Syria - style Chemical Weapon False Flag Attacks Coming Soon To Ukraine

Life is becoming impossible for the people of Ukraine's beseiged cities - Picture: Business Insider

For two weeks now the content of mainstream media ews has been dominated by by the Russian incursion into Ukraine attack launched with the sole aim of conquering Ukraine and absorbing it back into the Russian empire, thus advancing Vladimir Putin's alleged ambition to recreated the Soviet Union. Bizarrely there is almost no mention of the fact that Russia;s action is a response to almost nine years of Western provocations.

These provocations were initiated  by a coup d'etat enginered by the deep state agencies of The USA and other NATO member states and culminated in the Euromaidan colour revolution in November 2013, which ousted the corrupt but democratically - elected administration of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. The real reason Yanukovych was overthrown was that globalist interests were miffed at his  decision to suspend an EU trade deal and move his country towards closer economic ties with Russia. 

As soon as the new US / NATO /EU sponsored, Russia hating, far-right sympathisers that made up the Western-backed post-Maidan government took office they began moves to force ethnic Russians out of Ukraine. This led Moscow to annex the Crimean Peninsula and to the predominantly ethnic Russian Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine region breaking away from Kiev’s control and declaring themselves independent republics in April 2014.

A near eight-year long civil war in Ukraine, involving Kiev-supported neo-Nazi factions such as Azov Battalion and Right Sector, and ethnic Russian guerillas in the breakaway republics have so far cost an estimated 14,000 deaths across both sides.

The Minsk Agreements between Ukrainian and Russian leaders, brokered by France and Germany for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe set out a framework within which Donetsk and Luhansk would be granted a degree of autonomy whilst still remaining under Ukrainian rule.

However the Kiev regime decided that they would not honour their side of the deal, a as well as the continuing their attacks on the ethnic Russians in Donbass, giving themselves a false sense of security based on the assumption that Ukraine would eventually be admitted as a NATO member and host weapons and troops intended to attack Russia,.Their belief that NATO membership would ultimately force Moscow to accept the genocide of ethnic Russians in Ukraine was incredibly naive. Their failure to understand the continued harassment of Russians in Ukraine would eventually provoke Moscow into launching a military intervention into its Western neighbour in order to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” the country was beyond stupid.

In the two weeks since Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border the military-industrial-complex / media narrative of the ‘Ukrainian resistance’ has made it clear that of the US and its allies is to drag Moscow into a military quagmire in the second largest country in Europe which will not help the people of Ukraine about whom the US led alliance claims, this conflict is being waged. Neither will it help the oppressed people of Ukraine's breakaway Donbas region who have been under attack by the Ukrainian government for the pas eight years. In fact the aim of the west seems only to be the creation of a war of attrition that will cripple Europe's second largest nation and a vastly important food producer with the result that living costs will soar in prosperous nations and there will be serious food shortages in many poorer nation of Africa and South East Asia.

The American led western alliance used the same ploy against the Kremlin  in 1979, at the height of the Cold War, American and European deep state agencies would bean surreptitiously arming and training Islamist fundamentalists known collectivey as the Mujahideen and including a group led by Osama Bin Laden that would later become Al Qaeda.

Years later, in an interview Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter recounted how, in 1979 drawing the USSR into a costly military intervention was a motivating factor in the activities of the CIA, MI6 and the French secret service.

Despite the current intention of the deep state and the war lobby apparently being draw the Russian Federation into an Iraq war-style mess however, there also appears to be an element who favour a far more dangerous approach. They are calling for a Libya-style no fly zone over Ukraine, with US / NATO air forces given orders to engage and shoot down Russian aircraft, which would inevitably trigger a catastrophic third world war involving the use of nuclear weapons.

Despite this clamour for a Western military intervention in Ukraine, which is getting vociferous support from people in internet comment threads who are so deluded from reading nothing but propaganda, as to believe such a war is winnable by either side, US President Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have stated unequivocally that such an act is not an option, citing the global nuclear conflict that would undoubtedly follow would result in, to use a cold war phrase, Mutually Assured Destruction.

Whatever the common sense being uttered by the current military advisers of our leaders, word on the street is the deep state elements in these military powers are already preparing to carry out a false flag operation in Ukraine, one with the intention of implicating Moscow in an act so outrageous it will be impossible to resist calls for military escalation, and to manipulate public and political opinion into supporting a NATO military intervention.

