Yearly Archives: 2022

Waltzing to Armageddon

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The Dr. Strangeloves, like zombies rising from the mass graves they created around the globe, are once again stoking new campaigns of industrial mass slaughter.

By Chris Hedges

Source: Information Clearing House

The Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, was a wild Bacchanalia for arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the diplomats who played one country off another on the world’s chess board, and the global corporations able to loot and pillage by equating predatory capitalism with freedom. In the name of national security, the Cold Warriors, many of them self-identified liberals, demonized labor, independent media, human rights organizations, and those who opposed the permanent war economy and the militarization of American society as soft on communism. 

That is why they have resurrected it.

The decision to spurn the possibility of peaceful coexistence with Russia at the end of the Cold War is one of the most egregious crimes of the late 20th century. The danger of provoking Russia was universally understood with the collapse of the Soviet Union, including by political elites as diverse as Henry Kissinger and George F. Kennan, who called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” 

This provocation, a violation of a promise not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany, has seen Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia inducted into the Western military alliance.

This betrayal was compounded by a decision to station NATO troops, including thousands of U.S. troops, in Eastern Europe, another violation of an agreement made by Washington with Moscow. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, perhaps a cynical goal of the Western alliance, has now solidified an expanding and resurgent NATO and a rampant, uncontrollable militarism. The masters of war may be ecstatic, but the potential consequences, including a global conflagration, are terrifying. 

Peace has been sacrificed for U.S. global hegemony. It has been sacrificed for the billions in profits made by the arms industry. Peace could have seen state resources invested in people rather than systems of control. It could have allowed us to address the climate emergency. But we cry peace, peace, and there is no peace. Nations frantically rearm, threatening nuclear war. They prepare for the worst, ensuring that the worst will happen. 

So, what if the Amazon is reaching its final tipping point where trees will soon begin to die off en masse? So what if land ice and ice shelves are melting from below at a much faster rate than predicted? So what if temperatures soar, monster hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires devastate the earth? In the face of the gravest existential crisis to beset the human species, and most other species, the ruling elites stoke a conflict that is driving up the price of oil and turbocharging the fossil fuel extraction industry. It is collective madness.

The march towards protracted conflict with Russia and China will backfire. The desperate effort to counter the steady loss of economic dominance by the U.S. will not be offset by military dominance. If Russia and China can create an alternative global financial system, one that does not use the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, it will signal the collapse of the American empire. The dollar will plummet in value. Treasury bonds, used to fund America’s massive debt, will become largely worthless. The financial sanctions used to cripple Russia will be, I expect, the mechanism that slays Americans, if not immolation in thermonuclear war.

Washington plans to turn Ukraine into Chechnya or the old Afghanistan, when the Carter administration, under the influence of the Svengali-like National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, equipped and armed the radical jihadists that would morph into the Taliban and al Qaeda in the fight against the Soviets. It will not be good for Russia. It will not be good for the United States. It will not be good for Ukraine, as making Russia bleed will require rivers of Ukrainian blood.

Pandora’s Box of Evils

The decision to destroy the Russian economy, to turn the Ukrainian war into a quagmire for Russia and topple the regime of Vladimir Putin will open a Pandora’s box of evils. Massive social engineering — look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya or Vietnam — has its own centrifugal force. It destroys those who play God.

The Ukrainian war has silenced the last vestiges of the Left. Nearly everyone has giddily signed on for the great crusade against the latest embodiment of evil, Vladimir Putin, who, like all our enemies, has become the new Hitler.

The United States will give $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, with the Biden administration authorizing an additional $200 million in military assistance. The 5,000-strong EU rapid deployment force, the recruitment of all Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, into NATO, the reconfiguration of former Soviet bloc militaries to NATO weapons and technology have all been fast tracked.

Germany, for the first time since World War II, is massively rearming. It has lifted its ban on exporting weapons. Its new military budget is twice the amount of the old budget, with promises to raise the budget to more than 2 percent of GDP, which would move its military from the seventh largest in the world to the third, behind China and the United States.

NATO battlegroups are being doubled in size in the Baltic states to more than 6,000 troops. Battlegroups will be sent to Romania and Slovakia. Washington will double the number of U.S. troops stationed in Poland to 9,000. Sweden and Finland are considering dropping their neutral status to integrate with NATO.

This is a recipe for global war. History, as well as all the conflicts I covered as a war correspondent, have demonstrated that when military posturing begins, it often takes little to set the funeral pyre alight. One mistake. One overreach. One military gamble too many. One too many provocations. One act of desperation.

Russia’s threat to attack weapons convoys to Ukraine from the West; its air strike on a military base in western Ukraine, 12 miles from the Polish border, which is a staging area for foreign mercenaries; the statement by Polish President Andrzej Duda that the use of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical weapons, by Russia against Ukraine, would be a “game-changer” that could force NATO to rethink its decision to refrain from direct military intervention — all are ominous developments pushing the alliance closer to open warfare with Russia.

Once military forces are deployed, even if they are supposedly in a defensive posture, the bear trap is set. It takes very little to trigger the spring. The vast military bureaucracy, bound to alliances and international commitments, along with detailed plans and timetables, when it starts to roll forward, becomes unstoppable. It is propelled not by logic but by action and reaction, as Europe learned in two world wars.

