How Russia Will Counterpunch the U.S./EU Declaration of War

March 4, 2022 Algora Blog 1 Comment

Only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South.

One of the key underlying themes of the Russia/Ukraine/NATO matrix is that the Empire of Lies (copyright Putin) has been rattled to the core by the combined ability of Russian hypersonic missiles and a defensive shield capable of blocking incoming nuclear missiles from the West, thereby ending Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.)

This has led the Americans to nearly risk a hot war to be able to place hypersonic missiles that they still don’t have on Ukraine’s western borders, and so be within three minutes of Moscow. For that, of course, they need Ukraine, as well as Poland and Romania in Eastern Europe.

In Ukraine, the Americans are determined to fight to the last European soul – if that’s what it takes. This may be the last roll of the (nuclear) dice. Thus the next-to-last gasp at coercing Russia into submission by using the remaining, workable American weapon of mass destruction: SWIFT.

Yet this weapon can be easily neutralized by rapid adoption of self-sufficiency.

With essential input by the inestimable Michael Hudson I have outlined possibilities for Russia to weather the sanction storm. That didn’t even consider the full extent of Russia’s “black box defense” – and counter-attack – as outlined by John Helmer in his introduction to an essay that heralds no less then The Return of Sergei Glaziev.

Glaziev, predictably detested across Atlanticist circles, was a key economic adviser to President Putin and is now the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). He has always been a fierce critic of the Russian Central Bank and the oligarch gang closely linked to Anglo-American finance.

His latest essay, Sanctions and Sovereignty, originally published by expert.ru and translated by Helmer, deserves serious scrutiny.

This is one of the key takeaways:

“Russian losses of potential GDP, since 2014, amount to about 50 trillion rubles. But only 10% of them can be explained by sanctions, while 80% of them were the result of monetary policy. The United States benefits from anti-Russian sanctions, replacing the export of Russian hydrocarbons to the EU as well as China; replacing the import of European goods by Russia. We could completely offset the negative consequences of financial sanctions if the Bank of Russia fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure a stable ruble exchange rate, and not the recommendations of Washington financial organizations.”

De-offshore or bust

Glaziev essentially recommends:

– A “real de-offshorization of the economy”.

– “Measures to tighten currency regulation in order to stop the export of capital and expand targeted lending to enterprises in need of financing investments”.

– “Taxation of currency speculation and transactions in dollars and euros on the domestic market”.

– “Serious investment in R&D in order to accelerate the development of our own technological base in the areas affected by sanctions – first of all the defense industry, energy, transport and communications.”

And last but not least, “the de-dollarization of our foreign exchange reserves, replacing the dollar, euro and pound with gold.”

The Russian Central Bank seems to be listening. Most of these measures are already in place. And there are signs that Putin and the government are finally ready to grab the Russian oligarchy by the balls and force them to share risks and losses at an extremely difficult for the nation. Goodbye to stockpiling funds taken out of Russia offshore and in Londongrad.

Glaziev is the real deal. In December 2014 I was at a conference in Rome, and Glaziev joined us on the phone. Reviewing a subsequent column I wrote at the time, between Rome and Beijing, I was stunned: it’s as if Glaziev was saying these things literally today.

Allow me to quote two paragraphs:

“At the symposium, held in a divinely frescoed former 15th century Dominican refectory now part of the Italian parliament’s library, Sergey Glaziev, on the phone from Moscow, gave a stark reading of Cold War 2.0. There’s no real “government” in Kiev; the U.S. ambassador is in charge. An anti-Russia doctrine has been hatched in Washington to foment war in Europe – and European politicians are its collaborators. Washington wants a war in Europe because it is losing the competition with China.”

“Glaziev addressed the sanctions dementia: Russia is trying simultaneously to reorganize the politics of the International Monetary Fund, fight capital flight and minimize the effect of banks closing credit lines for many businessmen. Yet the end result of sanctions, he says, is that Europe will be the ultimate losers economically; bureaucracy in Europe has lost economic focus as American geopoliticians have taken over.”

Gotta pay the “tax on independence”

A consensus seems to be emerging in Moscow that the Russian economy will stabilize quickly, as there will be a shortage of personnel for industry and a lot of extra hands will be required. Hence no unemployment. There may be shortages, but no inflation. Sales of – Western – luxury goods have already been curtailed. Imported products will be placed under price controls. All the necessary rubles will be available though price controls – as happened in the U.S. in WWII.

A wave of nationalization of assets may be ahead. ExxonMobil announced it will withdrawfrom the $4 billion Sakhalin-1 project (they had bailed out on Sakhalin-2, deemed too expensive), producing 200,000 barrels of oil a day, after BP and Norway’s Equinor announced they were withdrawing from projects with Rosneft. BP was actually dreaming of taking all of Rosneft’s participation.

According to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the Kremlin is now blocking asset sales by foreign investors looking to divest. In parallel, Rosneft, for instance, is bound to raise capital from China and India, who are already minority investors in several projects, and buy them out 100%: an excellent opportunity for Russian business.

What could be construed as the Mother of All Counter-Sanctions has not yet been announced. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev himself hinted all options are on the table.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, channeling the patience of 10,000 Taoist monks, still expecting the current hysteria to fade away, describes the sanctions as “some kind of a tax on independence”,

with countries barring their companies from working in Russia under “huge pressure.”

Lethal counterpunches though are not excluded. Apart from completely de-dollarizing – as Glaviev recommends – Russia may ban the export of titanium, rare earth, nuclear fuel and, already in effect, rocket engines.

Very toxic moves would include seizing all foreign assets of hostile nations; freeze all loan repayments to Western banks and place the funds in a frozen account in a Russian bank; completely ban all hostile foreign media, foreign media ownership, assorted NGOs and CIA fronts; and supply friendly nations with state of the art weapons, intel sharing and joint training and exercises.

What’s certain is that a new architecture of payment systems – as discussed by Michael Hudson and others – uniting the Russian SPFS and the Chinese CHIPS, may soon be offered to scores of nations across Eurasia and the Global South – several among them already under sanctions, such as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the DPRK.

Slowly but surely, we are already on the way to the emergence of a sizeable Global South bloc immune to American financial warfare.

The RIC in BRICS – Russia, India and China – are already increasing trade in their own currencies. If we look at the list of nations at the UN that voted against Russia or (sic) but abstained from condemning Operation Z in Ukraine, plus those that did not sanction Russia, we have at least 70% of the whole Global South.

So once again is the West – plus satrapies/colonies such as Japan and Singapore in Asia – against the Rest: Eurasia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America.

The coming European collapse

Michael Hudson told me, “the U.S. and Western Europe expected a Froelicher Krieg (“happy war”). Germany and other countries haven’t begun to feel the pain of gas and mineral and food deprivation. THAT’S going to be the real game. The aim would be to break Europe away from U.S. control via NATO. This will involve “meddling” by creating a New World Order political movement and party, like Communism was a century ago. You could call it a new Great Awakening.”