We have been here before of course, in 2017 the government of Bashar Al Assad in Syria had been involved in a six-year long conflict with Western-backed, Islamic fundamentalist irregulars armed and trained by US and allied nations. The guerillas, known as ISIS, al Nusra, ISIL and various other names were a proxy for a NATO / United Nations regime change campaign launched in response to Assad’s 2009 refusal to allow Qatar and Saudi Arabia to build a pipeline through his country, a development that would have, and was intended to undermine Russia's position as a key exporter of oil and gas to Europe..

 The funding and training of Islamic terrorists groups by the west powers, with the openly declated intention of replacing Assad’s secular Muslim government with a Western-friendly religious fundamentalist theocracy amounted to a proxy war by the American led coalition on a nation that was an ally of Russia, China and Iran.

In June 2013, after Putin had faced down the bid of Muslim sympathiser Barack Obama to create a pretext for ordering American and NATO troops into Syria, Iran and the Hezbollah group in Lebanon entered the proxy war at the request of the Syrian government, providing a key role in assisting Damascus in repelling the Western-backed terrorist campaign. This was probably one of the main reason  behind Assad's survival in office.  tide of the conflict in the Arab Republic’s favour however, come in September 2015.

The decisive factor in the defeat of the terrorists, after they had swept through the region taking control of vast swathes of Syrian, Iraqui and Kurdish territory was the delivery of Russian air support and technical advisers, again at the request of the Syrian government, enabling the targeting of terrorist strongholds with air strikes and artillery bombardment, and which allowed Damascus to retake the vast swathes of Syrian territory which had come under their control, such as the key city of Aleppo.

The Syrian regime change operation was heading for an embarrassing failure when warmongers in the anti Assad coalition finally resorted to desperate , stupid measures.

In early April 2017, a false flag  attack with chemical weapons (chlorine gas) was launched on the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun, with western media leaping to denounce Syria's leader Assad as a war criminal within seconds of the bombs exploding. In spite of a lack of firm evidence that the attack was the work of the Assad regime, the US administration of Donald Trump launched cruise missiles strikes on a Syrian government airbase three days later.T.hough the regime-change lobby worked themselves into a state of hysteria demanding a full scale invasion, Trump stopped short of that fatal step which would have plunged the world into war.

A year later the same tactic was repeated when a poison gas attack on the the city of Douma, again  of dubious origin, resulted in the US, Britain and France launching air strikes against Syrian government targets, again stopping short of a full-scale intervention after Vladimir Putin repeated his warning that in the event of an attack on Syria Russia would give its ally full military support.

Without wishing to diminish the sheer criminality of using chemical weapons against civilians or even military personnel, the emergence of doubt about the originators of the attack remind us of how disastrous a NATO escalation of hostilities could have been. Should a similar false flag operation take place in Ukraine, perhaps also involving chemical weapons or a nuclear reactor  even a ‘limited’ strike against Russian military infrastructure would immediately place the world on an irreversible path to the most grave consequence of all – nuclear war.

Thus we should all be dismayed at rumours that certain elements among the nations and agencies supporting Ukraine in this conflict are considering a similar false flag outrage in order to force The USA,  UK and France to lead a direct military intervention to engage Russian forces on the ground and in the air in support of Ukraine and rapid escalation to the use of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately the propaganda signs suggest we are heading down the same road as in Syria, with anti Putin propaganda being ramped up just as anti - Assad was in the days preceding the alleged gas attacks there.

Only yesterday I hear on a BBC News report that Vladimir Putin "had invaded Ukraine in the same way as he invaded Estonia, Georgia and Syria. We know that the action in Georgia was not really an invasion but an incursion aimed at halting the process of Georgia's admission to NATO, I can find no evidence of any recent military action against Estonia beyond a couple of minor border incidents and as mentioned above Russian troops entered Syria in 2014 at the request of Syria's legitimate government, (whether the west likes them or not.) It was the US and NATO troops that were in Syria illegally although not in great enough numbers to be considered an invasion. However that BBC report and the way it was worded, though not important, illustrates how propaganda and misinformation are being used to ramp up support for western military involvement in Ukraine.

Aside provoking general outrage because of their indiscriminate nature and thus manipulating the public mood from opposition to the pointless death and destruction of large scale conflict to an almost bloodthirsty lust for revenge, chemical weapons are of little use strategically.  The gas attacks in Syria were a part of a disinformation campaign aimed at demonizing Assad and his regime. Experience gained in WW1 from large scale use of chemical weapons showed them to be  ineffective as offensive weapons.They’ve been used sporadically since then but were only deemed a necessary part of the military arsenal because 'the other side has them.' 