Staggering Hypocrisy

The moral hypocrisy of the United States is staggering. The crimes Russia is carrying out in Ukraine are more than matched by the crimes committed by Washington in the Middle East over the last two decades, including the act of preemptive war, which under post-Nuremberg laws is a criminal act of aggression. Only rarely is this hypocrisy exposed as when U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the body:

“We’ve seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield. That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs which are banned under the Geneva Convention.”

Hours later, the official transcript of her remark was amended to tack on the words “if they are directed against civilians.” This is because the U.S., which like Russia never ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions treaty, regularly uses cluster munitions. It used them in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Iraq. It has provided them to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen. Russia has yet to come close to the tally of civilian deaths from cluster munitions delivered by the U.S. military.

The Dr. Strangeloves, like zombies rising from the mass graves they created around the globe, are once again stoking new campaigns of industrial mass slaughter. No diplomacy. No attempt to address the legitimate grievances of our adversaries. No check on rampant militarism. No capacity to see the world from another perspective. No ability to comprehend reality outside the confines of the binary rubric of good and evil. No understanding of the debacles they orchestrated for decades. No capacity for pity or remorse.

Elliott Abrams worked in the Reagan administration when I was reporting from Central America. He covered up atrocities and massacres committed by the military regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and by the U.S.-backed Contra forces fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. He viciously attacked reporters and human rights groups as communists or fifth columnists, calling us “un-American” and “unpatriotic.” He was convicted for lying to Congress about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. During the administration of George W. Bush, he lobbied for the invasion of Iraq and tried to orchestrate a U.S. coup in Venezuela to overthrow Hugo Chávez.
“There will be no substitute for military strength, and we do not have enough,” writes Abrams for the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a senior fellow:

“It should be crystal clear now that a larger percentage of GDP will need to be spent on defense. We will need more conventional strength in ships and planes. We will need to match the Chinese in advanced military technology, but at the other end of the spectrum, we may need many more tanks if we have to station thousands in Europe, as we did during the Cold War. (The total number of American tanks permanently stationed in Europe today is zero.) Persistent efforts to diminish even further the size of our nuclear arsenal or prevent its modernization were always bad ideas, but now, as China and Russia are modernizing their nuclear weaponry and appear to have no interest in negotiating new limits, such restraints should be completely abandoned. Our nuclear arsenal will need to be modernized and expanded so that we will never face the kinds of threats Putin is now making from a position of real nuclear inferiority.”

Putin played into the hands of the war industry. He gave the warmongers what they wanted. He fulfilled their wildest fantasies. There will be no impediments now on the march to Armageddon. Military budgets will soar. The oil will gush from the ground. The climate crisis will accelerate.

China and Russia will form the new axis of evil. The poor will be abandoned. The roads across the earth will be clogged with desperate refugees. All dissent will be treason. The young will be sacrificed for the tired tropes of glory, honor and country. The vulnerable will suffer and die.

The only true patriots will be generals, war profiteers, opportunists, courtiers in the media and demagogues braying for more and more blood. The merchants of death rule like Olympian gods. And we, cowed by fear, intoxicated by war, swept up in the collective hysteria, clamor for our own annihilation.

President Joe Biden seeks to destroy Russia and Punish the Russian People

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He supported savage sanctions that killed one million Iraqis in the 1990s and criminally ignores the plight of post-war Afghanistan

By John Stanton

Source: Intrepid Report

Who, really, is the war criminal?

So what does President Joe Biden want the sanctions imposed on Russia to do? Think back to the 1990s and what the US-NATO imposed no-fly zone and sanctions did to the people of Iraq?  The results were almost 1 million Iraqis dead, according to the website GlobalIssues.org.

Over at truthout.org, Jake Batinga reported that President Joe Biden strongly supported those sanctions as a US senator and recently has turned a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan: “Senator Biden strongly supported the sanctions and advocated for even more aggressive policies toward Iraq. Biden was not then, and is not now, known for his humanitarian impulses or dovish foreign policy stances.”

Batinga also notes that: “More Afghans are poised to die from US sanctions over the next few months alone than have died at the hands of the Taliban and US military forces over the last 20 years combined— by a significant margin. Yet, as journalist Murtaza Hussain recently wrote, US establishment politicians and intellectuals who decried the humanitarian crisis during the fall of Kabul are seemingly unbothered by imminent mass starvation, imposed by us.”

The Biden administration— which routinely laments human rights violations perpetrated by China, Iran, Russia, and other adversaries— is ignoring desperate pleas from humanitarian organizations and UN human rights bodies, choosing instead to maintain policies virtually guaranteed to cause mass starvation and death of civilians, especially children. Yet it is important to note, and remember, that as a matter of policy, this is not particularly new; the US has often imposed harsh economic sanctions, causing mass civilian death. A previous imposition of sanctions resulted in one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes, one largely forgotten in mainstream historical memory.