A possible Great Awakening certainly will not involve the NATOstan sphere anytime soon. The collective West is rather in serious Great Decoupling mode, its entire economy weaponized with the aim, expressed in the open, of destroying Russia and even – the perennial wet dream – provoking regime change.

Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR, succinctly described it:

“Masks have dropped. The West is not just trying to enclose Russia with a new ‘Iron Curtain’. We are talking about attempts to destroy our state – its ‘abolition’, as it is now customary to say in the ‘tolerant’ liberal-fascist environment. Since the United States and its allies have neither the opportunity nor the spirit to try to do this in an open and honest military-political confrontation, sneaky attempts are being made to establish an economic, informational and humanitarian “blockade”’.

Arguably the apex of Western hysteria is the onset of a 2022 Neo-Nazi Jihad: a 20,000-strong mercenary army being assembled in Poland under CIA supervision. The bulk comes from private military companies such as Blackwater/Academi and DynCorp. Their cover: “return of Ukrainians from the French Foreign Legion.” This Afghan remix comes straight from the only playbook the CIA knows.

Back in reality, facts on the ground will eventually lead entire economies in the West to become roadkill – with chaos in the commodities sphere leading to skyrocketing energy and food costs. As an example, up to 60% of German and 70% of Italian manufacturing industries may be forced to shut down for good – with catastrophic social consequences.

The unelected, uber-Kafkaesque EU machine in Brussels has chosen to commit a triple hara-kiri by grandstanding as abject vassals of the Empire, destroying any remaining French and German sovereignty impulses and imposing alienation from Russia-China.

Meanwhile, Russia will be showing the way: only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South: one day someone had to stand up and say, “That’s Enough”. With maximum raw power to back it up.

Military Affairs

Morale High Among Ukrainian Resistance in Kiev as Russians Forget to Bring Gas for Tanks

March 4, 2022 Algora Blog 3 Comments

by Andrew Anglin via Daily Stormer

A Ukrainian people’s resistance movement in Kiev prepares for the Russian attack.

Photos emerging from the conflict zone in the Ukraine show Ukrainian civilian resistance fighters looking joyful as they prepare to defend their homeland, while Russians are seen looking depressed and downtrodden as they forgot to bring gas for their tanks.

Russia invaded the Ukraine last week because Vladimir Putin is a dictator who insists he will rebuild the Soviet Union.

Josef Konisky owned a pastry shop in Kiev before the invasion began, and he decided to take up arms against the brutal Russian invasion. He now leads a band of rebels who he says are “ready to fight to the last man” to defend democracy and freedom.

Josef Konisky, Ukrainian pastry shop owner turned militia leader

The Times spoke to Konisky, who said that “desperate times call for desperate measures, and I will do everything to protect my homeland and defend the freedom of our democracy.”

Konisky laughed when shown pictures of Russian fighters on their way to Kiev who had to stop the movement of their military convoy because they forgot to bring gas.

Russian soldiers seen looking irritated as they realize that their convoy cannot move forward because they forgot to bring gas for their trucks and tanks.

Konisky was not surprised that the Russians would make a mistake like this, referring to the enemy as “dumb animals.”

“Russians think they are good at war, but they know nothing about the strength and heart of the Ukrainian people. They forget to bring gas, but soon they will forget everything, when we blow their brains out of their skulls,” Konisky explained.

Russians soldiers seen piled on a truck, headed back to Russia to pick up the gas they forgot.

“I never want a war,” Konisky told the Times. “I am happy with my life, with my freedom. I make cherry pies, pretzel buns, and fish cakes. But Russians bring the war to us, and we will not bow down.”

“My men are ready for anything. We have already killed over 4,000 Russian soldiers attempting to enter the city,” he said.

One of Konisky’s men, Volo Krensky, who is only 11 years old, has already had 160 confirmed kills, and was able to shoot down two Russian helicopters with his AK-47.

Volo Krensky is only 11, but has killed over 150 Russian soldiers while defending Kiev.

“The key is to aim at the rotors,” Volo told the Times when explaining how he was able to shoot down helicopters. “When the rotors have holes in them, air gets through, and it causes the helicopter to crash.”

Koninsky also explained his anti-tank strategy.

“We fill balloons with paint, and throw them at the tanks, and it disables them,” he said. “Often, we send young children on these anti-tank missions, as they are smaller and harder to hit.”

Konisky said that he did not know that you could take out a tank with a balloon, but he read it from an American journalist on Twitter, and has found the technique extremely efficient. He says his team has taken out more than 200 tanks using balloons.

He says that his team spends hours each day scanning Twitter for tactical advice from American journalists.

Konisky’s squad is so effective that Vladimir Putin has personally addressed him, putting a bounty on his head. He passed out pamphlets to his soldiers reading “Get Konisky.”

The brutal Russian dictator, who been using cluster bombs in Kiev to kill children, gave a special address calling out Koninsky as the chief threat to his aggressive war effort.

Konisky’s deadly band has gotten so famous in the Ukraine and across the world that Joe Biden addressed him personally at his State of the Union address, ending his address with “Koninsky – go get him.”

Note: There might be traces of humor in this piece.

Anglozionism

Sean Hannity Calls for Putin Assassination as Ultimate Retardedness Intensifies

March 4, 2022 Algora Blog 2 Comments

by Andrew Anglin via Daily Stormer

On Wednesday night, Fox News host Sean Hannity called for the assassination of Vladimir Putin, saying he has “forfeit his right to live.”

He first said that he hoped that people around him assassinate him, then he called for a change in international law which prohibits the assassination of foreign leaders.

It’s really like deja vu all over again to see Fox News – Hannity in particular – back on his game from twenty years ago. I remember watching this guy during the Iraq War talking about all of the atrocities that Saddam Hussein was committing, and going into this unhinged rage about how America needs to kill people.

There is only so much I can even take. He had Ari Fleischer on.

For those younger among you – Fleischer is a Jewish neocon who served as George Bush’s version of Jen Psaki during the Iraq invasion. He was the press secretary who kept talking about intelligence showing Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was planning to invade America.

Someone who did what Fleischer did, playing this role in faking this hoax that got thousands of Americans killed and millions of Arabs – for literally no reason other than the alleged security interests of Israel – would retire from public life completely, in total shame. Or, in his case, he might move to Israel, and get a job there. But instead, he is brought on as an expert on how we need to do a really serious war against Russia.

Hannity is claiming that Putin is losing the war so badly that he has begun using cluster bombs on civilian neighborhoods. This is the wackiest thing.

The biggest difference between this and Iraq is that when Hannity was pumping that war, three large buildings had just been blown up in New York City.

The other big difference is that after Donald Trump, who did succeed in changing America’s mind about foreign wars, this conservative agenda for war cannot yet include calls for an American invasion of Russia, or even boots on the ground in the Ukraine to fight Russian soldiers.

