Why Shinzo Abe Was Assassinated: Towards a ‘United States of Europe’ and a League of Nations

February 06, 2023

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By Cynthia Chung

As already discussed in my paper “Is Japan Willing to Cut its Own Throat in Sacrifice to the U.S. Pivot to Asia?”, to which this paper is a follow-up, Japan has become the ticking time bomb for the world economy.

This is not an unexpected outcome for Japan but has been in the works for the last 50 years as a policy outlook of the Trilateral Commission (though is not limited to this institution). It is in fact the League of Nations’ vision that has been on the wish list of those who began WWI in hopes that the world would accept a one world government of regionalisations in service to an empire. It is what orchestrated the Great Depression to again attempt an implementation of a League of Nations outlook through the rise of a “National Socialist” brand of fascism seen in Italy and Germany (which would not have been possible without an economic crisis). And it was what launched a Second World War in a desperate attempt to forcefully implement such a vision onto the world (for more this refer here and here.)

It has always been about obtaining a League of Nations organization for the world and those who have called themselves democrats have often found themselves in the same room as those who called themselves fascists in order to see such a vision through.

As Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the father of Pan-Europeanism (who happened to also be pro-fascist), wrote in his 1943 autobiography “A Crusade for Pan-Europe”:

“The Anti-Fascists hated Hitler…yet they…paved the way to his successes. For these anti-Fascists succeeded in transforming Mussolini, Hitler’s strongest enemy during the years of 1933 and 1934, into Hitler’s strongest ally. I don’t blame the Italian and Spanish anti-Fascists for their brave and very natural fight against their ruthless political enemies. But I blame the democratic politicians, especially in France…they treated Mussolini as an ally of Hitler till he became one.”

According to Kalergi, and many other ‘elites’ of similar pedigree, it was an inevitability that a fascist Pan-European rule should occur, and Kalergi expressed his clear disdain for anti-fascist and democratic resistance to this ‘inevitability’. From Kalergi’s standpoint, because of the anti-fascist and democratic resistance to a more ‘peaceful’ transference to fascism, they had created a situation where fascism would have to be imposed on them with violent force. It was a tragedy in the eyes of Kalergi that could have been avoided if these countries had simply accepted fascism on ‘democratic’ terms.

Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi would write in his other autobiography “An Idea Conquers the World”:

“The use of mass hypnotism for propaganda purposes is most successful at times of crisis. When National Socialism made its bid for power, millions of Germans had been thrown completely off their balance: middle-class families had sunk to the level of the proletariat, whilst working-class families were without work. The Third Reich became the last hope for the stranded, of those who had lost their social status, and of those rootless beings who were seeking a new basis for an existence that had become meaningless…

The economic background of the Hitler movement becomes apparent when one recalls that Hitler’s two revolutions coincided with Germany’s two great economic crises: the inflation of 1923 and the recession of the early 1930s, with its wave of unemployment. During the six intervening years, which were relatively prosperous for Germany, the Hitler movement was virtually non-existent.” [emphasis added]

The father of Pan-Europeanism and spiritual father of the European Union, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, often spoke well of Austrian and Italian fascism and even Catholic fascism, and thus the above quote by him takes on another layer of eeriness. Kalergi acknowledges that Hitler’s rise would not have been possible if there had not been two periods of extreme economic crisis for Germany. The question is, were these crises organic in their occurrence or rather engineered?

In Kalergi’s 1954 autobiography “An Idea Conquers the World,” he writes: “there is not doubt that Hitler’s popularity rested mainly on the fanatical struggle which he waged against the Versailles Treaty.”

If we look at the political ecosystem Kalergi was navigating in, we get some hints to such a question, which included such men as Max Warburg, Baron Louis Rothschild, Herbert Hoover, Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, Owen D. Young, Bernard Baruch, Walter Lippmann, Colonel House, General Tasker Bliss, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Thomas Lamont, Justice Hughes. All of these men are named by Kalergi directly as his support base in the United States in his autobiography. They were adamantly supportive of Kalergi’s Pan-Europeanism, aka a “United States of Europe,” were staunch supporters of a League of Nations vision and were architects within the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920) which was responsible for the Treaty of Versailles which launched Germany into its first wave of extreme economic crisis. (For more on this story refer here.)

In my previous paper, “Is Japan Willing to Cut its Own Throat in Sacrifice to the U.S. Pivot to Asia?” I discussed how this is the very goal of the Trilateral Commission, to create economic crises in order to push through extreme structural reforms.

Financial analyst and historian Alex Krainer writes:

“The [Trilateral] commission was co-founded in July of 1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski and a group of American, European and Japanese bankers, public officials and academics including Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker. It was set up to foster close cooperation among nations that constituted the three-block architecture of today’s western empire. That ‘close cooperation’ was intended as the very foundation of the empire’s ‘three block agenda,’ as formulated by the stewards of the undead British Empire.”

Its formation would be organised by Britain’s hand in America, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), (aka: the offspring of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the leading think tank for the British Crown).

On Nov 9^th, 1978, Trilateral Commission member Paul Volcker (Federal Reserve Chairman from 1979-1987) would affirm at a lecture delivered at Warwick University in England: “A controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate object for the 1980s.” This is also the ideology that has shaped Milton Friedman’s “Shock Therapy”.

In 1975 the CFR launched a public study of global policy titled the 1980’s Project. The general theme was “controlled disintegration” of the world economy, and the report did not attempt to hide the famine, social chaos, and death its policy would bring upon most of the world’s population.

This is precisely what Japan has been undergoing, and which economist Richard Werner demonstrated in his book Princes of Yen, to which a documentary by the same name was made. That Japan’s economy was put through a manufactured bubble in order to create an economic crisis that would then justify the need for extreme structural reform.

We will now briefly discuss how the United States, the Tiger Economies and Europe have also been put through the same process of manufactured economic crises and what this means for the world today, what has been the consequence for Europe in following a “United States of Europe” model and how does the one world government model of a League of Nations differ from the multipolar framework made up of sovereign nation states. I will conclude this paper with remarks on why Shinzo Abe was assassinated.

Colonialism 2.0: The Asian Economic Crisis of the Tiger Economies

Japan was not the only high-performance economy in Asia that in the 1990s found itself in the deepest recession since the Great Depression. In 1997, the currencies of the Southeast Asian Tiger Economies could not maintain a fixed exchange rate with the U.S. dollar. They collapsed by between 60-80% within a year.

The causes for this crash went as far back as 1993. In that year, the Asian Tiger Economies – South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia – implemented a policy of aggressive deregulation of their capital accounts and the establishment of international banking facilities, which enabled the corporate and banking sectors to borrow liberally from abroad, the first time in the postwar era that borrowers could do so. In reality, there was no need for the Asian Tiger Economies to borrow money from abroad. All the money necessary for domestic investment could be created at home.

The Princes of Yen documentary remarks:

“Indeed the pressure to liberalise capital flows came from outside. Since the early 1990s, the IMF, the World Trade Organization and the U.S. Treasury had been lobbying these countries to allow domestic firms to borrow from abroad. They argued that neoclassical economics had proven that free markets and free capital movement increased economic growth.

Once the capital accounts had been deregulated, the central banks set about creating irresistible incentives for domestic firms to borrow from abroad by making it more expensive to borrow in their own domestic currencies than it was to borrow in U.S. dollars.

The central banks emphasised in their public statements that they would maintain fixed exchange rates with the U.S. dollar, so that borrowers did not have to worry about paying back more in their domestic currencies than they had originally borrowed. Banks were ordered to increase lending. But they were faced with less loan demand from the productive sectors of the economy, because these firms had been given incentives to borrow from abroad instead. They therefore had to resort to increasing their lending to higher-risk borrowers.

Imports began to shrink, because the central banks had agreed to peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar. The economies became less competitive, but their current-account balance was maintained due to the foreign issued loans, which count as exports in the balance-of-payments statistics. When speculators began to sell the Thai baht, the Korean won and the Indonesian rupee, the respective central banks responded with futile attempts to maintain the peg until they had squandered virtually all of their foreign exchange reserves. This gave foreign lenders ample opportunity to withdraw their money at the overvalued exchange rates.

The central banks knew that if the countries ran out of foreign exchange reserves, they would have to call in the IMF to avoid default. And once the IMF came in, the central banks knew what this Washington-based institution would demand, for its demands in such cases had been the same for the previous three decades: the central banks would be made independent [and subservient to the IMF diktat].

On the 16th of July the Thai Finance Minister took a plane to Tokyo to ask Japan for a bailout. At the time Japan had USD $213 billion in foreign exchange reserves, more than the total resources of the IMF. They were willing to help but Washington stopped Japan’s initiative. Any solution to the emerging Asian Crisis had to come from Washington via the IMF.

After two months of speculative attacks the Thai government floated the baht.

The IMF to date has promised almost $120 billion USD to the embattled economies of Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea. Immediately upon arrival in the crisis-stricken countries, the IMF teams set up offices inside the central banks, from where they dictated what amounted to terms of surrender. The IMF demanded a string of policies, including curbs on central bank and bank credit creation, major legal changes and sharp rises in interest rates. As interest rates rose, high risk borrowers began to default on their loans.

Burdened with large amounts of bad debts, the banking systems of Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia were virtually bankrupt. Even otherwise healthy firms started to suffer from the widening credit crunch. Corporate bankruptcies soared. Unemployment rose to the highest levels since the 1930s.”

The IMF knew well what the consequences of its policies would be. In the Korean case, they even had detailed but undisclosed studies prepared, that had calculated just how many Korean companies would go bankrupt if interest rates were to rise by five percentage points. The IMF’s first agreement with Korea demanded a rise of exactly five percentage points in interest rates.

Richard Werner stated in an interview: “The IMF policies are clearly not aimed at creating economic recoveries in the Asian countries. They pursue quite a different agenda and that is to change the economic, political and social systems in those countries. In fact, the IMF deals prevent the countries concerned, like Korea, Thailand, to reflate.”

Interviewer: “Interesting. So you’re saying it’s making the crisis worse and you’re suggesting that the IMF has a hidden agenda?”

Richard Werner responded: “Well, it’s not very hidden this agenda because the IMF quite clearly demands that the Asian countries concerned have to change the laws so that foreign interests can buy anything from banks to land. And in fact, the banking systems can only be recapitalised, according to the IMF deals, by using foreign money which is not necessary at all, because as long as these countries have central banks, they could just print money and recapitalise the banking systems. You don’t need foreign money for that. So the agenda is clearly to crack open Asia for foreign interests.”

The IMF demanded that troubled banks not be bailed out, but instead closed down and sold off cheaply as distressed assets, often to large U.S. investment banks. In most cases the IMF-dictated-letters-of-intent explicitly stated that the banks had to be sold to foreign investors.

In Asia, government organised bailouts to keep ailing financial institutions alive were not allowed. But when a similar crisis struck back home in America a year later, the very same institutions reacted differently.

The Princes of Yen documentary remarks:

“The Connecticut based hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, which accepted as clients only high-net-worth individual investors and institutions, had leveraged its $5 billion USD in client capital, by more than 25 times, borrowing more than $100 billion USD from the world’s banks. When its losses had threatened to undermine the banks that had lent to it, with the possibility of a systemic banking crisis that would endanger the U.S. financial system and economy, the Federal Reserve organised a cartel-like bailout by leaning on Wall Street and international banks to contribute funds so that it could avoid default.

Why would the United States make demands on foreign nations in the name of the free market, when it has no intention of enforcing the same rules within its own borders?

The examples of the Japanese and Asian crises illustrate how crises can be engineered to facilitate the redistribution of economic ownership, and to implement legal, structural and political change.”

The reason why the Asian banks were forbidden to be saved, was so there could be a foreign buy-out of these Asian economies. Who needed the British East-India Co. when you now had the IMF ensuring the empire’s colonial objectives?

The IMF and Trilateral Commission’s “not so Hidden” Agenda

The IMF has clearly set its sights on a western banking take-over of Asia, but what was the “agenda” for Europe and the United States who were located within this sphere of influence? Were they destined to benefit from the plunders of the empire?

The short answer to this, which should be evident by now, is no.

The manufactured crises in the United States and Europe were to further centralise power amongst an ever smaller grouping and clearly not for the benefit of the people, or shall we say subjects of the land, who happen to be living in these regions.

Europe has particularly done a number on itself due to its adherence to a “United States of Europe” vision. Countries within the Euro currency bloc had forfeited their right to a national currency and handed this power to the European Central Bank (ECB), the most powerful and secretive of all central banks.

Under such a system, no European country has control over its own economy and is completely exposed to whatever the ECB decides.

Richard Werner remarked: “They [ECB] have to focus more on credit creation rather than interest rates. The ECB has a lot to learn from its past mistakes, because basically I don’t think it really watched credit creation carefully enough. Where in Spain, Ireland, we had massive credit expansion, under the watch of the ECB, interest rates are of course the same in the Eurozone, but the quantity of credit cycle is very different…There is one interest rate for the whole euro area but in 2002 the ECB told the Bundesbank [central bank of Germany] to reduce its credit creation by the biggest amount in its history and told the Irish central bank to print as much money as if there was no tomorrow. What do you expect is going to happen? Same interest rate. Is it the same growth? No. Recession in Germany, boom in Ireland. Which variable tells you that? Credit creation.”

From 2004 under the ECB’s watch, bank credit growth in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain increased by over 20% per annum and property prices sky-rocketed. When bank credit fell, property prices collapsed, developers went bankrupt and the banking systems of Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece became insolvent.

The Princes of Yen documentary remarks:

“The ECB could have prevented these bubbles just as it could have ended the ensuing banking and economic crises. But it refused to do so until major political concessions had been made, such as the transfer of fiscal and budgeting powers from each sovereign state to the European Union.

In both Spain and Greece, youth unemployment has been pushed up to 50%, forcing many youths to seek employment abroad. The deliberations of the ECB’s decision-making bodies are secret. The mere attempt at influencing the ECB, for instance through democratic debate and discussion, is forbidden according to the Maastricht Treaty.

The ECB is an international organisation that is above and outside the laws of jurisdictions of any individual nation. Its senior staff carry diplomatic passports and the files and documents inside the European Central Bank cannot be searched or impounded by any police force or public prosecutor.

The European Commission, an unelected group whose aim is to build a ‘United States of Europe,’ with all the trappings of a unified state has an interest in weaking individual governments and the influence of the democratic parliaments of Europe. It turns out that the evidence for central-bank independence that was relied upon in the Maastricht Treaty derived from a single study that was commissioned by none other than the European Commission itself.”

The Fascist Roots of the ‘United States of Europe’

On February 15^th, 1930, Churchill published in The Saturday Evening an articled titled “The United States of Europe,” where he wrote:^[1]

“…The resuscitation of the Pan-European idea is largely identified with Count Coudenhove-Kalergi…The League of Nations, from which the United States have so imprudently – considering their vast and increasing interests – absented themselves, has perforce become in fact, if not in form, primarily a European institution. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi proposes to concentrate European forces, interests and sentiments in a single branch which, if it grew, would become the trunk itself, and thus acquire obvious predominance. For think how mighty Europe is, but for its divisions! Let Russia slide back, as Count Kalergi proposes, and as it is already so largely a fact, into Asia. Let the British Empire, excluded in his plan, realize its own world-spread ideal, even so, the mass of Europe, once united, once federalized or partially federalized, once continentally self-conscious-Europe, with its African and Asiatic possessions and plantations, would constitute an organism beyond compare.” [emphasis added]

In Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s “An Idea Conquers the World” he writes:

“I discovered to my surprise that the feeling of European consciousness had first shown itself during the Crusades. After the fall of the Roman Empire the Crusades represented the most vigorous display of European solidarity. For a time, feuds between kings, princes and cities were submerged in a common cause…Finally, in 1834, Mazzini founded Young Europe, a movement designed to coordinate all existing revolutionary movements with a view to building up a new and united Europe on a basis of nationalism and democracy.” [emphasis added]

Interestingly Kalergi would write that Giuseppe Mazzini who Kalergi considered the most modern organizer towards a “united Europe on a basis of nationalism and democracy” was also considered the forerunner of fascism in Italy. Kalergi writes:^[2]

“Fascism at that time [in Italy] had not yet broken with parliamentarism and democracy. The new Italian government was a government of coalition; it respected the principle of constitutional monarchy, pretending only to give it new vigor and authority. It appealed to the heroic instincts of youth, to the spirit of sacrifice and of idealism. It tried to restore the respect for religious values and the glorious traditions of ancient Rome. It hailed the memory of Mazzini as a forerunner of Fascism.” [emphasis added]

The theme of the Crusaders would be central to Kalergi’s idea for a Pan-Europe, to which he even incorporated the symbol of the Crusaders within his flag for the Pan-European cause.

In his 1943 autobiography, Kalergi further expands on his theme of the Crusader of Pan-Europe:^[3]

“I chose the sign of the red cross superimposed on a golden sun as the emblem of our movement. The red cross, which had been the flag of the medieval crusaders, seemed the oldest known symbol of supra-national European brotherhood. In more recent times it has also gained recognition as a symbol of international relief work. The sun was chosen to represent the achievements of European culture in helping to illuminate the world. Thus, Hellenism and Christianity – the cross of Christ and the sun of Apollo – figured side by side as the twin enduring pillars of European civilization.” [emphasis added]

This idea of a “United States of Europe”, Kalergi’s “Pan-Europe” vision was a clever and dishonest play on words. The United States had originally existed in the form of 13 colonies beholden to the British Empire. However, when the United States maneuvered for independence from the British Empire by organizing itself into a sovereign nation state, the founding fathers unified the new republic around a system of Hamiltonian banking. This innovation in political economy converted unpayable debts into a new system of federal credit, enacted federal protectionism to favor local industrial growth and vectored the banks around investments which improved the General Welfare.

Thus, the United States was able to form one currency and a national bank to facilitate trade which upheld the economic sovereignty of the newly created nation.

This Hamiltonian economic organization in turn influenced German economist Friedrich List’s “The National System of Political Economy” which led to the Zollverein. Germany at the time was also divided into regions like the United States (Germany had never really been a nation up until this point) and the Zollverein allowed for Germany to begin establishing itself as a sovereign nation state for the first time in history. Friedrich List had directly referred to the Hamiltonian economic system as his inspiration for Germany. This system had also influenced Sun Yat-sen the father of the Republic of China in his “The Three Principles of the People” which was a direct reference to Lincoln/Henry C. Carey’s economic program which itself was a continuation of Alexander Hamilton’s economic principles. This was also revived in the form of American pro-Lincoln economists in Japan who helped organize the industrial growth program begun with the Meiji Restoration.

This is what the multi-polar framework is continuing, the defense and growth of sovereign nation-states. Yes, there is regional cooperation. You need regional cooperation for big infrastructure projects, such as rail, that will involve numerous nations. But regional cooperation should not be confused with a League of Nations vision and we can easily tell the difference between the two in terms of what is actually being proposed politically and economically. I will be writing a paper in the near future to address this subject more directly but for now I would refer the reader here for more on this.

In the case of the League of Nations, Pan-Europe, United States of Europe etc. etc. vision, it was the very opposite. It was to take power away from the sovereign nation-state framework and transform nations into vassal states subservient to systems of empire. That is, the “United States of Europe” was a dishonest and misleading reference to the original 13 American colonies. It was dishonest because instead of promoting further national economic sovereignty, the nations within Europe were expected to remove their sovereignty and be beholden to a centralised control through a European Union (centralised political power) and European Central Bank (centralised economic power) and NATO (centralised military power). No country within Europe would have control over their political, economic or military destiny within such a stranglehold.

In order for the League of Nations vision to take-over, sovereign nation-states would have to be dismantled. For more on this story refer to my book “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set.”

What the American and European economic crises have taught us is that the tax-payer will be made to pay for the increasing centralised take-over of what were once sovereign economies in order to empower a very small grouping of people, as the rights and welfare of average citizens are increasingly viewed as irrelevant.

Why Shinzo Abe was Assassinated

Former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe was assassinated July 8^th, 2022, and though no longer in the position of Prime Minister of Japan at the time of his assassination (having served from 2006-2007 and 2012- September 16, 2020) he was the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history and continued to exert major influence on policy-shaping within Japan.

News of Abe’s assassination was received around the world with an admixture of very strong emotion from both extremes. Some were horrified by his death and praised what he had done for Japan as something almost saintly. Others ecstatically celebrated his death, thinking no possible good could come from him due to his attempts to revive the dark side of Japan’s imperial past and his public displays of tribute to the Japanese fascists from WWII. When the news was still fresh and the frenzy of confusion at its peak, many even blamed China for the orchestration of Abe’s death, thinking they were clearly the ones to benefit from such an act.

It is true that Abe had a very dangerous and destructive mission to restore Japan to its status as an imperialistic empire. He was a corrupt insider who pushed for the dangerous privatization of the Japanese government and increased the gap between the wealthy and middle-class citizens. However, it is also too simplistic as to celebrate his death as an absolute triumph. As we can clearly see seven months after Abe’s assassination, Japan has not become more peaceful and ready for dialogue with its eastern partners but rather has become much more bellicose and stauncher in its cooperation with the increasingly war frenzied western demands. Japan has also greatly severed motion towards greater economic and political cooperation with Russia and China, which was still moving forward when Abe was alive.

It is also interesting to note that Abe was assassinated weeks before Pelosi’s Circus Tour to Taiwan. Although Pelosi’s provocation did not amount to any military confrontation, we cannot say that that was not its intention, nor that things could have played out very differently in terms of a military confrontation between China and the United States.

The reader should be reminded that in 2014, Japan had changed or “reinterpreted” its constitution which gave more powers to the Japan Self-Defense Forces, allowing them to “defend other allies” in case of war being declared upon them. The United States, of course, fully supported the move.

This “reinterpretation” of Japan’s constitution effectively entered it into NATO.

In December 2022, Japan announced a new national security strategy. This new strategy would double defense spending. Japan also plans to invest in counter-strike capabilities, including buying U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles and developing its own weapons systems.

It was precisely Abe’s grand vision of Japan returning to its “glory” days as an empire that was problematic for the League of Nations vision, for if Japan saw itself on par with other great empires, or perhaps even greater, it meant that it did not ultimately intend to bend the knee. That is, Abe was not willing to sell off Japan as a satrapy, however, that was exactly what the western diktat was essentially demanding of Japan. Under this western diktat Japan was being ordered to accept its fate to collapse economically and sink into desperation, become increasingly militaristic and extremist and lead a kamikaze charge into a war with China and Russia which would lead to the ruination of the Japanese civilization. It does not look like Abe was going to go along with that stark vision for Japan.