 Some people have described what took place in Syria as a crude attempt at using what were effectively swimming pool disinfecting chemicals to provide photo ops for the propaganda corps.

What hasn’t been widely reported in mainstream news is that there are a large number of biological laboratories in the Ukraine. The number reported as being under American control (26 if memory serves correctly) suggest it would be a good idea for them to be identified along with what they are working on. Ukraine is primarily an agricultural country so there could be all sorts of pathogens lurking quite legitimately in a lab that if released in an uncontrolled way could cause problems. But then, like Poland’s ‘secret CIA black site’, there’s always the possibility that something tucked away in an obscure part of a large country that nobody visits is up to something dodgy. Governments aren’t very trustworthy.

I recall that there was considerable controversy at the time over the allegations that Assad (not  Putin) had 'used chemical weapons against his own people' with scepticism being fuelled by news video of rescue workers dressed in T shirts, shorts and sandals (not a haz - mat suit insight) wandering among the wreckage tending the surprisingly healthy looking alleged victims of the alleged gas attack.
Initial reports from the Organisation for Prevention Of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)  seemed to support the official line that the Assad government was responsible for that attack, the weapons used having originated in Russia. This was debunked by a Wikileaks report which by revealing before and after versions of the report showed that the evidence and conclusions in the original had been heavily amended to bring the report into line with the US / NATO version of events which had been intended to provide justification for direct military action by US / NATO forces in Syria.
https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/
So Ed Miliband should not feel shame, he made the intelligent choice of turning away from nuclear war.Tom Harris however, should wear sackcloth for evermore for penning this idiotic driven if nothing else. Should The Pentagon succeed in dragging UK and Europe into a war with Russia it will become a nuclear war. And it's not a question of takings sides or of 'teaching that nasty bully Putin a lesson,' get real.   If you still think war with Russia would be a good idea keep repeating over and over to yourself that cold war phrase, "MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION" because  that is what the people who support war are cheerleading for.

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CESAR MANSO/AFP via Getty Images

Chris Tomlinson Breitbart Europe

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by Patricia Harrity

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NATO Expansion And The Ukraine War

 by Portfolio Armour

Wednesday, Mar 09, 2022 - 10:08

From COVID to Ukraine: Media-Manufactured Consent

On The "Putin Apologist" Accusation 

Driving home from the gym Tuesday night, I saw a billboard demanding a no-fly zone over Ukraine. This, it turns out, is now a super-majority position in America, according to a recent poll, despite the near certainty that this would lead to World War III. Another example of manufactured consent at work.

One of the ways the discourse about the Ukraine war is policed is by claiming that someone who mentions NATO expansion as one of the causes of the current conflict is a "Putin apologist". Oxford-trained British researcher Noah Carl wrote a piece refuting this lazy ad hominem charge. I have posted it in full below. Before that, a quick update on our system's top names, in light of the Ukraine crisis. 

Ukraine Crisis Rewards Oil Exposure 

In my previous post (Ukraine Is Trying To Goad The U.S. Into World War III), I mentioned that our top ten securities on Monday included five oil names. Our system's gauges of stock and options market sentiment started picking up oil names well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine though. For example, these were our top ten names on January 27th. As you can see, they included the Direxion Daily S&P Oil & Gas Exp. & Prod. Bull 2x Shares ETF (GUSH) along with the oil E&P Antero Resources (AR). 

Screen capture via Portfolio Armor on 1/27/2022.

Here's how they've done since: up 6.31%, on average, versus down 3.48% for SPY, with pretty much all of our gains coming from the two oil names plus the biotech stock Intra-Cellular Therapies (ITCI). 

Now on to Dr. Noah Carl's piece. 

Authored by Dr. Noah Carl at Substack

Mentioning NATO does not make you a "Putin apologist"

 

If you venture to suggest that NATO expansion has anything to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, you will be promptly informed that you’re a “Putin apologist” or that you’re peddling “pro-Putin talking points” (or some variation on this theme). The argument seems to be that, by suggesting Putin’s invasion was motivated – even in part – by anything other than bellicose revanchism, you’re absolving him of responsibility and even undermining the war effort. However, aside from being a blatant ad-hominem (most people, though not all, consider “Putin apologism” to be a bad thing), this argument is deficient on three counts.