But that will change. They are hyping up this atrocity propaganda to maximum level, as they prepare to call for a no-fly zone aggressively, which will mean starting a war with Russia. Please remember that this is at the same time they are saying that Putin has gone completely insane, and will start firing nukes if he is backed into a corner. It seems like if you actually believed that, you’d be saying “maybe we should just agree to talks with Russia, restore Ukraine’s neutrality status, and end the war.”

Understand that: this could be ended at any time by simply ending the push for the Ukraine to join NATO and the EU. Putin isn’t going to give back the south of the country, but he’d let them keep Kiev and most of the rest of the country if the Americans and NATO simply agreed to go back to neutrality. He’s said that clearly.

Hannity and Fox were the key figures pushing the idea that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 911, and that he had weapons of mass destruction. So I guess it shouldn’t be surprising he is pushing these “mindlessly slaughtering women and children” narratives. But it’s still wild to see.

There is a woman, Victoria Spartz, who is apparently a Ukrainian-American Congressperson, who I didn’t even know existed. She has a thick accent. She was on Hannity Wednesday night saying that gangs of mercenaries are going into villages and shooting women and children.

Because they can’t call for open war yet, the main thing that Fox News is calling for is energy sanctions, blocking the sale of all Russian energy to the West.

Those are probably coming. I don’t know how they couldn’t be, with the pitch that this narrative has reached.

I saw that black woman on Fox News, I forget her name (she is very white presenting and the only black female host on Fox), and she was saying that it will spike the price of gasoline in an extreme way, but said that Americans should start riding bicycles as a sacrifice for the democracy of the Ukraine.

I’m not joking. I wish I had the clip. She said that people should give up driving cars and start riding bicycles in order to protect human rights in the Ukraine.

It’s just…

Imagine what the Jews have done to the Palestinians in recent memory. Imagine the invasion of Lebanon.

Also, do people remember Rwanda? And all of these other wars in Africa where entire villages were getting machine-gunned down or chopped up with machetes?

What about what is going on right now in Yemen, which is supported by the United States? No one can say that is not much worse than what is happening in the Ukraine.

And that is without even going into what the United States has done itself in my lifetime. The invasion of Iraq was a complete slaughter. The US killed millions of people. They leveled the entire city of Baghdad. It was just indiscriminate slaughter.

Also – it took 20 days. People keep saying “Putin is losing the war because it is taking him a week to win.” Well, Iraq was “shock and awe.” No one can say Putin is doing “shock and awe.” Even in Kharkiv – Fox News itself, the lead propaganda outlet, was whining about four (4) civilian deaths yesterday. They said the entire civilian death toll – which I guarantee is mostly partisans throwing Molotovs at soldiers and trucks – is less than 2,000, through the entire week. I don’t know how that jives with “going into villages and slaughtering everyone.”

The strategy of saying “Biden isn’t doing the war hard enough” is smart. I mean, Biden’s people started the war by trying to move NATO into the Ukraine, and completely refusing to negotiate on neutrality. Russia gave a list of demands that were really reasonable – just saying “we just don’t want NATO on our border, we need a buffer. We’ve tolerated this endless expansion, but now it’s on our direct border, and you’re talking about short range missiles openly, and this is a red line. Please just back off and let’s have peace.”

Biden’s people refused to even discuss this, and kept walking out of meetings, or refusing to meet at all.

So, Biden started the war – but he isn’t fighting the war hard enough. That’s their narrative.

Fox keeps playing this clip of Kamala Harris saying “basically, the Ukraine is a country…”

I am about as critical of that bitch as I am of anyone, but the clip is from “The Morning Hustle.” It’s a black show. She is trying to get black people on board with the war, and when you are talking to black people about something like this, you have to start with “basically, the Ukraine is a country.”

I’m not defending Kamala, but it’s the dumbest attack.

The West is Getting These People Slaughtered

There is zero chance that the Ukraine can win a war against Russia. That is an insane proposal.

This is like if Texas tried to secede and it was invaded by the US Military and the Russian media was broadcasting nonstop propaganda that the Texas National Guard was going to win a war against the US military, because Texans have such a strong fighting spirit.

Whatever you think of Russia, this is a matter of numbers. Adolf Hitler – who had a pretty good army – sent nearly 4 million troops to fight Russia with at the time extremely advanced weaponry, and lost really badly.

There is nothing more irresponsible than the West continuing to tell the Ukrainians they can win this war, that they are going to send them all these weapons, and they will repel the invasion. The Ukrainian media is saying the same thing, and is trying to block all Russian media that is trying to explain to these people the basic math of the situation.

The West is saying they’re sending all these weapons – how are they going to get the weapons into the country? Russia already bombed all the airfields, and Russia has complete control of all Ukrainian airspace. There is no possible way to fly weapons in. So they are going to do what? They are going to drive the weapons in across the Polish border?

Even if Russia didn’t bomb the weapons convoys – or just stop them on the road – there is no possible way they are going to get the weapons into Kiev, which is already surrounded. Honestly, I don’t even understand what these people are talking about when they say they are sending all these weapons. It has been sort of addressed in the media, they’ve at least noted it for anyone who has basic cognitive functionality, and they’ve said they don’t know how the weapons are going to get into the country.

Even with massive amounts of Western military hardware, Ukraine would still lose the war – it would just mean that a lot more people would die. But right now, making this claim about Western weapons is just a way to give these people false hope, and keep them shoving themselves into a meat grinder.

The West is also implying that there might be a NATO no-fly zone over the Ukraine, or some other form of serious military aid. They are just filling the minds of the people with dreams of lollipops and candy canes.

No sane person thinks that the Ukraine is going to win this war. It is just utterly goofy nonsense.

What the West wants is as many dead civilians and bombed out buildings as possible, so they are stringing the Ukrainian military, and whatever percentage of the civilian population is against a Russian takeover (that isn’t clear, but we know from pre-Maidan elections that it is less than half). They are trying to create a massive atrocity situation.

This is why they are advising the Ukrainian military to take up positions in residential areas or other areas with high civilian populations. They are trying to force Russians to kill as many civilians as possible. (Obviously, in any war, civilians are going to die, but Russia went in with a policy of minimizing civilian casualties at the expensive of higher Russian military casualties.)

The footage we’ve seen from Kharkiv specifically shows that they are seeing some success with this strategy. As we’ve reported, the mayor of Kharkiv tried to surrender to the Russian military, but then the Ukraine military moved in more heavily and started fighting the Russians.

No one wants to see death and destruction, other than the West, who wants to paint Putin as a mass murdering psychopath who indiscriminately slaughters civilians.

Basically, the Western strategy is to force Russia to completely level much of the Ukraine. That means, in any rational analysis, that the West is completely responsible for all of the deaths in the Ukraine. The only logical thing for the Ukraine to do would have been to immediately surrender, and for Zelensky to resign, and to allow the Russians to install an intermediary government to hold new elections, at which point neutrality could be reinstated.

