📨Message from China to the U.S
“Your military will be reduced into scrap iron”
In short:
“Stop causing and hyping unnecessary tensions between us (China) and Taiwan because you’re provoking us and putting our security at risk, we shall respond”Zikhala everywhere now 🤧🔥 pic.twitter.com/1cWJfHWwbU
— Sphithiphithi Evaluator (@_AfricanSoil) March 2, 2022
Monthly Archives: March 2022
Russia Declares War on the Straussians
by Thierry Meyssan via Voltairenet
Russia is not waging war on the Ukrainian people, but on a small group of people within the US power that has transformed Ukraine without its knowledge, the Straussians. It formed half a century ago and has already committed an incredible amount of crimes in Latin America and the Middle East without the knowledge of the United States. This is their story.
Leo Strauss
This article is a follow-up to :
1. “Russia wants to force the US to respect the UN Charter,” January 4, 2022.
2. “Washington pursues RAND plan in Kazakhstan, then Transnistria,” January 11, 2022.
3. “Washington refuses to hear Russia and China,” January 18, 2022.
4. “Washington and London, deafened“, February 1, 2022.
5. “Washington and London try to preserve their domination over Europe“, February 8, 2022.
6. “Two interpretations of the Ukrainian affair”, 16 February 2022.
7. “Washington sounds the alarm, while its allies withdraw”, 22 February 2022
At dawn on February 24, Russian forces entered Ukraine en masse. According to President Vladimir Putin, speaking on television at the time, this special operation was the beginning of his country’s response to “those who aspire to world domination” and who are advancing Nato’s infrastructure to his country’s doorstep. During this long speech, he summarized how NATO destroyed Yugoslavia without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council, even bombing Belgrade in 1999. Then he perused the destruction of the United States in the Middle East, in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Only after this lengthy presentation did he announce that he had sent his troops to Ukraine with the dual mission of destroying the Nato-linked armed forces and ending the Nato armed neo-Nazi groups.
Immediately all the member states of the Atlantic Alliance denounced the occupation of Ukraine as comparable to that of Czechoslovakia during the “Prague Spring” (1968). According to them, Vladimir Putin’s Russia had adopted the Soviet Union’s “Brezhnev doctrine”. Therefore, the free world must punish the resurrected “Evil Empire” with “devastating costs”.
The interpretation of the Atlantic Alliance is aimed above all at depriving Russia of its major argument: although Nato is not a confederation of equals, but a hierarchical federation under Anglo-Saxon command, Russia is doing the same. It refuses Ukraine the possibility of choosing its destiny, just as the Soviets refused it to the Czechoslovakians. It is true that Nato violates the principles of sovereignty and equality of states stipulated in the UN Charter, but it should not be dissolved, unless Russia is also dissolved.
Perhaps, but probably not.
President Putin’s speech was not directed against Ukraine, or even against the United States, but explicitly against “those who aspire to world domination”, i.e. against the “Straussians” in the US power structure. It was a real declaration of war against them.
On February 25, President Vladimir Putin called the Kiev leadership “a clique of drug addicts and neo-Nazis”. For the Atlantic media, these words were those of a mental patient.
During the night of February 25-26, President Volodymyr Zelensky sent a ceasefire proposal to Russia via the Chinese embassy in Kiev. The Kremlin immediately responded by setting out its conditions:
- arrest of all Nazis (Dmitro Yarosh and the Azov Battalion, etc.)
- removal of all street names and destruction of monuments glorifying Nazi collaborators during the Second World War (Stepan Bandera, etc.),
- laying down of weapons.
The Atlantic press ignored this event, while the rest of the world, which knew about it, held its breath. The negotiation failed a few hours later after Washington intervened. Only then would Western public opinion be informed, but the Russian conditions would always be hidden from them.
What is President Putin talking about? Who is he fighting against? And what are the reasons that have made the Atlanticist press blind and mute?
Paul Wolfowitz
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE STRAUSSIANS
Let us stop for a moment to consider this group, the Straussians, about whom Westerners know little. They are individuals, all Jewish, but by no means representative of either American Jews or of Jewish communities worldwide. They were formed by the German philosopher Leo Strauss, who took refuge in the United States during the rise of Nazism and became a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. According to many accounts, he had formed a small group of faithful students to whom he gave oral instruction. There is no written record of this. He explained to them that the only way for the Jews not to fall victim to a new genocide was to form their own dictatorship. He called them Hoplites (the soldiers of Sparta) and sent them to disrupt the courts of his rivals. Finally, he taught them discretion and praised the “noble lie”. Although he died in 1973, his student fraternity continued.
The Straussians began forming a political group half a century ago, in 1972. They were all members of Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s staff, including Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. They worked closely with a group of Trotskyite journalists, also Jewish, who had met at the City College of New York and edited the magazine Commentary. Both groups were closely linked to the CIA, but also, thanks to Perle’s father-in-law Albert Wohlstetter (the US military strategist), to the Rand Corporation (the think tank of the military-industrial complex). Many of these young people intermarried until they formed a compact group of about 100 people.
Together they drafted and passed the “Jackson-Vanik Amendment” in the midst of the Watergate crisis (1974), which forced the Soviet Union to allow the emigration of its Jewish population to Israel under pain of economic sanctions. This was their founding act.
In 1976, Paul Wolfowitz [1] was one of the architects of the “Team B” charged by President Gerald Ford with assessing the Soviet threat [2]. He issued a delirious report accusing the Soviet Union of preparing to take over “global hegemony”. The Cold War changed its nature: it was no longer a question of isolating (containment) the USSR, it had to be stopped in order to save the “free world”.
The Straussians and the New York intellectuals, all of whom were on the left, put themselves at the service of the right-wing president Ronald Reagan. It is important to understand that these groups are neither truly left nor right wing. Some members have switched five times from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party and back again. What is important to them is to infiltrate power, whatever the ideology. Elliott Abrams became an assistant to the Secretary of State. He led an operation in Guatemala where he put a dictator in power and experimented with Israeli Mossad officers on how to create reserves for the Mayan Indians in order to eventually do the same thing in Israel with the Palestinian Arabs (the Mayan Resistance earned Rigoberta Menchú her Nobel Peace Prize). Then Elliott Abrams continued his exactions in El Salvador and finally in Nicaragua against the Sandinistas with the Iran-Contra affair. For their part, the New York intellectuals, now called “Neoconservatives”, created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Institute of Peace, a mechanism that organized many colored revolutions, starting with China with the attempted coup d’état of Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang and the subsequent repression in Tiananmen Square.
At the end of George H. Bush’s (the father’s) term of office, Paul Wolfowitz, then number 3 in the Defense Department, drew up a document [<a href=”https://www.voltairenet.org/article215879.html#nb3″ class=”spip_note” rel=”appendix” title=”This document was revealed in “US Strategy Plan Calls For Insuring No (…)” id=”nh3″ style=”margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline: 0px; color: rgb(172, 17, 17); text-decoration: none; font-weight: 700″>3] based on a strong idea: after the decomposition of the USSR, the United States had to prevent the emergence of new rivals, starting with the European Union. He concluded by advocating the possibility of taking unilateral action, i.e. to put an end to the concerted action of the United Nations. Wolfowitz was undoubtedly the designer of “Desert Storm”, the operation to destroy Iraq that allowed the United States to change the rules of the game and organize a unilateral world. It was during this time that Straussians valued the concepts of “regime change” and “democracy promotion.”
Gary Schmitt, Abram Shulsky and Paul Wolfowitz entered the US intelligence community through the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence’s Working Group on Intelligence Reform. They criticized the assumption that other governments think the same way as the US government [4]. Then they criticized the lack of political leadership in intelligence, leaving it to wander into
unimportant issues instead of focusing on the essential ones. Politicizing intelligence is what Wolfowitz had already done with the B-team and what he would do again in 2002 with the Office of Special Plans, inventing arguments for new wars against Iraq and Iran (Leo Strauss’ “noble lie”).