Emanuel Pastreich wrote an insightful paper titled “The Assassination of Archduke Shinzo Abe,” one could simply just read the title and it says it all. [The article is also under the title “When the Globalists Crossed the Rubicon: the Assassination of Shinzo Abe”]

Pastreich writes: “[Abe]…was already the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history, and had plans for a third bid as prime minister, when he was struck down.

Needless to say, the powers behind the World Economic Forum do not want national leaders like Abe, even if they conform with the global agenda, because they are capable of organizing resistance within the nation state.

…In the case of Russia, Abe successfully negotiated a complex peace treaty with Russia in 2019 that would have normalized relations and solved the dispute concerning the Northern Territories (the Kuril Islands in Russian). He was able to secure energy contracts for Japanese firms and to find investment opportunities in Russia even as Washington ramped up the pressure on Tokyo for sanctions.

The journalist Tanaka Sakai notes that Abe was not banned from entering Russia after the Russian government banned all other representatives of the Japanese government from entry.

Abe also engaged China seriously, solidifying long-term institutional ties, and pursuing free trade agreement negotiations that reached a breakthrough in the fifteenth round of talks (April 9-12, 2019). Abe had ready access to leading Chinese politicians and he was considered by them to be reliable and predictable, even though his rhetoric was harshly anti-Chinese.

The critical event that likely triggered the process leading to Abe’s assassination was the NATO summit in Madrid (June 28-30).

The NATO summit was a moment when the hidden players behind the scenes laid down the law for the new global order. NATO is on a fast track to evolve beyond an alliance to defend Europe and to become an unaccountable military power, working with the Global Economic Forum, the billionaires and the bankers around the world, as a ‘world army,’ functioning much as the British East India Company did in another era.

The decision to invite to the NATO summit the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand was a critical part of this NATO transformation.

These four nations were invited to join in an unprecedented level of integration in security, including intelligence sharing (outsourcing to big tech multinationals), the use of advanced weapons systems (that must be administrated by the personnel of multinationals like Lockheed Martin), joint exercises (that set a precedent for an oppressive decision-making process), and other ‘collaborative’ approaches that undermine the chain of command within the nation state.

When Kishida returned to Tokyo on July first, there can be no doubt that one of his first meetings was with Abe. Kishida explained to Abe the impossible conditions that the Biden administration had demanded of Japan.

The White House, by the way, is now entirely the tool of globalists like Victoria Nuland (Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs) and others trained by the Bush clan.

The demands made of Japan were suicidal in nature. Japan was to increase economic sanctions on Russia, to prepare for possible war with Russia, and to prepare for a war with China. Japan’s military, intelligence and diplomatic functions were to be transferred to the emerging blob of private contractors gathering for the feast around NATO.

We do not know what Abe did during the week before his death. Most likely he launched into a sophisticated political play, using of all his assets in Washington D.C., Beijing, and Moscow—as well as in Jerusalem, Berlin, and London, to come up with a multi-tiered response that would give the world the impression that Japan was behind Biden all the way, while Japan sought out a détente with China and Russia through the back door.”

Let us be honest here, since the hot mess should be rather plain for everyone to see at this point; those who are in the position of pushing the IMF, NATO, World Economic Forum’s disastrous policies are not the brains in the room. The embarrassment of less than two-month former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, who did not even know Russian territory from Ukrainian territory, responding that she would never recognise Rostov and Voronezh as Russian, is just one of too many examples that are occurring on an almost daily basis. These are the perfect tools for such insane policies for this very reason, they do not understand what outcome they are ultimately pushing. They are absolutely clueless and thus expendable as the card-board cut-outs that they are.

The reality of the situation is that no nation is expected to survive this stand-off.

It is not about the western bloc against the eastern bloc. It is about the ruination of all nations and the formation of one empire, or if you prefer the wording, one world government. Again, this is the League of Nations vision that has been the wet dream of a very small grouping since the First World War.

It is not about western democracy or liberalism or western value systems. It is about, and has only ever been about the reinstitution of systems of empire. This is what the First World War was about, this was what the Second World War was about and it is what the Third World War is about.

Interestingly, we again see Germany and Japan positioned next to the trip-wire that is ready to launch the globe into another full-blown world war. And guess what will be the fate of those two countries, Germany and Japan, who’s automaton ‘leadership’ so foolishly think of themselves as included within the ‘elite’ grouping who will somehow survive after setting the world on fire, as they so foolishly made the mistake of thinking during the Second World War. They will see once again how expendable their people, their civilization are to this ‘elite’ grouping they so desperately want to be accepted by.

One thing is for certain since Abe’s assassination. Japan is moving ever more rapidly forward on a very dangerous path that threatens it to be once again on the wrong side of history. The question is, are Germany and Japan so foolish as to make the same mistake twice, for they should not assume they will survive such a reckoning a second time.

The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com.

1. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard. (1943) Crusade for Pan-Europe: Autobiography of a Man and a Movement. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, pg. 198-200. ↑
2. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard. (1943) Crusade for Pan-Europe: Autobiography of a Man and a Movement. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, pg. 78. ↑
3. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard. (1954) An Idea Conquers the World. Purcell & Sons Ltd., Great Britain, pg. 98.

A Tale of Two Cultures (America and Russia)

January 12, 2023

Source

by Jimmie Moglia

When events do not make sense or are such as sense cannot untie, an option is to forget all about them – the head-in-the-sand solution. Another is to remember that man is but a quintessence of dust and often, therefore, not even worth the dust that the rude wind blows in his face.

Yet another option is an attempt at interpretation, with emphasis on ‘attempt’ and limits on ‘interpretation.” In the instance, the events in question are: one, the claim – by the Western signatories of the so-called “Minsk Agreements” on Ukraine in 2014 – that they did not intend to respect them. And two, that the commitment by the USA to Gorbachev in 1989 not to expand NATO Eastward was invalid for not having been set in writing.

But how can we interpret shamelessness? For to define true shamelessness, what is it but to be nothing else but shameless? At least Shakespeareanly speaking.

In past similar historical occasions, perjurers usually found some fancy or preposterous reasons to justify their behavior. Often those affected by the perjury sought redress through vengeance, leading to bitter wars and to the execution of the perjurers. During the 100-year war (1337-1453), King Henry V, uncovered and executed three English traitors, the Earl of Cambridge, Lord Scroop and Sir Thomas Grey, who were working for the French king.

In other cases, such as the momentous event when Hitler broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement of 1939 and invaded the USSR in 1941, Germany’s official reason had some pretense of authenticity, however false or questionable. Namely the alleged violations of German air space by some Soviet planes.

Yet history abounds with enigmas. In that instance, some sources have claimed that Stalin was himself planning an attack on Germany. But as of today, available evidence doesn’t support the claim, and suggests that Stalin ignored or pretended to ignore the reported and warnings of a pending, massive German invasion.

Though even Count Schulenburg, the German ambassador to Moscow, only learned about the invasion at the last moment. And having developed strong friendships during his stay, Schulenburg was reported to be crying when he took the last train from Moscow to Berlin. For the record, he died in a German concentration camp in 1944.

Given this and other precedents, the current belligerent stance of US-NATO versus Russia is astonishing. For the Western Juntas and their puppets find no shame in hiding their bad faith.

And yet an avowed impostor usually still triggers more dislike than admiration – for the difference between an impostor and a traitor is one of degree, not substance. And breach of trust, at least at large, is still rated more negatively than positively. For example, it is not something that a job applicant (as yet), would claim in his resume as a ‘strength’– e.g. “I am particularly skilled at breaching the trust placed on me by whomsoever.”

But the American and Western European actors involved in the current breaches of trust do not seemingly care. Therefore the tragic, absurd and Orwellian posture of political and Zionist America (with Europe in tow), towards the Ukrainian business and war should give us pause. Considering that history is concerned with the relation between the unique and the general. And that a historian can no more separate them, or give precedence to one over the other, than he can separate fact from interpretation. Further realizing that there are as many interpretations as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents.

In this writing I will deal separately with the two main parties involved, Russia and the USA. For puppets nominally rule the European Union and their media is historically irrelevant.

As for the USA, the inaudible and noiseless foot of time, along with forgetfulness and dark oblivion, have erased from the collective memory the purportedly original reason that triggered the Vietnam war – and the consequent millions killed, the many maimed and the countless wounded on both sides. Namely the ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ incident. When, allegedly, North Vietnamese torpedo boats fired on a US destroyer that was in international water according to the US, and in domestic waters according to the Vietnamese. Nevertheless those involved on the US side still found it then necessary to invent a plausible cause.

But not now. What changed or what happened then between 1965 and the present? And what identifiable original or ideological cause can be found for the Western so-called ‘rulers’ to disregard the Minks agreements and the agreement about the non-expansion of NATO? Even the often quoted notion of so-called ‘plausible deniability’ has seemingly gone the way of all flesh.

One socio-political interpretation may be perhaps found well over 20 years ago. That is, a related pattern-setting event can be traced back to the Clinton-Lewinsky business. When the president of the Unites States had the gall to tell the nation, in prime time, that ‘I did not have sex with that woman’ notwithstanding ample, legal and irrefutable evidence.

That the president of the ‘exceptional nation’ would allow himself to be entrapped into an obvious and decidedly bawdy situation, while simultaneously showing himself as the lyingest knave in Christendom, should at least have raised some doubts about his qualifications for the position.

But it didn’t, and at the time various qualified voices expressed concern about the implications of the resolution. For when a preposterous lie to the public and parliament (by the highest representative of the state) is essentially endorsed by allowing the perjurer (for he was under oath) to remain in office, a pattern and precedent is established for others to follow suit in times to come.

One obvious, recent and worthy fellow and follower is Giuseppe Biden along with his remarkable family. And we can see clearly an evolution. For what with Clinton was a matter of lying to save his bottom, with Biden lying seems actually a matter of pride. (E.G. “18 FBI agents have verified that Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation!”)

Yet already after the Lewinsky business, the list of patent, unrestrained and preposterous lies excreted by subsequent US state department administrations would fill a long row of portable toilets and stink to high heaven. Beginning with Yugoslavia, followed by the very murky 9/11 affair, Saddam’s weapons of mass distraction, Gadhafi’s breach of human rights, Assad’s ‘chemical poisons’ in Syria, bringing democracy to Afghanistan, Georgia, Ukraine, and the Middle Eastern terrorist groups that are enemies one day and freedom fighters the next, financed and supplied in either case by the exceptional nation.

Giving the proverbial seal of approval and certificate of authenticity to much of the above was, among others, the ex-CIA director, plump and pompous Pompeo. Who, in a relatively recent conference declared, in a vein of satisfied and entertaining pride, that (at the CIA), “we lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire related training (how to) courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.” With the audience erupting in spontaneous applause.

Yet, it is possible to detect another ideological connection among these past events and the present – namely a clear pride in disregarding the truth. Or rather, in a brave new world and new world order, verification of truth is no longer necessary. Truth is what is declared to be by questionable academia, by imposed ideology and by the interests that push forward academia, academics and ideology.

Donald Rumsfeld, departed and un-missed secretary of defence, said it best, “We create our own reality.” In the circumstances, it is already extraordinary that – seemingly – a majority of the American people have not followed suit. Otherwise most of us would be forced to walk around town with a loaded AK-47, and each state would be transformed into a myriad of mini-Ukraines at war with each other.

A thornier yarn to unravel or issue to interpret, in the limited confines of an essay, is the political-ideological relationship between the US and the Russian Federation.

As far as the US, my perceptions, for what is worth, are a possibly unwarranted extrapolation of impressions gained over the years by observing behavior, reactions, and points of view among people whom I either know personally at work, or socially, or whose manners and expressions I had occasion to follow on various media channels.

To begin with – and however obvious – it is unfair and useless to tag or label the actions of one or more US governments, politicians, questionable bigwigs or equally questionable oligarchs as representing “the Americans.”

Further considering that, historically and commercially, the evil and turbid sell more than the good and limpid. And since “to things of sale a seller’s praise belongs” the relentless media-driven emphasis on prurient narratives of evil ends up popularizing it. Considering that notoriety contains in itself an undeclared or hidden element of quasi-praise. Praise not for the evil act but for the profit produced by the sale of evil. Therefore, in the end, the evil, the turbid and the prurient join together to maximize returns. A proposition beautifully condensed in the expression, ‘anything for a buck’.

I will not pursue further this line, other than with a few remarks on what I think remains of the collective American psyche, until (if the trend continues), it will be overrun by the “new world order”, transgenderism, fluid sexuality, male maternity, wokism, cancel culture and various other Gomorrish items of insanity. Leading, finally, to the satanic substitution or replacement of the Western European population, or population of that extraction, as promoted by various notorious and vocal so-called ‘intellectuals’.

At the root of the historical American psyche, it could be said that there are two prevailing world-views, quite different from each other, and yet both deriving from events associated with the birth of the nation and the so-called conquest of the American West.

According to one view, man has to do with the practical, the risky, the impending and the inevitable. He must assert himself whatever the circumstances and the consequences. He is the macho man, the winner who takes all. Culture is essentially a feminine thing, as women are exempted from the masculine duties and have time to spare. A man (or a nation for that matter) who presents a posture of respect, regard, conformity to good form, aperture to disinterested friendship, interest, maybe with a view to learn the good points of the other, is essentially weak.

This version of the American man may admire Lincoln for having crushed the South, but especially for having succeeded in ignoring the statutes of the Confederation, which included the option for the single states to leave the Union. And perhaps, above all, for having been so smart as to sell the idea that the war was declared to free the slaves, rather than to patently ignore the covenant of the Union. Can one be smarter than that?

A more modern version of the ‘macho man’ is captured or described by the famous sentence, ‘Speak softly but carry a big stick’ – a philosophy applicable to reluctant regimes, especially in South and Central America. The assumption being that genuine kindness is a sign of weakness and he who wastes his time in ‘culture’ is equally weak and un-suited to lead armies into battle or economists into plunder.

I am broadly simplifying and generalizing, but I have personally watched one such man (and his entourage) drive to the ground a successful and innovative Fortune 500 corporation – eventually sold to the proverbial highest bidder – and I know of other cases.

These traits describe in their entirety the class ‘A’ Americans, (‘A’ for ‘arrogant’ and for simplification). They are not the majority by any means and yet, by default, design, or through the inscrutable paths of fate, end up projecting abroad the cartoon-image of the ‘typical’ American.

‘Security’ is the nominal, illogical reason why this class imposes criminal measures on behalf of the rest of the nation, claiming to act for the nation’s interest. Unable or unwilling to realize that the most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security – rather the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different.

Counteracting the ‘macho’ view there is (luckily), the great majority of the ‘other’ Americans, who are helpful, independent, practical, kind, considerate, genuinely interested in others, generous and helpful to their neighbors as a matter of course. These traits were equally necessary and indispensable during the ‘so-called’ conquest of the West. And they equally and globally describe the class ‘H’ Americans (‘H’ for ‘Humanity’).

It is an extremely simplified and maybe questionable view, but I think it goes beyond the mere generalization captured by the sentence, ‘there are good and bad people everywhere’ or similar. In fact, I do not think it is far fetched to detect, in the proliferation and almost exaltation of transgenderism, ‘fluid sexuality,’ etc. a kind of psychological reaction to the cult of the macho man of the American sort.

Moving now to Russia, the prevailing and official US ‘macho man’ attitude is reflected in and enhanced by the current posture of the US Administration on the Ukraine business. We should also include the non-American elephant-in-the-room affecting the whole thing. But it would un-necessarily complicate the historical perspective.

I will attempt – however cursorily – to observe Russia’s current posture on Ukraine and the world at large, in the context of Russian history and of the present historical moment.

Some may recall proverbial statements by notable personalities about the mystery and the ‘difficulty’ of understanding Russia. Notorious is Churchill’s saying about Russia being a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

Actually, in the past, even notable Russians were not shy about the issue, admitting not to understand their own nation. So much so that Dostoyevsky, in his ‘Diary of a Writer’, pokes fun at this doubting class of Russians.

“In days gone by – he says – the words “I understand nothing” meant merely ignorance on the part of him who uttered them; yet, at present they bring great honor. One has only to declare with an open air and snobbishly: “I do not understand religion; I understand nothing in Russia; I understand nothing in art” – and at once he is lifted to lofty heights. And this is all the more advantageous if one, in fact, understands nothing. However, this simplified device proves nothing…”

It is possible to follow some of the speculations that may explain the effect of such national self-questioning. Of course in this field no theory is perfect but any is better than none.

Reasons for the air of mystery surrounding Russia, as per Churchill’s quote, or for the lack of national self-understanding, as noted by Dostoyevsky, would be but speculative. Dostoyevsky himself does not pursue this line of inquiry, other than hinting that it may be a self-satisfying form of eccentricity. There remains the fact, however, that the Russian culture and language have given the world some of the most extraordinary and unique literary masterpieces.

Language being the scaffold of civilization, we can more fruitfully read the history of a nation once that nation has a language for writing it. In this respect Russian culture is the tale of three cities, Kiev, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Kiev was founded around the 8^th century, Moscow in the 12^th and St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 18^th. For traditional chroniclers and historians, Kiev has remained the “mother of Russian cities”, and memories of its accomplishments gave to the Orthodox Eastern Russians an enduring sense of unity. Especially in the midst of religious turmoil, when the confrontation between Poland’s Catholicism and Ukraine’s Orthodox Christianity led eventually to the treaty of Pereiaslav in 1654 and the formal annexation of Ukraine to Russia. Thanks to which the Cossack ruler Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who was confronting the attacks and belligerence of Poland-Lithuania, sought to join Russia and pledged the allegiance (of Ukraine) to the Tsar.

According to one school of thought, the year 1252 marks the beginning of the historical-cultural split between Russia and the rest of Europe. When Alexander Nevsky – a most beloved protagonist in the history of Russia – struck an agreement with Khan Bayi of the Mongol Golden Horde, whereby Nevsky could reign as Sovereign of Kiev and of all Russia.

This was a situation quite different from than in the West, where Western kings or emperors needed the benediction of the Pope and the Church to be able to reign – or, if not, suffer excommunication. And this on the ground that the Pope was the prime minister of God. And God, via the Pope, conferred on the kings the authority to reign.

One historically famous consequence of this arrangement took place when the German Henry IV was Emperor of the Western Roman Empire and Gregory VII the Pope. Henry nominated as Bishop of Milan a prelate not approved by the Pope. Whereupon Gregory VII excommunicated the Emperor, and the Emperor the Pope. In the instance Henry IV – in 1077 – had to yield and do penance by waiting in the winter snow for 3 days and nights outside the castle of Countess Matilde of Canossa (heir to a feudal domain that comprised most of Northern and a good part of Central Italy), until being received and pardoned by the Pope.

The feud became symbolic of the “Fight for the Investitures.” Meaning the fight for ‘who really called the shots’, when electing high-rank church officials, the pope or the emperor. And until about the time of the discovery of America, and sometimes even later, it was difficult for a king to reign by antagonizing (or without the approval of) the Pope. For it made it easier for rebellious princes to disregard the authority of the king.

That German emperor’s distressful pilgrimage gave rise to the saying “going to Canossa” indicating an act of repentance. Even in the late 1800 Bismarck, the unifier of Germany used the sentence, “We will not go to Canossa, neither in body nor in spirit” (Nach Canossa gehen wir nicht, weder körperlich noch geistig) to signal his steadfastness on a certain decision.

But the last dispute on whether it should be the church or the king to have the final say in appointing bishops or cardinals occurred during the time of another Henry IV, this time a king of France (1553-1610). Who, when essentially forced to ban the Huguenots (protestants) from France, pronounced the famous sentence, “Paris is well worth a mass” (Paris vaut bien une messe).

None of this occurred in Russia. Nevsky (with much questionable simplification) not having to fight in the East, was able to pursue a ‘nation consolidating policy’ on the Western Front. He fought victorious and legendary battles against German and Swedish invaders. And he served as Prince of Novgorod, Grand Prince of Kiev and Grand Prince of Vladimir during some of the most difficult times of Kievan Rus’ history.

The difference with the West is that there were bitter and sometimes deadly religious disputes inside the Orthodox church and factions, but they did not affect (on the whole) the integrity of the state. All the while Russia could pursue her Eastern expansion mostly with agreements and treaties with various Eastern potentates.

It may be instructive to compare significant historical events during the same timeframe in Eastern and Western Europe and their respective impact.

Nevsky’s agreement with the Mongols took place in 1252, two years after the death in the West of Frederick II of Svevia, Holy Roman Emperor, who had a German father, a Norman mother and a Sicilian upbringing.

At the time of the Crusades, Frederick II (whom later historians named “the wonder of the world” due to his personality defined as ‘polyhedric’), rather than fighting the Arabs and the Turks found an agreement with them – whereupon the pope excommunicated him. With his actions Frederick II wanted to restore the glories of Charlemagne’s original Western Roman Empire, established in 800 AD and later plagued by internal disputes, splits and wars.

Frederick II did not seem interested in Northern and Eastern Europe. He did not succeed in revitalizing the Western Roman empire, whereas Nevsky succeeded in building the base of the Russian state and eventually empire. To the success of one and failure of the other, historians have attributed the beginning of the difference between the developments of Russia and of the rest of Europe as well as the notably different and respective ‘weltanschauung’.

Though even before Nevsky, Pope Honorius III promoted the wars between Finland and the Republic of Novgorod, one of the important Russian medieval states, eventually incorporated into the Grand duchy of Moscow.

The pope authorized the bishop of Finland to establish a commercial embargo against the ‘barbarians’ (Eastern-Orthodox) who threatened Catholic Christendom in Finland. A measure echoing today’s US sanctions and embargos on Russia, due to Russia contesting Western ‘exceptionality’ and its related pretended rights to a planetary empire.

Pope Gregory IX supported or encouraged the efforts at destroying the Orthodox Church, which culminated in a famous battle between the Western coalition (Poles, Danes, Swedes, Baltic elements and German forces) against Alexander Nevsky, whose army, complemented by Mongol archers on horse – won the battle on the frozen lake Peipus (1242), now the border between Estonia and Russia. In that battle the Mongols, allied with Nevsky, forced the antagonist cavalry to retreat to the part of the lake where the ice was thinner and broke under the weight of the heavy medieval armory of the enemy.