In 1990, the US imposed sanctions on Iraq through the UN following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. These sanctions continued for more than a decade after Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, and had horrific humanitarian consequences eerily similar to the imminent mass starvation of Afghan civilians. The sanctions regime against Iraq— which began under President George H.W. Bush but was primarily administered by President Bill Clinton’s administration— froze Iraq’s foreign assets, virtually banned trade, and sharply limited imports. These sanctions crashed the Iraqi economy and blocked the import of humanitarian supplies, medicine, food, and other basic necessities, killing scores of civilians.”

BRIC’s made of straw

The BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China have been in the news lately and for good reason. There is talk, and talk is cheap of course, of China and Russia creating an alternative payment system to the US dollar dominated international payments system SWIFT.

Already Russia has joined China’s Cross Border Interbank Payment System Payment as an alternative to SWIFT, along with joining China’s UnionPay credit card system which serves as an alternative to Visa and Master Card who, along with dozens of other Western country businesses (Europe, USA plus Japan and South Korea), bolted Russia’s marketplace after its military operation got started in Ukraine in late February.

India apparently is trading with Russia in a rupee, ruble swap but that seems ad hoc, at best. And there is news of Saudi Arabia cutting a deal with China to use the yuan as an exchange currency. Brazil has enough internal problems to deal with: crime, disease, Amazon deforestation.

Chinese leaders must realize that if Russia falters in Ukraine which means it is unable to liberate the Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, gain international recognition of Crimea—and maintain territorial gains made on the coast of the Black and Azov Sea’s—and/or President Putin is removed from office and Russia destabilizes, the United States will chop up Russia into separate republics, steal its resources and cancel the billions in deals signed with China for oil, gas, and grains

The United States will bring the NATO military alliance to China’s doorstep and likely put on show trials in the International Criminal Court arguing that Putin and his general staff are war criminals, which would be utter nonsense given US policies and actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

China is trying to placate the US because it still fears US economic and military power. Its party officials probably figure that they can keep building up the People’s Liberation Army, Navy, Air Force and Strategic nuclear capability and when there is enough firepower, will be able to challenge US dominance in the Pacific. But how?

The PLA forces have no modern combat experience to speak of and their plan seems to be; well, no plan at all. They are faced with the combined forces of the USA that are building new aircraft carriers, submarines and long distance B-21 bombers, along with upgrading all three legs of its nuclear TRIAD.

Which brings us back to Russia and the economic support it needs so that Biden’s sanctions don’t end up killing a million Russians. Because that is what Biden intends and his track record on supporting sanctions is disturbingly clear. When China looks at what the USA-NATO have done to the Russian economy, they are looking at their own future.

Hypocrisy

Joe Scalice at the World Socialist Website notes the hypocrisy of the USA-NATO and the compliant MSM Western media:

“The wars of aggression of Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump contained the accumulated evil of the torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the drone bombing of children at play, villages leveled by precision missiles and refugees drowned in the Mediterranean. Baghdad crumbled beneath the shock and awe of unstinting US bombing; Fallujah burned with white phosphorus.

The American mass media is complicit in these crimes. They never challenged the government’s assertions, but trumpeted its pretexts. They whipped up a war-frenzy in the public. Pundits who now denounce Putin were ferocious in demanding that the United States bomb civilians.

Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times in 1999 of the bombing of Serbia under Clinton, “It should be lights out in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted… [W]e will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.” [Biden supported bombing Belgrade]

Biden labels Putin a war criminal in the midst of a new media hysteria. Never referring to the actions of the United States, never pausing for breath, the media pumps out the fuel for an ever-expanding war. Hubris and hypocrisy stamp every statement from Washington with an audacity perhaps unique in world history. Its hands bathed in blood up to the elbows, US empire gestures at its enemies and cries war crimes.”

Tactics

Indeed, the media have capitulated to the war propaganda narrative of the Biden Administration. The US MSM relies almost exclusively on Ukrainian sources for its error filled reporting. If you are reading the New York Times or the Washington Post, you aren’t getting the full story. Pro-Russia sites like Southfront, Newsfront, War Gonzo and others tell a different story. For example, the Retroville Mall destruction on March 21 was reported in the West as a wanton and random attack on a shopping place. In fact, the below-building parking lot was home to Ukrainian military vehicles clearly shown by a set of photos that appeared on Newsfront. Residential buildings are clearly being used by the Ukrainian forces to hide their weapons or launch anti-tank attacks from apartment building roofs or top floor apartments. That’s a tactic that makes sense. The Russians know that.

You’ve got to look at all the news sources, even the ones you don’t want to view, in order to be informed about this conflict.

Charade Buster… Biden Goes Off Script With Regime-Change Admission on Russia

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By Finian Cunningham

Source: Islam Times

U.S. President Joe Biden came to Europe last week riding high on European deference towards America’s leadership. Then he went to Warsaw to make a victory lap speech at the weekend which was billed as marking the high point in galvanizing European and NATO unity towards Russia.

But the climax cratered like a house of cards. As the president was boarding Air Force One to take him home, the much-vaunted transatlantic unity was in disarray from Biden’s cack-handed big moment.

It reminds one of former President Barack Obama’s cautionary words in appraising Biden. “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up,” said Obama of his former vice president and his gaffe-prone big mouth.