The Straussians were removed from power during Bill Clinton’s term. They then entered the Washington think tanks. In 1992, William Kristol and Robert Kagan (the husband of Victoria Nuland, widely quoted in the previous articles) published an article in Foreign Affairs deploring President Clinton’s timid foreign policy and calling for a renewal of “benevolent global hegemony” [5]. The following year they founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) at the American Enterprise Institute. Gary Schmitt, Abram Shulsky and Paul Wolfowitz were members. All of Leo Strauss’s non-Jewish admirers, including the Protestant Francis Fukuyama (the author of The End of History), immediately joined them.
Richard Perle
In 1994, now an arms dealer, Richard Perle (a.k.a. “the Prince of Darkness”) became an advisor to the President and ex-Nazi Alija Izetbegović in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was he who brought Osama Bin Laden and his Arab Legion (the forerunner of Al Qaeda) from Afghanistan to defend the country. Perle was even a member of the Bosnian delegation at the signing of the Dayton Accords in Paris.
In 1996, members of the PNAC (including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) wrote a study at the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) for the new Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. This report [6] advocates the elimination of Yasser Arafat, the annexation of the Palestinian territories, a war against Iraq and the transfer of Palestinians there. It was inspired not only by the political theories of Leo Strauss, but also by those of his friend, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of “revisionist Zionism”, of whom Netanyahu’s father was the private secretary.
The PNAC raised funds for the candidacy of George W. Bush (the son) and published before his election its famous report “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”. It called for a Pearl Harbor-like catastrophe that would throw the American people into a war for global hegemony. These are exactly the words that PNAC Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used on September 11, 2001.
Robert Kagan
«»
Thanks to the 9/11 attacks, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz installed Admiral Arthur Cebrowski in Donald Rumsfeld’s shadow. He played a role comparable to that of Albert Wohlstetter during the Cold War. He imposed the strategy of “endless war”: the US armed forces should not win any more wars, but start many of them and keep them going as long as possible. The aim would be to destroy all the political structures of the targeted states in order to ruin these populations and deprive them of any means of defending themselves against the US [7]; a strategy that has been implemented for twenty years in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen…
The alliance between the Strausians and the revisionist Zionists was sealed at a major conference in Jerusalem in 2003, which Israeli political figures from all sides unfortunately thought they should attend [8]. It is therefore not surprising that Victoria Nuland (Robert Kagan’s wife, then ambassador to NATO) intervened to declare a ceasefire in Lebanon in 2006, allowing the defeated Israeli army not to be pursued by Hezbollah.
Bernard Lewis et Benjamin Netanyahu
Bureau de Presse du Premier ministre
Some individuals, such as Bernard Lewis, have worked with all three groups, the Straussians, the Neoconservatives and the Revisionist Zionists. A former British intelligence officer, he acquired both U.S. and Israeli citizenship, was an advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu and a member of the U.S. National Security Council. Lewis, who halfway through his career assured that Islam is incompatible with terrorism and that Arab terrorists are in fact Soviet agents, later changed his mind and assured with the same aplomb that the religion preaches terrorism. He invented the strategy of the “clash of civilizations” for the US National Security Council. The idea was to use cultural differences to mobilize Muslims against the Orthodox, a concept that was popularized by his assistant at the Council, Samuel Huntington, except that Huntington did not present it as a strategy, but as an inevitability that had to be countered. Huntington began his career as an advisor to the South African secret service during the aparteheid era, and later wrote a book, The Soldier and the State [9], arguing that the military (regular and mercenary) is a special caste, the only one capable of understanding national security needs.
After the destruction of Iraq, the Straussians were the subject of all sorts of controversies [10]. Everyone is surprised that such a small group, supported by neoconservative journalists, could have acquired such authority without having been the subject of a public debate. The U.S. Congress appointed an Iraq Study Group (the so-called “Baker-Hamilton Commission”) to evaluate its policy. It condemned, without naming it, the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy and deplored the hundreds of thousands of deaths it had caused. But Rumsfeld resigned and the Pentagon inexorably pursued this strategy, which it had never officially adopted.
In the Obama administration, the Straussians found their way into Vice President Joe Biden’s cabinet. His National Security Advisor, Jacob Sullivan, played a central role in organizing the operations against Libya, Syria and Myanmar, while another of his advisors, Antony Blinken, focused on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. It was he who led the negotiations with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of key members of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s team in exchange for the nuclear deal.
Regime change in Kiev in 2014 was organized by the Straussians. Vice President Biden is firmly committed to it. Victoria Nuland came to support the neo-Nazi elements of the Right Sector and to supervise the Israeli “Delta” commando [11]in Maidan Square. A telephone intercept reveals her wish to “fuck the European Union” (sic) in the tradition of the 1992 Wolfowitz report. But the leaders of the European Union do not understand and protest only weakly [12].
“Jake” Sullivan and Antony Blinken placed Vice President Biden’s son, Hunter, on the board of one of the major gas companies, Burisma Holdings, despite opposition from Secretary of State John Kerry. Hunter Biden is unfortunately just a junkie, he would serve as a front for a gigantic scam at the expense of the Ukrainian people. He would appoint, under the supervision of Amos Hochstein, several of his stoner friends to become other front men at the head of various companies and to plunder Ukrainian gas. These are the people that President Vladimir Putin called a “clique of drug addicts”.
Sullivan and Blinken relied on mafia godfather Ihor Kolomoysky, the country’s third largest fortune. Although he is Jewish, he financed the heavyweights of the Right Sector, a neo-Nazi organization that works for NATO and fought in Maidan Square during the “regime change”. Kolomoïsky took advantage of his connections to take power within the European Jewish community, but his co-religionists rebelled and ejected him from international associations. However, he managed to get the head of the Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh, appointed deputy secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council and to get himself appointed governor of the Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Both men would be quickly removed from any political function. It was their group that President Vladimir Putin called a “clique of neo-Nazis.”
In 2017, Antony Blinken founded WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm that brought together former senior Obama administration officials and many Straussians. The firm’s business is extremely low-key. It uses the political connections of its employees to make money; what anywhere else would be called corruption.
Joe Biden is not a Straussian, but he has been doing business with them for about fifteen years. Here with Anthony Blinken.
THE STRAUSSIANS ARE STILL THE SAME AS EVER
Since Joe Biden returned to the White House, this time as President of the United States, the Straussians have been running the show. “Jake” Sullivan is National Security Advisor, while Antony Blinken is Secretary of State with Victoria Nuland at his side. As I have reported in previous articles, she went to Moscow in October 2021 and threatens to crush Russia’s economy if it ded not comply. This was the beginning of the current crisis.
Undersecretary of State Nuland resurrected Dmitro Yarosh and imposed him on President Zelinsky, a television actor protected by Ihor Kolomoysky. On November 2, 2021, he appointed him special advisor to the head of the army, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi. The latter, a true democrat, rebelled at first and finally accepted. When questioned by the press about this astonishing duo, he refused to answer and mentioned a question of national security. Yarosh gave his full support to the “white führer”, Colonel Andrey Biletsky, and his Azov Battalion. This copy of the SS Das Reich division has been staffed since the summer of 2021 by American mercenaries formerly from Blackwater [13].
Having identified the Straussians, we must admit that Russia’s ambition is understandable, even desirable. To rid the world of the Straussians would be to do justice to the million or more deaths they have caused and to save those they are about to kill. Whether this intervention in Ukraine is the right way remains to be seen.
In any case, if the responsibility for the current events lies with the Straussians, all those who let them act without flinching also have a responsibility. Starting with Germany and France, who signed the Minsk Agreements seven years ago and did nothing to ensure that they were implemented, and then with the fifty or so states that signed the OSCE declarations prohibiting the extension of Nato east of the Oder-Neisse line and did nothing. Only Israel, which has just got rid of the revisionist Zionists, has expressed a nuanced position on these events.
