On September 28th, the AP headlined “Record methane leak flows from damaged Baltic Sea pipelines” and reported that “Methane leaking from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines is likely to be the biggest burst of the potent greenhouse gas on record, by far. … Andrew Baxter, a chemical engineer who formerly worked in the offshore oil and gas industry, and is now at the environmental group EDF … said, ‘It’s catastrophic for the climate.’” The article pointed out that methane “is 82.5 times more potent than carbon dioxide at absorbing the sun’s heat and warming the Earth.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin had been aiming ultimately (and maybe soon) to get the gas to Europe flowing again, and said to EU nations on September 16th, “Just lift the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, which is 55 billion cubic metres of gas per year, just push the button and everything will get going.”
Here is what U.S. President Joe Biden had already promised about that on February 7th:
If Germany — if Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the — the border of Ukraine again — then there will be — we — there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.
Q But how will you — how will you do that exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: We will — I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.
He had promised to cause permanently the end of Nord Stream if Russia invaded, which it did on February 24th. He fulfilled on that promise on September 27th.
Radek Sikorsky, who is a Member of the European Parliament and had been Poland’s Foreign Minister and is the husband of the famous writer against Russia Anne Applebaum, and has been affiliated with Oxford University, Harvard University, and NATO, tweeted on the day of the explosions, “Thank you, USA.” He also tweeted explanations: “All Ukrainian and Baltic sea states have opposed Nordstream’s construction for 20 years. Now $20 billion of scrap metal lies at the bottom of the sea, another cost to Russia of its criminal decision to invade Ukraine.” And: “Nordstream’s only logic was for Putin to be able to blackmail or wage war on Eastern Europe with impunity.”
Furthermore on September 27th, Germany’s Spiegel magazine reported that, as Reuters put it, “The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had weeks ago warned Germany about possible attacks on gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea”
On September 28th, SouthFront headlined “No Way Back for Europe” and reported:
It is reasonably suspected that the pipeline was blown up by the special services of the United States in order to finally stop the gas supplies to Germany from Russia.
On September 27, a detachment of warships led by the US amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge reported on the completion of their tasks in the area of the alleged sabotage in the Baltic Sea and headed for the North Sea.
Since the beginning of September, suspicious activity by anti-submarine helicopters of the US Navy has been observed in the area. In the last few days, reconnaissance activities of NATO aircraft have significantly intensified in the Baltic Sea area. In particular, a US Boeing E-3 Sentry reconnaissance aircraft was on constant patrol over the Baltic States, and a US Joint STARS was spotted over Germany and Poland.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
Have you ever noticed how those who shriek the loudest about tyranny in foreign countries are always the same people calling for the censorship and deplatforming of anyone who criticizes the western empire?
It’s a ubiquitous mind virus throughout western society. Anyone — and I do mean anyone — who aggressively and consistently criticizes the foreign policy of the US and its allies in front of a sizeable audience gets branded a Russian agent by empire apologists, and this consensus is accompanied by the steadily growing opinion that Russia’s operatives and useful idiots should be banned from western platforms.
Defenders of the western empire won’t admit to wanting all empire critics silenced, but that’s what you get when you combine (A) the fact that they view everyone who criticizes the empire with sufficient aggression as a Russian agent with (B) their opinion that those given to Russian influence ought to be censored. Whenever I criticize the foreign policy of the western empire I get its apologists telling me I’d never be allowed to criticize my rulers like that if I lived in a nation like Russia or China, when they know full well that if it were up to them I wouldn’t be allowed to criticize the western empire here either. They are the same as the tyrants they claim to despise.
The trouble with “western values” is that westerners don’t value them. They think they value them, but all that reverence for free expression and holding power to account with the light of truth goes right out the window the second they see someone saying something that sharply differs from what their rulers and their propagandists have told them to think. Then they want that person silenced and shut down.
In truth, the most forceful critics of the western empire actually embody these western values infinitely more than empire apologists do. It is the critics of empire who value free speech and holding the powerful to account. It’s the brainwashed bootlickers of the US-centralized empire who are calling for censorship and shouting down anyone who directs fierce oppositional scrutiny toward the most powerful people in the world.