Everyone who knows anything understands that the current government of the Ukraine is a ~~revolutionary~~ counter-revolutionary government installed by the West, following the ~~revolution~~ coup they funded in 2014. And everyone understands that this government is only able to hold power by banning opposition media and opposition political figures (there have also been assassinations). Putin tolerated this, as long as neutrality was maintained, but the West refused to maintain neutrality, and attempted to get Ukraine into NATO and the EU.

The level of disinformation coming out of the media is completely out of control. It’s actually shocking. The fact that the right-wing is going along with this lunacy really proves that there is not any kind of solution to the problems of the United States. We are just doomed. The media has complete control over people’s thoughts. I think many conservatives will be willing to pay $9 for a gallon of gas – or ride a bike through the snow to the grocery store – in order to back the fight against the evil Russian regime.

Tucker Carlson is going to be taken off the air, social media is going to continue to be censored even further, and people will be convinced that they are only good people if they agree to submit to these sanctions. A free society is not compatible with a ubiquitous and ubiquitously censored mass electronic media.

(Republished from The Daily Stormer

Anglozionism

Ukraine: Putin, the Pope, and Wayne Gretzky

March 4, 2022 Algora Blog 3 Comments

by Larry Romanoff via Unz.com

“This is the largest, and most shocking, display of a centrally-controlled media flood of vicious invective that I have ever seen.”

I made that comment to myself after reading thousands (and I don’t exaggerate; I mean thousands) of articles in all the Western world’s media about Kamila Valieva and Russia at the Olympics. But I’d hardly gotten the words out of my mouth when Kamila fell to second place, replaced by Vladimir Putin and Russia (again).

For background, I generally peruse 30 or more publications each day, in 15 or 20 countries, to learn what different countries are saying on important topics, and I save all webpages with useful content. With these Western attacks on Russia, I stopped. I’ve been doing this for many years, but in this case I could no longer stomach the rubbish I was reading, and I quit.

The intensity of the attacks on Russia are breath-taking. The false and twisted reports are finding new highs of dishonesty, and the range of items assembled to “punish” Russia would have been beyond the limits of my imagination only a week ago. Looking at the entire landscape, it is obvious this is all being tightly orchestrated from a central source, the usual suspects who benefit most from all wars, but it is astonishing to see how wildly they are grasping and how useless many of their actions must be. There seems almost a desperation to inflict pain, no matter how trivial, and to give the impression of an international consensus of inflicting pain. Some of the Western actions are serious, some almost comical, and others absolutely ridiculous. I have attempted here to give you a small sample of what I have collected. The main thread through all of it is the intensity of the attacks and the lies being told.

On the serious side, Switzerland, of all countries, suddenly abandoned its history of neutrality to claim it will impose “EU-like” sanctions on Russia, which means freezing or seizing all Russian bank accounts in the country. That is almost unbelievable. How could such a thing happen? Who put what kind of pressure on the Swiss government to effect this?[1]

Everyone is joining in. The UK now “fast-tracks law to tackle Russian ‘dirty money’”, the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel claiming, “Time is up for Putin’s cronies hiding dirty money in the UK”, and Boris Johnson stating “there will be nowhere to hide your ill-gotten gains.”[2]

No evidence the gains are ill-gotten, but it seems none is necessary. The West appears unanimous in wanting to simply seize all assets owned by Russia or Russians, having convinced itself that laws no longer apply, that to punish disobedience you simply steal all of another’s property and bankrupt him.

Roman Abramovich is having to turn the Chelsea club over to a custodian for fear it will be confiscated, and the UK media are mostly screaming to have his $200 million house confiscated as well, simply for the crime of being Russian.

We have headlines telling us that all world leaders are determined to fight Russia on these (financial) fronts because, even after another wave of sanctions, many Putin associates “still remain untouched”. These people have stated a determination to find and seize all assets belonging to anyone who agrees with Putin on anything, his friends, colleagues, business associates, family, everyone. They have already seized all the assets of Russia’s Central Bank that are in the EU, which is about half of all Russia’s foreign currency and gold reserves.[3]

[4]

There is no law to support this; sovereign funds are untouchable. Unless you are a Western fascist criminal cabal masquerading as a “democracy.”

The UK Guardian has changed character from a newspaper to a disgusting hate-mongering trash bin with sometimes as many as 20 or 25 articles on Russia in one day that are almost breath-taking in their abysmal dishonesty. I would never have imagined such a thing. “It’s stomach-turning”, the Guardian tells us,[5]

of the mothers and babies taking shelter as Russian invasion claims lives of ‘up to’ ten children.” Well, where the hell was the Guardian when Madeline Albright was ‘claiming the lives’ of half a million infants in Iraq? Where was the Guardian when the photos surfaced of the tens of thousands of hideously-deformed babies born in Iraq from the depleted uranium?

Many of the Western media tried to present photo evidence of “Thousands of Ukrainians rushing towards Polish border”, and “thousands of vehicles packed with Ukrainian refugees trying to flee”. Where were they when hundreds of thousands were fleeing portions of Yugoslavia on foot, including limitless numbers of children? Where were they when millions were fleeing the genocide in Iraq? The Guardian tells us “More than 360,000 people have fled war in Ukraine”, apparently counted by the UN.[6]

If this is true, why wasn’t the UN counting the refugees in all the US-instigated wars of recent past?

Ukrainian “refugees” desperately fleeing for their lives (Photo: BBC)

Then we had Reuters tearfully relating how Ukraine’s hospitals are all running out of medical oxygen,[7]

a bit surprising after only two days and with the Russian military nowhere near the large cities. But where are Reuters when even today Iran has a shortage of not only medical oxygen but of almost everything medical, from no cash due to Western ‘sanctions’?

Also, courtesy of the BBC, we have “Powerful pictures of Ukrainians’ lives turned upside down by war”,[8]

and photos of “Ukrainians under fire”.[9]

Again, why didn’t we have pictures of lives in Iraq and Libya “turned upside down by war”? Why not for Yugoslavia and Syria and Yemen? Why not for Venezuela today? Why not some photos of the effects of 60 years of brutal sanctions on Cuba?

The BBC told us tearfully of the “miles of queues to flee the invasion” of Ukraine.[10]

Well, where were the BBC and their tears to tell us of the millions (rather than hundreds) of Iraqis fleeing their country? Where was the BBC when we needed to know of the millions of refugees and the horrific ethnic cleansing that went on in what was Yugoslavia? Similarly, the BBC has a refugee “tearfully describe why she fled Ukraine”.[11]

Where were the BBC reporters to interview some of the millions fleeing Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and so many others? Would the BBC, “the most trusted news source in the world”. like to shed a public tear for Julian Assange?