First, foreign policy analysts have been pointing out the risks of NATO expansion since before Putin came to power. It’s therefore very difficult to see how they could have been engaging in “Putin apologism”, unless they are somehow capable of time travel. Vladimir Putin become Prime Minister of Russia in 1999, before succeeding to the Presidency the following year. Yet as far back as 1997, Jack Matlock – US ambassador to the Soviet Union – said the following in a Congressional statement:

I consider the administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Bill Clinton’s Defence Secretary William Perry wrote in his book My Journey at the Nuclear Brink that he was so opposed to NATO enlargement in 1996 that he “considered resigning”, and that he is “not willing to concede” that the “rupture in relations with Russia would have occurred anyway”. In 1998, George Kennan – who’s been described as the “architect” of the US containment policy during the Cold War – told the journalist Thomas Friedman:

I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

Second, many of those who’ve expressed reservations about NATO enlargement don’t exactly fit the mould of a “Putin apologist”. I’ve already named three – two former US ambassadors and a former defence secretary. But there are plenty of others who can scarcely be accused of having pro-Putin sympathies: former Australian Prime Minister Malcom Fraser; former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates; former British ambassador to Russia Sir Roderic Lyne; and current CIA Director William Burns. They’re all in this excellent thread by Arnaud Bertrand. Even Joe Biden warned about NATO admitting the Baltic states in 1997.

If a former US ambassador (and a patriot to boot) can describe NATO enlargement as something that “would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves”, it is surely possible for others to reach similar conclusions without being stooges of the Kremlin. Now I’m sure there are some genuine “Putin apologists” in the West, and they may well go around blaming NATO for the present crisis. But to conclude that everyone who blames NATO is therefore engaged in “Putin apologism” would be an example of the “Hitler used toilet paper” fallacy. (“Oh, you use toilet paper? So did Hitler!”)

Third, there’s a lot of evidence that NATO enlargement was a factor – arguably the most important factor – in Putin’s decision to invade. This evidence is by no means dispositive; isolating the causes of particular historical events is notoriously tricky. But I believe it’s possible to defend statements such as, “If the West had ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, Putin would not have invaded”. Having said that, I’m willing to be convinced that I’m wrong. Some people claim that Putin always had designs on Ukraine, and would have invaded regardless of our policy; or perhaps that the only thing that would have stopped him is Ukraine joining NATO even sooner! If so, let them make their arguments without calling those of us who disagree “Putin apologists”.

 

 

So, what’s the evidence that NATO enlargement set the stage for Russia’s invasion? Much of it’s laid out in a 2014 article by John Mearsheimer titled ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault’. I’ll do my best to summarise. Ukraine has always been an ethnically divided country, with mostly Ukrainian speakers in the North West, and mostly Russian speakers in the South East (see above). Prior to February of 2014, about 50% of Ukrainians favoured one party, and about 50% favoured another. The map below shows results from the 2010 election. As you can see, there’s an extremely strong relationship between ethnicity and voting.

 

Viktor Yanukovych, whose party was favoured in the Russian-speaking parts of the country, happened to win the 2010 election. So in 2010, Ukraine had a democratically elected (albeit massively corrupt) pro-Russian President. The trouble started in November 2013, when his government decided not to ratify an association agreement with the EU so that it could pursue closer economic ties with Russia. This gave rise to the Western-backed Euromaidan protests, and the eventual toppling of Yanukovych. Which in turn led to the outbreak of the war in Donbass and Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

It would be fair to say that, prior to the toppling of Yanukovych, both the West and Russia had been meddling in Ukrainian affairs – each trying to steer the country in its own direction. After this event, however, the country veered sharply away from Russia. (This was partly due to the fact that Crimea and the Donbass – the two most pro-Russian areas – had been removed from the electoral map.)

Petro Poroshenko, the man who replaced Yanukovych, announced that “we’ve decided to return to the course of NATO integration”. NATO troops began military exercises in Ukraine later that year. Then in 2019, the Constitution was amended to include joining NATO as a strategic goal. By June of 2020, Ukraine was recognised by NATO as an “Enhanced Opportunities Partner”. And in November of 2021, the US and Ukraine signed a “Charter on Strategic Partnership”, which declared that the US “supports Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO”.