People tell me “Move to Russia!” or “Move to China!” depending on what aspect of the empire’s global power agendas I happen to be criticizing at the moment, and I always want to tell them, no, you move to Russia. You move to China. You’re the one trying to suppress dissent and criticism of the powerful. I’m the one who is living by western values as they were sold to me and demanding normal scrutiny of the most powerful empire that has ever existed. You don’t belong here.
In school we are taught that our society values truth, free speech, equality, accountability for the powerful, and adversarial journalism, then we grow up and we see everyone rending their garments because institutions like CBS News or Amnesty International let slip one small report which doesn’t fully comply with the official line of our rulers. We see Russian media banned and censorship protocols expanded to the enthusiastic cheerleading of mainstream liberals. We see astroturf trolling operations used to mass report and shout down those who scrutinize the establishment line about Ukraine on social media. We see Julian Assange languishing in Belmarsh Prison for the crime of unauthorized journalism.
It’s obvious with a look around that the “western values” we’re all told about are not actually terribly common in the west. Look at the west’s major media platforms and they virtually never platform anyone who is meaningfully critical of the real centers of power in western civilization. Look at western governments and they continually dance to the beat of oligarchy and empire regardless of how people vote in their supposedly free democratic elections. Look at the internet and it’s actually very difficult to find authentic criticisms of imperial power unless you already know where to look.
Some of us bought into those western values we were taught about in school, but it’s not the people you’ve been trained to expect. It’s we marginalized outsiders who are adamantly opposing censorship, propaganda and the empire’s war on the press while continuously working to shine the light of truth on the mechanisms of power from the fringes, while we are being yelled at and accused of treason by mainstream sycophants who have far more in common with the autocrats they claim to oppose than with the western values they purport to uphold.
Directed by Alex Garland; screenplay by Alex Garland; based on the novel Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer; cinematographed by Rob Hardy; edited by Barney Pilling; music by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury; production design by Mark Digby; produced by Eli Bush, Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich and Scott Rudin. Released in Feb. 2018 by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated NNN
Starring: Natalie Portman as Lena, Oscar Isaac as Kane, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dr. Ventress, Gina Rodriguez as Anya Thorensen, Tuva Novotny as Cass Sheppard, Tessa Thompson as Josie Radek, David Gyasi as Daniel and Benedict Wong as Lomax
There are many layers to this smart, tense, slow-building science fiction drama. It’s at once a nuanced exploration of trauma and identity, a surreal excursion into high-concept cosmic horror and an endlessly rich subject for intellectual debate. It’s a movie that invites many interpretations, having been read as a metaphor for everything from depression to cancer to radioactive contamination following a nuclear accident. Perhaps its most poignant subtext is that of nature fighting back against the encroachments of human civilization.
Loosely based on an eponymous 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation centers around a journey to the heart of an anomalous region known as Area X on America’s southern coast. Three years earlier, a meteorite crashed into a lighthouse in a national park, bringing with it an extraterrestrial entity that has since been transforming everything around it. During its spread inland, the alien has forged new ecosystems filled with mutations like something out of a psychedelic vision. At the edge of the contaminated zone lies a hypnotic, pulsating electromagnetic field called The Shimmer, from which almost no one who enters ever emerges—the one man to have done so bearing little trace of his former personality or memories afterward.
A clandestine government organization called Southern Reach has been created to study Area X with the aim of halting and reversing its progress. But Area X is impervious to satellite surveillance, and no one has picked up radio transmissions from any of the numerous teams that have ventured inside. So far, Southern Reach has managed to keep Area X under wraps, using the pretext of a chemical spill to evacuate the sparsely populated swampland that has thus far been consumed. But it’s only a matter of months before Area X will begin to expand into population centers, raising the prospect of mass evacuations that will be much harder to explain.