This is one of the lessons of this crisis: democratically governed peoples are responsible for the decisions taken for a long time by their leaders and maintained after alternations in power.
Translation
Roger Lagassé
[1] “Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s Soul”, by Paul Labarique, Voltaire Network, 4 October 2004.
[2] Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA, Anne H. Cahn, Pennsylvania State University Press (1998).
[3] This document was revealed in “US Strategy Plan Calls For Insuring No Rivals Develop”, Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, March 8, 1992. See also the excerpts published on page 14: “Excerpts from Pentagon’s Plan: ’Prevent the Re-Emergence of a New Rival’”. Additional information is provided in “Keeping the US First, Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower” Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, March 11, 1992.
[4] Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, Abram N. Shulsky & Gary J. Schmitt, Potomac Books (1999).
[5] « Toward a neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy », Robert Kagan & William Kristol, Foreign Affairs, july-august 1996, vol. 75 (4), p. 18-32.
[6] «A Clean Break : A New Strategy for Securing the Realm», Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (1996).
[7] “The Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 25 May 2021.
[8] «Sommet historique pour sceller l’Alliance des guerriers de Dieu », Réseau Voltaire, 17 octobre 2003.
[9] The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, Samuel Huntington, Samuel Huntington, Belknap Press (1981).
[10] This controversy is still ongoing. To write this article I have mainly consulted these eight books: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, Shadia B. Drury, Palgrave Macmillan (1988). Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, Anne Norton, Yale University Press (2005). The Truth About Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy, Catherine H. Zuckert & Michael P. Zuckert, University of Chicago Press (2008). Straussophobia: Defending Leo Strauss and Straussians Against Shadia Drury and Other Accusers, Peter Minowitz, Lexington Books (2009). Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America, Paul E. Gottfried, Cambridge University Press (2011). Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West, Harry V. Jaffa, Rowman & Littlefield (2012). Leo Strauss, The Straussians, and the Study of the American Regime, Kenneth L. Deutsch, Rowman & Littlefield (2013). Leo Strauss and the Invasion of Iraq: Encountering the Abyss, Aggie Hirst, Routledge (2013).
[11] «Qui sont ces anciens soldats israéliens parmi les combattants de rue dans la ville de Kiev ?», AlyaExpress-News.com, 2 mars 2014. “The new Gladio in Ukraine”, by Manlio Dinucci, Voltaire Network, 21 March 2014.
[12] “What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?”, by Andrey Fomin, Oriental Review (Russia) , Voltaire Network, 7 February 2014.
[13] « Exclusive : Documents Reveal Erik Prince’s $10 Billion Plan to Make Weapons and Create a Private Army in Ukraine », Simon Shuster, Time, July 7, 2021.
Thierry Meyssan
Political consultant, President-founder of the Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network).
Latest work in English – Before Our Very Eyes, Fake Wars and Big Lies: From 9/11 to Donald Trump, Progressive Press, 2019.
Russia declares war on the Straussians
Comments by Thierry Meyssan on Russia’s intervention in Ukraine (Video)
Washington sounds the alarm, while its allies withdraw
Two interpretations of the Ukrainian affair
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Documented War Crimes by the Ukis in Donbas
The Russian Embassy in Geneva has released a document entitled “War Crimes and Crime against Humanity Committed by the Ukrainian Military-Political Leadership in the Donbass” and made it available.
Warning pretty graphic content.
https://archive.org/details/presentation-ukrainian-war-crimes/mode/2up
Where the European Union Gets Its Energy From
For its own consumption, the EU needs energy which is imported from third countries. In 2019, the main imported energy product was petroleum products (including crude oil, which is the main component), accounting for almost two thirds of energy imports into the EU, followed by gas (27 %) and solid fossil fuels (6 %). – ec.europa.eu
(Click on the image to enlarge)
The Americans Itching For War
Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,
America’s return to “normalcy.”
The foreign policy experts promised us that President Biden would restore our standing in the world and “stand up to tyranny.” Retired Admiral William McRaven said Biden would make America lead again. They were wrong, of course. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster. The reliance on intelligence and security from the Taliban got Americans killed.
If they were right about anything, it was about the return to American “normalcy.” This was one of our biggest concerns with Biden. Normalcy in the U.S. is incompetence. It got us the war in Iraq and a ~20 year war in Afghanistan. It gave us Libya and the emergency of ISIS.
This same class of experts – the ones who were wrong on Biden, wrong on Iraq and Afghanistan – are now salivating at the prospects of war with Russia. And they’re doing so by misrepresenting the purpose and risk of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the mental health of Vladimir Putin.
Liz Cheney goes so far as to make this a moral issue, stating “Isolationism has always and will always be wrong.” If isolationism is “always” wrong, then is intervention always right? Follow her twisted worldview to its logical conclusions and you find the answer.
There is no doubt that America would be better off not taking moral lessons from a Cheney. While she doesn’t tell us the standard of this moral judgment, but it is no doubt based on the incorrect assumption that America’s use of force to advance its own interests is morally right. To that I say: bullshit. Rightness isn’t judged by the identity of the actor.
Our criticisms of the West must be addressed before we continue. We are principled anti-war, although we acknowledge the limited necessity of war. In short, we believe in the principles of Just War (but not the secular revisions of that theory). This means we acknowledge the necessity of wars of defense and reject wars conducted for ambiguous notions of “national interest” or “pre-emption” or conflicts to “reorder the international system.”
This puts us in the position of condemning both Russia’s war of national interest in Ukraine and America’s war of national interest in Iraq. In contrast, while neo-conservatives like Liz Cheney condemn Russia’s war Ukraine, they agree with the principles underlying Russia’s use of force.
Crazy Putin, Nuclear Weapons, and the Calls for Escalation.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls Putin’s behavior “erratic,” his views “delusional.” James Clapper says Putin is “unhinged.” Clapper suggests the possibility that Putin will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Fiona Hill, the Regime’s favorite “Russia expert,” believes“Putin is increasingly operating emotionally and likely to use all the weapons at his disposal, including nuclear ones.”
There’s a couple goals in questioning Putin’s state of mind. First, it serves to defend America from criticisms that potential NATO expansion and continued American meddling in Ukraine helped spark this conflict. (“Blame the crazy man, not us.”)
Second, it justifies the escalation of the West’s involvement in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Talks about the potential for nuclear war only make intervention more necessary (though that doesn’t guarantee Biden would take the bait). U.S. Senators are calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Escalation leads to dangerous questions and unknown answers, such as what happens when the U.S. and Russia are in direct conflict.
Missing from the media’s coverage is push-back on these statements about Putin’s state of mind or the potential use of nuclear weapons. Their skepticism isn’t missing – it’s dead. Putin the Madman is the new talking point, the elite opinion that is approved for the masses. There’s little basis for their new talking point – certainly not in Putin’s February 24, 2022 speech where he calmly outlines Russia’s grievances and concerns, and their plans for Ukraine.
In fact, while Fiona Hill questions Putin’s mental state, she admits they assessed years ago that there was “a real, genuine risk of preemptive Russian military action” against Ukraine in response to NATO’s Open Door promise to welcome any European democracy (including Ukraine). Such predictions don’t square with craziness.
Hill and Clapper’s inflammatory statements about the potential for Russia to use nuclear weapons makes zero sense in context of the conflict in Ukraine and Putin’s demands. Putin is winning the war. At the time I’m writing this, Russia is surrounding major Ukrainian cities and the Russian convoy headed to Kyiv is estimated to be 40 miles long.
The great length of the convoy reflects the fact that Russia owns the air. While there is some brave Ukrainian resistance, it won’t stop the encirclement of Kyiv or other major cities. The New York Times further explains:
Analysts say they expect Russian forces to work to expand their hold on the pro-Russia, separatist enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, and to capture a land bridge to Crimea in the south, while pushing troops down from the north to try to encircle the main Ukrainian Army east of the Dnieper River. They are trying to surround Mariupol and take Kharkiv.