There was a schism in the Russian Orthodox church, about 150 years after the Catholic-Protestant Western schism, triggered by Luther in 1520. But the outward items of the Russian dispute had to do with disputes that (I assume), even to a Western mind of the time may have appeared odd. Such as the advocates of unison versus harmony in singing, the use of two fingers instead of three in making the sign of the cross and similar others. Whereas the Western Schism had to do with the sought-for independence, by Luther and the Protestants, from Catholic Rome.

According to many, the most emblematic character, in the clash between Eastern and Western cultures, was Peter the Great (1672-1725). As described by an eminent Russian historian, his Russian traits were simplicity, coarseness, dislike of ceremony, conventions and etiquette, a curious sort of democracy, a love of truth and equity, a love of Russia, and at the same time “the elemental nature of a wild beast was awake in him”. And there were traits, in Peter, that may be compared with the Bolsheviks. Some historians have defined the Peter the Great as the first Bolshevik.

In the wake of Peter the Great’s era both French enlightenment and German Romanticism were imported into Russia. Emblematic of the influence that French ‘philosophes’ had on Russian culture was the era of the reforming despots, in turn exemplified by Catherine the Great’s correspondence with Voltaire. In recent years, 26 letters of her correspondence with Voltaire were returned to Russia.

In the wake of these new links and connections a wave of admiration for France and French culture spread among the Russian nobility and intellectuals at large. It became fashionable to speak French alongside Russian at home and on social occasions. A curiosity reflected in a number of Russian novels. By the way, this is one more point that throws into ridicule the current subservience of the French government to the dictates of the EU and US, as recently also commented on, in an interview, by the grandson of Charles DeGaulle on a French YT channel. Who – De Gaulle – kept France out of NATO and maintained cordial, peaceful and economically beneficial relations with the USSR even at the peak of the Cold War.

Anyway, following, or out of the wave of thought inspired by Peter’s reforms, and the strong connection with European Illuminist thinking, came that stream of Russian literature that has ennobled mankind in a unique and inimitable way. And that has enabled Russia – even allowing for the distortions, the folly and the absurdities of Bolshevism – to still remain, so far, a bastion of resistance against the plague of cancel culture, wokism and the like.

In fact, in my view, even in Gorbachev (whose life I have described in a video – link at the end) it is possible to find traits of two of the three brother Karamazov of Dostoyevsky, the adventurous Dmitry (reflected in Gorbachev’s daring opening towards the West) and the sincere and spiritual Alexei (reflected in Gorbachev’s belief that his Western counterparts spoke and acted in good faith).

Often, and perhaps inevitably, the persona portrayed by the corporate media is a caricature, and many, including him who writes here, are prone to be tricked or misled.

Finally and for what is worth, this write-up in no way can be considered adequate, let alone sufficient, for drawing a comparison between two states, two peoples, two histories and two cultures. In partial disculpation, I can only repeat to my twenty-five readers what Dr. Johnson said of dictionaries, “No dictionary is perfect, but any is better than none.”

Video “Goodbye Gorbachev” — https://youtu.be/Zei7elnxJ0s

Bye bye 1991-2022

January 10, 2023

by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

2023 starts with collective NATO in Absolutely Freak Out Mode as Russian Defense Minister Shoigu announces that Russian Navy frigate Admiral Gorshkov is now on tour – complete with a set of Mr. Zircon’s hypersonic business cards.

The business tour will encompass the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, and of course include the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire’s former Mare Nostrum. Mr. Zircon on the prowl has absolutely nothing to do with the war in Ukraine: it’s a sign of what happens next when it comes to frying much bigger fishes than a bunch of Kiev psychos.

The end of 2022 did seal the frying of the Big Ukraine Negotiation Fish. It has now been served on a hot plate – and fully digested. Moscow has made it painfully clear there’s no reason whatsoever to trust the “non-agreement capable” declining superpower.

So even taxi drivers in Dacca are now betting on when the much- vaunted “winter offensive” starts, and how far will it go. General Armageddon’s path ahead is clear: all-out demilitarization and de-electrification on steroids, complete with grinding up masses of Ukrainians at the lowest possible cost to the Russian Armed Forces in Donbass until Kiev psychos beg for mercy. Or not.

Another big fried fish on a hot plate at the end of 2022 was the 2014 Minsk Agreement. The cook was no other than former chancellor Merkel (“an attempt to buy time for Ukraine”). Implied is the not exactly smokin’ gun: the strategy of the Straussian/neo-con and neoliberal-con combo in charge of US foreign policy, from the beginning, was to unleash a Forever War, by proxy, against Russia.

Merkel may have been up to something telling the Russians, in their face, that she lied like crypto-Soprano Mike Pompeo, then she lied again and again, for years. That’s not embarrassing for Moscow, but for Berlin: yet another graphic demonstration of total vassalage to the Empire.

The response by the contemporary embodiment of Mercury, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Maria Zakharova, was equally intriguing: Merkel’s confession could be used as a specific reason – and evidence – for a tribunal judging Western politicians responsible for provoking the Russia-Ukraine proxy war.

No one will obviously confirm it on the record. But all this could be part of an evolving, secret Russia-Germany deal in the making, leading to Germany restoring at least some of its sovereignty.

Time to fry NATO fish

Meanwhile, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, visibly relishing his totally unplugged incarnation, expanded on the Fried Negotiation Fish saga. “Last warning to all nations”, as he framed it: “there can be no business with the Anglo-Saxon world [because] it is a thief, a swindler, a card-sharp that could do anything….From now on we will do without them until a new generation of sensible politicians comes to power… There is nobody in the West we could deal with about anything for any reason.”

Medvedev, significantly, recited more or less the same script, in person, to Xi Jinping in Beijing, days before the zoom to end all zooms – between Xi and Putin – that worked as a sort of informal closure of 2022, with the Russia-China strategic partnership perfectly in synch.

On the war front, General Armageddon’s new – offensive – groove is bound to lead in the next few months to an undisputable fact on the ground: a partition between a dysfunctional black hole or rump Ukraine on the west, and Novorossiya in the east.

Even the IMF is now reluctant to throw extra funds into the black hole. Kiev’s 2023 budget has an – unrealistic – $36 billion deficit. Half of the budget is military-related. The real deficit in 2022 was running at about $5 billion a month – and will inevitably balloon.

Tymofiy Mylovanov, a professor at the Kiev School of Economics, came up with a howler: the IMF is worried about Ukraine’s “debt sustainability”. He added, “if even the IMF is worried, imagine what private investors are thinking”. There will be no “investment” in rump Ukraine. Multinational vultures will grab land for nothing and whatever puny productive assets may remain.

Arguably the biggest fish to be fried in 2023 is the myth of NATO. Every serious military analyst, few Americans included, knows that the Russian Army and military industrial complex represents a superior system than what existed at the end of the USSR, and far superior to that of the US and the rest of NATO today.

The Mackinder-style final blow to a possible alliance between Germany (EU), Russia and China – which is what is really behind the US proxy war in Ukraine – is not proceeding according to the Straussian wet dream.

Saddam Hussein, former imperial vassal, was regime-changed because he wanted to bypass the petrodollar. Now we have the inevitable rise of the petroyuan – “in three to five years”, as Xi Jinping announced in Riyadh: you just can’t prevent it with Shock’n Awe on Beijing.

In 2008, Russia embarked on a massive rebuilding of missile forces and a 14-year plan to modernize land-based armed forces. Mr. Zircon presenting his hypersonic business card across the Mare Nostrum is just a small part of the Big Picture.

The myth of US power

The CIA abandoned Afghanistan in a humiliating retreat – even ditching the heroin ratline – just to relocate to Ukraine and continue playing the same old broken records. The CIA is behind the ongoing sabotage of Russian infrastructure – in tandem with MI6 and others. Sooner or later there will be blowback.

Few people – including CIA operatives – may know that New York City, for instance, may be destroyed with a single move: blowing up the George Washington bridge. The city can’t be supplied with food and most of its requirements without the bridge. The New York City electrical grid can be destroyed by knocking out the central controls; putting it back together could take a year.

Even trespassed by infinite layers of fog of war, the current situation in Ukraine is still a skirmish. The real war has not even started yet. It might – soon.

Apart from Ukraine and Poland there is no NATO force worth mentioning. Germany has a risible two-day supply of ammunition. Turkey will not send a single soldier to fight Russians in Ukraine.

Out of 80,000 US troops stationed in Europe, only 10% are weaponized. Recently 20,000 were added, not a big deal. If the Americans activated their troops in Europe – something rather ridiculous in itself – they would not have any place to land supplies or reinforcements. All airports and seaports would be destroyed by Russian hypersonic missiles in a matter of minutes – in continental Europe as well as the UK.

In addition, all fuel centers such as Rotterdam for oil and natural gas would be destroyed, as well as all military installations, including top American bases in Europe: Grafenwoehr, Hohenfels, Ramstein, Baumholder, Vilseck, Spangdahlem, and Wiesbaden in Germany (for the Army and Air Force); Aviano Air Base in Italy; Lajes Air Base in Portugal’s Azores islands; Naval Station Rota in Spain; Incirlik Air Base in Turkey; and Royal Air Force stations Lakenheath and Mildenhall in the UK.

All fighter jets and bombers would be destroyed – after they land or while landed: there would be no place to land except on the autobahn, where they would be sitting ducks.

Patriot missiles are worthless – as the whole Global South saw in Saudi Arabia when they tried to knock out Houthi missiles coming from Yemen. Israel’s Iron Dome can’t even knock out all primitive missiles coming from Gaza.

US military power is the supreme myth of the fish to be fried variety. Essentially they hide behind proxies – as the Ukraine Armed Forces. US forces are worthless except in turkey shoots as in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, against a disabled opponent in the middle of the desert with no air cover. And never forget how NATO was completely humiliated by the Taliban.

The final breaking point

2022 ended an era: the final breaking point of the “rules-based international order” established after the fall of the USSR.

The Empire entered Desperation Row, throwing everything and the kitchen sink – proxy war on Ukraine, AUKUS, Taiwan hysteria – to dismantle the set-up they created way back in 1991.

Globalization’s rollback is being implemented by the Empire itself. That ranges from stealing the EU energy market from Russia so the hapless vassals buy ultra-expensive US energy to smashing the entire semiconductor supply chain, forcibly rebuilding it around itself to “isolate” China.

The NATO vs. Russia war in Ukraine is just a cog in the wheel of the New Great Game. For the Global South, what really matters is how Eurasia – and beyond – are coordinating their integration process, from BRI to the BRICS+ expansion, from the SCO to the INSTC, from Opec+ to the Greater Eurasia Partnership.

We’re back to what the world looked like in 1914, or before 1939, only in a limited sense. There’s a plethora of nations struggling to expand their influence, but all of them are betting on multipolarity, or “peaceful modernization”, as Xi Jinping coined it, and not Forever Wars: China, Russia, India, Iran, Indonesia and others.

So bye bye 1991-2022. The hard work starts now. Welcome to the New Great Game on crack.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed!

December 16, 2022

Source

By David Sant

During its rise to world domination, the City of Rome had one major competitor, which was its equal in every way. That city was Carthage, located 370 miles away, on the South side of the Mediterranean Sea.

Carthage had been planting colonies around the Mediterranean and Atlantic for over a century before Rome was even founded. As Rome rose to power, these two Mediterranean cities fought two wars for control over the Island of Sicily, called the Punic Wars. Despite an admirable performance by Hannibal who managed to invade Italy twice and inflicted a terrible defeat on the Romans at Cannae, Carthage still ended up losing both wars.

At the close of the second Punic War in 201 BC, Carthage was conquered by Rome and placed under a special administrative status that disallowed it from fielding a navy or overseas military without permission from the Roman Senate.

Carthage was one of only three powers that ever managed to directly threaten Rome during the days of the Republic, the others being the Gauls who sacked Rome in 390 BC, and the Macedonian Greeks, who were defeated in 197 BC.

The Roman attitude and behavior toward Carthage then was very similar to the Anglo-American attitude toward Russia, today. The main “sin” of Carthage in the eyes of the Romans was that it was equal in power and influence to Rome. And for that sin, it had to be destroyed.

Cato the Elder was a Roman soldier, who later became a Senator and famous orator who gave many speeches in the Senate even after his retirement. Over a period of forty years, he routinely ended his speeches on any subject with the statement, “And furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed!”

Cato repeatedly made this demand, despite the fact that Carthage was now a Roman client state bound by a peace treaty.

For fifty years after losing the Second Punic War, Carthage submitted to the terms of the treaty. However, after the death of Cato the Elder in 149 BC, a certain faction in Rome deliberately allowed the King of Numidia to pillage and conquer Carthagenian territories, in violation of the treaty.

This placed Carthage in a position where they had to defend themselves from predations by a neighboring Roman client state. Their appeals to the Roman Senate were ignored. So, they took action to defend their interests against Numidia without permission.

When they did so, the Roman Senate immediately interpreted this as a violation of the 201 BC peace treaty, and authorized the invasion and destruction of Carthage. This was not unlike the “rules based international order” of Washington, DC, where we make the rules (for you) but we don’t have to follow them ourselves.

Despite having surrendered their weapons at the outset of the Roman campaign, the walls of Carthage were so well made that it took the Romans nearly three years of siege to break through.

Finally in 146 BC, Carthage fell for the last time to the Roman Army, and was deliberately razed to the ground and burned. The Romans slew all of its population, men, women, and children, except for 50,000 who were taken back to Italy as slaves. According to Polybius, the wife of the last general of Carthage threw herself and her own children into the burning temple of the city rather than surrender to Rome.

Moscow as the New Carthage

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not the result of losing a war. It was caused by the failed policies of a centralized economy, exacerbated by American manipulation of the oil markets, and a costly American-backed guerilla war in Afghanistan. The United States moved in with “shock therapy” economic advisors and took the opportunity to restructure a confused and gullible Russia, including writing a new constitution.

For Russia the collapse of the Soviet Union had many similarities to the loss of Carthage in the Second Punic War.

Despite making peace with their former adversary, and honoring their treaties, Russia found that she could never be accepted as a friend on equal terms by the Western world order. And this was for the very same reason that Carthage could never be tolerated by Rome. Russia was and is in every way an equal to the Anglo-American Empire.

Ever since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia, the chorus of the West has become louder and louder that Putin must go. While they cannot say it aloud yet, what they really mean is “Russia must be destroyed!”

If Russia had continued the policy of submission to Western control that was begun by Boris Yeltsin, we can be assured that Moscow would have eventually met the same fate as Carthage from the Anglo-American Empire.

However, the appointment of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia derailed their plans. Under his rule Russia has steadily reasserted her former leadership and strength against the machinations of the Anglo-American Empire.

False Flag Attacks as a Means to an End

While at first Mr. Putin made a genuine effort to be a “partner” with the West, by the year 2011 it was clear that the West would never accept Russia as a friend or an equal. The West had enjoyed two decades of bossing everyone else around and had learned to enjoy giving orders rather than negotiating. One might say that the West forgot the art of diplomacy.

After watching in horror the NATO-led destructions of Serbia, Libya, and Syria, the Kremlin began asserting itself with foreign policy problems that directly affected Russian security interests starting in 2013.

The Obama Administration was very busy from 2011 to 2013 planning the overthrow of the Assad Regime in Syria. Two major hacks of intelligence related companies shed some unexpected light on what was going on behind the scenes. These were the Stratfor hack in 2011, and the hack of a British private security company (ie. mercenaries), that shall not be named, in January of 2013.

I must note that the private security company (PSC for short) admitted that they were hacked, but claimed that two of the most damning emails released within the gigabytes of leaked files were “fabricated.”

The “fabricated” email as reported by the Oriental Review, purportedly from the business development officer to the company founder reads as follows:

Phil

We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.

We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have. They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.

Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

Kind regards

David

The original story and its context can be found at The Oriental Review: https://orientalreview.org/2013/01/31/britamgate-staging-false-flag-attacks-in-syria/

Despite the file dump including personnel files containing copies of 58 real Ukrainian passports of employees of said PSC, the “fact checkers” at the time examined the email headers and noted that the email in question had a very similar time stamp, of three minutes before midnight, to another email in the release that was sent on a different date, also at three minutes before midnight. While this could be explained by a mail server or laptop setting which sent mail every day at the same time, it was accepted as proof of skullduggery and the entire affair was quickly dismissed and mostly forgotten.

Said PSC then sued The Daily Mail for libel for reporting the “obviously fake” email above as authentic, and was awarded damages and a partial retraction in January of 2022.

The supposedly fabricated email above happened to fall between several other breaches which revealed US and British intelligence were planning to release a video showing Russian-speaking soldiers as the operators of Syria’s chemical weapons depots.

I consider the aforementioned “hoax” to be one of the most amazing coincidences of the past two decades.

The PSC hack was shortly followed by claims of the Khan al-Assal chemical attack near Aleppo only three months later, and another at Ghouta five months after that, both of which were blamed by the West on the Assad Regime in the ramp up for an American invasion of Syria.

It is simply amazing that some unknown hacker managed to fabricate an email discussing the details of an event that hadn’t even happened yet. But the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Of course I know that the PSC referred to above couldn’t have had anything to do with either of the real chemical attacks which followed, because after their demonstrated incompetence of allowing all of their operations in the Middle East to be breached and published on the Internet, I seriously doubt they would be trusted to handle such an offer, had it been real.

The “fabricated” email shows us a picture of what was certainly going on in Syria as US and British intelligence farmed out projects to mercenary groups like Blackwater and other “private security companies.”

However, the invasion party was halted in its tracks in September of 2013, when Mr. Putin completely neutralized the Anglo-American casus belli against Syria by offering to help Syria destroy their chemical weapons stockpiles.

This was successfully completed and verified by the OPCW as being completed in late June of 2014. Thus Syria’s chemical stockpiles were completely removed before the American false flag plan could be convincingly executed. In poker this is known as calling the bluff.

Anyone who actually believed the Western propaganda about chemical weapons might have expected that President Vladimir Putin would be given some kind of international award for bringing Syria into the Chemical Weapons Convention and averting yet another major war in the Middle East.

However, rather than being pleased at the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, the Atlanticists were furious. This was the first major chess move by Mr. Putin that completely derailed the plans of the Atlanticists on the world stage. They shifted gears to the Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine, beginning in November 2013.

However, the chemical weapons saga in Syria was only getting started. The Assad Regime continued to be accused of chemical weapons attacks in 2015, 2016, 2017, and even up until 2022. Syria has suffered from multiple attempted chemical weapons attacks since 2012, culminating in a major one in Idlib on April 4, 2017. The Idlib attack was used by President Trump to justify a cruise missile strike on Syria, two days later, before any facts could be ascertained about the event. Since 2017, Russia has warned repeatedly that the White Helmets group were planning false flag chemical attacks to be blamed on the Assad Regime. This activity has continued all the way up to the present year.

The most important lesson to be learned from the chemical weapons saga in Syria is that the Atlanticist intelligence agencies have such complete control over global mainstream media outlets that they do not fear exposure of their false flag attack plans. And furthermore, if you want to anticipate their plans, all you have to do is listen to what they say.

On August 20, 2012, a few months before any of the false flag chemical attacks in Syria, President Obama made the following comments:

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.

Obama started warning Syria that using or even moving chemical weapons was a red line, shortly before the American false flag attempts began.

Thus, we can see that the US regime will telegraph their plans by first naming a casus belli, and then secretly working to create the false appearance of violation of the casus belli by the intended victim.

Even when the plans are exposed in advance, they will still be carried out. The MSM will pretend that there was no prior warning, and fact checkers will claim the prior warning was part of the deception by the country that was in reality falsely accused.

Russia Must Be Destroyed!

This brings us to the likely culmination of the Western war against Russia. In Septemer of 2022, Biden officials suddenly started clucking about how Russia must not use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This refrain was repeated to the media multiple times by officials including the President, Secretary of State, and National Security Advisor, as well as several retired military officers.

Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would go against every interest Russia has there, as well as breaking all the rules of Russian nuclear doctrine. The majority of Russian citizens have relatives in Ukraine, which would make such an action political suicide. Russia has never threatened to use such weapons in Ukraine. So, why would the USA give such warnings?

The ridiculous American warnings against nuclear weapons in Ukraine show the wise observer exactly what the US State Department is planning to do. They obviously intend to deploy a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb through their proxies in order to blame Russia for it.

We have already seen this beginning to play out. The Kremlin warned several major countries in October of 2022 that Ukraine was planning to detonate a dirty bomb to be blamed on Russia. US Defense Secretary Austin immediately spun the story to say Russia is fabricating that accusation to justify their own intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Then the topic seemed to die down for a spell.

It is unfortunately naive to think Mr. Shoigu’s warnings averted anything. In the past, exposing the planned chemical false flag did not prevent its eventual execution. We know from the Russian MOD that a radiological or nuclear false flag event has definitely been planned for Ukraine.

Since Russia announced this, it is possible that the Atlanticists may have upgraded the plot to use an actual tactical nuclear weapon, because Ukraine supposedly doesn’t have those, and it would be harder for Russia to deny. It will probably be saved for a moment where it looks like Russia is about to win a major victory in Ukraine.

In the larger context, Britain’s MI6 has run a series of false flag poisonings blamed on Russia, starting with Litvinenko in 2006, followed by the Skripal poisoning, and most recently the Nalvany poisoning. The purpose of these theatrical false flag campaigns has always been to reduce Russia’s influence in the international community, and attempt to isolate Russia as a “rogue regime.”

And going back to the “fabricated” email of the PSC quoted above, we see that the requirement to get video of Russian-speakers deploying a chemical weapon against innocent Syrian civilians fit right in with the British narrative that, “Russia poisons people, because Russia is a venomous serpent!”

The downing of MH-17 would also count as the same class of false flag incident, but with a somewhat more tactical purpose of trying to create enough international hysteria to turn the victory of the Donbass militia into a major defeat for Russia internationally through sanctions.

The downing of MH-17 succeeded in energizing Europe to apply the first round of sanctions against Russia. And even more so, it generated enough hysteria that Russia no longer is given the chance to defend her actions, to cross examine witnesses, or bring her own witnesses with regard to accusations against her. Russia and her citizens are now routinely accused of atrocities by the West and summarily punished by confiscation of property with no recourse in the international bodies that were created to adjudicate such disputes.