At the same as it was making overtures to joining NATO, the government began implementing pro-nationalist policies. The day after the toppling of Yanukovych, parliament voted to repeal a 2012 law that gave Russian and other minority languages the status of “regional languages” (allowing their use in courts, schools and other public institutions). This decision was initially vetoed by the acting President. However, the law was later ruled unconstitutional by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court. Efforts to promote Ukrainian nationalism were stepped up further under Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who assumed the Presidency in 2019. He banned pro-Russian media, and arrested the opposition leader – a gentleman named Viktor Medvedchuk, who happens to be a personal friend of Putin. (Medvedchuk stands accused of treason.)

Russian leaders have long viewed Ukraine as what Mearsheimer calls a “core strategic interest”. And they have repeatedly made this clear to their counterparts in Washington. Back in 1995, when CIA Director William Burns was working at the US embassy in Moscow, he wrote a memo stating, “Hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.” And in a later memo, sent to the US Secretary of State before NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit, Burns wrote:

Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.

The memo was titled ‘Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement red lines’. Burns had previously been called in by the Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and reminded of Russia’s long-standing opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine. Lavrov told Burns that “the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” In spite of all this, NATO members at the Bucharest Summit formally agreed that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO”.

Russian opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine is particularly strong due to feelings of betrayal over earlier rounds of NATO expansion, which they had been assured by the US would not happen. While some commentators dispute the US ever promised Russia that NATO wouldn’t expand into Eastern Europe, the political scientist Joshua Shifrinson – who has studied the issue in greater detail than anyone else – comes to different conclusions. In a prize-wining 2016 article (with 185 footnotes), he notes that

during the diplomacy surrounding German reunification in 1990, the United States repeatedly offered the Soviet Union informal assurances against NATO’s future expansion into Eastern Europe. In addition to explicit discussion of a NATO non-expansion pledge in February 1990, assurances against NATO enlargement were epitomized and encapsulated in later offers to give East Germany special military status in NATO, to construct and integrate the Soviet Union into new European security institutions, and to generally recognize Soviet interests in Eastern Europe.

Shifrinson further states, “There are numerous reasons to condemn Russian behavior in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as against states in Eastern Europe, but Russia’s leaders may be telling the truth when they claim that Russian actions are driven by mistrust.” This surely helps to explain some of Putin’s remarks in his February 22nd speech, such as when he claimed “they have deceived us” and when he referred to the US as the “empire of lies”.

Of course, there are important cultural and geographic reasons why Russian leaders regard Ukraine as a “core strategic interest”. The cultural reasons are laid out in Putin’s rambling 2015 essay ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’ – which you can read for yourself. (Note: I’m not saying Putin is correct; I realise that his factual claims are heavily contested. I’m just saying that’s what he, and probably most Russian nationalists, believe.) The geographic reasons are more straightforward: Ukraine’s vast territory provides a buffer-zone between NATO’s Western Border and Russia’s major cities; and Russia requires access to its Black Sea Fleet, which is based in the port of Sevastopol in Crimea (see above).

Finally, it’s worth noting that Putin explicitly mentioned the threat of NATO expansion as the motivation for his “special military operation” in his February 22nd speech. In fact, he spends the entire first half of the speech criticising US foreign policy vis-a-vis NATO, and arguing that NATO is an aggressive not a defensive alliance. Of course, we shouldn’t take what Putin says at face value. Perhaps he was concealing the true motivations for his military aggression? But if you’re going to make this argument, you can’t rely on other things Putin has said (like his 2015 essay), since you’ve already assumed that his words can’t be trusted.

Arguing that NATO enlargement was a key motivation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not make you a “Putin apologist”. Foreign policy analysts have been pointing to the risks of NATO enlargement since before Putin came to power. And many of those analysts were bona fide American patriots (ambassadors and defence secretaries), not fringe commentators with an anti-Western axe to grind. What’s more, there’s a lot of evidence that NATO enlargement was a crucial factor in Putin’s decision-making: longstanding Russian policy with respect to Ukraine; developments in that country since 2014; and the content of Putin’s February 22nd speech.

Of course, none of this means we have to support Russia’s military aggression. So what’s the upshot? We should have followed John Mearsheimer’s advice in 2014: work with Russia to create a prosperous and neutral Ukraine, which respects minority rights. Of course, that’s no longer possible, as it’s 2022 and Russian artillery fire is raining down on Ukrainian cities. But if we want to end this conflict sooner rather than later, while minimising the risk of a devastating nuclear war, we should be pushing for some kind of settlement that accepts Ukraine won’t be a member of NATO.