If that isn’t bad enough, even the Pope got into this, with a statement that “Those who wage war in Ukraine ‘forget humanity’”.[12]

This is also without precedent. Who has the influence or power to instigate such a provocative claim from the Pope? Forgive my rudeness, but where the hell was this hypocritical SOB when Madeleine Albright was killing 500,000 Iraqi infants? Where was he when the US was firing millions of depleted-uranium shells into Iraq? Where was he when the US was engaged in Serbia with “the most protracted bombing campaign in the history of the world”? But Russia, wanting to prevent Ukraine from becoming a nuclear bastion for the US, ten minutes from Moscow, has no ‘humanity’.

Getting Tough With Putin the Killer

The UK Telegraph boasts that “The West has finally taken the gloves off against Putin, and redeemed our honor”.[13]

Well, good for us. And the Guardian tells us “It is a matter of life and death” that we provide weapons for Ukraine[14]

to make the war last as long as possible (and weaken Russia in preparation for a US declaration of war).

The London Times concurs that we must “Confront the Warmonger”, and crows that “the West is at last putting together measures to hurt Putin and punish Russian aggression.”[15]

That’s nice, but why wasn’t anyone confronting the warmongers of the US and Israel? Those involved many “life and death” situations but the media were all silent.

Canada’s CTV moans that Ukraine is “a humanitarian catastrophe”, with grave concerns about capacity to replenish food and medicine.[16]

The last figures I saw, indicated several hundred deaths. If this makes Ukraine “a humanitarian catastrophe”, what would CTV like to tell us about Palestine? Where was Canada’s CTV when Iran was so badly hit by US sanctions it still hasn’t the cash even to buy COVID vaccines, much less basic medical supplies? Same with Venezuela, another beneficiary of US sanctions. Those countries are genuine humanitarian catastrophes while Ukraine is nothing. Where are these people when we need them? Canada’s CTV network is deplorably dishonest, blinded by some parasitic ideology.

Canada used to be a respectable country; not too many friends, but no enemies, and a reputation for integrity. Courtesy of recent psychopathic Zionists and pedophiles in its leadership, Canada now has no friends, plenty of serious enemies, a bad and worsening reputation, and has become a directionless US puppet-state with a mouth as large as that of Australia’s and a collective brain the size of a walnut. Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is not only painfully unintelligent but can be astonishingly stupid and gives a rather good imitation of a coward. To say nothing of beating the US at its own game of turning his country into the first genuine fascist state. It is unbelievable to me that neither Canada’s Trudeau nor Australia’s Morrison are able to look at Ukraine today and realise how dispensable they are. Both shoot off their mouths, taunting major nuclear powers – just as Ukraine did – and neither can see how freely their Washington puppet-master abandons its puppets when the going gets rough.

Canada is supporting, and even eagerly pushing, the elimination of Russia from Swift[17]

– as if the powers causing all this cared what Canada thinks. Talk about a delusional intellectual midget punching above his weight while hiding behind someone he believes will protect him. But Trudeau will “punish” Russia by asking Canadian liquor stores to ban Russian vodka. A statesman, if I ever saw one. But it gets much better: Canada’s truly delusional, and almost certainly psychopathic, Foreign Affairs Minister, Melanie Joly, is a real tough chick, who says “Everything is on the table: Canada will “suffocate” “Russia.[18]

Not only that, she encourages Canadians to “join the Ukrainian foreign legion to fight Russia”.[19]

I want to write something here, but I can’t think of anything to say.

Trudeau and Canada pride themselves on “Demonstrations in solidarity with Ukraine”, but Trudeau had no such solidarity with the Freedom Protesters in Canada against his insane COVID policies and in fact arranged with the banks to seize the bank accounts of all the protestors.[20]

It seems that protests are good only when someone else is the target.

Australia’s Morrisson is equally as stupid, promising to supply “lethal arms” for Ukraine.[21]

I know this isn’t very nice, but both Canada and Australia deserve to get nuked. They really do. When you are so small and have a mouth so big, something bad will happen to you sooner or later.

There is much more that the ‘democratic’ West is doing to punish Russia. Reuters reported a new EU law that will require all firms to check suppliers for “human rights”.[22]

Sorry, Russia, but you no longer qualify for anything, hence your exports will hopefully fall to zero. Natural gas supplies may be protected from this law, at least until Putin shuts the pipeline.

Then we have the Western airlines banning all Russian flights to Western countries,[23]

which makes you wonder what some of these people think about, if they think at all. The perfectly predictable outcome of these bans was that Russia immediately retaliated, banning not only foreign flights but all transit over Russian air space, which means many Western flights will now be hours and potentially thousands of miles longer, and quite a bit more expensive.

The US Administration, no doubt thanks at least in part to Victoria Nuland the Cookie Monster, the White House now wants “to Make China Pay for Close Ties to Russia”. Never miss an opportunity to cause yet more trouble; never fail to pour more fuel on the fire. The WSJ tells us that “Sanctions and UN debates are aimed in part at making Beijing feel discomfort . . . and dividing the two.”[24]

“One step, U.S. officials said, is making Beijing feel pain over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” Germany’s der Spiegel agrees they should do this because “Xi Is, Along with Putin, the Most Dangerous Man in the World”[25]

In the middle of all this the US even found time to condemn Pyongyang’s latest missile launch, widening the Axis of Evil even further.

And we have George Soros telling us Ukraine reminds him of the Siege of Budapest.[26]

It’s not clear why, because during the ‘siege of Budapest’ Soros was busy taking part in the confiscation of property from other Jews in Nazi-occupied areas, but claims he has “no sense of guilt” for what he did. Perhaps he’s planning on confiscating yet more property in Ukraine when the dust settles. In case you don’t know, Soros and Madeline Albright “took over” the communications networks of Kosovo after the US separated it from Serbia. The estimated value was $800 million.

Another bizarre feature of all this is that Israel offered its services as a “mediator” on Ukraine.[27]

Until this, I thought I’d heard everything. The European Zionist financiers and industrialists who want a Third World War so badly they can taste it, and who are certainly responsible for both the geo-political events that have transpired, and for the intense media flood of Russia hatred, have the nerve to offer one of their own to screw things up even more. Not only that, Israel proclaimed to the world (not that anyone was listening) that it remained “neutral” in the Russia-Ukraine dispute (not that anyone cared). It is my opinion that if Israel has delusions of becoming a “world power” and begins to stick its neck out in areas like this, that head is begging to be chopped off.

Canada’s CTV news tells us that “Russia’s billionaires call for peace in Ukraine”.[28]

Well, where were Canada’s billionaires when Iraq and Libya were being trashed? Where were America’s?

Then we have the Western governments rushing to our protection by blocking RT and Sputnik News and cancelling their licenses so they will “no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war”.[29]

Worse has happened with the Russian News Agencies like TASS and Ria Novosti, who have been subject to non-stop DDOS and other attacks in attempts to take them off the air permanently. I guess that’s good. Nobody wants fake news. Sadly, this news was given to us by the UK Guardian who are rapidly becoming the most rabid fake-news source of all.