As the Ukraine War has stopped trending on Twitter, freezing Europeans are ready to take up pitchforks against their masters, and Russia’s presumed Winter offensive seems very likely to inflict some major losses on Ukraine and the NATO backers, the Atlanticist spin masters badly need a bigger shock to jolt the UN and EU into doing their bidding.

As in the case of MH-17, the Satanists running the Empire of Lies need a large sacrifice of human lives to generate enough shock and outrage to achieve their next big foreign policy coup.

The reader should recognize the same playbook as the warnings for Syria not to use chemical weapons in 2012, followed by years of false flag attempts.

After hearing the US warnings against Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, we should not have been surprised to learn from the Russian MOD that the Zelensky regime was planning to deploy a dirty bomb to be blamed on Russia as a tactical nuclear weapon. The American forewarnings, followed by exposure of such a plot, express the same pattern seen in Syria playing out again.

I expect that some version of this nuclear plot will eventually be carried out with the backing of Atlanticist intelligence agencies.

To What End?

Russia’s position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power has been a thorn in the paw of the Atlanticist beast since the Cold War.

Russia’s willingness to use her military to defend allies in Syria, Ukraine, and Armenia presents an uncontrollable risk factor for Anglo-American hegemony. They cannot tolerate it.

Russia has used her veto on the Security Council multiple times to block American warmongering. If Russia cannot be destroyed literally, then at minimum, they must destroy Russia’s reputation to the point of revoking their seat on the Security Council.

If the Atlanticists cannot risk directly attacking Moscow itself, then they can achieve the next best thing by creating a provocation to justify kicking Russia off the United Nations Security Council.

The Atlanticist Axis is desperate to remove Russian leadership and influence on the rest of the world, because Russia keeps blocking their imperial plans, whether in Syria, Ukraine, Asia, Latin America, or Africa.

The purpose of such an overt false flag attack as a nuclear detonation, real or fake, would be to generate sufficient international horror and emotion to remove Russia from the UN Security Council, or expel her from the UN entirely. They will require a 9-11 level event to achieve that.

Rest assured that when the bomb is finally detonated, the paperwork to expel Russia will be presented to the UN General Assembly before the ashes have hit the ground.

It doesn’t make sense to view such an event as an attempt to stave off Russian advances in the Ukraine. A nuclear bomb might be tactical but its purpose is strategic – to excommunicate Russia from the UN and all other international bodies of which it is a member.

The long term campaign by the USA and UK intelligence services to frame Russia for provocations using weapons of mass destruction follows the dark parallel of Rome’s treatment of Carthage.

Cato and his faction demanded the destruction of Carthage, not because Carthage was involved in any current plots against Rome, but because Carthage was a near equal to Rome in wealth, in culture, and in potential military power. Carthage was a potential adversary that could block Rome’s path to Empire.

Cato made these speeches for decades prior to his death, and ended every one of them with the demand that Carthage must be destroyed. At first it was probably considered a joke. But eventually through repetition he succeeded in priming the minds of the Roman Senate to carry out his desire.

Rome could brook no competition, and therefore did not recognize Carthage as an equal. The existence of Carthage, to the Roman mind, required its destruction. And this is exactly how the think tanks in DC and London view Russia today. “Russia must be destroyed!”

Just as Rome used the peace treaty with Carthage to prevent Carthage from defending herself, while encouraging Numidia to go to war against Carthage, both Angela Merkel and Petro Poroshenko have now admitted that the Minsk Agreements were only used to buy time for Kiev to prepare for war against Russia.

Cato the Elder died at the old age of 85 years in 149 BC. Within a year of his death, the Roman Senate used their client kingdom, Numidia, to create the false pretext to go to war against Carthage. After an extended siege they burned the city to the ground and ensured that it was not rebuilt for generations.

The deliberate destruction of Carthage by Rome was completely irrational. They destroyed what would have been billions of 2020 Dollars worth of property. They destroyed a civilization that wasn’t even at war with them. The Roman Empire became poorer by the destruction of Carthage, not richer. The irrational destruction of Carthage was entirely driven by hatred and jealousy, both of which are irrational.

If Russia ever capitulates to the Atlanticist Axis she will meet the same fate. “Russia must be destroyed,” is the mantra that has been woven through all of the actions, plots, and strategies of the Atlanticists ever since Putin became President of Russia. We should have no doubt that Washington is willing to use nuclear weapons to achieve that objective, whether outright or by farce.

In the nearterm, we should expect the farce – a false flag nuclear attack on Ukraine. If Russia achieves a major breakthrough in Ukraine in the coming year, the nuclear false flag will probably be triggered, followed by hysterical condemnation and demands that Russia be immediately expelled from the United Nations.

The question to which I have no answer is, how can Russia defeat such a strategy?

The End of Mutually Assured Destruction

The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is based on the assumption that two rational actors who understand that a certain action will destroy them both will avoid that action at all costs. This was the lynchpin of foreign policy during the Cold War.

The problem is that most humans are only rational some of the time. And some small percentage of us may reach a state of complete irrationality most of the time.

Furthermore, humans have a strange tendency on rare occasions to go mad together in crowds, not unlike lemmings who follow each other over the cliff into the sea. Nazi Germany in the 1930s comes to mind.

While Russia has recently been trying to protect herself from the acidic influence of Western imposed sodomy, the West has fully embraced it. And that, not merely as one of many valid options, but as a totalitarian state religion that children must be indoctrinated into. This is what Mr. Putin meant when he said that the West has become Satanic.

Sodomy is not merely an individual choice. It is a suicidal choice both for the individual and for human society. Consistent sodomites have no offspring, so they must recruit the offspring of normal people in order to grow in numbers. But in the end, a civilization that embraces sodomy as the preferred lifestyle will completely collapse morally, economically, and numerically.

The West has come under the spell of a death cult, currently led by the World Economic Forum. Their irrational desire to deindustrialize and depopulate the world in the name of environmentalism and technocracy can only be described as insanity. Ultimately both sodomy and Malthusian environmentalism are rejections of our Creator, and the mandate to be fruitful, multiply, and exercise dominion over the Earth and its living creatures. It is a rejection of the mission of transforming the Earth from wilderness and wasteland into a garden.

But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:36)

Such leaders cannot be counted on to act rationally under the MAD regime, because they may view a nuclear war as a shortcut to achieve their goals of deindustrialization and depopulation. Of course, they have their bunkers in Switzerland and irrationally believe they will survive the conflagration to become the new elite of a greener world controlled by technocrats.

The Heaven’s Gate cult members also believed that by committing mass suicide they would ascend into a higher and better state. As far as anyone knows, they were completely wrong. But that did not stop them from carrying out mass suicide.

Jesus said that you don’t pour new wine into an old wineskin. The reason is that the leather of a wineskin stretches under the pressure of fermentation. An old wineskin has lost its elasticity, and cannot contain the power of a second batch of fermenting wine. It will burst.

It appears to me that Mutual Assured Destruction is an old wineskin of the twentieth century that may not be able to contain the fermenting minds of the annihilationist “young leaders” whose hearts were trained by the World Economic Forum.

In the past year we have already seen the West demonstrate it has reached a state of chronic criminal insanity.

First, they blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline which will cause the deindustrialisation of Western Europe.

That is criminally insane!

Then, Ukraine, under western supervision and using western weapons, has spent the past six months shelling the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Station in an effort to cause a nuclear accident.

That is criminally insane!

Now, the Russian MOD already has said they have evidence that the NATO-backed Ukrainians are planning a false flag radiological or nuclear weapon detonation on their own soil!!!

That is criminally suicidally insane!

We have reached a point in world history where the West appears to be planning a nuclear false flag attack in Ukraine to be blamed on Russia in order to justify the next big change, whatever that is. And Russia stands in their way. The leaders of the West have gone certifiably mad. And this means that MAD is no longer a shield against nuclear war.

Any remaining sane powers in this world need to immediately take that into account, and start preparing and planning to survive and win a nuclear war against a diabolically insane and suicidal adversary who may not see a total nuclear war as a bad thing.

If Carthage waits for Rome to make their next move, trusting in the good faith of the parties to make rational decisions under international law, then it is quite likely that once more, Carthage shall be destroyed.

Kyrie eleison on us all!

Berlin Goes to Beijing: The Real Deal

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

PEPE ESCOBAR

The Scholz caravan went to Beijing to lay down the preparatory steps for working out a peace deal with Russia, with China as privileged messenger.

With his inimitable flair for economic analysis steeped in historical depth, Professor Michael Hudson’s latest essay, originally written for a German audience, presents a stunning parallel between the Crusades and the current “rules-based international order” imposed by the Hegemon.

Professor Hudson details how the Papacy in Rome managed to lock up unipolar control over secular realms (rings a bell?) when the game was all about Papal precedence over kings, above all the German Holy Roman Emperors. As we know, half in jest, the Empire was not exactly Holy, nor German (perhaps a little Roman), and not even an Empire.

A clause in the Papal Dictates provided the Pope with the authority to excommunicate whomever was “not at peace with the Roman Church.” Hudson sharply notes how US sanctions are the modern equivalent of excommunication.

Arguably there are Top Two dates in the whole process.

The first one would be the Third Ecumenical Council of 435: this is when only Rome (italics mine) was attributed universal authority (italics mine). Alexandria and Antioch, for instance, were limited to regional authority within the Roman Empire.

The other top date is 1054 – when Rome and Constantinople split for good. That is, the Roman Catholic Church split from Orthodoxy, which leads us to Russia, and Moscow as The Third Rome – and the centuries-old animosity of “the West” against Russia.

A State of Martial Law

Professor Hudson then delves on the trip by “Liver Sausage” Chancellor Scholz’s delegation to China this week to “demand that it dismantle its public sector and stops subsidizing its economy, or else Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China.”

Well, in fact this happens to be just childish wishful thinking, expressed by the German Council on Foreign Relations in a piece published on the Financial Times (the Japanese-owned platform in the City of London). The Council, as correctly described by Hudson, is “the neoliberal ‘libertarian’ arm of NATO demanding German de-industrialization and dependency” on the US.

So the FT, predictably, is printing NATO wet dreams.

Context is essential. German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in a keynote speech at Bellevue Castle, has all but admitted that Berlin is broke: “An era of headwinds is beginning for Germany – difficult, difficult years are coming for us. Germany is in the deepest crisis since reunification.”

Yet schizophrenia, once again, reigns supreme, as Steinmeier, after a ridiculous stunt in Kiev – complete with posing as a unwitting actor huddled in a bunker – announced an extra handout: two more MARS multiple rocket launchers and four Panzerhaubitze 2000 howitzers to be delivered to the Ukrainians.

So even if the “world” economy – actually the EU – is so fragilized that member-states cannot help Kiev anymore without harming their own populations, and the EU is on the verge of a catastrophic energy crisis, fighting for “our values” in Country 404 trumps it all.

The Big Picture context is also key. Andrea Zhok, Professor of Ethical Philosophy at the University of Milan, has taken Giorgio Agamben’s “State of Exception” concept to new heights.

Zhok proposes that the zombified collective West is now completely subjugated to a “State of Martial Law” – where a Forever War ethos is the ultimate priority for rarified global elites.

Every other variable – from trans-humanism to depopulation and even cancel culture – is subordinated to the State of Martial Law, and is basically inessential. The only thing that matters is exercising absolute, raw control.

Berlin – Moscow – Beijing

Solid German business sources completely contradict the “message” delivered by the German Council on Foreign Relations on the trip to China.

According to these sources, the Scholz caravan went to Beijing to essentially lay down the preparatory steps for working out a peace deal with Russia, with China as privileged messenger.

This is – literally – as explosive, geopolitically and geoeconomically, as it gets. As I pointed out in one of my previous columns, Berlin and Moscow were keeping a secret communication back channel – via business interlocutors – right to the minute the usual suspects, in desperation, decided to blow up the Nord Streams.

Cue to the now notorious SMS from Liz Truss’s iPhone to Little Tony Blinken, one minute after the explosions: “It’s done.”

There’s more: the Scholz caravan may be trying to start a long and convoluted process of eventually replacing the US with China as a key ally. One should never forget that the top BRI trade/connectivity terminal in the EU is Germany (the Ruhr valley).

According to one of the sources, “if this effort is successful, then Germany, China and Russia can ally themselves together and drive the US out of Europe.”

Another source provided the cherry on the cake: “Olaf Scholz is being accompanied on this trip by German industrialists who actually control Germany and are not going to sit back watching themselves being destroyed.”

Moscow knows very well what the imperial aim is when it comes to the EU reduced to the role of totally dominated – and deindustrialized – vassal, exercising zero sovereignty. The back channels after all are not lying in tatters on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Additionally, China has not provided any hint that its massive trade with Germany and the EU is about to vanish.

Scholz himself, one day before his caravan hit Beijing, stressed to Chinese media that Germany has no intention of decoupling from China, and there’s nothing to justify “the calls by some to isolate China.”

In parallel, Xi Jinping and the new Politburo are very much aware of the Kremlin position, reiterated again and again: we always remain open for negotiations, as long as Washington finally decides to talk about the end of unlimited NATO expansion drenched in Russophobia.

So to negotiate means the Empire signing on the dotted line of the document it has received from Moscow on December 1^st, 2021, focused on “indivisibility of security”. Otherwise there’s nothing to negotiate.

And when we have Pentagon lobbyist Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin advising the Ukrainians on the record to advance on Kherson, it’s even more crystal clear there’s nothing to negotiate.

So could this all be the foundation stone of the Berlin-Moscow-Beijing trans-Eurasia geopolitical/geoeconomic corridor? That will mean Bye Bye Empire. Once again: it ain’t over till the fat lady goes Gotterdammerung.

(Republished from Strategic Culture Foundation by permission of author or representative)

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Germany’s position in America’s New World Order

November 02, 2022

Source

by Michael Hudson

Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

President Biden has characterized this split as being between democracies and autocracies. The terminology is typical Orwellian double-speak. By “democracies” he means the U.S. and allied Western financial oligarchies. Their aim is to shift economic planning out of the hands of elected governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under U.S. control. U.S. diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to demand privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependency on U.S. technology, oil and food exports.

By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhettoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities. What basically is at issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands.

The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global fracture is Germany. As Europe’s most advanced industrial economy, German steel, chemicals, machinery, automotives and other consumer goods are the most highly dependent on imports of Russian gas, oil and metals from aluminum to titanium and palladium. Yet despite two Nord Stream pipelines built to provide Germany with low-priced energy, Germany has been told to cut itself off from Russian gas and de-industrialize. This means the end of its economic preeminence. The key to GDP growth in Germany, as in other countries, is energy consumption per worker.

These anti-Russian sanctions make today’s New Cold War inherently anti-German. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that Germany should replace low-priced Russian pipeline gas with high-priced U.S. LNG gas. To import this gas, Germany will have to spend over $5 billion quickly to build port capacity to handle LNG tankers. The effect will be to make German industry uncompetitive. Bankruptcies will spread, employment will decline, and Germany’s pro-NATO leaders will impose a chronic depression and falling living standards.

Most political theory assumes that nations will act in their own self-interest. Otherwise they are satellite countries, not in control of their own fate. Germany is subordinating its industry and living standards to the dictates of U.S. diplomacy and the self-interest of America’s oil and gas sector. It is doing this voluntarily – not because of military force but out of an ideological belief that the world economy should be run by U.S. Cold War planners.

Sometimes it is easier to understand today’s dynamics by stepping away from one’s own immediate situation to look at historical examples of the kind of political diplomacy that one sees splitting today’s world. The closest parallel that I can find is medieval Europe’s fight by the Roman papacy against German kings – the Holy Roman Emperors – in the 13^th century. That conflict split Europe along lines much like those of today. A series of popes excommunicated Frederick II and other German kings and mobilized allies to fight against Germany and its control of southern Italy and Sicily.

Western antagonism against the East was incited by the Crusades (1095-1291), just as today’s Cold War is a crusade against economies threatening U.S. dominance of the world. The medieval war against Germany was over who should control Christian Europe: the papacy, with the popes becoming worldly emperors, or secular rulers of individual kingdoms by claiming the power to morally legitimize and accept them.

Medieval Europe’s analogue to America’s New Cold War against China and Russia was the Great Schism in 1054. Demanding unipolar control over Christendom, Leo IX excommunicated the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and the entire Christian population that belonged to it. A single bishopric, Rome, cut itself off from the entire Christian world of the time, including the ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem.

This break-away created a political problem for Roman diplomacy: How to hold all the Western European kingdoms under its control and claim the right for financial subsidy from them. That aim required subordinating secular kings to papal religious authority. In 1074, Gregory VII, Hildebrand, announced 27 Papal Dictates outlining the administrative strategy for Rome to lock in its power over Europe.

These papal demands are strikingly parallel to today’s U.S. diplomacy. In both cases military and worldly interests require a sublimation in the form of an ideological crusading spirit to cement the sense of solidarity that any system of imperial domination requires. The logic is timeless and universal.

The Papal Dictates were radical in two major ways. First of all, they elevated the bishop of Rome above all other bishoprics, creating the modern papacy. Clause 3 ruled that the pope alone had the power of investiture to appoint bishops or to depose or reinstate them. Reinforcing this, Clause 25 gave the right of appointing (or deposing) bishops to the pope, not to local rulers. And Clause 12 gave the pope the right to depose emperors, following Clause 9, obliging “all princes to kiss the feet of the Pope alone” in order to be deemed legitimate rulers.

Likewise today, U.S. diplomats claim the right to name who should be recognized as a nation’s head of state. In 1953 they overthrew Iran’s elected leader and replaced him with the Shah’s military dictatorship. That principle gives U.S. diplomats the right to sponsor “color revolutions” for regime-change, such as their sponsorship of Latin American military dictatorships creating client oligarchies to serve U.S. corporate and financial interests. The 2014 coup in Ukraine is just the latest exercise of this U.S. right to appoint and depose leaders.

More recently, U.S. diplomats have appointed Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s head of state instead of its elected president, and turned over that country’s gold reserves to him. President Biden has insisted that Russia must remove Putin and put a more pro-U.S. leader in his place. This “right” to select heads of state has been a constant in U.S. policy spanning its long history of political meddling in European political affairs since World War II.

The second radical feature of the Papal Dictates was their exclusion of all ideology and policy that diverged from papal authority. Clause 2 stated that only the Pope could be called “Universal.” Any disagreement was, by definition, heretical. Clause 17 stated that no chapter or book could be considered canonical without papal authority.

A similar demand as is being made by today’s U.S.-sponsored ideology of financialized and privatized “free markets,” meaning deregulation of government power to shape economies in interests other than those of U.S.-centered financial and corporate elites.

The demand for universality in today’s New Cold War is cloaked in the language of “democracy.” But the definition of democracy in today’s New Cold War is simply “pro-U.S.,” and specifically neoliberal privatization as the U.S.-sponsored new economic religion. This ethic is deemed to be “science,” as in the quasi-Nobel Memorial Prize in the Economic Sciences. That is the modern euphemism for neoliberal Chicago-School junk economics, IMF austerity programs and tax favoritism for the wealthy.

The Papal Dictates spelt out a strategy for locking in unipolar control over secular realms. They asserted papal precedence over worldly kings, above all over Germany’s Holy Roman Emperors. Clause 26 gave popes authority to excommunicate whomever was “not at peace with the Roman Church.” That principle implied the concluding Claus 27, enabling the pope to “absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.” This encouraged the medieval version of “color revolutions” to bring about regime change.

What united countries in this solidarity was an antagonism to societies not subject to centralized papal control – the Moslem Infidels who held Jerusalem, and also the French Cathars and anyone else deemed to be a heretic. Above all there was hostility toward regions strong enough to resist papal demands for financial tribute.

Today’s counterpart to such ideological power to excommunicate heretics resisting demands for obedience and tribute would be the World Trade Organization, World Bank and IMF dictating economic practices and setting “conditionalities” for all member governments to follow, on pain of U.S. sanctions – the modern version of excommunication of countries not accepting U.S. suzerainty. Clause 19 of the Dictates ruled that the pope could be judged by no one – just as today, the United States refuses to subject its actions to rulings by the World Court. Likewise today, U.S. dictates via NATO and other arms (such as the IMF and World Bank) are expected to be followed by U.S. satellites without question. As Margaret Thatcher said of her neoliberal privatization that destroyed Britain’s public sector, There Is No Alternative (TINA).

My point is to emphasize the analogy with today’s U.S. sanctions against all countries not following its own diplomatic demands. Trade sanctions are a form of excommunication. They reverse the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia’s principle that made each country and its rulers independent from foreign meddling. President Biden characterizes U.S. interference as ensuring his new antithesis between “democracy” and “autocracy.” By democracy he means a client oligarchy under U.S. control, creating financial wealth by reducing living standards for labor, as opposed to mixed public/private economies aiming at promoting living standards and social solidarity.

As I have mentioned, by excommunicating the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and its Christian population, the Great Schism created the fateful religious dividing line that has split “the West” from the East for the past millennium. That split was so important that Vladimir Putin cited it as part of his September 30, 2022 speech describing today’s break away from the U.S. and NATO centered Western economies.

The 12^th and 13^th centuries saw Norman conquerors of England, France and other countries, along with German kings, protest repeatedly, be excommunicated repeatedly, yet ultimately succumb to papal demands. It took until the 16^th century for Martin Luther, Zwingli and Henry VIII finally to create a Protestant alternative to Rome, making Western Christianity multi-polar.

Why did it take so long? The answer is that the Crusades provided an organizing ideological gravity. That was the medieval analogy to today’s New Cold War between East and West. The Crusades created a spiritual focus of “moral reform” by mobilizing hatred against “the other” – the Moslem East, and increasingly Jews and European Christian dissenters from Roman control. That was the medieval analogy to today’s neoliberal “free market” doctrines of America’s financial oligarchy and its hostility to China, Russia and other nations not following that ideology. In today’s New Cold War, the West’s neoliberal ideology is mobilizing fear and hatred of “the other,” demonizing nations that follow an independent path as “autocratic regimes.” Outright racism is fostered toward entire peoples, as evident in the Russophobia and Cancel Culture currently sweeping the West.

Just as Western Christianity’s multi-polar transition required the 16^th century’s Protestant alternative, the Eurasian heartland’s break from the bank-centered NATO West must be consolidated by an alternative ideology regarding how to organize mixed public/private economies and their financial infrastructure.