In the movie’s opening scene, the sole survivor of the latest expedition into Area X, a cellular biologist named Lena (Natalie Portman), is being questioned in a small, bare room by Southern Reach agents in hazmat suits. It’s been four months since she and the rest of her team embarked on their mission to reach and study the lighthouse that appears to be The Shimmer’s epicenter. The other members of her group were psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), paramedic Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), geomorphologist Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novotny) and physicist Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson). They left with food rations, camping gear, weapons and their various scientific instruments. Lena’s questioners want to know what became of the others, how Lena lasted for months on only two weeks’ worth of food and what transpired between her and the lighthouse entity. The movie then flashes backward to recount the saga.
Portman gives a strong, sympathetic performance. Her character’s personal journey—which involves coming to terms with the fate of her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac), a special forces officer who was part of an earlier mission—forms the emotional core of the story. Leigh, who plays the group’s stoic leader, seems strangely subdued at first, until we come to understand her character’s motivations for heading into Area X. All of the actresses excel as action heroines during the movie’s periodic swings into action-thriller mode.
Unfortunately, some of the characters are given more to do than others. Lena and Josie are the only ones who really put their respective areas of expertise to use, each making important discoveries that advance our understanding of the entity’s threat. The others might as well just be soldiers.
Though subtle at first, the aberrations to the landscape and its flora and fauna grow increasingly dreamlike the closer the group comes to the lighthouse. The early mutations are, to use Lena’s words, “Corruptions of form. Duplicates of form.” But eventually the women encounter humanoid shrubs, stems harboring multiple plant species, an alligator with shark-like concentric rows of teeth, deer with flowering branches for antlers and trees made of glass. Josie hypothesizes that the alien being is a prism that refracts not only light rays and energy waves, but molecular structures as well, including DNA. This explains how shark’s teeth ended up in the mouth of an alligator, how sand formed into glass trees and how plants have melded with one another and with humans and deer.
Freakish things soon begin happening to the bodies and minds of our protagonists. Examining a drop of her own blood under a microscope, Lena finds it suffused with rapidly dividing alien cells. Anya is unnerved to see her fingerprint patterns moving. Paranoia begins to overrun the group. Some of the women fall victim to the creatures of Area X, while others turn into them, like Gregor Samsa becoming a cockroach in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” Characterized by intense emotions and moments that seem to occur out of sequence and without logical explanation, these events play out much like a dream sequence. This feeling is heightened by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury’s musical score, whose sounds become increasingly unnatural and mesmerizing.
The movie’s frights are a mixed bag. At their best, they’re superb at evoking a sense of incomprehensible horror such as one finds in the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Indeed, Annihilation has been likened to Lovecraft’s 1927 short story “The Colour Out of Space”—as well as its numerous film adaptations—in which a life form brought to Earth on a meteorite wreaks madness and all manner of physical deformities upon the wildlife and human residents of a tract of Massachusetts woodland. (Unlike Annihilation’s alien, however, the being in that tale decimates its surroundings rather than creating something new from them.) The film also contains some very effective Cronenberg-esque body horror. However, not all the scares arise naturally from the plot and the characters; there are some monster attacks and shoot ’em up scenes that belong in a less lofty movie, and which are nowhere to be found in the book.
Beyond its similarity to the Lovecraft story (and despite VanderMeer stoutly denying he was influenced by either of the following two works), Annihilation also has obvious echoes of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic and its 1979 movie adaptation, Stalker. These also involve journeys through a restricted zone rife with strange mutations and inexplicable phenomena brought on by contamination left by an extraterrestrial presence.
Annihilation’s screenwriter and director is Alex Garland, whose previous film was another landmark of intelligent sci-fi filmmaking—and his directorial debut, no less—2014’s Ex Machina. With Annihilation, he takes great liberties with his source material, changing much of the plot, premise and thematic emphasis. The film has more human connection, more emotional interplay among the characters, than the novel does. (The book’s characters don’t relate; they’ve completely shed their names and pasts.) The book begins in medias res and bypasses much of its backstory, whereas the film starts more conventionally, with a full act of setup that relies on clichés such as a getting-to-know-you session between Lena and her future fellow expeditioners and tearful flashbacks to Lena’s personal drama that led her to agree to the mission. Neither version of the story is superior, really; they’re more like “refractions” of a single underlying inspiration.