That encirclement would cut off the bulk of Ukraine’s forces from Kyiv and from easy resupply, the experts say, limiting the sustainability of organized resistance. Russian troops are also moving steadily toward Kyiv from three axes to try to surround it.
Then we get to the foolishness of escalation in light of Putin’s stated goals of the invasion. Assuming the latest reports are accurate, the purpose of this war isn’t to seize and occupy the whole of Ukraine into perpetuity. Putin isn’t demanding Ukraine be brought into Russia. Instead, Putin’s demands include:
- The disarmament of Ukraine.
- The neutrality of Ukraine (no NATO membership).
- The formal recognition of Crimea as Russian.
If those are the terms, then how much escalation is necessary? Or justified?
Dare I got out on a ledge and say the U.S. does not have Ukraine’s best interests in mind. (The U.S. initially opposed the settlement talks.) More Ukrainians die as the war drags on.
But cynics in the U.S. government must be considering that a long war also puts economic pressure on Putin. How many other peoples’ lives would the U.S. government be willing to sacrifice if Putin could be unseated? We already know that the goal of some – including Adam Schiff – is to “fight Russia over there.”
Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, they’re the ones doing the fighting. Proxy battles never end well for the proxy.
Russian Sanctions Threaten Dollar’s Reserve Status
by Tyler Durden via ZeroHedge
Over the weekend, the world gasped in shock when Western powers announced that the nuclear option would be used against Russia in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine – sanctions against the country’s central bank and targeted expulsions of key banks from SWIFT, a move which has effectively locked Russia out of the western financial system and left its vast oil export industry – a key lifeline for the Putin regime – in limbo. But the real reason for the shock is that this was the first time the global reserve currency was weaponized against a G20 economy, setting a clear precedent for how the west would and could respond to any other nation that followed in Russia’s footsteps (something which China is clearly contemplating vis-a-vis Taiwan, and is carefully studying just how the west responds to Moscow),
As a result, and following this week’s dramatic freeze of the Russian central bank overseas assets, has prompted some to question just why countries build foreign currency reserves at all and, more broadly, whether the unprecedented western response to Russia hasn’t jeopardized the dollar’s reserve status.
In what one Washington lawyer described to Reuters as the “biggest hammer in the toolshed”, the G7 and European Union governments blocked certain Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT international payment system and also went a step further than many expected by paralyzing about half the Russian central bank’s $630 billion worth of foreign currency and gold reserves. In doing so, the west has undermined Moscow’s ability to defend the ruble – which has lost up to a quarter of its value since Friday alone – and recapitalize sanctioned banks as they face nascent bank runs. In fact, as some admitted, it was the explicit intention of the west to spark bank runs and to crash the Russian financial system from within.
While a huge blow for Russia’s economy, Reuters’ Mike Dolan wrote that the move quickly prompted questions about whether targeting reserve holdings as an act of “economic warfare” may prompt a rethink by reserve managers across the globe – not least in countries that may be at loggerheads or face a potential conflict with U.S. or EU governments – over where to bank their national stash.
It’s a potentially huge issue for world markets given that central bank foreign currency reserves totaled a record $12.83 trillion late last year – a rise of $11 trillion over the past 20 years. This money is held mostly in U.S. and European government bills and bonds – with the U.S. dollar still accounting for almost 60% of that and the euro about 20%.
To be sure, Russia has long been aware of the potential risk involved in holding dollars as reserves, and since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia’s central bank had steadily divested its reserves of most U.S. dollar assets. But the dollar, euro and sterling still account for more than 50% of its holdings, located in France, Germany, Japan, Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia.
With Moscow and Beijing increasingly allied on the geopolitical stage and China refusing to either condemn the Ukraine invasion or join Western sanctions, China’s yuan – currently accounting for just 2.7% of world reserves – may be one clear option for anxious reserve managers in Moscow or elsewhere.
Of course China itself – for all its fraught relationship with the West – has been the biggest reserve stockpiler since it joined the global trading system 20 years ago amid tight control of its exchange rate. More than $3 trillion of its $3.22 trillion hoard was amassed since 2000 – precisely to offset foreign inflows to keep a lid on the yuan.
But is that about to change, and did western sanctions against Russia marked the beginning of the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency?
Berkeley professor and expert on world reserve management Barry Eichengreen reckons that of the two imperatives behind reserve stockpiling – to intervene or stabilize domestic markets or as a war chest against shocks, disasters or balance of payments crises – the latter may now be in question. “The main effect may be declining demand for reserves,” he said.
“If countries see reserves and foreign exchange management as less useful and available, then they will have to accept the inevitability of that their exchange rates are likely to move by more,” Eichengreen added. “In which case they need harden their financial systems and economies against exchange rate related disruptions, for example by discouraging corporates from borrowing in foreign currency.”
That in itself could have a profound impact on world markets and on the model for emerging markets and developing economies.
An even more alarming take comes from former Goldman economist Jim O’Neill who said the Western sanctions could ultimately lead to major reform of the global system.
“Amongst the fallout some countries may see less need to accumulate FX reserves,” he said, adding that could indeed seed “peak reserves” worldwide. “It might (also) make some of the bigger emerging markets think more seriously about reform and opening up their domestic markets, liberalizing and moving away from the U.S-centric system.”
But the most surprising take comes from former NY Fed staffer, current repo guru and Credit Suisse money market guru Zoltan Pozsar – who on any other day would be a stalwart advocate of the status quo – and who ominously said that the response to Russia may have set off a sequence of events in motion that eventually leads to the demise of the dollar as the reserve currency.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Pozsar – who this weekend warned that the lockout of Russia from the global financial system could prompt central banks to aggressively pump liquidity to stabilize markets – said noted that wars tend to turn into major junctures for global currencies, and with Russia losing access to its foreign currency reserves, a message has been sent to all countries that they can’t count on these money stashes to actually be theirs in the event of tension.
As such, he echoes the opinions voiced above that it may make less and less sense for global reserve managers to hold dollars for safety, as they could be taken away right when they’re most needed.
Of course, Russia wasn’t the first country to learn the hard way that dollar reserves can be weaponized at a moment’s notice. Last year, the Biden administration’s move to seize Afghanistan’s cash assets and confiscate the country’s gold held at the NY Fed to prevent access by the Taliban, was another such signal that reserves can be frozen.
Pozsar, similar to O’Neill, argues that this recognition will encourage central banks to diversify away from the dollar, or try to re-anchor their currencies to assets that are less susceptible to influence from U.S. or European governments. As such, recent tensions could usher in a new monetary order in which countries are far less interconnected through international bank accounts and reserves.
Speaking to the Odd Lots podcast, Pozsar said that “most FX reserves that exist in the world today are all forms of inside money, i.e. they are the liabilities of someone.” As a quick reminder, and as we explained over the weekend, central bank deposits, bank deposits, and securities are all “inside money” – money and money-like claims that are someone else’s liability, and it’s situations like this when “outside money”, or money claims like gold bullion that are no one’s liability, is king, especially if stored in vaults domestically. Unlike balances at the Deutsche Bundesbank, western G-SIBs, or Euroclear, you control what you have.
Echoing what he said over the weekend, Pozsar told Bloomberg that “whether you hold the sovereign debt of a country, or you keep a deposit at a central bank of a foreign country, or if you keep deposits at Western financial institutions, these are all forms of inside money that you don’t control. Someone owes it to you. And these things can be sanctioned.”
“If a central bank is in a situation like this and the currency’s under pressure, would it ever come to having to re-anchor your currency to something? Like gold? I think these are all questions that should be top of mind,” he added, forgetting to mention bitcoin and other cryptos, which an entire generation now views as digital gold.