Biden’s speech in Warsaw was a carefully crafted rousing one. It was of course littered with mangled words as is Biden’s rambling style, and laden with the usual banal American arrogance about leading the free world against evil dictators. Nevertheless, he also appeared to succeed in rallying the unity of the U.S. and its allies in facing down alleged Russian aggression. That unity certainly seemed remarkable with regard to NATO’s and the European Union’s response to Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. The Europeans have ratcheted up economic sanctions against Russia at the behest of Washington; they are buying up U.S. weapons and set to import American energy instead of Russian.

It was all going swimmingly well until the very end of the speech when Biden suddenly went off script and, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin, declared: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

There it is. Regime change, according to Biden. European allies have recoiled in embarrassment over the clumsy admission. Britain, France, Germany and the European Union have all said they repudiate the objective. The distancing from Washington is not so much out of principle but rather out of the bad political look.

After weeks of an intense Western media campaign projecting the policy as supposedly defending Ukraine (and European democracy), the U.S. president was letting it be known that the real endgame is regime change in Moscow.

Just like the Biden order to pull out from Afghanistan last year, the European leaders are left looking like bystanders at a bus stop. Washington calls the shots without even the pretense of consulting its vassals.

At the end of a European tour deemed up to that point to be a stunning success for the American president owing to the fawning deference he was shown days before, and just at the very end of a set-piece address choreographed for the history books, Joe Biden blew it.

The White House immediately swung into damage-limitation mode, urgently clarifying that the president did not actually mean regime change. Biden himself denied that he was referring to regime change when he got back to the U.S. But even sycophantic news outlets admitted the difficulty in trying to spin any other literal meaning.

Biden’s knack for putting his foot in his mouth has been around for a long time during 50 years as a politician. It can’t be simply explained as a sign of senility although the recent frequency of gaffes suggests his mental acuity is waning with his 79-year-old age. During his first year-and-half as 46th president, administration aides have countless times had to clean up sloppy remarks. In one notorious clanger, he appeared to repudiate Washington’s decades-old One China Policy, saying the U.S. would militarily defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion from the mainland.

The laugh is Biden touts himself as a “foreign policy expert” from his many years as a Senator and roving ambassador before he entered the White House, first as vice president under Obama and now as the president.

If this is American expertise, then what does incompetence look like? At a time of extremely sensitive U.S.-Russian relations, Biden has called Putin “a killer” and “war criminal”. On the weekend before his regime-change manifesto was announced, he labeled the Russian president a “butcher” and compared the Kremlin with the Third Reich.

The hypocrisy of Biden is bad enough. He has endorsed endless criminal U.S. wars and regime-change operations that have resulted in millions of deaths and whole nations destroyed. For Biden to call anyone a war criminal and butcher is too nauseating for irony.

But it is contemptible that the Ukraine conflict is reduced by Biden to simplistic caricatures in total denial of how the U.S.-led NATO alliance has largely created the confrontation with Russia.

Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken was among the damage-limitation squad over the weekend’s incendiary remarks. Blinken had the temerity to say: “We don’t have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere else.” That’s from Blinken who helped engineer the regime-change wars in Libya and Syria while Biden was vice president.

The Ukraine conflict is only a part of a bigger picture of U.S. hostility towards Russia. Washington and its European minions have tried to portray NATO’s eastward expansion over the years as an innocent development of a defensive nature.

Moscow has repeatedly denounced NATO’s stance as aggressive and an existential threat to Russian national security. When the Kremlin proposed a security treaty at the end of last year, it was rebuffed by Washington and NATO. That inevitably led to the war in Ukraine as a defensive counter-measure by Russia.

Biden just ripped off the wrapping on the policy. In one fell swoop, he just proved what Russia has been saying. His admission of regime change against Russia is an admission of violating the UN Charter and international law. The European leaders are aghast not because they are against such criminality. Their concern is that they too are exposed as being complicit in a criminal conspiracy. They fear how their public will react to that imperial agenda. Is this what economic sanctions and resulting energy price inflation are for?

Good old Joe, screwing it up – again. Just when Uncle Sam had the Europeans corralled under supposed American leadership, the imperial agenda blows up in their face.

This also explains why the Zelensky regime in Kiev is procrastinating and avoiding political settlement of the conflict. Settlement is not in Washington’s interest. It wants the proxy war to continue because the real aim is to use Ukraine as a cat’s paw to destabilize Russia. Zelensky and Kiev can’t make the peace because that’s not what their handlers in Washington are after. Washington wants and needs permanent tensions and conflict (short of all-out war) with Russia.

After Biden’s charade-busting admission, however, it will be difficult politically to maintain US-European “unity” over such a flagrant imperial agenda.

Biden’s Unhinged Call for Regime Change in Russia

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By Norman Solomon

Source: CounterPunch

Ever since Joe Biden ended his speech in Poland on Saturday night by making one of the most dangerous statements ever uttered by a U.S. president in the nuclear age, efforts to clean up after him have been profuse. Administration officials scurried to assert that Biden didn’t mean what he said. Yet no amount of trying to “walk back” his unhinged comment at the end of his speech in front of Warsaw’s Royal Castle can change the fact that Biden had called for regime change in Russia.