 

The Weaponization Of Money Is War Like Has Never Been Seen Before

 Removing Russia’s central bank and a number of commercial banks from the SWIFT international payment messaging system was the shot heard around the world that signalled the start of World War 3. It represented the weaponisation of money in a way and on a scale never seen before.

The whole world has seen this. Never mind what African, South East Asian and South American nations will think when US or European nations want to do business with them via SWIFT. And what will China think now? 

They will make it a priority to NOT need the US dollar going forward. Russia and China have already established an alternative cross border transactions system to by pass SWIFT and banks in over a hundred nations are signed up to it. So  they were already well on the path to de-dollarisation before the kerfuffle in Ukraine kicked off,. but expect this process to speed up now, particularly before the Chinese invade Taiwan. 

It may sound dramatic, but this is a turning point in monetary history. When the US left American soldiers stranded in Afghanistan and rescinded all its promises to Afghans, it effectively told the rest of the world that it couldn’t be trusted as a military ally. The indeciviveness and vacillation of the Biden administration was like giant flag with the word weakness emblazoned on it.

However it has suddenly become fashionable to say what a few years ago would have been unthinkable, that the USA and NATO have brought all this shit down on themselves by repeatedly meddling in the internal politics of nations in all these far flung corners of the earth. There were always going to be consequences. Keep poking The Bear with a pointed stick and sooner or later it is going to get angry.

 

Russian Ruble

By canceling Russian banks and thus making life difficult for millions of Russian citizens and businesses that need to move money around globally (via SWIFT) they just announced that the US dominated, petrodollar based monetary system could not be trusted. Unless you play by whatever rules the West wants you to play by you’re out, and your assets are frozen or confiscated so you cannot join another game.

Russia and China saw it coming, western leaders  were warned (by Russia and China) that Russia and China had seen it coming but were too arrogant to heed the warning, in fact they were so deeply absorbed in their own pomposity they refused to believe Russia and China were capable of mounting a challenge.

Now that the west has used money as a weapon in this way it opens a gate to the end of USD hegemony and the acceleration towards a bipolar monetary order. This gives the US Federal Reserve, The Bank of England, the European Central Bank (ECB) and other central banks  a huge problem. Think it through. China’s PBOC and Russia’s central bank all hold the debt of other central and commercial banks in the form of bonds, and they will draw on those or call them in. That in itself would reduce funding at those banks as swap lines would be canceled (we had a precursor in 2008 to this) as it would involve massive amounts of funding problems. 

Sanctions began this process and now eliminating Russia from SWIFT will accelerate it. Ironically the sanctions imposed by the US / NATO alliance on Russia were always going to hurt citizens of the USA and NATO member states more than their intended target. Millions have already been forced into fuel poverty, food shortages and energy supply problems are already being felt and we are only two weeks in. Russia has had sanctions for years. They’ve built resistance to them. And they have prepared, developed strategies and put plans in place to avoid dependence on western capital in exactly the way western leaders have not avoided dependence on Russian energy, Russian fertilizer and Chinese manufacturing.

Yuan-Ruble Payment System ‘Can Counter US Hegemony’

In the political world. A world littered with sociopaths and thugs, Putin is arguably the most experienced thug. In fact, if you listen to his speech it was anything but the rantings of a mad man.

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Ukraine Conflict Roundup - 6 March 2022

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[ Ukraine And The NGO Archipelago ] ... [ "Energy Shortages Could Threaten Social Cohesion": Germany Warns Against Ban On Energy Imports From Russia ] ... [ Zelensky Lambasts West in Tirade Against 'Weak' NATO ] ... [ Now We Have A “Hot War” With Russia & We Are Being Warned That “WW3 Can Only Be Nuclear” ] ... [ Ukrainian MP says country 'feel abandoned by the West' ] ... [ The Unintended Consequences Of The Wests Response To Russia's Invasion/ ]

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Ukraine And The NGO Archipelago

Authored by David Reaboi at Substack

I’ve half-written several pieces on the unfolding Ukraine crisis—mostly as I see things through the lens of the information warfare business in the West—but my posts on Twitter might be the best place to get quick analysis on it, alongside everything else. The effectiveness of writing think-pieces at all about fast-developing stories is now an open question; the old TLDR (“Too Long, Didn’t Read”) dynamic seems to’ve been replaced by, simply, DR.