Medieval churches in the West were drained of their alms and endowments to contribute Peter’s Pence and other subsidy to the papacy for the wars it was fighting against rulers who resisted papal demands. England played the role of major victim that Germany plays today. Enormous English taxes were levied ostensibly to finance the Crusades were diverted to fight Frederick II, Conrad and Manfred in Sicily. That diversion was financed by papal bankers from northern Italy (Lombards and Cahorsins), and became royal debts passed down throughout the economy. England’s barons waged a civil war against Henry II in the 1260s, ending his complicity in sacrificing the economy to papal demands.

What ended the papacy’s power over other countries was the ending of its war against the East. When the Crusaders lost Acre, the capital of Jerusalem in 1291, the papacy lost its control over Christendom. There was no more “evil” to fight, and the “good” had lost its center of gravity and coherence. In 1307, France’s Philip IV (“the Fair”) seized the Church’s great military banking order’s wealth, that of the Templars in the Paris Temple. Other rulers also nationalized the Templars, and monetary systems were taken out of the hands of the Church. Without a common enemy defined and mobilized by Rome, the papacy lost its unipolar ideological power over Western Europe.

The modern equivalent to the rejection of the Templars and papal finance would be for countries to withdraw from America’s New Cold War. They would reject the dollar standard and the U.S. banking and financial system. that is happening as more and more countries see Russia and China not as adversaries but as presenting great opportunities for mutual economic advantage.

The broken promise of mutual gain between Germany and Russia

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 promised an end to the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was disbanded, Germany was reunified, and American diplomats promised an end to NATO, because a Soviet military threat no longer existed. Russian leaders indulged in the hope that, as President Putin expressed it, a new pan-European economy would be created from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Germany in particular was expected to take the lead in investing in Russia and restructuring its industry along more efficient lines. Russia would pay for this technology transfer by supplying gas and oil, along with nickel, aluminum, titanium and palladium.

There was no anticipation that NATO would be expanded to threaten a New Cold War, much less that it would back Ukraine, recognized as the most corrupt kleptocracy in Europe, into being led by extremist parties identifying themselves by German Nazi insignia.

How do we explain why the seemingly logical potential of mutual gain between Western Europe and the former Soviet economies turned into a sponsorship of oligarchic kleptocracies. The Nord Stream pipeline’s destruction capsulizes the dynamics in a nutshell. For almost a decade a constant U.S. demand has been for Germany to reject its reliance on Russian energy. These demands were opposed by Gerhardt Schroeder, Angela Merkel and German business leaders. They pointed to the obvious economic logic of mutual trade of German manufactures for Russian raw materials.

The U.S. problem was how to stop Germany from approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Victoria Nuland, President Biden and other U.S. diplomats demonstrated that the way to do that was to incite a hatred of Russia. The New Cold War was framed as a new Crusade. That was how George W. Bush had described America’s attack on Iraq to seize its oil wells. The U.S.-sponsored 2014 coup created a puppet Ukrainian regime that has spent eight years bombing of the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces. NATO thus incited a Russian military response. The incitement was successful, and the desired Russian response was duly labeled an unprovoked atrocity. Its protection of civilians was depicted in the NATO-sponsored media as being so offensive as to deserve the trade and investment sanctions that have been imposed since February. That is what a Crusade means.

The result is that the world is splitting in two camps: the U.S.-centered NATO, and the emerging Eurasian coalition. One byproduct of this dynamic has been to leave Germany unable to pursue the economic policy of mutually advantageous trade and investment relations with Russia (and perhaps also China). German Chancellor Olaf Sholz is going to China this week to demand that it dismantle is public sector and stops subsidizing its economy, or else Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China. There is no way that China could meet this ridiculous demand, any more than the United States or any other industrial economy would stop subsidizing their own computer-chip and other key sectors.^[1] The German Council on Foreign Relations is a neoliberal “libertarian” arm of NATO demanding German de-industrialization and dependency on the United States for its trade, excluding China, Russia and their allies. This promises to be the final nail in Germany’s economic coffin.

Another byproduct of America’s New Cold War has been to end any international plan to stem global warming. A keystone of U.S. economic diplomacy is for its oil companies and those of its NATO allies to control the world’s oil and gas supply – that is, to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels. That is what the NATO war in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine was about. It is not as abstract as “Democracies vs. Autocracies.” It is about the U.S. ability to harm other countries by disrupting their access to energy and other basic needs.

Without the New Cold War’s “good vs. evil” narrative, U.S. sanctions will lose their raison d’etre in this U.S. attack on environmental protection, and on mutual trade between Western Europe and Russia and China. That is the context for today’s fight in Ukraine, which is to be merely the first step in the anticipated 20 year fight by the US to prevent the world from becoming multipolar. This process, will lock Germany and Europe into dependence on the U.S. supplies of LNG.

The trick is to try and convince Germany that it is dependent on the United States for its military security. What Germany really needs protection from is the U.S. war against China and Russia that is marginalizing and “Ukrainianizing” Europe.

There have been no calls by Western governments for a negotiated end to this war, because no war has been declared in Ukraine. The United States does not declare war anywhere, because that would require a Congressional declaration under the U.S. Constitution. So U.S. and NATO armies bomb, organize color revolutions, meddle in domestic politics (rendering the 1648 Westphalia agreements obsolete), and impose the sanctions that are tearing Germany and its European neighbors apart.

How can negotiations “end” a war that either has no declaration of war, and is a long-term strategy of total unipolar world domination?

The answer is that no ending can come until an alternative to the present U.S.-centered set of international institutions is replaced. That requires the creation of new institutions reflecting an alternative to the neoliberal bank-centered view that economies should be privatized with central planning by financial centers. Rosa Luxemburg characterized the choice as being between socialism and barbarism. I have sketched out the political dynamics of an alternative in my recent book, The Destiny of Civilization.

This paper was presented on November 1, 2022. on the German e-site
https://braveneweurope.com/michael-hudson-germanys-position-in-americas-new-world-order. A video of my talk will be available on YouTube in about ten days.

1. See Guntram Wolff, “Sholz should send an explicit message on his visit to Beijing,” Financial Times, October 31, 2022. Wolff is the director and CE of the German Council on Foreign Relations. ↑

To Hell or Not to Hell?

July 16, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

The Barbarian West

By the fifth century AD the barbarians had moved into Western Europe in significant numbers, bringing about the fall of Old Rome in what is now Italy in 410. Curiously, the barbarianism they brought with them, combined with the systematic brutality of Old Rome by the most brutal of them, the Franks, survives today. Indeed, we can state quite clearly that many in Western Europe have remained barbarians, knowingly or unknowingly supporting the ‘Frankish’ warlord aristocracy/ oligarchy which administrates (but not controls –control is from elsewhere) the Western world till this day. At first the barbarians took over only Western Europe, but then they expanded to its immediate neighbours in Eastern Europe, the Near East and along the African coasts. However, from 1492 on there began the Western European occupation and exploitation of the New Worlds. Barbarianism had literally gone global.

As we have said, the Franks (literally meaning ‘freemen’, that is, not slaves) (1) led the field among the barbarians, even renaming one country, Gaul, after themselves, as ‘France’. The word ‘Frank’ was generalised after Charlemagne who in the late eighth century massacred other less violent barbarians, the Saxons. Charlemagne founded a ‘Holy Roman Empire’ (in reality an Unholy Frankish Empire), whose intellectuals had been trained by Jews in Spain. Thus, tenth-century Muslims used the word ‘Frank’ to mean an ‘aggressive Western European’, as did eleventh-century Orthodox Christians in New Rome. In 1100 Baldwin I was enthroned in Jerusalem as the ‘first King of the Franks’. In the late eleventh century, Welsh chroniclers called the invading Normans ‘Franks’, as did the Irish and the Scots in the twelfth century, as did the Spanish and Portuguese French invaders, and did Poles and Czechs German settlers. In the sixteenth century the Chinese called marauding Portuguese and Spanish ‘Fo-lang-ki’, taken from the Arabic ‘Faranga’, from the selfsame word ‘Frank’.

Soon after 1492 the second of the two Spanish Borgia/Borja Popes, Rodrigo Borgia, alias Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), defined Non-Catholic European men as non-humans, permitting them to be robbed, enslaved and killed. In the twentieth century, this misogynistic and racist Western culture graciously extended its ‘superiority’ to Western women, then to the Jews, calling their ‘Western civilisation’ ‘Judeo-Christian’, and then extended it to all races (2), but on one condition: that these newcomers accept ‘Western values’ such as ‘democracy’ = a new word for Western supremacy, that is, Nazism. Thus, today Kiev’s barbarian troops, the New Vandals, are doing the same as Western barbarian marauders, the Old Vandals, genociding all who do not accept their Nazi ideology. Russia is fighting the West today, because the barbarians are at its gates in the Ukraine – again, just as they were eighty years ago.

In the Ukraine

In recent months, here and there in various Western European countries, I have seen two or three flags being flown together, the EU One Ring ‘to rule them all’, sometimes the local national flag, and beneath it the Ukrainian one. This represents Western supremacism, the Nazi ideology which proclaims the long-desired Westernisation of the Ukraine. It says that any who do not accept ‘Western values’ are to be destroyed or, as they say now, ’cancelled’ – with Western fake news, Western arms and Western death.

Who are today’s aristocratic warlords, today’s Franks, Lombards, Goths, Vandals and Vikings? They are Stoltenberg, Biden, Johnson, von der Leyen, Blinken, Nuland, Kagan, Scholz, Macron and all the other knowing and unknowing neocons who fly these flags together. The barbarians were there sacking civilisation in August 476 and in August 1914, they were there sacking civilisation in late 1492 and in early 2022. However, the world that started on 12 October 1492 died on 24 February 2022 and a new era has begun.

On 14 July 2022 the Serbian President Vucic said: ‘Now the whole Western world is at war with Russia through Ukrainian intermediaries and today’s armed conflict can almost be called a world war’. ‘I know what awaits us. As soon as Vladimir Putin has finished his work in Seversk, Bakhmut and Soledar and then reaches the second line in Slaviansk-Kramatorsk-Avdeevka, he will make an offer. And if they (the West) don’t accept – and they don’t intend to – we shall take the road to hell’.

After the Barbarians

So what happens if the Western world chooses not to go to hell? What happens after the barbarians, after the final demise of the myths of ‘The West and the Rest’ and ‘The West is Best’? At the moment, the alternative is an alphabet soup of BRI, BRICS, EAEU, SCO etc. BRICS itself is becoming old-fashioned, as it may well soon be joined by Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and maybe Argentina and then, who knows? Does that make BRICSITESAA? An alternative name like ‘The Anti-West’ is purely reactive, negative and refers to the 530 years before 24 February 2022. It is especially inappropriate since the EU is clearly collapsing and it is obvious that, at the very least, countries like Serbia, Hungary (whom the EU elite wishes to expel from the EU) and Germany, if it is to survive, will be joining the to-be-renamed BRICS.

Perhaps we could call the future bloc ‘The Free World’, but that also makes too close a reference to the past. We of course do not know the future name. But we could suggest some more realistic names like ‘The International Alliance’ (IA), or, ‘The Free Alliance of Sovereign Peoples’ (FASP). Such a bloc could help settle long-standing historic injustices, through the formation of new countries, new borders, new constitutions and new prosperity. The fact is that the world has not yet been decolonised. You can still see straight lines on maps, usually the work of tidy-minded colonial bureaucrats a century or so ago in London and Paris, who had little concept of history and geography, of rivers, mountains and the languages of different ethnicities, let alone of humanity, justice and prosperity.

There are still dispossessed peoples waiting to get or get back their own sovereign homelands, such as those in Scotland, Wales, Carpatho-Russia, Abkhazia, Ossetia, Kurdistan, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico. There are still peoples waiting to return to their real homelands, such as those in Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, Taiwan, American Samoa, Belize, French Guiana, the Falklands. There are still artificial countries which may well disappear entirely or else be federated, such as: USA, UK, France, Spain, Belgium, Kosovo, Ukraine, Morocco, Libya, Mali, Somalia, Israel, Lebanon, Kuwait, North Korea, South Korea. Finally, there are countries with disputed borders, not least in Europe, such as Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, the Jordan, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India. If we are to go not towards Hell, let us go to Free and Sovereign Nations, lands for native peoples, and not for colonial powers, and let there be a World Alliance of Free and Sovereign Peoples.

Notes:

1. We are reminded of the anthem of eighteenth-century British slave-traders and slave-owners that they, at least, would ‘never, never, never be slaves’. Of course they would never be slaves, they were ‘Franks’, aggressive Western Europeans.

2. Just as most in the twenty-first century had no problem with Obama (a pale brown, definitely not a black, man and the useful and self-obsessed idiot who started all the problems in the Ukraine) becoming US President, so few have a problem with the idea that a man of Indian extraction is the current frontrunner to be the next UK Prime Minister. After all, the candidacy of Rishi (called by some ‘Richy’) Sunak, until recently UK Chancellor/Minister of Finance, from an Indian/East African merchant family, worked appropriately for Goldman Sachs, married the daughter of the sixth richest billionaire in India, their combined fortune approaching $1 billion, Member of Parliament for a town called, strangely enough, ‘Richmond’, is unsurprisingly supported by the British Establishment’s ‘Financial Times’.

Maduro: We Are All Part of Axis of Resistance

June 21, 2022

By Staff, Khamenei.ir

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said the ‘Axis of Resistance’ is not just confined to certain countries across the world, but it refers to all those fighting colonialism and hegemonic powers.

“The Axis of Resistance exists throughout the world; it exists in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East, in Latin America and in the Caribbean. The Resistance also belongs to the people who are fighting against neoliberalism, racism and various forms of colonization, political, economic, cultural colonization and cyber colonization,” Maduro said in an exclusive interview with the official website of Leader of the Islamic Revolution His Eminence Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei that was published on Monday.

“All of us who fight against colonialism, all of us who fight to decolonize our minds and our people, are part of the Axis of Resistance that stands against the methods of the imperialists for imposing hegemony on the world,” he added.

Lauding the deeds of the Axis of Resistance throughout the years, Maduro said, “The 21st century is our century. It is the century of the unity of the people. It is the century in which people will be liberated. It is the century of justice and truth. Empires are in decline, and people’s projects for well-being, development and greatness have just begun. This century is our century.”

Pointing to a recent meeting with Imam Khamenei and the His Eminence’s statement about the very close relationship between Iran and Venezuela, Maduro said, “Since Commander Hugo Chavez’s first visit in 2001, Iran and Venezuela have established exemplary political, diplomatic, moral, and spiritual ties.”

“During this current trip, I’ve witnessed how there is an exemplary relationship between us in terms of our increasing cooperation. We’ve had many successes. So Imam Khamenei is right when he states that the relationship between the two countries is quite unique and extraordinary,” he noted.

Asked about his latest assertion regarding the Zionist occupation regime’s conspiracies against Venezuela through Mossad, Maduro said, “Imperialism and Zionism are conspiring against the progressive, revolutionary processes taking place in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially the Bolivarian Revolution.”

The Venezuelan president stressed, “This is because we are a true alternative, an alternative of truth and justice, an alternative of freedom, an alternative of democracy, and an alternative for realizing projects that are fully humane in the Latin American region and the Caribbean Sea. In addition to this, Mossad’s conspiracies are due to our strong position of solidarity with the Palestinian people and our support of them for their regaining their historical rights and for the Palestinian Resistance. Our support of them is strong and unique, and we will continue supporting them in this manner.”

Asked about the role of Iran’s anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani and the Quds Force over the last 20 years in strengthening the relationship between Tehran and Caracas, Maduro said he met General Soleimani in March and April of 2019 when he came to Venezuela during the time of US’ cyberattacks against the country’s power plants.

“I really didn’t know. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know how amazing he was, but the discussion I had with him was very pleasant. We reviewed everything during our meeting and he immediately suggested we get help from Iranian experts. Two or three days later, Iranian experts came to repair electrical services in Venezuela,” he added.

In response to a question regarding a saying by Imam Khamenei that, “If Prophet Issa [Peace upon Him] were among us today, he wouldn’t miss a moment to fight the leaders of global oppression and arrogance,” Maduro said, “We’re believing Christians. We’re the type of Christians who take action while praying and thinking. And Christ came into this world to fight the Empires. He came to confront the Roman Empires. He risked his life. He sacrificed his life to fight the Roman Empire.”

The Venezuelan leader said, “If there’s one good thing I can say about Christianity, it is its anti-imperialist nature and its seeking of truth and justice against the oppressors. I have no doubt that if Christ were among us today, he would have been at the forefront of the battle against imperialism, colonialism and all forms of oppression.”

During the interview, Maduro pointed to several meetings he had had with Imam Khamenei over the years as well as the meeting between Chavez and the Leader of the Islamic Revolution.

“I’ve always admired Imam Khamenei’s excellent memory. That he recalls the memories of those days is important. In the talks that I have had with him, he has recalled some of the conversations he had with Commander Chavez where Commander Chavez shared some of his memories about Cuba and Commander Fidel Castro. There was a time when a hurricane was heading straight toward Cuba. It was a Category 5 hurricane. A conversation took place between Fidel and Chavez. Fidel said, “Chavez! What you need to do right now is to pray. Pray for us!” Chavez started praying. That day passed and the hurricane changed its course. It didn’t cross over Cuba. Chavez called Fidel and said, “It’s a miracle!” Fidel replied, “Yes, it’s because God helps Chavez and Chavez’s friends.” In the last talk that I had with Imam Khamenei, he told me this story in a friendly, kind way in memory of Commander Chavez and Commander Fidel Castro,” he said.

“Holding a conversation with Imam Khamenei truly fills one with spirituality and wisdom. He likes the Venezuelan people. He likes the people’s ideals, and he always offers us great ideas and recommendations,” Maduro underlined.

What Does Nazism Mean?

March 29, 2022

Source

by Batiushka

• You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred, they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant of and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

• The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values of religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted), but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.

Samuel Phillips Huntingdon, The Clash of Civilizations, Chapter Two

President Zelensky of the Ukraine is by race a Jew, as indeed was President Poroshenko before him. Why then does the Russian Federal government call its special operation in the Ukraine ‘Denazification’? It seems contradictory to most Western minds, where the word ‘Nazi’ relates narrowly only to the anti-Jewish genocide of Third Reich (Reich = Empire) Germany. In other words what is the Russian, and for that matter non-Western, understanding of Nazism?

First of all, for Russians, as for many others, Nazism is the creed which in the Second World War organised above all the Slav Holocaust (over 30 million dead), far outmatching the Jewish Holocaust (nearly 6 million dead), as well as the genocide of other minorities at that time. Nazism is the programme to invade, kill, rape, plunder and enslave. This is exactly what the Nazis did in the Soviet Union after 1941. Invade others’ territories, kill the men, rape the women (and then kill them – one German soldier in two was a rapist and murderer in the USSR), plunder art and culture, and make slave workers of anyone left, taking them off to slave factories and camps in Germany, where they toiled until they died as serfs of the Third Reich.

However, the Nazis, shut out from colonization in the rest of the world, only did in Central and Eastern Europe, especially in Russia, what other Western European peoples did in their colonies, as we shall see below. In other words, what is meant by ‘Nazism’ is not at all specific to what Germans did during the Second World War. In this wider sense, which is what the Russian Federal government has in mind today, Nazism is what may be called ‘Western Supremacism’, the idea that Non-Western races are ‘Untermenschen’, subhumans. Therefore, like ‘niggers’, ‘savages’, ‘monkeys’, ‘nips’, ‘gooks’, the Russians too can be ‘cancelled’.

This mentality has its roots far back in the Barbarianism which destroyed the Western part of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. At first it seemed as though the Barbarians would be Christianised, especially on the outer edges of Western Europe, in Ireland, England, the Iberian Peninsula and Italy. But in the central geographical core, controlled by the Franks, the temptation among the barbarians of restoring the pagan Roman Empire was too strong.

This renewed and justified Barbarianism can be seen in the First ‘Reich’ (Empire), founded under the Germanic prince, Karl the Tall, also known as Charlemagne (747-814). Already before he founded this Reich in 800 and appointed himself ‘Emperor’, his Frankish forces under Roland had invaded the Basque Country and were defeated by the still free Basques at Roncevalles in 778 (one of the founding myths of Western Barbarianism) and again in 782 at the massacre of 4,500 Saxons at Verden. As a result, this genocidal barbarian was then called ‘The Great’ and ‘The Father of Europe’ and was ‘beatified’ by Roman Catholicism, which new Frankish religion, come from the Babylon of Rome, Charlemagne in effect founded, substituting it for the old Orthodox Christianity, come from Jerusalem.

Although Charlemagne and his Reich soon collapsed, it was the beginning of the end. After him the Western barbarians began to reject Christianity. (See, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 by R. I. Moore, 1987). Indeed, by the 11^th century, the barbarians under their new Norman shock troops, the SS of the time, began to massacre and oppress the native Greeks in the south of Italy and then the Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula and a little later the native Christian Mozarabs. As part of the same process, in 1066 the Norman SS invaded England and conquered that country, massacring the natives, imposing slavery (‘feudalism’) and Roman Catholicism. Many of the English took refuge in Constantinople and in the south of Russia.

The Western barbarians had found a justification for their barbarianism, there was no need to try and become Christians, they could carry on as before, only under the new names of ‘Catholics’, or in modern language, ‘Globalists’. After all, the barbarians were already saved, as now they belonged to an infallible organisation, whose leader held the keys to Paradise for them and which would justify any sort of pillage and murder.

After 1066 there soon followed the invasion, massacre and plunder of Wales and Scotland and the imposition of feudal enslavement and the new ‘Church’ there. In 1096 the same Western barbarians massacred the Jews in the Rhineland, on their way to massacre the ‘Greeks’ (= the Christians) and the Muslims in their genocidal campaign they called ‘The First Crusade’. In the second half of the 12^th century, these barbarians, who nowadays would be called Nazis, continued their massacres (‘crusades’) in the Near and Middle East and between 1169 and 1172 also invaded Ireland. In 1204 they massacred in and plundered the Christian Capital, New Rome, which they called Constantinople.

In the early 13^th century the barbarians to the north, called ‘The Teutonic Knights’, began their invasions, killings, rapings and plunderings of the Russian Lands. (See, Guy Mettan, Russia-the West, a Thousand-Year War, Geneva 2015, in French). However, this was only the beginning. At the end of the 15^th century there came the Italian Nazi, Columbus. In the space of 400 years, his primitive barbarian followers massacred perhaps 100 million people, whom they called the ‘Indians’, that is, the native peoples of the Caribbean (the Spanish, the British, the French and the Dutch), South America, (the Spanish and the Portuguese), Central America (the Spanish) and North America (the British, the French and the Spanish). They stole the vast American territories of two continents and their natural resources, and raped, plundered and enslaved on ‘reservations’.