They were nine words about Russian President Vladimir Putin that shook the world: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

With a reckless genie out of the bottle, no amount of damage control from the president’s top underlings could stuff it back in. “We do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia, or anywhere else, for that matter,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Sunday. Such words might plausibly have less than full weight; Blinken was chief of staff at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when, in mid-2002, then-Senator Biden wielded the gavel at crucial hearings that completely stacked the witness deck in support of the subsequent U.S. invasion of Iraq, with the explicit goal of regime change.

The USA’s commander in chief, brandishing the power to launch one of the world’s two biggest nuclear arsenals, would be out of his mind to consciously announce a goal of dethroning the leader of the world’s other nuclear superpower. Worst case would be that he was blurting out his government’s actual secret goal, which would not speak well of impulse control.

But it’s not much more reassuring to think that the president simply got carried away with his emotions. The day after, that was part of the messaging from Biden’s cleanup detail. “Administration officials and Democratic lawmakers said Sunday the off-the-cuff remark was an emotional response to the president’s interactions in Warsaw with [Ukrainian] refugees,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

However — before the cosmetics began to cover Biden’s unscripted statement — the New York Times provided a quick news analysis under the headline “Biden’s Barbed Remark About Putin: A Slip or a Veiled Threat?” The piece, by seasoned establishment reporters David Sanger and Michael Shear, noted that Biden’s off-script close to his speech came with “his cadence slowing for emphasis.” And they added: “On its face, he appeared to be calling for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to be ousted for his brutal invasion of Ukraine.”

Mainstream journalists have avoided putting a fine point on the likelihood that World War III just got closer thanks to Biden’s words, whether or not they were “a slip” or “a veiled threat.” In fact, it might never be possible to know which it was. But that ambiguity underscores that his slip and/or threat was mind-blowingly irresponsible, endangering the survival of humanity on this planet.

Outrage is the appropriate response. And a special onus is on Democrats in Congress, who should be willing to put humanity above party and condemn Biden’s extreme irresponsibility. But prospects for such condemnation look bleak.

Biden’s impromptu nine words underscore that we must not take anything for granted about his rationality. Russia’s murderous war in Ukraine does not give Biden any valid excuse to make a horrendous situation worse. On the contrary, the U.S. government should be determined to promote and pursue negotiations that could end the killing and find long-term compromise solutions. Biden has now made it even more difficult to pursue diplomacy with Putin.

Activists have a special role to play — by emphatically insisting that members of Congress and the Biden administration must focus on finding solutions that will save Ukrainian lives as well as put a stop to the slide toward military escalation and global nuclear annihilation.

To even hint that the U.S. is seeking regime change in Russia — and to leave the world wondering whether the president is slipping or threatening — is a form of imperial insanity in the nuclear era that we must not tolerate.

“I’m addressing the people in the United States,” former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said during an interview on Democracy Now just one day before Biden’s speech in Poland. “How many times have an attempt by the American government to effect regime change anywhere in the world worked out well? Ask the women of Afghanistan. Ask the people of Iraq. How did that liberal imperialism work out for them? Not very well. Do they really propose to try this out with a nuclear power?”

Overall, in recent weeks, President Biden has jettisoned all but the flimsiest pretenses of seeking a diplomatic solution to end the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Instead, his administration keeps ratcheting up the self-righteous rhetoric while moving the world closer to ultimate catastrophe.

World War III Has Already Started, And It’s An Economic War

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By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.us

In an article I published in April of 2018, titled World War III Will Be An Economic War, I outlined a number of factors that portend a large scale conflict between East and West and why this war would be mainly economic in nature. I investigated how this conflict would actually benefit globalists and globalist institutions seeking to bring down multiple nations’ economies while hiding the engineered crisis behind a wall of geopolitical chaos and noise.

The goal? To convince the masses that national sovereignty is a plague that only leads to widespread death, and that the “solution” is a one-world system – conveniently managed by the globalists, of course. That is to say, more centralization is always offered as the solution to every problem.

Furthermore, the war itself acts as cover for the inflationary collapse that our central bank and government has created. We are already seeing fraud propagandists like White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki attempting to mislead the public into believing all our current inflation problems stem from the Ukraine war. This claim requires some impressive mental gymnastics and an epic level of ignorance, but Psaki seems to have no shame about her role as a soulless Goebbels-like figure.

One issue which I used to get a lot of arguments over was the idea that countries like Russia and China would end up so closely aligned. People claimed there were too many disparities and that the countries would ultimately turn on each other in the middle of a financial crisis.

Well, it’s four years later and now we’re going to see if that is true or not. So far, it looks like I was correct.

My position has long been that certain nations have been preparing for a collapse of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency (the primary currency used in the majority of trade around the world). My belief is that America’s top economic position is actually an incredible weakness; the dollar’s hegemony is not a strength, but an Achilles heel. If the dollar was to lose reserve status, the whole of the U.S. economy and parts of the global economy would implode, leaving behind only those who prepared – those who saw the writing on the wall and planned ahead.

The Dollar Crash Coalition

There are four nations that have been actively positioning for the crash of the dollar and they include: China, Russia, India, Brazil (five if you count the limited involvement of part South Africa). These countries are also known as the BRICS. The BRICS are rarely mentioned in the mainstream media anymore, but there was a time around a decade ago when they were discussed regularly.