 

Even for Americans who, rightly, are opposed to US government involvement in the conflict, the Ukraine issue is massive knot of nearly every important concern: energy, economy, foreign policy, communications and censorship, the end of American hegemony, the Deep State, the limits of knowing, etc. All those intersections are fertile ground for pundits and analysts and citizens to consider.

Most of all, I’ve been alarmed at the predictable onslaught of one-sided propaganda and over-the-top lies coming from Western outlets, and the totalizing moral panic that discourages sober thought about the conflict. Putin’s Russia was certainly the aggressor—but American media from Fox to CNN and NBC supply an airbrushed narrative, a black-and-white morality tale. Not only is the truth in this conflict a shade of gray—but the implications are, as well.

Like BLM, Covid, and other the media and politicians of both parties have locked arms around a consensus. Allegiance to the the narrative must come before independent thought, which brings with it the possibility of questioning that narrative. Dissenters—heck, even questioners—have been shouted down and called, “traitors.”

The agitprop is so thick because Ukraine is ground zero for an ecosystem of influence that, for about a decade, has been able to wield tremendous consensus-making power within the American and western foreign policy community. Influencing the public and policy debate on Ukraine and Russia is precisely what this ecosystem was built to do.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been a cash machine for western oligarchs. With a very low standard of living and rampant corruption, the country was the perfect place for the very wealthy to make a buck. Unlike Eastern Europe, which had gotten far more expensive by then, Ukraine was a relative badland; pennies-on-the dollar investments in Ukrainian business and infrastructure would produce a windfall if the country moved towards NATO and the European Union.

In 2014, the western-backed Maiden uprising was a Color Revolution regime change effort in order to ensure this glide-path toward NATO and the EU would continue. But that’s only half the battle; the effort required the commitment of American policymakers who would push it aggressively from within the world’s most powerful government, as well.

Western oligarchs invested in Ukraine funded a massive infrastructure of information and influence operations I often refer to as the “NGO Archipelago.”

 

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"Energy Shortages Could Threaten Social Cohesion": Germany Warns Against Ban On Energy Imports From Russia

from Deutsche Welle, 6 March 2022

 

Germany's economy minister says he regrets the country is still dependent on imports from Moscow, and that Europe's largest economy is already feeling the impact of sanctions imposed over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Habeck said Germany must free itself from imports of Russian energy

Germany is currently still dependent on Russian fossil fuels, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Thursday.

He spoke out against a ban on energy imports from Russia in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. 

"I would not advocate an embargo on Russian imports of fossil fuels. I would even oppose it," he said after meeting German business leaders.

"We need these energy supplies to maintain the price stability and energy security in Germany," Habeck added.

A shortage in supply could threaten social cohesion in Germany, he warned.

Habeck stressed Germany "must free ourselves" from imports of Russia's gas, coal, and oil.

In February, Germany stopped the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. It has since joined other European nations in introducing a raft of sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Habeck, however, said Germany has already begun to feel the effects of those decisions.

"The impact of the sanctions and of the war on all sectors of the economy is so strong that we can fear a big impact," Habeck said.

The minister said any hopes that Europe's largest economy would return to post-pandemic levels later this year were dashed.

"We had hoped that we will experience an upswing this spring, a recovery phase. But now we have the consequences of the war," he warned.

Habeck urged consumers do their bit by reducing consumption. "If you want to hurt Putin a little, then save energy," he said.

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Zelensky Lambasts West in Tirade Against 'Weak' NATO

from Western Journal

With his life on the line every day his country fights back against Russian forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is angry that Western nations want to avoid alienating Russian leader Vladimir Putin while also backing Ukraine.

NATO leaders on Friday said that establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as Zelenskyy has begged for, would be a step too far in putting the West on Putin’s list of enemies.

On Saturday, Putin explicitly said that any country that stands with Ukraine to support it in the skies would be considered an enemy.

Zelenskyy said Ukrainians will die because of the temporizing and half-measures of NATO members that fear Putin more than they support freedom, according to Axios.

The “narrative” that supporting a no-fly zone leads directly to Russian aggression on their own counties is the “self-hypnosis of those who are weak, under-confident inside,” Zelenskyy said.

“All the people who will die starting from this day will also die because of you, because of your weakness, because of your disunity,” he continued.

Zelenskyy sought to portray the need for a no-fly zone in the stark terms of Ukrainian survival, saying the NATO summit was a “weak summit, confused summit, summit which shows that not everyone considers the struggle for freedom to be Europe’s number one goal.”

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