However, within the same space of time they did the same in much of Africa (the slave trade, the Boer War), Asia, India, (See, the ‘India Mutiny’ (1), the salt hedge, the Bengal famine), and in Australasia massacring the Aborigenes, the Maori, as well as Micronesians and Polynesians. What the Nazis did in the Slav Holocaust (30 million dead) in Eastern Europe, the other Europeans had already been doing among the native peoples in the rest of the world, apart from in the Americas and Australasia, the British in India, China and Africa, the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique, the Dutch in what is now Indonesia, the French in Central and North-West Africa and South-East Asia, the Belgians in the Congo, the Germans in South-West Africa and later the Italians in Ethiopia. All of this was in the name of ‘civilisation, freedom and democracy’. Why not even plant your flag on the Moon and claim that?

This Western Barbarianism used to call itself ‘the free world’ (it was not actually meant ironically…), but nowadays terms itself ‘the international community’ (= mafia). It is the same group of countries, totalling perhaps a billion zombified serfs, whose leaders have given themselves the divine right to sit at the top of the global pyramid of banana republics and racketeer and exploit the rest under the excuse of ‘Globalism’, that is their personal global control. Today they call their doctrine Secularism; in Russia it is called Nazism; elsewhere it is simply called ruthless exploitation.

Today, as a result of what is happening in the Ukraine, there is only one question: Are we going straight to the end of the world as a result of the global corruption of this elite of leaders, or will the end be delayed because the world is about to be cleansed of this Nazi elite?

Note:

1. See how the Nazis always camouflage their massacres and wars with different names:

English Christians = the Anglo-Saxons

Christians = The Greeks

The Genocide of Native Peoples and the Theft of Their Lands = The Discovery of the New World

The Franco-British Invasion of Russia = The Crimean War

The First Indian War of Liberation = The India Mutiny

The British Genocide of the Chinese = The Opium Wars

The Genocide of Dutch Settlers = The Boer War

The Great European War = World War I

The Euro-American War = World War II

---

Batiushka is an Orthodox priest

When the West was itchin’ to go to China

October 17, 2021

The old Silk Roads played a major role in connecting the world through trade, and the new version can too

by Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times

Forget about the incessant drumming of Cold War 2.0 against China. Forget about think-tank simpletons projecting their wishful thinking on the perpetual “end of China’s rise.”

Forget even about a few sound minds in Brussels – yes, they do exist – saying Europe does not want containment of China; it wants engagement, which means business.

Let’s time travel to nearly two millennia ago, when the Roman Empire was fascinated by the business opportunities offered by those “mysterious” lands in the East.

After the Fall of Rome and the Western half of the Empire in the 5^th century, Constantinople – the second Rome – which was in fact Greek, turned into the maximum embodiment of the only true “Romans.”

Yet contrary to the Hellenistic Greeks following Alexander the Great, who were so enticed by Asia, Romans from the end of the Republic to the establishment of the Empire were prevented from traveling further on down the road, because they were always blocked by the Parthians: never forget the spectacular Roman defeat at Carrhae in 53 BC.

For more than four centuries, in fact, the eastern limes of the Empire were remarkably stable, ranging from the mountains of eastern Armenia to the course of the Euphrates and the Syria-Mesopotamian deserts.

So we had in fact three natural limes: mountain, river and desert.

Rome’s overarching strategy was not to allow the Parthians – and then the Persians – to totally dominate Armenia, reach the Black Sea and go beyond the Caucasus to reach the Russo-Ukrainian plains and forward to Europe.

The Persians, meanwhile, limited themselves to strengthening the Euphrates borders, which were only broken many centuries later, by the Seljuk Turks in the late 12^th century and the Mongols in the early 13th century.

This is an absolutely crucial fracture in the history of Eurasia – because this border, later perpetuated between the Ottoman and Persian empires, is still alive and kicking today, between Turkey and Iran.

It explains, for instance, the current high tension between Iran and Azerbaijan, and it will continue to be exploited non-stop by divide and rule actors.

Something extraordinary happened in the year 166: Roman merchants arrived at the court of Chinese emperor Huan-ti, the 27^th emperor of the Han dynasty. We learn from the History of the Later Han that a “Roman envoy” – probably sent by none other than emperor Marcus Aurelius – was received by Huan-ti in Luoyang.

They traveled via what the Chinese in the 21^st century would rename the Maritime Silk Road – from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea all the way to northern Vietnam, then overland to Chang’an – today’s Xian.

Trade along the Silk Road was in fact conducted by an array of intermediaries: nobody traveled the whole way back to back.

Luxury industry products – silk, pearls, precious stones, pepper – from China, India and Arabia came into contact with Roman merchants only in one of the fabled hubs of the “communication corridors” between East and West: Alexandria, Petra or Palmyra. Then the cargo would be loaded in Eastern Mediterranean ports all the way to Rome.

Caravan trade was controlled by Nabateans, Egyptians and Syrians. The most efficient “Roman” traders were in fact Greeks from the Eastern Mediterranean. Scholar JN Robert has shown how, since Alexander, Greek was a sort of universal language – like English today – from Rome to the Pamir mountains, from Egypt to kingdoms that were born out of the Persian Empire.

And that brings us to a literally groundbreaking character: Maes Titianus, a Greek-Macedonian trader who was living in Antioch in Roman Syria during the 1st century.

The trip was epic – and lasted more than one year. They started in Syria, crossed the Euphrates, kept going all the way to Bactria (with fabled Balkh as capital) via Khorasan, crossed the Tian Shan mountains, reached Chinese Turkestan, then traversed the Gansu corridor and the Gobi desert all the way to Chang’an.

Since the legendary Geographical Guide by Claudius Ptolemy, the Maes Titianus caravan is recognized as the only Classic Antiquity source completely describing the main Ancient Silk Road land corridor from Roman Syria to the Chinese capital.

It’s crucial to note that Bactria, in today’s northern Afghanistan, at the time was the known eastern limes of the world, according to the Romans. But Bactria was way more than that; the key trade crossroads between China, India, the Parthians and Persia, and the Roman empire.

The Pamir mountains – the “roof of the world” – and the Taklamakan desert (“you can get in but you won’t get out”, goes the Uighur saying) were for centuries the major natural barriers for the West to reach China.

So it was geology that kept China in splendid isolation relative to the Roman empire and the West. In military terms, the Romans and then the Byzantines never managed to cross this eastern border that separated them from the Persians. So they never managed to advance their conquests all the way to Central Asia and China, as Alexander famously tried.

Yet the Arabs, during the lightning-fast expansion of Islam, actually managed it. But that’s another – long – story.

The Maes Titianus caravan adventure happened no less than over a millennium before the travels of Marco Polo. Yet Polo had much more sophisticated PR – and that’s the narrative imprinted in Western history books.

To evoke it now is a reminder of the early steps of the Ancient Silk Roads, and how the interconnectedness remains imprinted in the collective unconscious of great parts of Eurasia. Peoples along the routes instinctively understand why an evolving trade corridor uniting China-Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran-Eastern Mediterranean makes total sense.

Parachuted Prime Minister Mario “Goldman Sachs” Draghi may insist that Italy is Atlanticist, and may be constantly deriding the BRI. But sharp heirs of the Roman Empire do see that business partnerships along New Silk Road corridors make as much good sense as during the time of Maes Titianus.

Excuse me, Sir, but are you civilized?

July 25, 2021

by Naresh Jotwani for the Saker Blog

Washington Post recently ran an article with headline which contained the two phrases “civilized nations” and “deter Beijing and Moscow” (see a review here). Use of the latter phrase in the headline shows clearly that the phrase “civilized nations” here has undisguised, in-your-face geopolitical motivation.

But “civilized” and “deter” is in fact a very strange combination of words, tempting and encouraging us to dig deeper into the matter.

One must assume that, in geopolitics, it is “just another day at the office” for one power to attempt to deter another. If two powers are in a state of unstable equilibrium, but not yet openly at war, attempts to deter one another would go on. Such is life. Certain lines – red or otherwise! – must not be crossed, weighty pronouncements must be made, and “swords must be banged against shields”. All this is standard stuff which foreign office trainees must learn, and upon which their “superiors” must base their upward mobility.

Clearly physical power is the one deterrent we all know about, starting from our experiences in school. But what has “being civilized” got to do with all that? Makes you wonder.

Surely I would be deterred by a big guy carrying a big stick – regardless of whether or not he seems to be “civilized”. In the same way, I am also deterred by a growling dog – regardless of whether or not it is fed and groomed by a rich owner! Chengiz Khan attacked other countries with brutal physical force, without any claims of possessing “higher civilization”. Before the sack of Rome, Alaric behaved far more sensibly than the “civilized” ruling elite of Rome.

Around the same time, another article also appeared, this one on the subject of Russian history and civilization (a review here). This article was an honest attempt to educate others, but there was no sign of any attempt to deter anyone. Indeed a resplendent, vibrant, creative civilization attracts others, does not deter them. If a “civilization” is aiming to deter others, then what happens to all the talk of “civilizational values” and “soft power”?

We know that power flows through the barrel of a gun, but today do culture and civilization also flow through the barrel of a gun? Something is surely wrong here! Historically, have the “civilized” always won wars? How do we explain the very recent history of Afghanistan? Which “civilization” has been gaining the upper hand there? What did the “civilized nations” achieve there? Whom did they manage to deter? For how long?

***

What follows is a brief history of how we have got to where we now find ourselves. This is not a work of “academic scholarship” – but rather it connects various “dots” discovered by scholars. The connections are based on the play of human nature we see all around us today.

The word “civilize” derives from the Latin root “civis”, meaning “citizen”, and in this way it is predicated on the idea of a “city”. Nomadic tribes of a period earlier than, say, 10,000 years BC would not have such a word in their language, even while the concept of “fellow tribesman” would be internalized very well.

The earliest cities were in fact trading centres for the surplus primary produce of nearby hamlets and villages. Trading – that is, eminently sensible economic exchanges – happened long before the invention of writing and of money. People were smart even then.

Trade generated surplus wealth. Thus people in cities – that is, traders of one sort or another – were free to explore aspects of life other than the hard work of primary production. Philosophy, religion, politics, law, “higher” arts and literature … all these flourished. Individuals in the city cultivated themselves, while their fellow human beings “out there” cultivated the land. Paeans and hymns were dutifully sung to the glory of the city and her various “gods”.

It was not long before the cultivated ones thought of themselves as “superior” to the others. In any one-on-one interaction with a simpler human being, they could easily run circles around the latter – and probably also justify charging a fee for the privilege!

Aided by writing and money, political power of cities grew rapidly, and it soon reached a point at which cities deemed themselves to be “proud city states”. Thence arose class differentiation between “civilized” city dwellers and the rustic population outside, which was by then economically and politically dependent on the cities. City states eventually grew into empires, following the all-too-familiar dynamic of unlimited human greed and brutality.

The simpler rustic folk were divided into “subjects”, “serfs”, “slaves” … and so on; but when the rustic folk got into friction or warfare with the “civilized” ones, they were dubbed “barbarians”. The preferred words nowadays are “deplorable”, “backward”, “lower caste” et cetera.

This phenomenon has played out repeatedly in recorded history. The phenomenon is grounded in economic motivations, and therefore it also has huge economic consequences.

Before “civilizations” came into being – and therefore before the invention of money and writing – the relationships between primary producers and traders were simple and direct, as depicted below.

Even huge geographical distances could not block trade, since ships and caravans could be used. Traders were brave and ingenious. For probably a couple of millennia, mankind experienced a “golden age of trading”, during which benefits of trade accrued but without onerous economic exploitation, slavery, human trafficking, and so on.

Things changed after the emergence of money, writing and “civilizations”. Multiple layers of political, social, financial, legal and other services emerged, giving opportunity to every “citizen” to climb the hierarchy of choice, depending on his or her aptitude and talent. Of course the two most useful talents would be greed and cunning – but clearly any other talent could be put to use, for example physical beauty, or the ability to declaim in public.

Ever since then, members of the “civilized elite” of most “civilizations” have wanted to get into the act and take their cut. The main goal of such “civilized elite” is to grab every opportunity for easy money, with the view: “After me, the deluge!”

The situation thus evolved to what is shown below, in what is projected as “progress” or the “unstoppable march of human advancement”. Men and women high up in the “pecking order” of a “civilization”, puffed up with their own social position and self-importance, feel free to make profound pronouncements about “the masses” or “the common people”.

[Incidentally, how “civilized” can a society be in which we use the phrase “pecking order”? The verb “peck” applies to poultry birds, and is also seen in the phrase “hen-pecked husband”.]

So much for “civilized”, the word wrongly used in the Washington Post article.

***

Surprisingly, this discussion brings us close to Saker’s recent decision to write and share with us short vignettes about the teachings of Jesus Christ. How so?

Jesus Christ lived through a period of great turmoil in the region, as the ruthless might of the Roman empire came into contact with independent minded Hebrews. His message was of love and charity, rather than greed. He promised deliverance to his followers, mostly poor folk.

When does a poor person cry out for deliverance? For the many poor people that I know, a bit of poverty is alright if only they are allowed to live on in peace. None of them demands perfect economic equality. Many earn their livelihood working for richer people. “I am alright, Jack. Let me be!”, they say – as they adapt, cope and share.

But turmoil most definitely does occur when even the otherwise forbearing poor are in unbearable distress; that possibility can never be ruled out.

Turmoil did occur in the period when Jesus lived and taught. Therefore, his teachings include useful, practical sayings addressing the daily economic and political reality of the poor people who were his followers. We may consider just three of his many profound sayings:

Man shall not live by bread alone …

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s …

By the way, these themes are not readily found in Gautam Buddha’s teachings. Why? Buddha lived in pre-Alexander India. Specific instances of suffering which moved him, when he was a young prince, were disease, old age, death … All of which is really kid stuff compared to what the Romans and other people of the time did on a regular basis.

Gautam Buddha traced the roots of suffering to desire, whereas the followers of Jesus Christ suffered from extreme deprivation and cruelty. It would be inhuman to say that desire was at the root of their suffering, when in fact they desired only deliverance from extreme deprivation and cruelty. Buddha and Jesus Christ addressed two totally different audiences, separated greatly in time, space and economic/political conditions.

***

It’s time to turn our attention back to some economic and political realities.

It is much easier to make money otherwise than by being a primary producer, and typically every human being seeks the easier path rather than the harder one. Primary producers are therefore left further and further behind in the headlong societal rush towards material well-being. However, no self-respecting community or country should accept such a dire economic fate for a significant fraction of its hard-working members.

Political and economic measures must therefore address this issue in a fair manner, and also provide avenues open to all members to benefit from training, education and economic mobility. Any ideology – “capitalism”, “neo-liberalism” or whatever else – which violates this fairness criterion will enrich a very few but also doom the society. Any talk of “trickle down wealth” is no more than false propaganda; “trickle down” just does not happen.

The attitude of “civilizational upper-hand” displayed in the Washington Post headline leads to a bargaining tactic which goes something like this:

Hey, you! Every time we engage in any transaction, negotiation, discussion or collaboration, do keep in mind that – since I am more “civilized” – I am by definition superior to you. Is it not enough for you that I even deign to sit and talk with you?

As against this, realistic bargaining between parties must proceed only on the basis of specific strong and weak points of each party. Any presumed and self-proclaimed – but meaningless! – “civilizational superiority” has nothing to do with any real-life negotiation. Why introduce such a red herring of into “real-politik”? In today’s intellectually multi-polar, competitive world, the adversary easily sees through all such false pretences anyway.

The reality of being “civilized” – if indeed there is such reality! – must not depend on haughty self-proclamation. The word “civilized” must be defined in terms which are universal.

Our only “city” now is the entire Planet Earth. There are no outsiders, and therefore the word “civilized” has to have meaning not limited by this or that so-called great city of the past or present – whether that be Rome, Athens, Washington, Beijing, Jerusalem or Varanasi.

In that spirit, a simple test is proposed here for the reader’s consideration:

Regardless of how highly accomplished an individual may be – in music, literature, politics, law, science, wealth, beauty or any combination thereof – does the person “get it” and accept that the most deprived individual is also a human being deserving of dignity and respect?

Note that the word “charity” does not even occur here. Acknowledgement of the other person’s humanity is far more fundamental that any outward act of “charity”. It follows that laughing at deprived individuals or pouring scorn over them is not civilized behaviour.

Only if the above test is satisfied should a person today be considered “civilized”. Loud, self-serving proclamations do not count. This is a matter not of “politics” or “ideology”, but of humanity. Nobody need fly off at the handle shrieking “Buddha”, “Jesus Christ”, “capitalism”, “communism” or “socialism”! Humanity does not dwell in a person’s brain, wealth or loquacity, but deep inside the heart – or perhaps not even there.

Lest anybody misunderstand, none of the above is a justification for what does or does not happen in my own country. Wherever there are human beings, certain behaviour patterns are bound to be seen. Most of what is described here has gone on blatantly in India for many centuries, and at present there is an intense internal struggle in progress.

The point here is that any “civilization” worth its name should help temper economic injustice rather than exacerbate it. In times of huge diversity and change, an attitude amongst people of “us” versus “them” is inevitable. The key questions ask must be such as these:

What are the terms under which societal injustices and resentments are resolved? How exploitative are these terms? How is extreme deprivation avoided?

No society can be strong if brutal economic exploitation runs rampant amongst its people. The following paradox is too glaring to be missed:

“Leaders” who declaim the loudest about being “civilized”, and try to impose their “civilizational values” on others, represent the very same societies which are going through relatively rapid exacerbation of internal fissures. A recent extensive survey carried out in the UK reported that, according to most younger respondents, the number one priority of the government should be to protect the poorest, weakest and the most vulnerable. An overwhelming majority said “F**k them all” about their own political leaders. (A summary of the survey can be found here.)

Much should be expected from anyone claiming to be “civilized” today.

Russia and the EU; The Ukraine Card

April 08, 2021

by Ghassan and Intibah Kadi for the Saker Blog

A tug-of-war game in Europe has been a strong feature of dramatic events in the region and further afield ever since the Roman Empire plus the Church split up. Which was the cause and which was the effect is subject to debate, but the split was much deeper than one that was political; the spiritual aspect of it is not to be overlooked.

The authors are not experts on this aspect of history and will therefore not dwell too much, but it suffices to say that Catholic Easter can come before Passover, even though Jesus celebrated Passover before His Crucifixion. But this anomaly does not happen in the Julian Calendar that the Orthodox Church adheres to till today; and the Orthodox community doesn’t shy away from presenting this contradiction in the Georgian Calendar that Catholicism follows.

But this article is not about the over millennium-and-a-half-old disagreement between the Western and Eastern Churches. It is about the current rift between Russia and Western Europe.

But to what extent does much of the current rift find its roots in religion? No region in the world has in recent times experienced the repercussions of this ancient divide as much as the Balkans when the former federation of Yugoslavia split, on Catholic/Orthodox religious lines, that ironically bear a huge resemblance to the borders between those of the Roman and the Byzantine Empires. The exploitation of potential cracks in the two main spheres of Islam by the Western power-block, along with its useful non-Western allies, is not to be discounted. It is easy to apply a simplistic view of the divide of the East and West upon such criteria alone, but religious difference always plays an important role, albeit psychologically. In Europe, historical factors also include that of the influence of the Ottoman Empire, the conversion of many East Europeans to Islam, divisions within the Western Church resulting in drastic conflicts and, fast forward to the much later phenomenon of the Soviet era and the lasting implications of its legacy in neighbouring countries, then the picture becomes more complex.

No matter what is said by those countries that Russia had influence over in the post-World War II period, there is no excuse for their denial of the fact that that it was Russia, albeit under the banner of the Red Army, that liberated all of Eastern Europe, including former East Germany and all of Berlin from the Nazis. Among the allies in WWII, Russia made the biggest sacrifices, more sacrifices than all of those of the allies combined, losing tens of millions of its people, with estimates reaching up to forty million. No other nation came close to this calamitous human loss; not even Germany itself.

Yet, Russia is denied all of the accolade in winning the fight against Nazi Germany. Was it its communist USSR status that turned it into the underdog in Western written history or, was it its Orthodox heritage juxtaposed to that of a powerful-global reaching Vatican and also a ‘Christian West’, intent on subduing and dominating, all with the trappings of grabbing resources and spoils?

Clearly, Western Europe, no matter what facts on the ground exist, seems intent on expressing, in public at least, an incurable sense of apprehension, mythology and propagation of fiction when it comes to Russia. Add to this a European obedience to the dictates of America and its power-brokers in attempts to cripple Russia with sanctions, an obedience mostly gained through threats of negative consequences and blackmail if not adhered to. Not only is this broad-spectrum demonization, at least publicly, expressed by European politicians and its so-called ‘elites’, but also among most of the population of Western Europe.

One of the authors often uses popular songs of the West and their lyrics to express specific mental mindsets in certain blocks of time and space. In 1980, British musician, Sting, wrote a song titled Russians. It was meant to be a message of peace in which Sting wondered, with obvious sympathetic sarcasm, about the state of anti-Russia propaganda, and whether some people in the West regarded Russians as robotic communist mindless machines and questioned if they loved their children like all other humans. The lyrics exemplify the popular perceptions in the West of the people and nation of Russia, even to the extent that they would ask such a bizarre question about the love of children.

And, despite the changes in Russia since the dismantling of the Soviet Union which is what the West planned for, and the emergence during the Yeltsin period of ‘bandit capitalism’ – as if that doesn’t exist elsewhere- the negative perceptions persisted, and to add to that, a palpable sense of glee at the chaos and collapse occurring in Russia. Some say, Yeltsin was wracked with guilt later on and ensured a leader who could pull the country out of this disaster; Vladimir Putin, tripping up the West’s plan with many future surprises in store. To this day, the eyes of the Western public are re-directed from any ills that their own powers may be involved in and sharply turned towards this convenient ‘bogey-man’. There was no Hollywood spin to show a ‘rehabilitated’ Russia as Putin quickly turned things around after the Yeltsin period, restoring the nation and the Federation to one of healthy self-esteem, pride, strength and a resolve to regain its place in the world, gradually rendering what the West had seen as a great ‘coup’ over Russia, to a victory that backfired.