My fascination with the BRICS back then was primarily due to their odd trade behaviors. Specifically, their bilateral agreements which cut out the dollar as the reserve currency, and the fact that they were stockpiling tons upon tons of gold.

It was as if they had some kind of inside information that an economic conflict or disaster was coming, and they were getting ready to decouple from the dollar and the global supply chain.

Today, as the Ukraine war rages, there is constant hype about the union of nations opposed to Russia’s invasion to the point that the narrative has become bizarre. There is an incredible level of cultism in the mainstream media right now encouraging a mindless mob response. They have been trying to drum up something very similar to a behavioral vortex that many of us in conservative circles have seen thousands of times in the past few years: Western media is weaponizing cancel culture against Russia.

It’s not just a general admonition of the Kremlin or of Putin, that would be normal. Rather, it’s an outright dismissal of anything remotely related to Russia, from bar owning dummies throwing away all their vodka (even though most of it is not made in Russia), to the International Cat Federation banning certain cats from competitions because they are Russian bred.

This is pure childish insanity, but again, we’ve seen this before with cancel culture in the US.

The thinking is utterly collectivist and goes a little something like this:

“We shall shun them from the hive and isolate them. We will erase their existence and rewrite their identity and history. Then we will punish them by taking away their ability to survive economically until they submit and conform to the directives of the gatekeepers, who shall remain nameless.”

That said, as most conservatives know, cancel culture is a failed strategy. Despite the international push to cancel Russia and media claims that Russia is now “completely isolated and alone,” the narrative is apparently designed more to con the masses, not intimidate the Kremlin. They are, in fact, not isolated at all. And, guess which countries are staunchly refusing to support actions and sanctions against the Ukraine invasion?

That’s right, the other members of the BRICS.

China has outright refused to accommodate any sanctions and is directly working with Russia to alleviate trade issues. As I’ve been pointing out for ten years, they’ve been preparing for this moment. Hell, if the rest of the world doesn’t want Russian exports and oil, China will certainly buy them.

India is eerily silent on Ukraine, despite endless pressure from the U.S.

Both Brazil and South Africa have taken neutral stances on Ukraine and continue to trade with Russia. It would appear that the cancellation of Russia has already failed before it really began.

The narrative only serves a purpose in that it gives the western public two false impressions:

  1. It makes the people think that cancel culture on an international scale is working and that Russia will soon fold when the opposite is true.
  2. It tricks people into thinking that all the risk is on the Russian side when, in reality, most of the risk is on the western side. This will make the inevitable economic disaster all the more frightening when it occurs.

Personally, I don’t have any affinity for either side of the Ukraine conflict. I feel empathy for the Ukrainian people, but certainly not the Ukrainian government and their globalist partners. I also have no love for Putin and his many friends in the globalist World Economic Forum.

That said, even if you think one side is right and the other side is wrong, one cannot deny that the cancel culture mentality of the west is going to lead to an epic disaster. What people don’t seem to understand is that this calamity will hurt the U.S. and Europe just as much as it hurts Russia, if not more so.

The Economic Weaponry Of Fortress Asia

The close economic relationship between Russia and China is fast building towards a “Fortress Asia” which guarantees a certain amount of insulation from global instability.

Russia exports a surprising number of raw materials that many countries rely on, from fertilizers to industrial metals like nickel and aluminum. But, their biggest export by far is energy in the form of oil and natural gas. Europe in particular is utterly dependent on Russia for between 40% to 50% of its heating and electricity. Cuts to Russian energy exports would devastate Europe in a year’s time and it’s unlikely other exporters would be able to fill the void in the near term, at least not without huge price increases.

According to the IEA, Russia is the third largest oil producer in the world behind Saudi Arabia and the U.S. and it is the largest exporter to global markets. Sanctions on Russian oil would mean a massive shift in supply and multiple markets rushing to fill the gap.

Just the threat of cuts to Russian oil  caused large overnight price spikes in gasoline in the U.S. and Europe. Brent crude prices skyrocketed from $90 a barrel to $130 a barrel in a matter of a couple weeks.

I don’t think it will stop there, either. I expect crude prices to climb into the $200 per barrel range and gas prices to jump to around $7 a gallon before increased U.S. shale pumping helps balance out the supply (and this is a best case scenario). Some of the price will be due to speculation, but ultimately without Russian oil prices will remain high even if the war in Ukraine ends.

And here is where we get to a key aspect of this scenario which I don’t think many people are taking into account. It does not matter if Russia pulls out of Ukraine, and it certainly doesn’t matter if Ukraine surrenders. The economic side of the war will continue, and it will only escalate.

Retaliation In Economic Warfare

Beyond oil and energy the combined influence of the BRICS has the power to dramatically disrupt the U.S. dollar’s world reserve status. China alone holds trillions in dollars and U.S. treasuries which it can dump on the market anytime it pleases. China is the world’s largest exporter and most nations including the U.S. rely on Chinese manufacturing. This is why China’s draconian Covid shutdowns have caused a constant strain on the global supply chain. Around 20% of imports to the US come from China, including over 97% of our antibiotics.