“I don’t know if it’ll come to that, but if things get worse, you could basically re-anchor the ruble to a pile of gold because you need an anchor in situations like this”, he said, echoing what we have said for years, namely that in case Russia wanted to truly extricate itself from the current “dollar reserve” world, it should unveil a gold-backed currency, one which is co-sponsored by the Chinese yuan, which would then also announce unveil it is becoming gold-backed.
Others also share this dismal view: a few days ago, former Societe Generale strategist Dylan Grice who since founded Calderwood Capital, described the recent moves as a “weaponization” of money. “You only get to play the card once,” he tweeted. “China will make it a priority to need no USD before going for Taiwan. It’s a turning point in monetary history.”
A similar warning was issued by Steven Englander, former Citi head of FX and current Managing Director at Standard Chartered Bank.
“It’s a very long-term thing, so nothing immediate or even say on a two- to three-year basis, but if what we are seeing is a demonstration of the power of economic and financial force, the logical response if there is a risk that you will be on the receiving end is to see what you can do to immunize yourself,” he said. “Weirdly enough there may be a second response – what essentially is your potential economic foe importing from you and what can you do to have the maximum impact on their economy and least on yours.”
Of course, none of this is a surprise to Russia, which has been feverishly rotating out of its “inside money” dollar reserves, including dumping off all of its U.S. Treasuries in 2018 according to official data, and amassing a record stockpile of gold in the process. In fact, as Pozsar noted over the weekend, “the Bank of Russia now has more gold than deposits at foreign central banks!”
Another former Citi strategist, Brent Donnelly, who now runs Spectra Markets agreed with Pozsar: “In a cooperative game, more global trade and the accumulation of FX reserves makes sense.” But “in a competitive game, where your currency holdings are issued by an adversary and can be frozen or vaporized at that adversary’s discretion… Global trade and the accumulation of FX reserves makes … less sense.”
But while a growing number of countries, especially those that remain ideologically aligned with Russia like China and India, may seek to quietly – and not so quietly – rotate out of the dollar, they face another problem: they’ll need to convert those trillions in dollars into something, and for now the pool of potential suitable assets remains limited. Then again, if one wishes to avoid the fiat system entirely – since within the system every single asset is someone else’s liability and vice versa – one would need to seek refuge outside, i.e., in a non-fiat assets.
Here gold is the most obvious candidate, although as Bloomberg notes, there’s only so much of it available, which of course is a narrow view – after all, all that would need to happen is for gold to be revalued to make it worth far more. Incidentally, it was none other than a Pimco economic who back in 2016 suggested that in order to save the economy and devalue the dollar, the Fed should buy gold.
Failing that, the US government can just confiscate all the existing physical gold and devalue the dollar against it, similar to what FDR did with the infamous executive order 6102.
So will the Fed start buying gold in the open market? We doubt it… but just as attention is now turning to “regulating” (read banning) cryptos to avoid Russian oligarchs from using to to bypass sanctions, it stands to reason that the next trigger point as the fiat system continues along its relentless path to terminal disintegration, will be a confiscation of all precious metals. It’s only a matter of time.
Pfizer Side Effects Report Released
Pfizer releases its list of vaccine side effects.
Click to access 5.3.6-postmarketing-experience.pdf
US/NATO is in the Grip of a Daemonic Death-Wish & the Entire World is Threatened
by Edward Curtin via Off-Guardian
Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia.
Their hypocrisy and nihilistic thirst for death and destruction are so extreme that it boggles my mind. They accuse Russia of starting a New Cold War when they did so decades ago and have been pushing the envelope ever since. Now they act shocked that Russia, after many years of patience, has struck back in Ukraine.
In 2017, Oliver Stone released his four-part interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Putin Interviews were conducted between 2015, the year after the US engineered the coup d’état in Ukraine installing Nazis to power in that country bordering Russia, and 2017.
Stone was of course bashed for daring to respectfully ask questions and receive answers from the Russian leader who the American media has always cast, like all the mythic bogeymen, as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world, when it is the United States, not Russia, that has over 750 military bases throughout the world and has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – the list is endless.
In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin and the matters that concern him as the leader of Russia. In 2018, I wrote of those interviews:
…he [Putin] makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts.
- that the US needs an external enemy (“I know that, I feel that.”).
- the USA engineered the coup d’état in the Ukraine on Russia’s border.
- the US has surrounded Russia with US/NATO troops and bases armed with anti-ballistic missiles that can, as Putin rightly says to Stone, be converted in hours to regular offensive nuclear missile aimed at Russia.
This is a factual and true statement that should make any fair-minded person stand up in horror. If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable? What would CNN and The New York Times have to say?
Yet these same people readily find it impossible to see the legitimacy in Russia’s position, resorting to name calling and illogical rhetoric. Russia is surrounded with U.S/NATO troops and missiles and yet Russia is the aggressor.
In the years since those interviews, U.S./NATO has consistently tightened the noose around Russia, including fueling the Ukrainian attacks on the Donbass, killing thousands, all the while pleading innocent and expecting no reply. Now the reply has come.
Although I have no inside information, I get the sense that the Western Empire is planning/initiating counter-measures far more extreme than the highly publicized economic sanctions.
While it is true, as many commentators such as Ray McGovern and Pepe Escobar have pointed out, that a paradigm shift is underway and the once dominant US/NATO bully boys must now contend with the Sino-Russian alliance that has ushered in a dramatic change, nevertheless, as in the past decades, the so-called leaders of the US are a dumb bunch driven by unquenchable demons.
As McGovern says:
Yet, there remain unsettling indications coming from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan that senior administration ‘dolts’ (copyright North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) in the Washington Swamp still don’t get it.
I’m afraid they don’t and never will. That is what frightens me. While it seems counterintuitive and totally irrational that these people would be planning to use some type of nuclear weapon in this current situation, I am not so sure.
They obviously pushed Russia to have no alternative but to attack Ukraine, and now that they have accomplished that goal, it seems to me that they will up the ante. Diplomacy is not their way; violence is.
Pepe Escobar has just written:
This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born at breathtaking speed.
From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a UN history lesson delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to the breakaway republics’ appeal to Putin to intervene militarily to expel the NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a seamless process, executed at warp speed.
The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced it to pounce – was Comedian/Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky, back from the Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed.
As usual, his analysis is correct, but it may fail to grasp the unspeakable nature of the madness that drives desperadoes.
If those running US foreign policy feel that a new geo-political order is being born “at breathtaking speed” as a result of Russia’s move into Ukraine, then they are capable of extreme acts. And they have all the mainstream western media behind them, barking out their non-stop propaganda.
We are inexorably moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international movement doesn’t quickly arise to stop it. Most people bemoan the thought of such a war to end all wars, but refuse to analyze the factors leading to it.
It seems so unimaginable, but It happens step-by-step, and many steps have already been taken with more coming soon. It’s so obvious that most can’t see it, or don’t want to.
The corporate mainstream media are clearly part of the continuation of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, and those who still rely on them for the truth are beyond reach. We need to use all alternative means to raise the alarm and make sure the ultimate nightmare never occurs.
Perhaps hyperbole is the only way to do so, for it may be closer to the truth than we want to believe.
Jewish Subtexts in Ukraine
“If I put on glasses and look at myself like the whole rest of the world, I see myself as a monster, as a puppet master, as the master of Zelensky, someone making apocalyptic plans. I can start making this real.”
Ihor Kolomoisky, New York Times, November 2019.