Those in the West are at a loss to accurately elaborate on the actual cause of the current escalation with Russia and, that is because the facts don’t stack up in their favour in the honesty box when it comes to manufacturing conflict. Their exploitation of any religious divide has to an extent been successful, but more so about ensuring the encircling of Russia with hostile nations or turning around some governments of traditional Orthodox allies. There is no racial based explanation to the escalation and history of it other than Russian culture being generally one of inclusiveness and diversity, something the West has failed in and in fact abused. Russia, an old culture with at least one thousand years of existence in a paradigm of interdependence with diverse cultures and ethnicities, spanning a massive section of the largest continent that reaches the Black, Caspian, Baltic, Bering Seas, those to the north and east, and all the way to the North Pacific Ocean; how can modern day Europe and the West compare to that?

For the old West, Europe, now mostly gathered into the entity known as the EU, their animosity cannot be explained by unresolved issues with the old Soviet Union. Nor can it be based on beliefs of clear and present dangers and threats posed by the existence of Russia. EU leaders are surely cognisant of the fact that it was NATO that broke the agreement between Gorbachev and the West and that NATO incrementally has been intimidating and threatening Russia’s security by positioning missiles in former Warsaw Pact nations, encircling Russia, and long before Russia made any attempts to counteract such measures. EU leaders, for various reasons, put aside reality and rationality and the known fact that peace and stability in Europe can only exist or have any potentiality if it is based on a mutual European understanding that Russia must be included. EU leaders clearly know, but never state it, that it is the USA that is coercing them to make a stand against their own regional and economic interests and to take actions against Russia; not the other way around as stipulated by their national interests as they claim.

When it comes to the crunch, it is the manipulation by America, a power that aimed and succeeded for some decades in creating itself as a unipolar, all-reaching, global power, one which called the shots on anything and everything and had under its control the vanquished nations that lost out in WWII. When Europe organized itself into a union, it became far easier for America to have almost the entire sub-continent under its boot. It could not have achieved this without the demonization of Russia and re-writing of history for the consumption of the West and all under its tutelage. Just like we have witnessed over time with the ‘Empire Wars’, the strategy of co-opting into a hybrid war format Hollywood and all media has played a crucial role in building a world-wide narrative of America as the ‘world policeman’, ‘saviour’ and ‘leader of the free-world’, when in reality it played the role of raider, pirate and predator, sharing spoils with some of its more powerful ‘allies’ who in effect were nations with little sovereignty or ability to make any crucial decisions of their own.

Last but not least, from the unpragmatic military position, EU leaders know, but under duress ignore the fact that Russia has recently developed state-of-the-art hypersonic weapons that their NATO status and alliance with the USA cannot protect them against. They know that should an escalation materialize between NATO and Russia; such weapons can be used and the outcome possibly devastating for the EU itself. EU nations and, NATO as a whole, know for a fact that a war on European soil with Russia is totally and utterly unwinnable by them. Even without deploying any of the many weapons President Putin announced to the world during his famous speech of March the 1^st 2018, a conventional war between the two sides gives Russia the benefit of depth of field and number of troops. Such is the hold on these nations that they act as if in denial of the obvious. What do they stand to gain? Or, is it about harm minimization under the yoke of America? And, what does Europe in particular, expect to gain from provoking or partaking in the provoking of war over Ukraine?

Again, in the usual twisting of facts, the Western media busy themselves in the post-Trump era in portraying Russia as the culprit that is escalating the crisis in Ukraine. If Russia is left with no alternative to act, deciding it must engage militarily, it is not going to be either influenced or intimidated by Western ‘fake news’. It will act based on the facts on the ground, and whatever Russia decides to do or not do, the Western media and leading figures will portray Russia as the transgressor and aggressor, and as we have recently witnessed from Biden himself, ramp up the rhetoric such as calling the President of a world power, President Putin, ‘a killer’.

Without the benefit of a crystal ball, either the situation will escalate to a level that leaves Russia with no other alternative than taking measures similar to those it took in Chechnya and Georgia, or that Ukraine will back off. The former scenario seems more likely unless the superior style of Russian diplomacy that specializes in win-win deals can find a solution. However, the current threat regarding Ukraine surely is for Russia where the line in the sand is to be drawn. Should matters descend to the irreconcilable, even though Russia is certain to score military victory, it will most definitely be subjected to more Western sanctions than the ones it is already under. No doubt, in such an event of ever more imaginative and diabolic sanctions imposed, it will draw Russia ever closer to allies the West does not approve of and new systems which the West has monopolized, will be overridden and rendered ineffective in bringing Russia to its knees.

As for the ever creeping ‘naughty puppy’ syndrome of NATO pushing its presence in Eastern Europe one inch at a time after the breakup of the USSR, all the way from feigning reasons for missiles stationed in Eastern Europe as safeguarding the EU from Iranian missiles, to inciting and coercing former Warsaw Pact nation members to join NATO, deploying more troops in the EU, blatant support for the Ukrainian Nazis, Russia has reciprocated in measured ways. Yes, it did retake Crimea from Ukraine, but this was done within a referendum-based democratic process. Russia may have to bite the dangerous bullet and offer the persecuted regions of Ukraine the same option. Afterall, Russia’s stand in Syria in 2015 at the request of the Syrian government, has clearly signaled that the unipolar 1990’s style ‘New World Order’ is over and that there cannot be any turning back.

Russia’s patience, perseverance and confidence in superior, win-win diplomacy in time will be widely regarded with respect by the rest of the world, even quietly by the EU leaders. It is the EU leaders who will not come to the party because they are hostage to many traps and hence, it is extremely unlikely, if not impossible, given the bind they find themselves in, that they will respond to reason, diplomacy or act in their best interests. Unlike the decades America in particular has had to install or hijack institutions and conjure up scams to place ‘rules’ on the world, Russia is not yet in a strong enough financial position to implement some of its own ‘rules’ to protect her interests. No nations should be able to do this in a manner that adversely affects other nations, whether through ‘rules’, sanctions, scams or monopoly and other tools that kill without a bullet being fired or bombed dropped. These and other strategies and tactics have come predominately from a nation in a general decline; one that boasts a huge fleet of ten aircraft carriers, countless world-wide bases and almost a trillion-dollar annual war budget; the American war machine nonetheless is a technological dinosaur in comparison to the slick and advanced Russian counter-part.

On the big geo-political level; (1) what keeps America in a position of power today is its power of the petro-dollar based global economy and all that comes with it, including control of the SWIFT-based monetary international transactions without which goods cannot be bought, sold and paid for on the international market; (2) in realistic economic sense however, it is China that is approaching the global lead if it hasn’t already at least in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, and (3) in terms of military hardware superiority, it is Russia that leads the world in this.

In regards to the current ‘crisis’ and a possible showdown over Ukraine, Russia surely cannot have concerns over its military capacity to deal with any action. However, unless Russia has been able to safe-guard its economy, quarantining it as much as possible from being affected by further Western sanctions, then any escalation should not leave Russia subject to any intimidatory Western repercussions. The further the West pushes, the closer Russia will co-operate with China, whether that is driven on a voluntary basis or has arisen out of necessity, and, in such a rapidly changing global environment, that decision of Russia is understandable and pragmatic, providing China stays solidly by the side of Russia.

Political Jesus

PEPE ESCOBAR • DECEMBER 23, 2020

Hieronymus Bosch, The Adoration of the Magi: detail featuring the splendid African Balthasar and, partially naked, at the entrance of the hut, the Anti-Christ.

Let’s hit the road in the search for the real Jesus.

Galilee, Year 27: baptized by an itinerant preacher, John the Baptist. That’s when the story really begins. We know virtually nothing of his life till then.

Galilee is ruled by shabby client kings of the Roman empire – first Herod, then his son Herod Antipas. Jesus only enters imperial jurisdiction later, when he moves to Judaea, a Roman province since Year 6.

Galilee is all about agricultural and fishing land, surrounded by way more sophisticated Greeks and Phoenicians. Jesus grows up in a context of simple peasant life; increasing taxes; population explosion; and then non-stop fragmentation of peasant land, causing the proverbial pressures on traditional family life.

Social oppression inevitably had to engender resistance – in the form of budding peasant unrest. Talk about quite fertile ground for the proliferation of charismatic spiritual leaders.

Yet who was Jesus The Man, really? A Jewish holy man? A prophet? A magician? A miracle man? A peasant leader? A revolutionary? Prefiguring Walt Withman, he did “contain multitudes”. He was indeed all things to all men.

What we seem to know for sure is that he had charisma in spades – and exuded natural authority.

The Synoptic Gospels point to problems with Mom and his brothers. Yet he never abandoned his followers – those twelve specials, all from very humble backgrounds, except Matthew (a tax collector).

He lived on the (dusty) road – full time, and that was not exactly comfortable. He was at ease with everyone – prostitutes included.

As a preacher, he was a master of P.R. He talked in parables – easily grasped by small agricultural communities. That’s where he felt really at home.

So Jesus was a rural, not urban, phenomenon. He specially appealed to those who were ill – mentally and physically. He built up a solid reputation as a healer: all those miracle cures – especially exorcisms. And the whole lot interpreted as a sign of holiness.

Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. His followers were overwhelmingly Jews – those peasants destabilized by heavy taxation of their lands and ingloriously clashing with the corruption of Herod’s political machine.

Jesus focused on the imminence of God’s kingdom. But what did he really mean? The Gospels don’t make it easier. Much of his preaching is inclusive. Yet sometimes he would refer to a “Last Judgment” in which the wicked will be punished and the good will be rewarded.

Essentially, he was a millenarian prophet. But as much as he was striving for moral renewal, he was delivering a social message – where the “kingdom” to come represented the Triumph of the Outcast. What that really mean, in practice, was possibly a renewal of family and village community life.

Whatever he was really up to, the Powers That Be feared Jesus. After all he was way too popular. And even if he did not advise armed resistance, Power could not but be very worried by a charismatic leader with miraculous attributes dazzling the crowds.

Jesus may have sensed he was a target. And that’s what may have provoked the move to Judaea – possibly in Year 30. And then to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem may have been the Holy Grail. The apex of his mission – as he finally sensed he was ready to confront the powers behind the Temple.

He made a Jerusalem entrance that was nothing short of epic, riding a donkey – as if fulfilling a prophecy (Zechariah) that “a king” would enter Jerusalem on a donkey. In Matthew, the crowds actually call him “Son of David”.

Jerusalem was buzzing with people getting together for Passover. And last but not least, Roman governor Pontius Pilate and his troops were also in town, freshly arrived from Caesarea – the Roman HQ in the province – and obsessed with maintaining order.

Enter Caiaphas, the high priest: a canny, vastly experienced political operator, who managed for years to get the support of the Jews while placating his Roman overlords.

Now imagine the scene – worthy of a Scorsese epic: an outsider, itinerant preacher from Galilee, arriving in the mean streets with his posse, all speaking in weird accents, with the crowds shouting he may be the Messiah.

And then, the ultimate set piece: he enters the Temple, by himself, and overthrows the tables of the moneylenders. What did he really want?

That’s Political Jesus 1 and 2.

1. To graphically stress the end of the old order – Temple included – and the coming of the “new kingdom”.

2. To express – politically – the growing popular revolt against the ruling elite.

And by a simple twist of fate, that’s when he sealed his destiny.

Blowback was instantaneous. The Jewish priests had to be placated. They feared Roman retaliation. And then Caiaphas saw his opening, telling them – according to the Gospel by John – “it is better for one man to die for the people”.

And that’s how Jesus the Outsider was used as only a pawn in their game to maintain order in Jerusalem.

He was now free to enter History as a larger than life Martyr, Savior, and Myth.

Constantinople & the world – the real story

October 16, 2020

by Giorgi Nektarios Selimos for the Saker Blog

Please read my words & think about what has happened.
Normal people are not to blame here it is the sin of Greed & Lust for money & power that is responsible. If you truly believe in Christ nothing is lost. But after you read this you must decide what to do as you will know the Truth & God will not hold you blameless.

The Throne of the Pope is an interesting case as there is no evidence in the Bible or any Historical religious texts there was ever 1 single Bishop that should or did preside over all other churches in Christianity.
The Word Pope in the context as the Universal leader is never mentioned by any of the Apostles in the Bible or any Bishops from the 5 churches of the Apostles during the Time of Christ on the Earth.

The 1st Bishop of the church in Rome was Pius 1 (142-155) & he never mentioned the Word Pope or ever referred to being the Universal leader of Christians during his service to the Lord & the people of Rome.

For the 1st 1000 years after Christ the Church was essentially one body that had 5 Historical Patriarchal Centres in Strategic locations as advised to by Christ himself & the Mutual agreement of all of the 12 apostles.
As seen in the Bible the Apostles worked as a team with their churches & consulted each other on troubling issues from time to time & were always in full communion with each other.

This is not to say that there was no differences as is clearly exhibited in the Bible when Apostle Paul argues with Peter for not wanting to except ALL people into the Church as Christians. Paul argued with Peter that Jewish laws & customs should NOT be applied to non Jews in order for them to be accepted in the Church. Peter thought that EVERYONE HAD to follow Jewish Laws & customs to be accepted by Christ.

In the end the Apostles agreed with Paul & Peter accepted the decision & so Christianity was able to be spread to the whole world. This documented event in the Bible clearly shows that NO ONE Apostle was the Supreme leader, and that all Apostles worked together in their faith to spread the Words of Christ.

From the Original Christian churches in Jerusalem, Antioch(Syria), Rome(Italy), Alexandria(Egypt), & Constantinople(Greece) the Apostles Spread the word of God. But were persecuted & tortured & murdered by Romans & non Believers .

In 306 Constantine the Roman Emperor had fought his way to power in Rome & had managed to become Emperor for all the Roman Empire. Early on his reign Constantine was a beneficiary of a miracle of Christ
( Battle of the Milvian Bridge) & became a firm believer in Christ & Christ’s teachings & ended the persecution of all Christians.

In Honour of his new found faith in Christ, Constantine decided to built a new Capital for the Roman Empire in the Eastern predominately Christian Greek area of the Roman Empire. He would name this new spectacular city Constantinople & build the Worlds Grandest Church there ” The Church of the Apostles” or “Ayia Sophia’ it was laden with Gold, Marble, jewels, & the finest materials in all mankind it was spectacular in appearance & magnificent in stature. The Russian Royal Delegation would later describe it to Prince Vladimir of Russia as: “When we entered this place of worship we did not know if we were in Heaven or on Earth”

Emperor Constantine would seek to Unite his empire in Christian faith under this Orthodox Church.
In fact Constantine was incredibly successful & Christianity flourished under his rule.
In 325 Constantine established the Council of Nicea , where all Religious matters of the 5 original Apostolic Churches were to be worked out together . Emperor Constantine set up a system where all the Bishops of each church would work together under the Orthodox Church & have full communion with each other.

It was a good democratic system where no one Bishop or Politician could rule alone & where the Emperor would still retain authority of the whole Roman Empire.

Constantine wisely understood that in order for the Roman Empire to remain Strong he needed to keep the Church strong unlike politics this was the one way he could unite the citizens of the Empire in a good manner. To be certain, differences did occur in some religious matters from time to time but ultimately were resolved or not allowed to interfere with the continuation of the Church. Such was a dispute with the Nicene creed, the Roman church Bishop had disagreed with the Orthodox church Bishops of the East on this. The Roman Bishop refused to agree with any of the other Bishops on this issue. So they just defered the matter & nothing was officially changed until the Great Schism of the Roman church.

During his reign, Emperor Constantine built St Peters Basilica in Rome directly over the Apostle Peter’s Tomb. This was done so as to greatly honour the Apostle Peter who had spent much of his time Preaching in Rome .
It took 30 years to build starting in 326. It was a grand Church but not close in stature to the Headquarters Church Constantine had built in the Eastern part of the empire in his new capital of Constantinople.

After Emperor Constantine’s death his successor’s would succumb to political pressure from the Rich & Old Guard Romans who wanted to shift government power back to Rome.
The Political Elite had seen how Constantine had managed to gain peace, great power & riches through the Unification of the empire under one church & most certainly were thinking of a way that they too could emulate his success. But they did not want to operate from this new Roman Empire Capital of Constantinople.

They were desperate to find a way to make Rome the power centre once again. The Great Orthodox Church that Constantine had built & united his empire in Christianity with, was caught in the middle of this political struggle with Western Roman elites & a lot of power & money was at stake. Not to mention many Roman politicians still found it difficult not worshipping the Old Roman Idols from previous Emperors & retaining the mentality of worshiping any Idol they believed would make them rich & powerful.
They were not too concerned about true salvation, much like many of today’s politicians who clearly pretend to be whatever they need to be in order to get elected. They were more interested in Power & money & sex. At the same time the Church in Rome also got caught up in this political power struggle.

Between religious disagreement with the four original eastern orthodox churches & the political pressure to undo Constantinople as the Roman capital, The Roman Church & Bishops were greatly effected & started to break away from the other 4 remaining Patriarchs of the Original church.

During this time the Roman Church bishops suddenly & mysteriously produced
“The Donation of Constantine Decree” a brilliantly forged Imperial Decree in which the now dead Emperor Constantine transfers authority over Rome & all the Western part of the Empire to the Pope .

In this fake decree Constantine purportedly agreed his throne would only retain Imperial Authority in the Eastern part of the Roman empire & rule only from his new imperial capital of Constantinople & was also agreed the Pope of the Roman Church could have control of the rest of the Empire.
The Forged Imperial Decree claimed it was a gift to Pope Sylvester 1 for teaching Emperor Constantine about Christianity , baptizing him, & curing him of Leprosy.
This Forged Decree continued to be of great use to the Roman Church & was used by successive Popes to solidify power acquire more territory & gain more converts.
This document was also used in the Roman Empire as a Propaganda tool for the Roman Church to claim Universal Supremacy over the remaining 4 unified apostolic orthodox churches.

The 1st Pope who had the audacity to use this Forged document in an official act against all the other churches was Pope Leo IX who in an officially recorded letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1054 declared to the remaining 4 Churches of the Apostles that Indeed it was the Roman Church who clearly had Universal Supremacy over all Christians as was the proof under the seal of the Emperor Constantine as well as under a loosely translated reference (Matthew:16:18 ) made in the Bible. The Roman Church then demanded that everyone bow down to them & except this for fact.

When the Orthodox Patriarchs refused, the Roman Pope split away & officially created the Roman Catholic Church independent of the Orthodox churches, thus creating new religious decrees such as celibacy for clergy, no divorce, & the new revelation that the Pope was the infallible Vicar of Christ as well as numerous other new rules that were never part of the original church.

This was the year 1054 & the Roman Church had now officially split with the remaining 4 Original Apostolic Orthodox churches.
It was to be known as the great Schism.
The Roman Church was now officially alone & the 1st church in History of Christianity to split from the remaining Apostolic Orthodox churches.

It was now the 4 Original Orthodox Patriarchal Churches remaining as one, just as they still remain almost 1,000 years later today. The 4 remaining church’s managed to come to an agreement together & agreed not to bow down to the self proclaimed Universal Supremacy of the Roman Pope & all his new rules. It was only due to Christ’s miraculous enlightenment that the Orthodox Bishops did not believe the lies of the Pope & his forged decree.
The Original Apostolic Churches were not lost.

Eventually Pope Pius in 1453 admitted that the decree was a forgery & just as it had suddenly appeared, it was suddenly never seen again & nor ever mentioned or used again by the Roman Church & Pope.
By this time though the Muslim Armies of the East had gained horrific strength & were ravaging the Eastern Parts of the Roman Empire. This area was precisely where the majority of Christians still lived & was the heart of the remaining Apostolic Orthodox Churches.

In 1421 the Officials in Constantinople sent word to the Rome that they needed more help from the Roman Soldiers stationed in the West as the Muslims were barbarically slaughtering people & forcing them to refute Christianity & convert to Islam under the sharp blades of Muslim swords.
Constantinople was clearly still part of the Roman Empire but over the years had developed strained relations with the Roman Government & the Roman Church. The Orthodox Church in Constantinople had become a sore spot for many Roman political & Church leaders. The request for military assistance reached Rome but It was decided by the Roman Government & Pope not to send help to the East & let the current army reserves there try & fend for themselves.

The Emperor & the Pope sensing political opportunity to be finally rid of Constantinople & have Rome return to its rightful position of glory decided to fortify the Western empire & protect it at all costs , the Muslims were never able to get through to Rome & the Popes Roman Church was unscathed.

In Constantinople & the Eastern part of the Empire this resulted in the Unholy Slaughter & Barbaric killings of Bishops, Priests & Christian men of all ages, Women were raped & brutally murdered, children taken into slavery & Christian Churches destroyed or turned into Muslim Mosques including the Grand Church Constantine had built “the Ayia Sophia” which now has once again has been converted from museum to a mosque in 2020 .

The previous Pope John Paul was the 1st & only Pope to acknowledge this great sin against humanity & ask forgiveness from the Orthodox believers in Christ for what the Roman Church did to their ancestors.

This Mass slaughter of the Eastern Roman Empire had now resulted in the Roman Church being the only functioning church left in the Empire. With the Muslims effectively killing all Orthodox Bishops & priests & not allowing any remaining survivors freedom of religion the Roman Catholic church was poised to become the #1 Church in the world.

From this point on the Roman Catholic church did not look back & eventually embarked on the infamous Catholic Crusades & Witch Burnings. The Pope was finally free to spread the Roman brand of religion to the world unopposed.
Catholicism became the #1 Church & religion in the World & The Pope’s Dream of undisputed power in all matters was now realized, all thanks to the mass slaughter of the Orthodox Christians by the Muslims.

It was the Russians & Ukrainians during this bleak time for the Orthodox church that were able to keep the 4 Original Apostolic Churches memory & Traditions alive & in fact rebuild many exact replicas of these great churches in their countries including the Ayia Sophia which was rebuilt in Kiev, Ukraine & still stands to this day as an Orthodox church.

The Muslims were never successful in Conquering Russia & the Orthodox Church flourished in Russia. Attaining still to this day the highest number of churches per capita in the world. Even during the times of communism this fact did not change.
That is how strong the Orthodox faith was & is today. The Orthodox Church of Constantinople where Constantine had ended Christian persecutions & started the flourishing of the Christianity movement was gone…..

But the faith remained.