The novel repeatedly stresses the pristineness of Area X. It’s a region that has managed, even if by otherworldly means, to beat back humankind. In the real world, of course, industrial humanity faces pushback from nature in the form of droughts, floods, diminishing returns in soil fertility, emerging infectious diseases and uncountable other threats to human habitat. Clearly, annihilation runs both ways.
On the very day the world learns about the sabotage of Russia’s Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2, guess what else happened? Well, Ukrainians from the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporhyzhia and Kherson oblasts voted in overwhelming numbers to become Russians. While that is a game changer that is not what I had in mind.
There is at least one prominent Polish citizen who believes the United States merits praise for sabotaging the Nordstream pipelines. Former former Polish Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, who happens to be married to Anne Appelbaum, an enthusiastic neo-con masquerading as a journalist, tweeted the following upon learning that the Nordstream lines were now “złamany” (Polish for”kaput”): “Thank you, USA.”
But, perhaps that is a bit of deflection. Poland has longstanding animus towards Nordstream. In other words, Poland has a clear motive for backing the destruction of the Russian pipeline. More than a year ago -April 2021 to be precise–this appeared in print:
Poland strongly opposes the development of Nord Stream 2, which will give Gazprom a subsea alternative route for supplying natural gas to Western European customers. At present, that gas has to pass through overland pipeline networks in Poland and Ukraine, bringing in valuable transit fees and providing both nations – which do not always have cordial relations with Russia – a measure of energy security.
Poland has reacted angrily to President Joe Biden’s decision to waive US sanctions on Nord Stream II, warning the move could threaten energy security across Central and Eastern Europe.
“The information is definitely not positive from the security point of view, as we know perfectly that Nord Stream II is not only a business project – it is mostly a geopolitical project,” said Piotr Muller, a spokesman for the Polish government. . . .
Announced following a phone-call between Joe Biden and Chancellor Angela Merkel, the US decision to lift sanctions was welcomed in Berlin, with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas noting that “it is an expression of the fact that Germany is an important partner for the US, one that it can count on in the future.”
The highly controversial pipeline has met with vigorous opposition across Central and Eastern Europe, including in Poland and Ukraine where officials say the project would be used by the Kremlin as a geopolitical weapon, de-facto increase Europe’s dependence on Russian gas and threaten energy security in the Eastern half of the continent.
Makes you wonder if there was some wheeling and dealing was going on between Washington and Warsaw. Given Warsaw’s critical location and role in ensuring U.S. and NATO military supplies is delivered to Ukraine, the Poles have a bit of leverage to push the United States to take out the pipelines or to help Poland take out the pipelines. Poland’s message to the United States was simple–reverse course on Nordstream and rupture the pipelines or you can find another way to move your military supplies to Ukraine.
But wait, doesn’t this create some real problems for Germany? Sure. But Poland “don’t” (sic) care. There was this little incident called World War II and it seems that the Poles are still miffed at the Germans. If revenge is a dish best served cold, then this sucker is a frozen dinner:
Poland’s top politician said Thursday that the government will seek equivalent of some $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ World War II invasion and occupation of his country.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice party, announced the huge claim at the release of a long-awaited report on the cost to the country of years of Nazi German occupation as it marks 83 years since the start of World War II. . . .
Germany’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday the government’s position remains “unchanged” in that “the question of reparations is concluded.”
With this new supply of Polish controlled natural gas, Germany is in a tough spot. Buy from Poland or buy from the United States. Either way, the Germans pay a premium while the United States and Poland make some bank.
Poor cognitively impaired Joe Biden. He repeats the obvious distortion fed to him on Ukraine and the United Nations Charter via teleprompter. Behind the scenes, I wonder if they are feeding him Adderall so he doesn’t screw it up — the hypocrisy, that is. It is possible Joe doesn’t remember the execrable role he enthusiastically played in the destruction and mass murder in what was once the most advanced nation in the Middle East, Iraq.
How dare he accuse Russia of violating the United Nations Charter, especially Article 51, which states:
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.