The BRICS in combination control a vast swath of the export and manufacturing markets. They don’t even need to dump the dollar in trade, all they have to do is say they prefer a basket of currencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Special Drawing Rights. The dollar’s value would collapse, and that would be in the midst of already rising inflation.

Another interesting development from the economic war is the increasing calls for crypto and digital currency solutions. I would note that it’s not just the BRICS who are refusing to go against Russia; there is also the matter of globalist institutions like the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Not surprisingly, Russia’s membership in these world banking platforms remains secure. Russia continues to hold billions in IMF SDRs. Both institutions have been calling for the implementation of a global digital currency system (which obviously they would control).

If the world economic war continues at its current trajectory, it is only a matter of time before trade sanctions turn into currency attacks. This is where the U.S. will be hurt the most.

It is perhaps not so coincidental that the globalists have staged themselves to benefit. With no world reserve currency established and an inflationary crisis raging, they will attempt to swoop in to “save the day” and assert that they have the perfect solution: A global digital currency system based on blockchain technology but tied to the IMF’s SDR basket system and administered by them.

In other words, with all the inflation present in national currencies, the IMF will offer the public a digital currency or cryptocurrency that promises them more stability. The inflationary crisis in confidence will be used to push people into a digital system which has no privacy and can be used to control them by denying them access on a whim, much like how the Chinese social credit system operates.

Ukraine is only the first domino in a long chain that is meant to lead to a one-world economic system centralized into the hands of the money elites.

There are ways to disrupt it, and the plan may not succeed at all, but there’s no avoiding the economic pain that will be caused in the meantime. All that we can do is accept that World War III is upon us and the weapons will be economic rather than nuclear.

WHY IS NON-CONFORMITY YOUR GREATEST ASSET IN THESE STRANGE TIMES?

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By Dylan Charles

Source: Waking Times

Have you noticed that in most of the great works of dystopian science fiction and cinema there’s a recurring theme of mass conformity to uncomfortably rigid and enforced social norms?

There’s always an impenetrable bureaucracy which has reduced the masses to statistical averages to be more efficiently managed. The system is never benign and loving, because paradoxically, at the top of the pyramid there always resides a single individual ruler, who is invariably psychotic, having no contact with reality. His psychosis is mirrored by the masses, and paradoxically, the individual is overrun by the mass so the the mass can be overrun by an individual.

The citizen-collective in these stories is intrinsically recognized as inhuman, unnatural, malignant and dangerous. It is compassionless, irrational, illogical and excessively emotional. To behold such a well-behaved and compliant hive stirs the primal fear of dying before death, of not-living while alive, and of an existence devoid of meaning.

The hero in these stories is always the lone individual who finds it unbearable to subjugate his autonomy to the herd. As much as he understands the consequences for non-conformity he simply cannot refuse the risk of rebellion, and is compelled to covertly express his distinctiveness. Once he experiences the thrill of making some small departure from the standard, he is thereby morally obliged to further differentiate himself, ultimately arousing the fury of the state which aims to brutally suppress him in order to maintain its position of absolute authority.

George Orwell’s 1984 is a favored example of this because the book takes you inside the mind of someone who cannot resist the pull of inner authenticity, self-integrity and truth. Aroused by truth and love, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is simply incapable of squashing his internal drive towards individuation from the party-mind, and sets out on a futile endeavor to experience the joys of having a genuine human existence… if only for a moment.

“So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.” ~Winston Smith, 1984

I won’t spoil it for you, but it doesn’t go well. He gets a short glimpse of what life could be like outside of the prison of total obedience, but is quickly punished. And horribly so.

Our natural drive towards individuation and authenticity is such a powerfully buoyant force that to subjugate it requires a tremendous counter force. Fear is typically what does the trick. Fear is the glue that holds the collective together.

What many people don’t realize is that this same story plays out metaphorically in our personal lives all day everyday, and without a proper understanding of how the mind seeks safety amongst the tribe, we’re at the mercy of the default programs running in the subconscious mind.

This is where we are wired to conform to the group, because the subconscious mind is the survival-seeking mechanism at the root of consciousness, and it compels us to pursue the safety of not being rejected, abandoned, ridiculed or ostracized. It looks at what everyone else is doing and it imitates, emulates, copies, and mimics the most common behaviors it sees in the tribe around us, now matter how insane or psychotic they are.

It has the faulty perception that to exist outside of the tribe is fatal, when in today’s society, the opposite is true.

But the good life lies beyond the herd, because by its very nature, the herd is a reduction to an average. It is by definition mediocre.

Just look at the quality of the average today. Unhealthy, unhappy, broke, dissatisfied, depressed, emotional, disconnected, dysfunctional and delusional. Being average here is deadly.

The good life is found in your authenticity and individuality. This is the part of you that has access to those non-average, non-mediocre experiences which make life worth living and inspire you to live deeply into your definition of success. Without the nuances of individual experience and authentic expression, life is dull, stupid, frightful and boring.