This one is important, and I was surprised the article ran, even though it has its dirty side. The New York Times openly admitted that people generally are “fed up” with Google and its clever de-platforming and censoring of both any truth and any contrary narrative, and are turning to DuckDuckgo.[30]

Of course, the NYT’s version is that it’s only the “conspiracy theorists” who go there because Google eliminates all those bad things from its search results. That’s an obvious lie, of course. Even Bing is infinitely better than Google; for my own writing, Google appears to have never heard of me, or at least nothing good, while Bing will produce nearly one million hits and many many pages of listings of my articles and archives. The Russian Yandex browser is also excellent for some kinds of things. I would encourage everyone to abandon Google almost entirely and go to Bing or DuckDuckGo.

Then we discover that Google has disabled live traffic data in Google Maps, ostensibly to prevent Russian tanks from navigating the streets of Kiev.[31]

Google said it disabled the maps “for the safety of local communities . . . after consulting with . . . regional authorities.” However, “A professor at California’s Middlebury Institute of International Studies said Google Maps helped him track a “traffic jam” that was actually Russian movement towards the border hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the attack.”

In fact, Google disabled its functions because Ukraine doesn’t want the world to see photographic evidence that its Nazi troops are embedding themselves on the streets in purely residential districts, using the civilian population as shields and hostages and refusing them permission to leave. More detail below, and there is much evidence in the Russian News Agency reports, if you care to read them.

To assist Google, we apparently have the Ukrainian government urging citizens to remove street signs so the Russian tanks won’t know where they are.[32]

Can you believe this? Russia initiates a military operation in Ukraine that will involve the cities, but will depend on Google maps and Ukrainian road signs for their navigation. Small world, if true.

And yet more bitter sanctions from all over the world. Siding with Canada, US state governors want liquor stores to stop selling Russian vodka,[33]

and both UPS and FedEx are halting all shipments to Russia,[34]

which isn’t a bad thing. I believe UPS is famous for delivering packages, especially those containing electronics, to the CIA for “additions and amendments” prior to delivery to the now-spy-victim customer.

Further to this, Google, Facebook and Twitter have dealt a serious financial blow to the Russian state purse by blocking all ad revenue from their platforms to “state-sponsored sources”. This would almost certainly be a killer. No need to remove Russia from the SWIFT banking system when we have these US platforms seizing all Russia’s ad revenue from Facebook.

There is some good news. The sanctions appear to be having some effect. Canada’s CTV news tells us that Russians are queuing for cash “as West targets [Russian] banks over Ukraine”.[35]

They provide no evidence, but fake stories haven’t any evidence.

And so much more punishment in the wings. For one thing, the International Judo Federation has suspended Vladimir Putin’s position as Honorary President.[36]

That has got to hurt. And Formula One will not have a race in Sochi, even though it is claimed to be “the best track in F-1”.[37]

Not only that, but FIFA has banned all matches in Russia, and there can be no flag or anthem for the Russian team.[38]

Russia is quickly being banned from all international sports; the Olympics are next. Also, the Czechs will boycott all World Cup matches that involve Russia.[39]

And to end with the most stupid of all, Wayne Gretzky says Russia should be barred from world junior hockey competition.[40]

[41]

It isn’t so much a question of what this man has in his head: short answer, nothing at all, but who got to him and with what pressure to make him say something so stupid as this.

When we think of some of the nations, organisations and people who have been co-opted into this frenzied attack on Russia, it begs the question of how this happened. It surely was not an accident. Someone got to these people with an offer they couldn’t refuse. How could the Pope, of all people, have said something so stupid when Putin made so clear he was targeting only military installations and that civilians were in no danger. In my mind, when you read about the immense tragedy of the Catholic Residential Schools in Canada (and the US), and the thousands of dead children, and when you recall the vast number of pedophile claims in all countries against the Catholic church, it seems to me it is the Pope who is “lacking in humanity”, not Putin.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

Some fantastic lies are being fabricated by someone, and then promulgated through the media. In one such, the London Times tells us:

“More than 400 Russian mercenaries are operating in Kyiv with orders from the Kremlin to assassinate President Zelensky and his government and prepare the ground for Moscow to take control, The Times has learnt.[42]

The Wagner Group, a private militia run by one of President Putin’s closest allies and operating as an arm-length (sic) branch of the state, flew in mercenaries from Africa five weeks ago on a mission to decapitate Zelensky’s government in return for a handsome financial bonus.” No evidence is presented for such an astonishing assertion, but where was the Times when the US government was employing Eric Prince and his Blackwater Group to kill a great many influential people. They were silent. It seems anything is okay if I do it, but evil if you do it.

You surely have all heard about the valiant and brave Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island. The island was approached by a Russian warship, the Ukrainian soldiers addressed by the captain to lay down their arms and prevent certain loss of life because the island would be shelled. These loyal and patriotic men, almost certainly part of the special Nuland Brigade, replied “F*** you, Russian warship.” You can’t be much braver than that. The island was shelled, all the brave men died, and we know it’s true because the BBC, “the world’s most trusted source of news”, said so.[43]

And Italy’s Corriere della Sera gave us all the grim details, even telling us they could hear the sounds on the tape of the bombs that killed these brave men.[44]

Ukrainian President Zelensky awarded the men post-humous gold medals for their conduct, and they surely deserved it, being almost American in their valor and patriotism.[45]

That was a good story. Too bad it never happened. In fact, the UK Guardian almost immediately published a story claiming the men “may still be alive”.[46]

And then the Washington Examiner ran an article stating that Ukraine said the men were alive after all.[47]

But there was still drama to the story. Those not-so-brave-but-still-smart non-Americans came very close to dying anyway – under attack from their own Nazi compatriots who didn’t want them to surrender. According to TASS,[48]

the Russian warship was attacked by “At least 16 Ukrainian naval boats . . . [when they] were evacuating the Ukrainian troops who had laid down their arms and surrendered on Snake Island, the small boats directed by US drones. Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said at a briefing that “some of the boats used civilian vessels as shields”.” “According to Konashenkov, the [Nazi] Ukrainian boats attacked to take revenge on those who had surrendered and to shift the blame for the prisoners’ deaths on Russia.” He added further, “As a result of the naval battles, 16 boats of the Ukrainian Navy were destroyed. None of the 82 Ukrainian troops from Snake Island were injured.” The famous audio (now viral) was apparently not genuine.

There are other rather alarming indications of the mental disposition of the Nazis in Ukraine. Putin offered amnesty to all Ukrainian soldiers agreeing to lay down their arms and avoid war and bloodshed, that they would not be harmed and would be permitted to return home to their families. It was also widely reported that any soldiers doing so were to be treated kindly by the Russian troops, that there was no animosity between them. The Nazis apparently were making deliberate efforts to identify and kill any soldiers planning to lay down their arms. There were many such reports from the Donbass areas, but none reported in the Western media.