I don’t expect Joe to know anything about the history of the Ukraine or the Cossack Hetmanate therein, its allegiance to the Russian Tsar (the Pereiaslav Agreement), and thus the Russian ethnic character of much of eastern and central Ukraine. It was later incorporated into the “Little Russia Governorate” established by Catherine II, thus becoming part of Russia. Other nations did not consider the region Russian, but rather a Russian vassal state.
But all of that is ancient history. Today the people of Donetsk and Luhansk consider themselves Russian, not Ukrainian. It can be argued that much of this cultural milieu stretches far as the Dnipro River to the west and certainly in the south at Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, including Odesa to the west on the Black Sea.
This is where the United Nations has failed. It defines nations along state-controlled borders, often established by war, not ethnic plurality as is the case in the Donbas Oblast.
At any rate, Biden’s remarks make him a hypocrite on steroids (or Adderall). Biden wholeheartedly supported and pushed for the destruction of Iraq. Despite claiming to be “democracies” (a term so whacked out of proportion as to be meaningless), the United States and the United Kingdom decided to violate the UN Charter and invade Iraq.
“I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal,” stated then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The neocon invasion destroyed the civilian infrastructure of Iraq, most heinously targeting its effort to produce clean drinking water, an egregious violation of the Geneva Conventions (in other words, a war crime).
“Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war,” writes Mark Weisbrot for The Guardian.
Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq.
The war in the Ukraine is misunderstood in America, if hardly noticed, by an indoctrinated and propagandized populace. Most of the lies and fabrications emanate from a neo-Nazi penetrated government (more a kleptocracy run by oligarchs and the most corrupt country in Europe). The lies, mostly fed to the US by the serial liar and authoritarian “leader” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are sucked up unquestioningly by the corporate propaganda media and fed to the population as truth.
Joe Biden is a war criminal, same as the remainder (with a few exceptions) of Congress. The decade long starvation, malnutrition, and infant mortality under “sanctions” imposed on Iraq destroyed the country for a decade under George W. Bush, his father, and their partner in crime, President Bill Clinton.
The United States is a serial violator of the UN Charter it now claims to respect. It is the most dangerous country on earth, not Russia. I don’t support war, even under these circumstances (neo-Nazi ethnic cleansers ignored in the West). I do, however, support the end of this conflict.
It is not Russia that should be carved up into harmless statelets, but the Ukraine. The genocidal neo-Nazis must be brought to justice, preferably before an International audience at The Hague, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court.
I am, however, not hopeful. History is instructive.
Outraged western leaders are threatening a price cap on imports of Russian natural gas after Moscow cut supplies to Europe this month, deepening an already dire energy and cost-of-living crisis. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Europe will “freeze” this winter unless there is a change of tack.
In this back-and-forth, the West keeps stepping up the rhetoric. Putin is accused of using a mix of blackmail and economic terror against Europe. His actions supposedly prove once more that he is a monster who cannot be negotiated with, and a threat to world peace.
Denying fuel to Europe as winter approaches, in a bid to weaken the resolve of European states to support Kyiv and alienate European publics from their leaders, is Putin’s opening gambit in a plot to expand his territorial ambitions from Ukraine to the rest of Europe.
Or so runs the all-too-familiar narrative shared by western politicians and media.
In fact, Europe’s arrogant, self-righteous posturing over Russian gas supplies, divorced from any discernible geopolitical reality, reflects precisely the same foolhardy mindset that helped provoke Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in the first place.
It is also the reason why there has been no exit ramp – a path to negotiations – even as Russia has taken vast swaths of Ukraine’s eastern and southern flanks – territory that cannot be reclaimed without a further massive loss of life on both sides, as the limited Ukrainian assault around Kharkiv has highlighted.
The western media has to carry a major share of the blame for these serial failures of diplomacy. Journalists have amplified only too loudly and uncritically what US and European leaders want their publics to believe is going on. But maybe it is time that Europeans heard a little of how things might look to Russian eyes.