Culturally we have a history of valuing the individual in his own right. We’ve always revered him over the collective and credit the ingenuity and creativity of individualistic, non-conformist thinking for shaping the system and circumstances which built the foundation of the prosperity we enjoy today. This is reflected in a few excellent quotes from some of our most revered American authors, speaking from a time when there was no herd mentality, only individuals collaborating to build something unique:

“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.”~James Fenimore Cooper

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” ~Henry David Thoreau

“They [conformists] think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world… Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members… Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist… Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Again, your best, most prosperous life is dependent on your willingness and ability to differentiate yourself from this sick tribe. The subconscious, however, wants you to feel safe, which is not the same thing as being safe, nor happy. And this is why your individuality is essential to real happiness and prosperity. It represents the drive to express your most extraordinary qualities, which is required to bring your true nature to completion.

Carl Jung elucidated this process of individuation, which is the psyche’s journey toward full maturation and independence. Individuation is, as he put it is, ‘to divest the self of false wrappings.’ The false wrappings of today’s world are revealed in how you self-sabotage and how you hold yourself back from your potential.

What repetitive behaviors do you engage in that you wish you didn’t? Where did the programs for these behaviors originate? Are they yours by choice, or are they learned from others, perhaps your family or tribe of origin? What do you repeatedly do, or not do, that takes your further and further from living the life you deserve and desire?

Here’s a final quote by Carl Jung on the importance of expressing your uniqueness and allowing for your individuation.

“Insofar as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists. Let it band together into groups and organizations as much as it likes – it is just this banding together and the resultant extinction of the individual personality that makes it succumb so readily to a dictator. A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one.

Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally shortsighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world had seen more than enough of what a well disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman… People go on blithely organizing and believing in the sovereign remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations in the world can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans.” ~Carl Jung

Saturday Matinee: Land of the Blind

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By Ms Mary Lou

Source: The News Blender

“A stale piece of bread is better than nothing.”

LAND OF THE BLIND is a 2006 film directed by Robert Edwards, and written by Edwards five years before. Its message about political corruption and complacency is so resonant that, even though it takes cues from historical figures throughout the centuries, we can still see our current climate reflected in it .

The film starts “Five Years Before” during the reign of President-For-Life Maximilian II (Tom Hollander). Having inherited the position from his father, Maximilian is equal parts politically clueless and personally gluttonous. He doesn’t understand why his constituents aren’t grateful when he commutes those sentenced to the gallows…by sending them to firing squads instead. Unable to stand any critique of himself, he murders his opponents when he can get away with it and sends them to the not-so-secret prisons when he can’t.

One of these prisoners is the de facto leader of the resistance, playwright turned political prisoner Thorne (Donald Sutherland). He’s been imprisoned for years for the crime of being critical of Maximilian. Despite having nearly all communication with the outside world cut off, his followers “The Citizens for Justice and Democracy” continue the movement he inspired. While they wage wars against the administration outside, Thorne is left to write his manifesto on the walls of his cell using any means available.

One of the guards assigned to him, Joe (Ralph Fiennes), serves as our everyman narrator. In the beginning he doesn’t consider himself political, just a man doing his job. The more he has conversations with Thorne, however, the more he sees the corruption in Maximiliam’s regime and becomes determined to help achieve change. From his cell Thorne runs for–and is elected to–parliament and is thus released to serve his term. Now that their leader is accessible the Citizens for Justice and Democracy spring into action.

Quickly Joe helps Thorne and his followers get into Maximilian’s castle. Within minutes Thorne puts Maximilian and his wife through a two minute trial in their bedroom, convicts, and executes them. The Maximilian II regime is over.

“Nothing is better than a big, juicy steak.”

With Thorne in the position of President-For-Life, change definitely happens. Maximilian’s indulgences are replaced with a strict moral code. All females are now forced to wear hijabs when outside the house. Re-education camps are opened to make sure everyone is in line with the nation’s moral code. This includes teachers, doctors, people who insist on wearing glasses, and anyone else not in line with the new morality. Children are separated from their parents in order to “fight the narcissism of family.” The revolution has occurred. Long live the revolution.

Joe is retired from the military and held up as a hero for his part in the revolution. He isn’t as thrilled with Thorne’s changes. When pressured to sign a loyalty oath, Joe refuses out of principle. He points out to Thorne that “before the revolution man exploited man. Since the revolution it’s the other way around.” That is enough to get Joe sent to the re-education camps.

What happens in the camps would be unfathomable if I didn’t know how much of this movie was based on historical events. There is physical torture, psychological torture, relentless pressure to accept anything and everything he’s told to believe. Can Joe survive with himself intact and is it worth it if he does?

“Therefore, a stale piece of bread is better than a big, juicy steak.”

LAND OF THE BLIND is not a movie for everyone. There are a lot of questions left unanswered. We don’t learn the characters’ histories. In the end there is no comfortable resolution. The movie will be fascinating for those who know history; they’ll be able to recognize the patterns that have happened and even recognize some that are still going on. Even those who can’t see when Idi Amin or the Khmer Rouge are referenced can still appreciate the movie on its own. The actors are all well cast in their roles and their journeys are completely believable. The music, composed by Guy Farley, is appropriately unsettling and comes in at just the right moments to keep the viewer on edge. Robert Edwards is a master at balancing actual history with a compelling story. I like to watch this movie whenever I find myself getting politically complacent. It’s a reminder that it’s not enough to stand against something; you have to also know what you’re standing for.

Watch Land of the Blind on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14779187