The Roman Church had now decided it was time to make St Peters Basilica the New centre of Christianity. Pope Julius II embarked on a grand reconstruction plan. Pope Julius II began by destroying Constantine’s original Church of St Peter & rebuilding one on top of the original Vatican grave yard .
Pope Julius also had All the original Orthodox Crosses from St Peter’s Church removed & replaced with new Latin crosses. The Pope then gloriously installed the famous Heliopolis Obelisk courtesy of the evil & debaucherous Roman Emperor Caligula.

This became a Grand church and was thereafter widely publicized as the Greatest Church on earth & the new centre of Christianity.
Later on in the mid 1930’s the Dictator & Ally of Adolf Hitler, Mussolini would add a Grand Monumental Avenue leading to the Piazza. Only the Pope is allowed to celebrate Catholic Mass on this Alter & no one else.

I want to make it absolutely clear that the Roman Catholic believers are not at fault for this lust for power & money in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Most Catholic believers don’t know any of this.

The Roman Catholic worshipers clearly believe in Christ, but unfortunately have been deceived by there church leaders & Roman politicians over the centuries. All in a lustful quest for power & money.
I believe that it is possible some Popes wanted to stop, but the deceit had gone too far & rather than expose it & risk dangerous consequences they probably asked Christ for forgiveness & just carried on the lies.

Other Popes mysteriously died or were removed .
I truly do admire the previous Pope John Paul for his courage to acknowledge the great Schism & ask for forgiveness. I think he was a good man & the only Pope who came close to reconciling with the Original Church. But Tragically by the time he had gotten to this point he died.

I am worried that many Catholics are starting to lose their faith in Christ because of all the repeated sexual scandals & of their clergy & the court ordered payouts forcing many churches into bankruptcy as well as many of the negative movies being made about their church.
The Catholic believers must understand that this has nothing to do with Christ & it is all the doings of their Leaders.
I want them to know that they were once part of the Orthodox Church & they should consider coming back rather than giving up.

A letter to Italian-Americans

Source

June 21, 2020

By POSTFATARESURGO for The Saker Blog

The World Thought Police (WTP) has included Cristoforo Colombo, a.k.a. Christopher Columbus, in his black list. He was a “bad” person, period. Details are not needed. WTP’s decision are not questionable, nor they can be subject to anyone’s appeal, scrutiny or disagreement. Once the WTP issues a red flag on anyone, past, present or future, scores of enforcers are ready, as they were waiting for a signal, to go into action. Even the most neutral observer of current events will have to admit that this ongoing heritage hate frenzy plays along well consolidated tactics, anything but “spontaneous”. Proof of that could easily come from asking participants in the hysteric toppling of statues around the US if they could correctly place dates and events related to the subject to be grounded: somebody has done that and all the answers he could receive were growls from a crowd of rabid Pavlov’s dogs who admit no questioning to their rage. After all a basic tenet of victimhood philosophy is that virtually everyone with problems, perceived problems, or a bad life situation, is a victim. Racial, sexual, age, ethnic, political, or whatever discrimination factor, outside one’s self, is to blame for one’s problems.

As for Americans of Italian heritage, the ultimate date to celebrate is the discovery of the new world by an Italian, Cristoforo Colombo on October 12^th, 1492. But Colombo had no idea of being “Italian”, nor other prominent “Italian” navigators and explorers of the time, incidentally all of them working for national states such as Spain, France or England, simply because there was not a state called “Italy” that could have financed their costly voyages.

Therefore, Colombo always considered himself a Genoese, Vespucci and Verrazzano considered themselves Florentines, and Giovanni Caboto – although probably born in Gaeta – was sure to be Venetian. Giovanni da Verrazzano (whose correct spelling was only recently recognized by the state of New York) was in fact the first European to set foot in North America and Amerigo Vespucci unwillingly gave the name to the entire continent, courtesy of the German cartographer Waldseemüller.

As for Columbus, targeted by many as one of symbols representing a past that must be eradicated, there are indeed records and historical accounts that prove that he was not – by today’s standards – benevolent towards natives he came in contact with. Rather, he probably did not consider them any different than animals or objects, just like the Romans who considered – without any qualms of conscience – other human beings they had reduced to the status of slaves, just that: objects to be used for any labor necessities, whether by a private owner who had purchased them, or by the state for public works such as roads or public buildings such as arenas or aqueducts.

So, where do we go from here? It doesn’t take long to figure out that if we continue to examine history by todays’ “moral standards”, the path becomes endless. Soon there will be an endless list of human beings –under any denomination possible – demanding some sort of compensation for torts, damages, injustices, presumed violence, discrimination, unfair treatment, you name it.

Let’s get back to the Romans. They got their huge empire by conquering, that is by subjugating with violence other human beings, all over western Europe, northern Africa, and parts of Asia. Never mind that eventually those “barbarians” conquered themselves a crumbling Roman empire certainly not waging an olive branch. What about ancient peoples of the Italian peninsula? They were mostly peaceful populations who would have lived happily along the Romans, but the Romans waged war to their neighbors Etruscans, Sabines, Picenes, Ligures, Samnites, Lucani, Celts, Gauls just to name a few.

A possible lawsuit against the city of Rome by anyone claiming “suffering damages” enhanced by racial hatred in a past life is looming in the not so distant future, not to mention that statues of Roman emperors, the Colosseum and Roman arches of triumph are inevitably at risk.

What about the making of Italy as a nation? In 1861, the various states comprised in the Italian peninsula, including duchies and grand-duchies, decided to become all Italians and put aside almost two thousand years of differences and live happily together. At least that’s what history manuals have told us all along, right? Not quite.

Neapolitan philosopher Giovanbattista Vico stated that history invariably repeats itself. And one of the basic lessons of history is that it is written by the winners. The making of Italy was no exception to the rule as it was the annexation of a number of sovereign and independent states to another that simply had the military force to do so, because aided by foreign powers, namely France and Great Britain.

Giovanni Giolitti, the Italian statesman who ruled Italy for decades before Mussolini seized power in 1922, used to repeat that after all the Risorgimento was a fairytale, but a useful one, and as such it should be left untouched. In essence, the making of Italy caused for most Italians, especially from the south, suffering and despair, due to an unbearable worsening of their livelihoods, so bad in fact that millions were forced to emigrate to both North and South America. It was, once again since the beginning of recorded history, one organized elite who prevailed upon innocent populations who lived peaceful lives under their respective Kings and Dukes, which –incidentally – had not declared nor sought any conflict whatsoever with Piedmont or any other Italian state.

Ironically, the Kingdom of Piedmont (also called Kingdom of Sardinia as the island was part of it) was by all accounts the least “Italian” of all other Italian states. In fact the common language used in Piedmont was French, and the opening declaration of the Kingdom of Italy, pronounced on March 17^th, 1861 by Camillo Benso di Cavour were in fact pronounced in French: “Le Royaume d’Italie est aujourd’hui un fait. Le Roi, notre auguste souverain prend pour lui-même et pour ses successeurs le titre de Roi d’Italie”. (The Kingdom of Italy is today accomplished. The King, our august sovereign, assumes for himself and his successors the title of King of Italy)

That the opening statement of the new nation was pronounced in French is one of the many details historians failed to describe or deleted altogether because inconvenient to the official narrative of the making of Italy. Neither Cavour nor the new king himself, Victor Emmanuel II, really knew how to express themselves in Italian, as the common language was the local dialect or, in more official occasions, French. Even after 1861 French was kept in use for most official acts of the new government as most employees and representatives came from Piedmont and had therefore no knowledge of Italian, which was used by no more than 2-3% of the populations of the Italian peninsula. The rest was simply other dialects, or other languages like Neapolitan.

Every basic manual of Italian history will tell you that Italy has its “founding fathers” and incidentally they all came from the Kingdom of Piedmont: Mazzini, the political father, ideologue and mastermind. Cavour, the discreet strategist and diplomat. The first King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, who preferred to be named in continuity with the dynastic line of Savoy, instead of becoming what should have been Victor Emmanuel I of Italy. And the quintessential Italian hero, Garibaldi.

Garibaldi enjoys a statue in every Italian city, village or hamlet. Universally recognized as the man who single handedly defeated all the enemies of Italian populations longing for liberty under one state, he also spent quite some time in South America, where he had to make a living, somehow. In 1852, in Lima, he decided to assume Peruvian citizenship in order to be named captain of a vessel that was to offer regular service from Lima to China with a cargo of guamo fertilizer, and sail back from Canton with a cargo of coolies, chinese peasants of the lowest class, who were practically brought to Peru by force to extract Guamo as slave labor force for a job not even the poorest Peruvians wanted to do.

So we have a problem here. Even a champion of liberty as Garibaldi could come under scrutiny as a slave trader and his statues soon could come down as symbols of a past that must be eradicated. Soon a worldwide ban on Garibaldi’s symbols could be enacted by the WTP and his statues – worldwide, but especially in Italy – singled out for immediate demolition.

But Colombo and Garibaldi were simply men of their times who were not burdened by the moral dilemmas of the 21^st century. We should know better than judging with today’s standards men of the past, despite all their flaws. After all we should know that men of the future will judge many of today’s standards with inevitable different ones.

Italian Americans – regardless of their political affiliation – should see Colombo as one “Italian” who embodied one of quintessential American qualities: don’t take the word “impossible” for granted. Most seamen of his time believed that the discovery of another part of the world sailing westward was “impossible” as – in their beliefs – the ocean was simply an endless body of water no human being should dare to challenge.

The making of Italy inevitably caused emigration and suffering to millions of people, just as Garibaldi or Colombo did cause suffering to other fellow human beings, thinking they were doing “the right thing”. That has happened in every country or civilization of the past, and it will happen inevitably again. But statues, or symbols, are essential: they help us remember, no matter what.

Destroying statues is a complete useless damnatio memoriae which serves no one. Neither the perpetrators, who should be remembered and judged for their deeds, good or bad, nor the victims, which will be completely forgotten. But it does serve the same old movers and shakers who are acting – and funding – behind the scenes this wave of hysteria in order to eradicate our symbols, and therefore our memory.

Why Xi won’t repeat Ming Dynasty mistakes

May 11, 2020

By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission

China has learned from its own rich history and is applying those lessons to re-emerge as a major 21st century power

Chinese President Xi Jinping visits the Jiayu Pass, a famed MIng Dynasty era part of the Great Wall in Jiayuguan City, during an inspection tour of northwest China’s Gansu Province, August 20, 2019. Photo: FacebookWith hybrid warfare 2.0 against China reaching fever pitch, the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, will continue to be demonized 24/7 as the proverbial evil communist plot for economic and geopolitical domination of the “free” world, boosted by a sinister disinformation campaign.

Chinese President Xi Jinping visits the Jiayu Pass,
a famed MIng Dynasty era part of the Great Wall in Jiayuguan City,
during an inspection tour of northwest China’s Gansu Province,
August 20, 2019. Photo: Facebook

It’s idle to discuss with simpletons. In the interest of an informed debate, what matters is to find the deeper roots of Beijing’s strategy – what the Chinese learned from their own rich history and how they are applying these lessons as a re-emerging major power in the young 21^st century.

Let’s start with how East and West used to position themselves at the center of the world.

The first Chinese historic-geographic encyclopedia, the 2^nd century B.C. Classic of the Mountains and the Seas, tells us the world was what was under the sun (tienhia). Composed of “mountains and seas” (shanhai), the world was laid out between “four seas” (shihai). There’s only one thing that does not change: the center. And its name is “Middle Kingdom” (Zhongguo), that is, China.

Of course, the Europeans, in the 16^th century, discovering that the earth was round, turned Chinese centrality upside down. But actually not that much (see, for instance, this 21^st century Sinocentric map published in 2013).

The principle of a huge continent surrounded by seas, the “exterior ocean,” seems to have derived from Buddhist cosmology, in which the world is described as a “four-petal lotus.” But the Sinocentric spirit was powerful enough to discard and prevail over every cosmogony that might have contradicted it, such as the Buddhist, which placed India at the center.

Now compare Ancient Greece. Its center, based on reconstituted maps by Hippocrates and Herodotus, is a composite in the Aegean Sea, featuring the Delphi-Delos-Ionia triad. The major split between East and West goes back to the Roman empire in the 3^rd century. And it starts with Diocletian, who made it all about geopolitics.

Here’s the sequence: In 293, he installs a tetrarchy, with two Augustuses and two Caesars, and four prefectures. Maximian Augustus is charged to defend the West (Occidens), with the “prefecture of Italy” having Milan as capital. Diocletian charges himself to defend the East (Oriens), with the “prefecture of Orient” having Nicomedia as capital.

Political religion is added to this new politico-military complex. Diocletian starts the Christian dioceses (dioikesis, in Greek, after his name), twelve in total. There is already a diocese of the Orient – basically the Levant and northern Egypt.

There’s no diocese of the Occident. But there is a diocese of Asia: basically the Western part of Mediterranean Turkey nowadays, heir to the ancient Roman provinces in Asia. That’s quite interesting: the Orient is placed east of Asia.

The historical center, Rome, is just a symbol. There’s no more center; in fact, the center is slouching towards the Orient. Nicomedia, Diocletian’s capital, is quickly replaced by neighbor Byzantium under Constantine and rechristened as Constantinople: he wants to turn it into “the new Rome.”

When the Western Roman empire falls in 476, the empire of the Orient remains.

Officially, it will become the Byzantine empire only in the year 732, while the Holy Roman Empire – which, as we know, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire – resurrects with Charlemagne in 800. From Charlemagne onwards, the Occident regards itself as “Europe,” and vice-versa: the historical center and the engine of this vast geographical space, which will eventually reach and incorporate the Americas.

Superstar admiral

We’re still immersed in a – literally – oceanic debate among historians about the myriad reasons and the context that led everyone and his neighbor to frenetically take to the seas starting in the late 15^th century – from Columbus and Vasco da Gama to Magellan.

But the West usually forgets about the true pioneer: iconic Admiral Zheng He, original name Ma He, a eunuch and Muslim Hui from Yunnan province.

His father and grandfather had been pilgrims to Mecca. Zheng He grew up speaking Mandarin and Arabic and learning a lot about geography. When he was 13, he was placed in the house of a Ming prince, Zhu Di, member of the new dynasty that came to power in 1387.

Educated as a diplomat and warrior, Zheng He converted to Buddhism under his new name, although he always remained faithful to Islam. After all, as I saw for myself when I visited Hui communities in 1997 when branching out from the Silk Road, on my way to Labrang monastery in Xiahe, Hui Islam is a fascinating syncretism incorporating Buddhism, the Tao and Confucianism.

Zhu Di brought down the Emperor in 1402 and took the name Yong Le. A year later he had already commissioned Zheng He as admiral, and ordered him to supervise the construction of a large fleet to explore the seas around China. Or, to be more precise, the “Occidental ocean” (Xiyang): that is, the Indian Ocean.

Thus from 1405 to 1433, roughly three decades, Zheng He led seven expeditions across the seas all the way to Arabia and Eastern Africa, leaving from Nanjing in the Yangtze and benefiting from monsoon winds. They hit Champa, Borneo, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Hormuz, Aden, Jeddah/Mecca, Mogadiscio and the Eastern African coast south of the Equator.

Those were real armadas, sometimes with over 200 ships, including the 72 main ones, carrying as many as 30,000 men and vast amounts of precious merchandise for trade: silk, porcelain, silver, cotton, leather products, iron utensils. The leading vessel of the first expedition, with Zheng He as captain, was 140 meters long, 50 meters wide and carrying over 500 men.

This was the original Maritime Silk Road, now revived in the 21^st century. And it was coupled with another extension of the overland Silk Road: after all the dreaded Mongols were in retreat, there were new allies all the way to Transoxiana, the Chinese managed to strike a peace deal with the successor of Tamerlane. So the Silk Roads were booming again. The Ming court sent diplomats all over Asia – Tibet, Nepal, Bengal, even Japan.

The main objective of pioneering Chinese seafaring has always puzzled Western historians. Essentially, it was a diplomatic, commercial and military mix. It was important to have Chinese suzerainty recognized – and materialized via the payment of a tribute. But most of all this was about trade; no wonder the ships had special cabins for merchants.

The armada was designated as the Treasury Fleet – but denoting more a prestige operation than a vehicle for capturing riches. Yong Le was strong on soft power and economics – as he took control of overseas trade by imposing an imperial monopoly over all transactions. So in the end this was a clever, comprehensive application of the Chinese tributary system – in the commercial, diplomatic and cultural spheres.

Yong Le was in fact following the instructions of his predecessor Hongwu, the founder of the Ming (“Lights”) dynasty. Legend rules that Hongwu ordered that one billion trees should be planted in the Nanjing region to supply the building of a navy.

Then there was the transfer of the capital from Nanjing to Beijing in 1421, and the construction of the Forbidden City. That cost a lot of money. As much as the naval expeditions were expensive, their profits, of course, were useful.

Yong Le wanted to establish Chinese – and pan-Asian – stability via a true Pax Sinica. That was not imposed by force but rather by diplomacy, coupled with a subtle demonstration of power. The Armada was the aircraft carrier of the time, with cannons on sight – but rarely used – and practicing “freedom of navigation”.

What the emperor wanted was allied local rulers, and for that he used intrigue and commerce rather than shock and awe via battles and massacres. For instance, Zheng He proclaimed Chinese suzerainty over Sumatra, Cochin and Ceylon. He privileged equitable commerce. So this was never a colonization process.

On the contrary: before each expedition, as its planning proceeded, emissaries from countries to be visited were invited to the Ming court and treated, well, royally.

Plundering Europeans

Now compare that with the European colonization led a decade later by the Portuguese across these same lands and these same seas. Between (a little) carrot and (a lot of) stick, the Europeans drove commerce mostly via massacres and forced conversions. Trading posts were soon turned into forts and military installations, something that Zheng He’s expeditions never attempted.

In fact Zheng He left so many good memories that he was divinized under his Chinese name, San Bao, which means “Three Treasures,” in such places in Southeast Asia as Malacca and Siam’s Ayutthaya.

What can only be described as Judeo-Christian sadomasochism focused on imposing suffering as virtue, the only path to reach Paradise. Zheng He would never have considered that his sailors – and the populations he made contact with – had to pay this price.

So why did it all end, and so suddenly? Essentially Yong Le run out of money because of his grandiose imperial adventures. The Grand Canal – linking the Yellow River and the Yangtze basins – cost a fortune. Same for building the Forbidden City. The revenue from the expeditions was not enough.

And just as the Forbidden City was inaugurated, it caught fire in May 1421. Bad omen. According to tradition, this means disharmony between Heaven and the sovereign, a development outside of the astral norm. Confucians used it to blame the eunuch councilors, very close to the merchants and the cosmopolitan elites around the emperor. On top of it, the southern borders were restless and the Mongol threat never really went away.

The new Ming emperor, Zhu Gaozhi, laid down the law: “China’s territory produces all goods in abundance; so why should we buy abroad trinkets without any interest?”

His successor Zhu Zanji was even more radical. Up to 1452, a series of imperial edicts prohibited foreign trade and overseas travel. Every infraction was considered piracy punished by death. Worse, studying foreign languages was banished, as was the teaching of Chinese to foreigners.

Zheng He died (in early 1433? 1435?) in true character, in the middle of the sea, north of Java, as he was returning from the seventh, and last, expedition. The documents and the charts used for the expeditions were destroyed, as well as the ships.

So the Ming ditched naval power and re-embraced old agrarian Confucianism, which privileges agriculture over trade, the earth over the seas, and the center over foreign lands.

No more naval retreat

The takeaway is that the formidable naval tributary system put in place by Yong Le and Zheng He was a victim of excess – too much state spending, peasant turbulence – as well as its own success.

In less than a century, from the Zheng He expeditions to the Ming retreat, this turned out to be a massive game changer in history and geopolitics, prefiguring what would happen immediately afterwards in the long 16^th century: the era when Europe started and eventually managed to rule the world.

One image is stark. While Zheng He’s lieutenants were sailing the eastern coast of Africa all the way to the south, in 1433, the Portuguese expeditions were just starting their adventures in the Atlantic, also sailing south, little by little, along the Western coast of Africa. The mythical Cape Bojador was conquered in 1434.

After the seven Ming expeditions crisscrossed Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean from 1403 for nearly three decades, only half a century later Bartolomeu Dias would conquer the Cape of Good Hope, in 1488, and Vasco da Gama would arrive in Goa in 1498.

Imagine a historical “what if?”: the Chinese and the Portuguese bumping into each other in Swahili land. After all, in 1417 it was the turn of Hong Bao, the Muslim eunuch who was Zheng He’s lieutenant; and in 1498 it was Vasco da Gama’s turn, guided by the “Lion of the Sea” Ibn Majid, his legendary Arab master navigator.

The Ming were not obsessed with gold and spices. For them, trade should be based on equitable exchange, under the framework of the tribute. As Joseph Needham conclusively proved in works such as Science and Civilization in China, the Europeans wanted Asian products way more than Orientals wanted European products, “and the only way to pay for them was gold.”

For the Portuguese, the “discovered” lands were all potential colonization territory. And for that the few colonizers needed slaves. For the Chinese, slavery amounted to domestic chores at best. For the Europeans, it was all about the massive exploitation of a workforce in the fields and in mines, especially concerning black populations in Africa.

In Asia, in contrast to Chinese diplomacy, the Europeans went for massacre. Via torture and mutilations, Vasco da Gama and other Portuguese colonizers deployed a real war of terror against civilian populations.

This absolutely major structural difference is at the root of the world- system and the geo-historical organization of our world, as analyzed by crack geographers such as Christian Grataloup and Paul Pelletier.  Asian nations did not have to manage – or to suffer – the painful repercussions of slavery.

So in the space of only a few decades the Chinese abdicated from closer relations with Southeast Asia, India and Eastern Africa. The Ming fleet was destroyed. China abandoned overseas trade and retreated unto itself to focus on agriculture.

Once again: the direct connection between the Chinese naval retreat and the European colonial expansion is capable of explaining the development process of the two “worlds” – the West and the Chinese center – since the 15^th century.

At the end of the 15^th century, there were no Chinese architects left capable of building large ships. Development of weaponry also had been abandoned. In just a few decades, crucially, the Sinified world lost its vast technological advance over the West. It got weaker. And later it would pay a huge price, symbolized in the Chinese unconsciousness by the “century of humiliation.”

All of the above explains quite a few things. How Xi Jinping and the current leadership did their homework. Why China won’t pull a Ming remix and retreat again. Why and how the overland Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road are being revived. How there won’t be any more humiliations. And most of all, why the West – especially the American empire – absolutely refuses to admit the new course of history.