Economic war
The media could start by dropping their indignation at “insolent” Moscow for refusing to supply Europe with gas. After all, Moscow has been only too clear about the reason for the shutdown of gas supplies: it is in retaliation for the West imposing economic sanctions – a form of collective punishment on the wider Russian population that risks violating the laws of war.
The West is well practised in waging economic war on weak states, usually in a futile attempt to topple leaders they don’t like or as a softening-up exercise before it sends in troops or proxies.
Iran has faced decades of sanctions that have inflicted a devastating toll on its economy and population but done nothing to bring down the government.
Meanwhile, Washington is waging what amounts to its own form of economic terrorism on the Afghan people to punish the ruling Taliban for driving out US occupation forces last year in a humiliating fashion. The United Nations reported last month that sanctions had contributed to the risk of more than a million Afghan children dying from starvation.
There is nothing virtuous about the current economic sanctions on Russia either, any more than there is about the blackballing of Russian sportspeople and cultural icons. The sanctions are not intended to push Putin to the negotiating table. As US President Biden made clear in March, the West is planning for a long war and he wants to see Putin removed from power.
But in practice, the reverse has been happening, just as it did through the 1990s when the West imposed sanctions on Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Putin’s position has been bolstered, as it will continue to be whether Russia is triumphing or losing on the battlefield.
The West’s economic sanctions against Russia have been doubly foolish. They have reinforced Putin’s message that the West seeks to destroy Russia, just as it previously did Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. A strongman is all that stands between an independent Russia and servitude, Putin can plausibly argue.
And at the same time, the sanctions have demonstrated to Russians how truly artful their leader is. Economic pressure from the West has largely backfired: sanctions have barely made an impression on the value of the rouble, while Europe looks to be heading into recession as Putin turns off the gas spigot.
It will doubtless not only be Russians quietly rejoicing at seeing the West get a dose of the medicine it so regularly force-feeds others.
Western conceit
But there is a more troubling dimension to the West’s conceit. It was the same high-handed belief that the West would face no consequences for waging economic warfare on Russia, just as earlier assumed it would be pain-free for Nato to station missiles on Moscow’s doorstep. (Presumably, the effect on Ukrainians was not factored into the calculations.)
The decision to recruit ever-more east European states into the Nato fold over the past two decades not only broke promises made to Soviet and Russian leaders, but flew in the face of advice from the West’s most expert policy-makers.
Guided by the US, Nato countries closed the military noose around Russia year by year, all the while claiming that the noose was entirely defensive.
The US had a hand in the 2014 protests that overthrew Ukraine’s government, one elected to keep channels open with Moscow.
With a new government installed, the Ukrainian army incorporated ultra-nationalist, anti-Russia militias that engaged in a devastating civil war with Russian communities in the country’s east.
At no point in the eight long years of Ukraine’s civil war did Europe or the US care to imagine how all these events unfolding in Russia’s backyard might look to ordinary Russians. Might they not fear the West just as much as western publics have been encouraged by their media to fear Moscow? Putin did not need to invent their concern. The West achieved that all by itself.
The encirclement of Russia by Nato was not a one-off error. Western meddling in the coup and support for a nationalist Ukrainian army increasingly hostile to Russia were not one-offs either. Nato’s decision to flood Ukraine with weapons rather than concentrate on diplomacy is no aberration. Nor is the decision to impose economic sanctions on ordinary Russians.
These are all of a piece, a pattern of pathological behaviour by the West towards Russia – and any other resource-rich state that does not utterly submit to western control. If the West were an individual, the patient would be diagnosed as suffering from a severe personality disorder, one with a strong impulse for self-destruction.
Bogeyman needed
Worse still, this impulse does not appear to be open to correction – not as things stand. The truth is that Nato and its US ringmaster have no interest in changing.
Their purpose is to have a credible bogeyman, one that justifies continuing the massive wealth redistribution from ordinary citizens to an elite of the already ultra-rich. A supposed threat to Europe’s safety justifies pouring money into the maw of an expanding war machine masquerading as the “defence industries” – the military, the arms manufacturers, and the ever-growing complex of the surveillance, intelligence and security industries. Both Nato and a US network of more than 800 military bases around the globe just keep growing.