In 2015, a fascinating study in Japan found that not only will rats “desert a sinking ship” in accordance with the ubiquitous maxim, but also engage in highly altruistic behavior toward trapped rats to help them escape. They assist one another and flee as a group. The study came to mind when I read a piece published by the Moscow Times on February 14, describing the simultaneous departure of “at least 20 chartered flights … from Kyiv on Sunday, more than at any other time in the last six years of flight observations.” The private jets carried the majority of Ukraine’s oligarchs, who were evidently privy to concrete indications of impending war at a time when a full-scale Russian invasion was mooted but far from being a matter of fact. The sole exception seems to be Petro Poroshenko, who has appeared in the streets of the capital clutching a rifle. Since their departure, the fleeing oligarchs have vanished from media discussions of what is happening in Ukraine. This is a curious fact given that the very meaning of the term oligarchy implies that these billionaires were extremely influential in the political direction adopted by their country until very recently. Years of speculation on the political influence and intentions of these oligarchs have now suddenly been replaced with simplistic, dueling visions that border on the nonsensical: one of an innocent democratic Ukraine fighting against Russian imperialism/quasi-Fascism; and the other of a Russian “special military operation” designed to “denazify” Ukraine. In the following essay I don’t want to critique or debunk either of these obviously flawed perspectives, but instead to return some of the focus to the oligarchs, and to two Jewish oligarchs in particular: Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Victor Pinchuk.
De-Nazifying Ukraine?
“We will strive for the demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine, as well as bringing to justice those who committed numerous bloody crimes against civilians.” Thus said Putin in what amounts to his declaration of war on Ukraine on February 24. This line, perhaps more than any other in his long, historically-weighted address, has absorbed considerable media attention. The majority of this attention has been devoted to smug portrayals of Putin as deranged or hypocritical. How can Ukraine be a ‘Nazi’ country, goes the logic, when it has a Jewish President in Zelenskyy? To the historiographically literate, it’s obvious that, to Putin and many Russians that share his thinking, the Jewishness of this or that politician or oligarch is irrelevant to the alleged ‘Nazi’ threat facing Russia. Our western-centric background dictates that we view National Socialism and World War II primarily as an action against Jews, and therefore the rhetorical positioning of Nazism and Judaism has a singular, jarring effect. Those media commentators smugly pointing to the Jewishness of Zelenskyy are operating within this paradigm. In the Soviet Union, however, World War II/Fascism was more prominently interpreted as a reactionary capitalist, imperialist, anti-Slavic or anti-Russian affair. Although the slow creep of Holocaust memorials and associated education programs has now reached deep into Eastern Europe, World War II is still primarily remembered for its masses of Slavic, not Jewish, dead. The racial element of National Socialist ideology was acknowledged in early ‘Holocaust’ historiography in the East, but wasn’t foregrounded (even in East Germany) in the way we have become totally absorbed by in the West. When Putin therefore claims he is seeking the de-Nazification of Ukraine, he is speaking, with perfect logic, less of political parties with broad racialist or anti-Jewish ideologies than of a more specific imperialist, militaristic, and anti-Russian movement, and specifically to an incident during the Maidan riots in 2014 when Ukrainian nationalists burned down a building in Odessa, killing 31 Russians who opposed the uprising; this incident was featured in Putin’s post-invasion speech, where he vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. But there can be no doubt that Putin’s main targets are the NATO-leaning, and Western-orientated politicians and those who have supported or ignored violence against Russian-speaking separatists since 2014.
Legitimate or not, Putin’s condemnation of Ukrainian nationalism has unfortunately kicked off the familiar game of ‘You’re the Real Fascists’ in the West. As if we didn’t have enough of “Antifa are the real Fascists” shenanigans muddying our social discourse, in recent days the Western liberal media has engaged in the production of massive numbers of articles reassuring nervous latte liberals that their support Ukraine is perfectly compatible with their woke political sensibilities. In some instances, this has led to some hilarious and extravagant U-turns, most notably in Facebook suddenly reversing its long-held ban on expressing support for Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, a military unit known for its adoption of certain Far Right and National Socialist symbols. The logic, as expressed in The Guardian by the Jewish self-styled expert on Fascism Jason Stanley (see my previous discussion of his work), is that Putin can be identified as the ‘real Nazi’ because he denies the primacy of Jewish suffering. Stanley:
The Russian leader’s pretext for invasion recasts Ukraine’s Jewish president as a Nazi and Russian Christians as true victims of the Holocaust. … The dominant version of antisemitism alive in parts of eastern Europe today is that Jews employ the Holocaust to seize the victimhood narrative from the “real” victims of the Nazis, who are Russian Christians (or other non-Jewish eastern Europeans). Those who embrace Russian Christian nationalist ideology will be especially susceptible to this strain of antisemitism. With this background, we can understand why Putin chose the actions he did, as well as the words he used to justify them. Ukraine has always been the primary target of those who seek to restore “Soviet power in fascist form”. Echoing familiar fascist antisemitic tropes, in a 2021 article, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev denounced Zelenskiy as disgusting, corrupt and faithless. The free democratic election of a Jewish president confirms in the fascist mind that the fascist bogeyman of liberal democracy as a tool for global Jewish domination is real. By claiming that the aim of the invasion is to “denazify” Ukraine, Putin appeals to the myths of contemporary eastern European antisemitism—that a global cabal of Jews were (and are) the real agents of violence against Russian Christians and the real victims of the Nazis were not the Jews, but rather this group. Russian Christians are targets of a conspiracy by a global elite, who, using the vocabulary of liberal democracy and human rights, attack the Christian faith and the Russian nation.
All of which is to say that Prof. Stanley could do with stepping outside and taking some deep, slow breaths of fresh air.
Ihor Kolomoyskyi
If Putin was in fact looking for a mega-rich, influential cabal-operating Ukrainian Jew guilty of perpetrating violence against Russians, he wouldn’t have to look much further than Ihor Kolomoyskyi. It didn’t surprise me when I read a couple of days ago that the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (Russia’s FBI) has initiated more than 400 criminal cases targeting Ukrainian officials, military servicemen, and volunteer fighters, and that Kolomoyskyi was on the list.
Ihor Kolomoyskyi
Russia has been trying to get it hands on Kolomoyskyi since 2014. Kolomoyskyi, who owns Ukraine’s biggest bank, plus airlines, huge stakes of Ukrainian media, and other companies, was accused in July 2014 of founding and funding Dnipro-1 Special Tasks Patrol Police Battalion. The unit was held responsible by Amnesty International in December of the same year for blocking food aid, and attempting to starve the Russian-speaking populations of the separatist “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk. Operating under the mask of Ukrainian patriotism, Kolomoyskyi, who offered bounties of thousands of dollars for Russian separatists, was in fact trying to stem the separatist movement so that it wouldn’t expand to the heartland of his business interests, his home city of Dnipropetrovsk. Together with fellow Jew Hennadiy Korban, who was later investigated for embezzlement and exiled to Israel, the pair “not only made political capital by saving [Dnipropetrovsk] from war, but used this emergence of Dnipropetrovsk as a ‘pro-Ukrainian’ city to protect [Kolomoyskyi’s] business interests.”
Kolomoyskyi’s Ukrainian “patriotism” and anti-Russian attitudes had already been significantly inflamed by the 2014 seizure of his assets in Crimea by the new Russian authorities. In 2016, RT reported that the authorities would sell the assets in order to compensate residents of Crimea who had been exploited by Kolomoyskyi’s PrivatBank:
Twenty businesses formerly owned by Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky will be sold by the Crimean authorities. The region’s government is seeking to compensate people who lost money in Ukrainian banks, mostly Kolomoisky’s PrivatBank. Crimea’s Deputy Speaker Konstantin Bakharev says the oligarch’s assets will be sold by year-end for 2 billion rubles (about $30 million). “The money will be transferred to the depositor protection fund for compensation payments to residents of the Crimea, whose deposits in the Ukrainian banks exceeded 700,000 rubles ($10,500),” he said.