More alarmingly, Andriy Moshkalenko, deputy mayor of the city of Lviv, denounced the Nazis, claiming they arranged “teams of saboteurs”, each around ten in number, who would paint signs on schools and hospitals, effectively marking them in Russian military code, to signal them as targets for bombing or rocket attacks.[49]

This was to discourage the population from weakening. The schools and hospitals were selected as targets because these were the main locations where civilians would gather to avoid casualties, since the Russians would target only military installations.

When Putin said his intention was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, it was these people he had in mind, the same people who had been shelling the Donbass for the past eight years, killing tens of thousands, and the reason the two areas declared independence and asked Russia for protection.

And two engaging tales of courage and wit, courtesy of typical Ukrainians. In the first, a Ukrainian woman confronts a Russian soldier and gives him a package of sunflower seeds, saying to him, “Keep these seeds in your pocket, when you die they will grow flowers”[50]

The next was equally as cute. A Ukrainian motorist drove up to a Russian tank that was lost and out of gas, and said to the occupants, “If you want, I will tow you and take you back to Russia.”[51]

The stories are false, courtesy of Italy’s Corriere della Sera, no lie about Russia or China too big, too small, or too ridiculous, to print. Rather like the New York Times.

On another topic, Italy’s Corriere della Sera (again) tells us, and even provides a video, purporting to show two Russian soldiers “looting” a store in Sumy, Ukraine.[52]

It is by no means clear from the video that anything was actually being stolen, and the soldiers may well have been Ukrainian rather than Russian. Nevertheless, and I apologise for being repetitive, but does anyone remember Iraq? That country, between the Tigris and Euphrates, was the cradle of civilisation, or at least one of them. Iraq’s museums contained hundreds of thousands of artifacts and relics from the times of Babylon and Mesopotamia, irreplaceable treasures of a history millennia old. It is not in dispute that today all of Iraq’s museums are empty, bone-dry, stripped of every last artifact not only from museums but from private homes. The US military blamed it on “rogue soldiers” but that claim is clearly false. They would have no idea of the importance or value of anything, and my information was that many of the most valuable pieces ended up in Israel and in the homes of European Zionist financiers. I would like to know where the Corriere della Sera was when this was happening. Why is two soldiers taking a bottle of soda from a convenience store more important than the vast looting done in Iraq?

You should also know that most, if not all, of the videos being circulated about the events in Ukraine are fabricated, many being video clips or screenshots from video games. Some are photographs from unrelated events such as the chemical explosion in Tianjin, China, in 2015. But the Western media promulgated them first and checked later, after they’d been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.[53]

[54]

[55]

[56]

According to Reuters, they were merely “mis-captioned.”

Lastly, and this is off-topic, Russia’s Maria Zakharova revealed that Italy, France, and many other countries possess US nuclear weapons but do not have access to them, that these nations do not have a nuclear arsenal of their own, but that these consist of American missiles stationed in those countries and accessible only by the Americans.[57]

These countries have been made hapless targets, and with no way to escape.

Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons). http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/2187/

His full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/ and http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

Notes

[1] https://www.corriere.it/esteri/22_febbraio_27/svizzera-sanzioni-russia-come-ue-rotta-storica-neutralita-00bf2d96-9805-11ec-97aa-535db4de4386.shtml

Switzerland breaks the historic neutrality: announces that it will impose sanctions like the EU

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60549927

UK fast-tracks law to tackle Russian ‘dirty money’

[3] https://www.ft.com/content/526ea75b-5b45-48d8-936d-dcc3cec102d8

Russia’s FX reserves slip from its grasp

[4] https://eadaily.com/en/news/2015/06/18/austria-seizes-russian-government-assets-half-of-russian-foreign-currency-reserves-under-threat

Austria seizes Russian government assets; half of Russian foreign currency reserves under threat

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/children-caught-up-in-ukraine-war

‘It’s stomach-turning’: the children caught up in Ukraine war

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/more-than-360000-people-fled-war-ukraine-so-far-un

More than 360,000 people have fled war in Ukraine, says UN.

[7] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/medical-oxygen-running-out-ukraine-war-rages-who-warns-2022-02-27/

Medical oxygen running out in Ukraine as war rages, WHO warns

[8] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/dqwtziap8e/ukrainians-under-fire

Ukrainians under fire

[9] https://tinyurl.com/yrt5w2tw

Powerful pictures of Ukrainians’ lives turned upside down by war

[10] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60539104

Miles of queues at borders to flee invasion

[11] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60549132

Refugee tearfully describes why she fled Ukraine

[12] https://video.corriere.it/cronaca/messaggio-papa-francesco-contro-guerra-ucraina-chi-fa-dimentica-l-umanita/bc755924-97d4-11ec-97aa-535db4de4386

The Pope’s message against the war in Ukraine: “Those who make it forget humanity”

[13] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/27/west-has-finally-taken-gloves-against-putin-redeemed-honour/

The West has finally taken the gloves off against Putin, and redeemed our honour

[14] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/eu-will-provide-weapons-for-ukraine-josep-borrell

It is a matter of life and death. So the EU will provide weapons for Ukraine’s armed forces

[15] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/the-times-view-on-sanctions-against-russia-confronting-a-warmonger-sxt33ngpq

Confronting a Warmonger: The West is at last putting together measures to hurt Putin and punish Russian aggression

[16] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-russia-attack-feb27-2022-1.6366236

Kyiv ‘at the border of a humanitarian catastrophe’ as Russian troops advance, mayor says.

[17] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/eu-russia-swift-sanctions-1.6366084

Canada among countries moving to block Russian access to SWIFT

[18] https://globalnews.ca/news/8649359/russia-ukraine-conflict-canada-response-melanie-joly/

‘Everything on the table’: Joly says Canada will do more to ‘suffocate’ Russia; Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said.

[19] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-up-to-individual-canadians-to-decide-if-they-wish-to-join-the/

Canadians can decide if they wish to join the Ukrainian foreign legion to fight Russia, Joly says

[20] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-ukraine-support-demonstrations-rallies-sunday-feb-27-1.6366456

Demonstrations in solidarity with Ukraine held across Canada on Sunday

[21] https://www.rt.com/news/550738-australia-lethal-arms-ukraine/

Australia to fund lethal arms for Ukraine

[22] https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/eu-draft-law-would-require-firms-check-suppliers-human-rights-environmental-2022-02-21/

EU draft law would require firms to check suppliers for human rights, environmental ethics _ Reuters

[23] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60539303

Ukraine invasion: EU shuts airspace to Russian planes

[24] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-looks-to-make-china-pay-for-close-ties-to-russia-in-ukraine-crisis-11645992755

U.S. Looks to Make China Pay for Close Ties to Russia in Ukraine Crisis

[25] https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-half-century-after-nixon-s-visit-to-china-xi-is-along-with-putin-the-most-dangerous-man-in-the-world-a-6de96bee-8b13-4268-bf19-5b1d0438516c

“Xi Is, Along with Putin, the Most Dangerous Man in the World”