A bogeyman also ensures western publics are unified in their fear and hatred of an external enemy, making them readier to defer to their leaders to protect them – and with it, the institutions of power those leaders uphold and the status quo they represent.
Anyone suggesting meaningful reform of that system can be rounded on as a threat to national security, a traitor or a fool, as Britain’s former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn found out.
And a bogeyman distracts western publics from thinking about deeper threats, ones that our own leaders – rather than foreigners – are responsible for, such as the climate crisis they not only ignored but still fuel through the very military posturing and global confrontations they use to distract us. It is a perfect circle of self-harm.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the demise of the Soviet Union, the West has been casting around for a useful bogeyman to replace the Soviet Union, one that supposedly presents an existential threat to western civilisation.
Afghanistan’s Taliban was harbouring al-Qaeda – until we learned that the Taliban had offered to hand Osama bin Laden over even before the 9/11 attacks.
There was the terrifying threat from the head-choppers of the Islamic State (IS) group – until we learned that they were the West’s arm’s-length allies in Syria and being supplied with weapons from Libya after it was liberated by the West from its dictator, Muammar Gadaffi.
And there is always Iran and its supposed nuclear weapons to worry about, even though Tehran signed an agreement in 2015 putting in place strict international oversight to prevent it from developing a bomb – until the US casually discarded the deal under pressure from Israel and chose not to replace it with anything else.
Braced for recession
Each of these threats was so grave it required an enormous expenditure of energy and treasure, until it had served its purpose of terrifying western publics into acquiescence. Invariably, the West’s meddling spawned a backlash that created another temporary enemy.
Now, like a predictable Hollywood sequel, the Cold War is back with a vengeance. Russia’s President Putin has a starring role. And the military-industrial complex is licking its lips with delight.
Just as with the financial crash nearly 15 years ago, when the public was required to tighten its belt through austerity policies, a crisis is providing ideal conditions for wealth to be redistributed upwards.
Like other officials, Nato’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has sounded the alarm about “civil unrest” this winter as prices across Europe soar, even while demanding public money be used to send yet more weapons to Ukraine.
The question is whether western publics will keep buying the narrative of an existential threat that can only be dealt with if they, rather than their leaders, dig deep into their pockets.
America creates, imposes, and enforces the sanctions against Russia, which are forcing up energy-prices in Europe, and are thereby driving Europe’s corporations to move to America, where taxes, safety-and-environmental regulations, and the rights of labor, are far lower, and so profits will be far higher for the investors. Furthermore, America can supply its own energy. Therefore, supply-chains are less dicey in the U.S. than in Europe. There is less and less reason now for a firm to be doing anything in Europe except selling to Europeans, who are becoming increasingly desperate to get whatever they can afford to buy, now that Russia, which had been providing the lowest-cost energy and other commodities, is being strangled out of European markets, by the sanctions. Money can move even when its owner can’t. The European public will now be left farther and farther behind as Europe’s wealth flees — mainly to America (whose Government had created this capital-flight of Europe’s wealth).
Europe’s leaders have cooperated with America’s leaders, to cause this European decline (by joining, instead of rejecting, America’s sanctions against Russia), but Germany’s companies can also enjoy significant benefits from relocating or expanding in America. Germany’s business daily newspaper, Handlelsblatt, reported, on September 25th, “More and more German companies are expanding their locations in North America: Washington attracts German companies with cheap energy and low taxes. This applies above all to the southern states. Berlin is alarmed – and wants to take countermeasures.” (Original: “Immer mehr deutsche Unternehmen bauen ihre Standorte in Nordamerika aus: Washington lockt deutsche Firmen mit billiger Energie und niedrigen Steuern. Das gilt vor allem für die Südstaaten. Berlin ist alarmiert – und will gegensteuern.”) It says that “Numerous German companies are planning to set up or expand their U.S. locations. … U.S. states such as Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma, show increasing interest” in offering special inducements for these firms to relocate, or to at least expand, their production in the U.S. For example, Pat Wilson, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, tells German companies that, “Our energy costs are low, and the networks are stable. … Companies coming to Georgia [from Germany] are reducing their carbon footprint.” Considering that one of the major reasons why Germany’s Government is squeezing-out Russia’s fuel-supplies (other than to ‘support democracy in Ukraine’, etc.) is that those Russian supplies are fossil fuels, an important benefit by which America can attract European firms (even on the basis of ‘Green’ arguments) is by advertising bigger ‘energy efficiency’ than in Europe — not necessarily in a strictly environmental sense, but definitely in the bottom-line sense, of lowered energy-costs, since America’s regulations are far less strict than in the EU.