When then-President Petro Poroshenko nationalized Kolomoyskyi’s PrivatBank (which was also operated by fellow Jew Gennadiy (Zvi Hirsch) Bogolyubov) in 2016, Kolomoyskyi threw his influence behind fellow Jew and popular actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now a hero and darling of the Western media. Zelenskyy’s campaign, strangely enough, began with his appearance on Kolomoyskyi’s media channel as the star of the television series Servant of the People, where he played the role of the president of Ukraine. In the series, Zelenskyy’s character was a high-school history teacher in his 30s who won the presidential election after a viral video showed him ranting against government corruption in Ukraine. In retrospect, the show was a masterwork of social engineering and life imitating art. Reuters later reported:
One of Ukraine’s most popular TV channels 1+1, owned by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, has given Zelenskiy a powerful platform in recent months during his meteoric rise to the brink of the presidency. On Saturday, a day before Zelenskiy won the first round of the presidential contest and set up a run-off with the incumbent Petro Poroshenko, 1+1 filled its schedule with back-to-back shows by the comedian and actor.
There was initially some unease that the whole thing might be too obvious. “There are legitimate reasons to worry about the future of Ukrainian Jewry,” said Vladislav Davidzon, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Odessa Review. “Having a Jewish president, who is also backed by a picaresque Jewish oligarch might cause any failings to be directed at the Jewish community.” He needn’t have worried. Zelenskyy sky-rocketed to prominence, and one of his earliest measures was to nominate fellow Jew Volodymyr Groysman as Prime Minister and target Poroshenko, setting in motion a sequence of events that would result in the reversal of the nationalization of PrivatBank and the return of the bank to Kolomoyskyi. Although posturing as an anti-corruption populist, Zelenskyy’s links to Kolomoyskyi have continued to dog him, and in October 2021 it was revealed via the Pandora Papers that Zelenskyy, who constantly denied that he was a “puppet” of the Jewish oligarch, and his associates had received $40 million into offshore accounts from funds linked to Kolomoyskyi.
Kolomoyskyi and his creation
Most of this money has been bled from the Ukrainian people. Kolomoyskyi, who acted as President of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, generously shared his wealth with Jews worldwide, and founded the European Jewish Union with Vadim Rabinovich, has been investigated for years by both the FBI and America’s Justice Department, in particular for pursuing a “vast scheme to steal millions of dollars from Ukraine’s largest bank and move the money into the U.S. to buy steel mills and skyscrapers.” In a special investigation, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last week that Kolomoyskyi’s efforts to launder stolen Ukrainian money in the United States, via his Jewish associates in South Florida Mordechai “Motti” Korf and Uriel Laber, left a wake of economic devastation:
One of the richest men in Ukraine, the 59-year-old oligarch is accused of setting up shell companies, cleaning the money through U.S. properties and ultimately leaving a trail of boarded-up buildings, failed steel facilities, and millions in unpaid property taxes, court records show. While money was transferred into the country for one of the oligarch’s companies, his operators shut down Warren Steel in Ohio in 2016, owing millions in property taxes, utility bills and supplies. For weeks, workers were left without medical coverage because the insurance premium wasn’t paid, records and interviews show. “A lot of people left here very angry,” said Nancy Waselich, a former IT manager for the factory. “People bled for this place.” Though no one so far has been criminally charged, prosecutors have filed legal actions to seize properties that they allege were bought with money stolen from the Ukraine bank, where Mr. Kolomoisky was a major shareholder.
Fedin Shandor, a professor at Uzhgorod University and adviser to the government on tourist development, has described Kolomoyskyi as “a leech who sucks our blood here and puts it in Switzerland.” This “leech” has also made a game for years of poking Vladimir Putin, stating publicly in 2014 that Putin was “a schizophrenic shorty. He is completely inadequate. He has completely lost his mind. His messianic drive to recreate the Russian empire of 1913 or the USSR of 1991 could plunge the world into catastrophe.”
Victor Pinchuk
Less outwardly ebullient than Kolomoyskyi is Victor Pinchuk, founder of both the pro-NATO Victor Pinchuk Foundation and the pro-EU Yalta European Strategy(the lobby group behind all those prominent polls showing massive Ukrainian support for NATO membership and a general tilt to the West). Pinchuk has been highly influential in driving Ukraine in a pro-NATO direction, including his funding of a free concert in 2008 headlined by Paul McCartney that was “shown on giant screens in five cities across the country” and designed to soothe growing splits between West and East Ukraine over Ukraine’s application that year to begin a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP). Pinchuk’s vision of Ukraine is less explicitly orientated for the protection of business interests, and more towards turning Ukraine into a clone of Western liberal democracies. As well as funding Steven Spielberg to produce a feature-length Ukrainian Holocaust film, Pinchuk describes himself as active in “human rights projects with George Soros.” In 2015, Pinchuk began the drive to further liberalize attitudes to homosexuals, and integrate Ukraine into “GloboHomo,” by inviting Elton John to speak at Yalta European Strategy. The speech was in many respects a typical example of neoliberal propaganda. John remarked:
What has [homosexuality] to do with a conference about the future of politics, security and the economy of the Ukraine? Because critical moments also exist in the lives of societies and nations. The choice of freedom over repression; democracy over totalitarianism; acceptance over hatred. Today there are more critical choices. … I suggest to you that your stance on human rights will also be a defining characteristic of the new Ukraine, and that there is no clearer touchstone on the issue of human rights than the respect and dignity afforded your LGBT citizens. … Being tolerant and inclusive is not only the morally right thing to do, for the new Ukraine; it is the smart thing to do. Basic fairness is an investment in human capital, and human capital is what drives business. … I suggest to you that accepting people regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation is today the measure of an open, tolerant, and democratic society. I ask you to begin this dialogue. … The people in this room are among the most powerful in the Ukraine, and in some cases the most powerful anywhere in the world. You have the power to help bring about this new era.
Russia sanctioned Pinchuk in 2018, as part of a broader approach to anti-Russian figures in Ukraine. Especially noteworthy is Pinchuk’s involvement with the Atlantic Council. A report in The Intercept points out that
The Atlantic Council has also launched “UkraineAlert” which publishes daily pieces on deterring Russia. A recent article, “Survey: Western public backs stronger support for Ukraine against Russia,” notes the survey in question was commissioned by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and Yalta European Strategy, which Pinchuk founded; however, the article does not mention that the foundation is a large contributor to the Atlantic Council, donating $250,000–499,000 a year, or that Pinchuk himself — the second wealthiest man in Ukraine — sits on the international advisory board of the Atlantic Council.
Victor Pinchuk receives an award from Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich
De-Oligarchisation
In a 2017 article, EuroMaidanPress made it clear that “The most important goal for oligarchs is money and not Ukraine’s national interests. … The sooner Ukraine pursues a long overdue policy of de-oligarchisation the better — although this will be impossible as long as Ukraine is led by an oligarch.” It’s clear that at least two of the oligarchs sucking on the blood of Ukraine have led them on a collision course with Putin’s Russia.
All of this, of course, is not to say that Putin’s Russia is much, or any, better. I still find it stunning that, when informed of Kolomoyskyi’s comment that he was a “schizophrenic shorty,” Putin didn’t reply that he was a crook for stealing from Ukrainians, Crimeans, or Russians, but that he was a crook who had “scammed Russian [Jewish] oligarch Roman Abramovich for billions of dollars.” In other words, much of what we are seeing here is not just grand geopolitics and clashing nationalisms, but a subtext of oligarchic feuds. In many respects, what we are seeing play out is a kind of perverse morbid rehash of the Middle Ages, when one king, funded and supported by “his Jews,” would wage war on another funded by his own group of Jews. The end result is normally richer Jews and a lot of European dead.