[26] https://sputniknews.com/20220227/reminds-me-of-siege-of-budapest-soros-inadvertently-compares-ukraines-army-to-wwii-nazis-1093428334.html

‘Reminds Me of the Siege of Budapest’: Soros Compares Ukraine’s Army to WWII Nazis

[27] https://tass.com/politics/1412525

Israel’s prime minister offers Putin mediation on Ukraine – Kremlin

[28] https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/two-of-russia-s-billionaires-call-for-peace-in-ukraine-1.5798082

Russia’s billionaires call for peace in Ukraine

[29] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/27/eu-ban-russian-state-backed-channels-rt-sputnik

EU to ban Russian state-backed channels RT and Sputnik

[30] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/technology/duckduckgo-conspiracy-theories.html

Fed Up With Google, Conspiracy Theorists Turn to DuckDuckGo – The New York Times

[31] https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-temporarily-disables-google-maps-live-traffic-data-ukraine-2022-02-28/

Google temporarily disables Google Maps live traffic data in Ukraine

[32] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/26/ukraine-russia-roads-signs-facebook/

Ukrainian agency, urging removal of road signs, posts fake photo with a colorful message for Russia

[33] https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/some-us-governors-order-state-run-liquor-stores-stop-selling-russian-vodka-2022-02-28/

Some U.S. governors order state-run liquor stores to stop selling Russian vodka

[34] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ups-fedex-halting-shipments-russia-ukraine-2022-02-27/

UPS and FedEx halting shipments to Russia and Ukraine

[35] https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/russians-queue-for-cash-as-west-targets-banks-over-ukraine-1.5798269

Russians queue for cash as West targets banks over Ukraine

[36] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/27/sport/judo-vladimir-putin-president-gymnastics-spt-intl/index.html

International Judo Federation suspends Vladimir Putin’s honorary president status

[37] https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/formula-one/f1-russian-gp-ukraine-invasion-latest-news-b984648.html

F1 cancels Russian GP in Sochi after invasion of Ukraine

[38] https://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/fifa-bans-matches-in-russia-no-flag-or-anthem-for-team-1.5798216

FIFA bans matches in Russia, no flag or anthem for team

[39] https://www.bbc.com/sport/60543803

Ukraine invasion: Czechs to boycott any Russia World Cup match, Elina Svitolina donates prize money

[40] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/article-gretzky-says-russia-should-be-barred-from-world-junior-competition/

Gretzky says Russia should be barred from world junior hockey

[41] https://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl/wayne-gretzky-calls-for-russia-to-be-banned-world-juniors-1.6366687

Wayne Gretzky calls for Russia to be banned from world junior hockey

[42] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/volodymyr-zelensky-russian-mercenaries-ordered-to-kill-ukraine-president-cvcksh79d

Russian mercenaries ordered to kill Ukraine’s president

[43] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60522454

Snake Island: Ukraine says soldiers killed after refusing to surrender

[44] https://video.corriere.it/esteri/ultime-parole-13-marinai-ucraini-russi-andate-farvi-fe/dda5eae8-967e-11ec-ae45-371c99bdba95

13 Ukrainian sailors, stationed on Snake Island, surprised by the Russian military, preferred to die than surrender.

[45] https://manzilnews.pk/en-ca/zelensky-says-the-posthumous-heroism-award-will-be-given-to-the-soldiers-of-snake-island-who-violated-the-russian-warship-2/

Zelensky says the posthumous Heroism Award will be given to the soldiers of Snake Island who violated the Russian warship.

[46] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/ukraine-island-defenders-who-told-russian-officer-go-fuck-yourself-may-still-be-alive

Ukraine island defenders who told Russian navy ‘go fuck yourself’ may still be alive

[47] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/snake-island-defenders-may-still-be-alive-ukraine-says

Snake Island defenders may be alive, Ukraine says

[48] https://tass.com/russia/1412053

Ukraine’s boats attack ships evacuating Ukrainian troops who surrendered on Snake Island

[49] https://video.corriere.it/esteri/leopoli-denuncia-vicesindaco-sabotatori-marchiano-scuole-ospedali-come-obiettivi-bombardamenti/944bac9c-97f6-11ec-97aa-535db4de4386

Lviv, the complaint of the deputy mayor: “Saboteurs mark schools and hospitals as targets for bombing”

[50] https://video.corriere.it/esteri/donna-ucraina-affronta-soldato-russo-tieni-questi-semi-tasca-quando-morirai-cresceranno-fiori/8cfd7974-96f8-11ec-ae45-371c99bdba95

Ukrainian woman confronts a Russian soldier: “Keep these seeds in your pocket, when you die they will grow flowers”

[51] https://video.corriere.it/esteri/automobilista-ucraino-militari-russi-rimasti-senza-benzina-se-volete-vi-traino-indietro-russia/f650e7a8-9720-11ec-ae45-371c99bdba95

The Ukrainian motorist to the Russian military left without gasoline: “If you want I will tow you and take you back to Russia”

[52] https://video.corriere.it/esteri/soldati-russi-filmati-mentre-saccheggiano-grande-magazzino-sumy/94c9856e-97aa-11ec-97aa-535db4de4386

Russian soldiers filmed looting a department store in Sumy

[53] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-ukraine-compilation-idUSL1N2UZ3LQ

Fact Check-Compilation of footage purportedly showing attacks in Ukraine features miscaptioned clips

[54] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/26/politics/fake-ukraine-videos-fact-check/index.html

Fact-checking fake videos of Ukraine conflict

[55] https://www.rt.com/russia/550694-ukraine-defense-ministry-fake/

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted fake video as air battle

[56] https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/propaganda-fake-videos-ukraine-invasion-051055022.html

Propaganda, fake videos of Ukraine invasion bombard users

[57] https://tass.com/world/1412847

Maria Zakharova recalled that Italy and many other countries possess the US nuclear weapons but do not have access to them

Military Affairs

China’s Message to the US: “Your Military will be Reduced Into Scrap Iron”

March 3, 2022 Algora Blog 2 Comments

📨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

Military Affairs

Russia Declares War on the Straussians

March 3, 2022 Algora Blog Leave a comment

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

Rising tensions (8)

Comments by Thierry Meyssan on Russia’s intervention in Ukraine (Video)

Washington sounds the alarm, while its allies withdraw

Rising tensions (7)

Two interpretations of the Ukrainian affair

Rising tensions (6)

Washington and London try to preserve their domination over Europe

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Military Affairs

Documented War Crimes by the Ukis in Donbas

March 2, 2022 Algora Blog 2 Comments

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

Capitalism in Decay

Where the European Union Gets Its Energy From

March 2, 2022 Algora Blog Leave a comment

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)

Military Affairs

The Americans Itching For War

March 2, 2022 Algora Blog 2 Comments

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.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Russian Sanctions Threaten Dollar’s Reserve Status

March 2, 2022 Algora Blog Leave a comment

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.

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