Also on the 25th, the Irish Examiner bannered “European industry buckles under weight of soaring energy prices: Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest carmaker, warned last week that it could reallocate production out of Germany and eastern Europe if energy prices don’t come down.”
Also on the 25th, Oil Price dot com headlined “Europe Faces An Exodus Of Energy-Intensive Industries”, and mentioned especially that “the U.S. Steel giant ArcelorMittal said earlier this month that it would slash by half production at a steel mill in Germany and a unit at another plant, also in Germany. The company said it had based the decision on high gas prices. … ArcelorMittal earlier this year announced it had plans to expand a Texas operation.”
On September 26th, the New York Times bannered “Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It’s the 1970s: U.S. manufacturing is experiencing a rebound, with companies adding workers amid high consumer demand for products.” In total, “As of August this year, manufacturers had added back about 1.43 million jobs, a net gain of 67,000 workers above prepandemic levels.” And this is only the start of America’s re-industrialization and economic recovery, because the hemorrhaging of jobs from Europe has only just begun. These German firms are getting in on the ground floor in America, leaving Europe’s workers behind, to swim or sink on their own (the ones that can).
Also on September 26th, Thomas Fazi at unherd dot com headlined “The EU is sleepwalking into anarchy: Its sanctions are crippling the bloc’s working class”, and documented that this hollowing-out of Europe’s economies is being experienced the most by Europe’s lower economic classes, who are the least capable of dealing with it but are being abandoned by the higher-wealth group, the investors, who are sending their money abroad, like banana-republic oligarchs do, and who might easily relocate themselves there too.
On September 19th, the New York Times headlined “‘Crippling’ Energy Bills Force Europe’s Factories to Go Dark: Manufacturers are furloughing workers and shutting down lines because they can’t pay the gas and electric charges.” For example, a major employer in northern France, Arc International glass factory, doesn’t know whether they will survive: “Nicholas Hodler, the chief executive, surveyed the assembly line, shimmering blue with natural gas flames [gas that came from Russia and that now costs ten times as much as just a year ago]. For years, Arc had been powered by cheap energy that helped turn the company into the world’s largest producer of glass tableware. … But the impact of Russia’s abrupt cutoff of gas to Europe [forced by the sanctions] has doused the business with new risks. Energy prices have climbed so fast that Mr. Hodler has had to rewrite business forecasts six times in two months. Recently, he put a third of Arc’s 4,500 employees on partial furlough to save money. Four of the factory’s nine furnaces will be idled; the others will be switched from natural gas to diesel, a cheaper but more polluting fuel.” The “Green” Parties throughout Europe, such as in the persons of Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck, had led the European movement against importing Russian fuels, and could turn out to have led Europe actually to increase its carbon footprint, if the end result turns out to be to switch to more coal and diesel fuels, as they now are doing.
It could not have happened without the leaderships both in America and in Europe, who are leading the way for Europe’s economies to decline, and for America’s to boom from this — attracting more and more investors, and their investments, into America, from the U.S. regime’s vassal-nations (such as Germany and France), especially in the EU and NATO (these new banana-republics). The beneficiaries of all this are not only America’s weapons-manufacturing firms, such as Lockheed Martin, and extraction firms such as ExxonMobil, that are growing because of the plunge in Europe that’s due to Europe’s cutting itself off from the cheap energy that it had formerly enjoyed. The future is opening up again, for investors in the United States. It’s come-one, come-all, to investors from Europe, and leaving everyone else in Europe simply to sink, if they can’t get out.
After the Crash 