It’s increasingly clear that Putin’s Jewish oligarchs are unhappy with having to bear the brunt of Western sanctions. The Times of Israel reported that two of the three Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the UK on February 22 were Jewish (and related) — Igor and Boris Rotenberg. Boris Rotenberg is co-owner of SGM Group, Russia’s largest construction and infrastructure company. Igor Rotenberg dominates in drilling, infrastructure and real estate. The international Jewish community is also becoming increasingly active in trying to protect sanctioned oligarchs on both sides — primarily because oligarchs are often extremely generous to Jews, in effect facilitating the transfer of large volumes of money (often illegal and laundered) from gentiles to Jews. Anything that weakens the oligarchs will, in the longer term, weaken the Jews as a whole. A report in Haaretz on February 27 comments:
Several billionaire Jewish philanthropists are the focus of concerned attention from Israeli and Jewish organizations who have benefited from their largesse. Topping that list is Roman Abramovich, the dual Russian-Israeli citizen who made a fortune through the privatization of Russia’s oil companies and is now reportedly the second-wealthiest man in Israel. Representatives of several Israeli organizations and institutions, including the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and Tel Aviv University, sent a letter asking U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides to refrain from sanctioning Abramovich for “his contribution to the Jewish people.” The letter earlier this month reportedly included the signature of Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi, David Lau, asserting that sanctioning Abramovich — who, in addition to his philanthropic donations, has business investments in Israel — would harm Jewish causes.
The United States, for its part, hasn’t been moved by these appeals, and in fact “sent Israel messages warning Jerusalem to make sure that Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the international community can’t hide their money in Israeli banks.” The article continues:
Another group of Russian billionaires — some of whom hold Israeli citizenship — who donate generously to Jewish and Israeli causes have already been hit by sanctions put in place against Russian banks. Mikhail Fridman, a co-founder and trustee of the Genesis Philanthropy Group and the Russian Jewish Congress, is the co-founder of Alfa Bank, which is the largest private bank in Russia, and he continues to sit on its board. Forbes listed him as the 11th richest man in Russia in 2020. … The Genesis Philanthropy Group gives to a long list of causes in Israel and across the Jewish world, including Yad Vashem, the Birthright-Taglit organization that provides free, 10-day trips to Israel for Diaspora Jews, Hillel international and Friends of the IDF.
Conclusion
Can Putin be reined in by ‘his’ Jewish oligarchs if they start to feel a financial pinch? This remains to be seen, but early indications are that they certainly don’t fear him. Haaretz reported on February 28 that “Jewish billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska have become the first Russian oligarchs to publicly express unhappiness with President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.” I think this is extremely telling.
Eight years ago I wrote an essay on “Nationalists, Jews, and the Ukrainian Crisis,” during which I expressed some sympathy with historically-rooted Ukrainian nationalism but also accepted that the origins of the nation are contested and extremely complex. I think it is difficult, if not impossible, for “Westerners” to form valid opinions on the moral merits of each cause, since both (Ukrainian nationalist and Russian separatist) bear some validity — this is the harsh reality of multiethnic states where the population is divided on self-assertion and self-determination. Such a situation is only made all the more complex by the presence of yet another ethnic group that is extremely influential and may seek its own interests to the detriment of the peace and well-being of others. As such, while the Jews discussed here may not have “caused” or “orchestrated” the war in Ukraine, they clearly form an important, but completely ignored, subtext to it. I’m therefore neither in the pro-Ukraine or pro-Putin camp. I am, however, very firmly in favor of ending any conflict in which innocent Europeans are dying needlessly, and of a thorough “de-oligarchisation” of both parties in the current war.
(Republished from The Occidental Observer
Former Russian Ambassador and Current CIA Director, Bill Burns, Knew Exactly What Would Trigger Vladimir Putin to Enter Ukraine
via The Conservative Tree House
A fantastic piece by Peter Beinart on substack {SEE HERE} puts excellent clarity on the people around Joe Biden baiting Russian President Vladimir Putin to enter Ukraine.
Current CIA Director William “Bill” Burns was the former ambassador to Russia and Jordan. Bill Burns had a 33-year career at the State Department under both Republican and Democratic presidents and speaks fluent Russian. If the people in the background of Joe Biden wanted an intelligence operative to trigger a specific result from Russia, there’s no one more strategically perfect for the job than CIA Director Bill Burns.
The article by Beinart is mainly focused on pointing out the irreconcilable nature of Joe Biden implying Ukraine could join NATO, while his own CIA Director has a history of giving serious warnings emphasizing the “brightest of all red lines” about that specific point.
[…] “Two years ago, Burns wrote a memoir entitled, The Back Channel. It directly contradicts the argument being proffered by the administration he now serves. In his book, Burns says over and over that Russians of all ideological stripes—not just Putin—loathed and feared NATO expansion. He quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow in 1995. ‘Hostility to early NATO expansion,” it declares, “is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.”
On the question of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about the breadth of Russian opposition are even more emphatic. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote in a 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “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.” (read more)
Against this backdrop of Bill Burns, the details about the lead up to the Russia-Ukraine crisis gain quite a bit of clarity.
The CIA Director is crystal clear that Russia would be seriously triggered about any prospect of Ukraine entering NATO.
Yet, in December of 2021, the exact same time when U.S. backchannel intelligence was being shared with China about Russian troop movements on the border with Ukraine, Joe Biden was telling Ukraine that membership in NATO was in their hands.
“U.S. President Joe Biden assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Kyiv’s bid to join the NATO military alliance was in its own hands, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff said after the two leaders spoke on Thursday. (link)
Joe Biden was publicly saying something his CIA Director knew to a certainty would trigger Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This is not a mistake.
This is not a strategic blunder or internal messaging error.
This level of provocation now seems completely purposeful.
As noted by ABC during the announcement of Bill Burns as a nominee for CIA Director:
Burns called intelligence the first line of defense for the country and the basis for making sound policy decisions. He also said he would deliver the intelligence to Biden and policymakers “without a hint of partisanship.”
Burns is perhaps an unconventional choice for the CIA job that many thought would go to a career intelligence officer.
However, he is also deeply experienced in the kind of cloak-and-dagger secret contacts that is a hallmark of the agency and won plaudits for his analysis and reporting abilities while he served as an American diplomat overseas. Burns was the author of some of the most insightful State Department cables that were published by Wikileaks in 2010 and is widely respected throughout the national security community. (read more)
If the U.S. was simultaneously influencing Ukraine military to keep targeting the breakaway regions in Eastern Ukraine, well, put it all together and a picture emerges of the people in/around the White House setting up a scenario for months that led up to Russia finally taking the bait and going into Ukraine.
The New York Times expose’ of U.S. intelligence contacting China should be reviewed from the perspective that U.S. intelligence and State Dept operatives were planting information into China – knowing it would be shared with Russia. The U.S. intelligence apparatus, with CIA Director Bill Burns in place, was seeding information into Russia via China for three months prior to the triggering point. Bill Burns would know exactly what type of intelligence would be needed to create maximum anxiety for Vladimir Putin.
WHY?
The Biden team was getting pummeled for negative economic outcomes, massive inflation, skyrocketing energy costs and gas prices set to double. Support for the administration was/is collapsing as the policy outcomes of the administration were felt.
Within the book of instructions for the ideological crew, the Alinsky people behind Biden, there are chapters on how to create off-ramps to cloud their agenda.
If they need a bigger cloud, they create a crisis. The crisis then becomes the cover, the justification to explain the outcomes of their agenda.
As we have witnessed, the White House is shifting blame for the collapsing economy, surging oil prices, massive gas price increases and overall U.S. inflation.
The manufactured crisis in Ukraine then takes on a geopolitical angle and a domestic angle. The rate of inflation, rising oil and gas prices, are now being blamed on Russia-Ukraine.
It is not coincidental that ABC (think George Stephanopolous) took the lead in helping to push this narrative as a cover story for the problems in the economy that are specifically driven by U.S. energy policy (chasing Green New Deal objectives), environmental policy, regulatory policy and massive spending.
The politics of policy are to blame for inflation, so it is the deployment of politics again used to create the cover.