African Union Chairman and Senegal president Macky Sall meeting President Vladimir Putin, June 3, 2022 (Photo:Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS)
The U.S. drive to dominate creates self-inflicted wounds and self-imposed crises. It also creates suffering around the world with only the most servile vassal states willing to do what Washington wants.
The United States continues to shoot itself in the foot in its futile effort to damage the Russian economy. It is also asking other nations to do likewise and live with inflation, food scarcity, and rising energy prices. European countries have gone along with the sanctions which cut off their natural gas supplies from Russia when there is no logical alternative source for them. However, the rest of the world has refused to join in U.S. and EU condemnations or accept that they must live with privations caused by the reckless actions of other nations.
Of course, the ongoing state of delusion just continues the fantasy foreign policy decision making in Washington. The Countering Malign Russian Influences in Africa Act, HR 7311 , is just one example. But while the U.S. makes up nonsense as it goes along, the real problems that African nations have with the U.S. and their desire to have good relations with Russia go unaddressed.
Russian president Vladimir Putin recently welcomed Macky Sall, president of Senegal and Chairman of the African Union (AU) to a summit meeting. African countries are particularly hard hit by sanctions against Russia. They depend on Russia and Ukraine for supplies of wheat and other grains. When the sanctions regime removed Russia from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system, it impeded Africans ability to pay for commodities, including food and fertilizer. In a virtual meeting with the EU, Sall said, “When the SWIFT system is disrupted, it means that even if the products exist, payment becomes complicated, if not impossible.” In other words, Africa has to go hungry because of the U.S. obsession with an impossible mission of breaking up Russia or turning back the clock to the 1990s when compromised Russian leadership allowed their country to be open to international thievery.
African nations are not the only ones who face serious crises because of anti-Russian sanctions. The U.S. expects India and China to give up supplies of Russian oil and cause hardships in those countries. Biden will soon visit Saudi Arabia and ask for an increase in oil production, which of course means that OPEC nations will make less money. Of course, Sall’s visit to Russia could have been a wakeup call to Washington that policy changes were needed, instead they fell back on old strategies, warning African countries not to buy grain from Russia, calling it “stolen ” from Ukraine. At a moment of opportunity, the Biden administration just added insult to injury.
The United States is still the country with the world reserve currency and 800 military bases around the world. This power is never used for the benefit of humanity. The drive to dominate never ends, and people throughout the planet are expected to go along and suffer due to American whims.
That is what the U.S. told the people of Venezuela, who had the gall to elect and re-elect left wing governments. The Trump administration demanded “maximum pressure” against Venezuela, enacting harsh sanctions that killed 50,000 people, cutting off access to foreign markets and even choosing to recognize a phony president.
But a funny thing happened on the way to destroying Russia. The Europeans who go along like good little vassals still need oil, and according to reports the U.S. has decided to allow Venezuela to sell some of its resources to their puppets in their time of need. The U.S. whiplashes from trying to punish one country, to lifting their punishments on another, while telling others they have to starve and just be quiet about it.
While the Congressional Black Caucuses (CBC) takes part in fairy tales about “malign Russian influence,” Africans are taking matters into their own hands and talking directly with Putin. They know they must ignore U.S. dictates if they are to survive. Of course Russia will ultimately create its own payment system with African countries, just as it did with China.
Meanwhile Russian victories in Ukraine continue. The Ukrainian counter attacks that have become a staple of corporate media are mostly imaginary, more grist for the war propaganda mill. Joe Biden undermines himself by blurting out that Ukraine may have to negotiate a settlement, while also announcing that the U.S. will keep sending money and military equipment.
The U.S. is once again undermining itself. An empire in crisis will inevitably behave irrationally. It demands control but creates the circumstances which undo the very systems, such as SWIFT, that it depends upon. But there will be more meetings with Putin, and more countries saying that they will not undermine themselves because Washington asks them to.
Perhaps the maxim of the Brazilian thinker José Luís Fiori that “expansionism and war are two essential parts of the machine that produces power and wealth in the interstate system” has never been so pertinent and seems to be confirmed at the exact historical moment we are witnessing.
The extraordinary events that resulted from the Russian intervention in Ukraine, which began on February 24, leave indelible marks and confirm some of the perceptions that have already been mentioned in other articles by us.
The western-led international order is clearly being questioned in its hierarchy of power, and the war in Ukraine is a clear symptom of this questioning.
What really causes astonishment, however, is the perception that this war aims at something much bigger than it might seem at first sight, because it would not be a regional war, but a war of global proportions: a hegemonic war.
The paradigm shift represented by the Russian intervention in Ukraine consolidates, therefore, the path of a new international system, more fragmented, and where Western power is weakened. In this scenario, the tectonic plates of the international system are slowly moving in the face of the new, and unprecedented, world that is unfolding.
Therefore, like it or not, the elites of countries like Brazil, so subservient to the security strategy of the United States, are being pushed towards a consensual solution in the direction of the Eurasian experience through the BRICS. In this way, the brazilian military, so reactionary and obedient to Washington, is facing a new world, apparently already understood by the diplomatic tradition of “Itamaraty”, and even by the powerful Brazilian agrobusiness lobby.
In the opposite direction, the blindness of the European elites causes astonishment by feeding a game that plunges Europe back into what it has always been: the great stage of military interstate competition of the last 500 years.
Therefore, taking this terrible premise into consideration, the armistice that made possible the creation of the European Union, as well as the common currency, would have been a mere interregnum of peace, until the next war.
Retaking its tragic place in the classical international system, Europe is once again the scene of the old theater of death, and the maxim that “peace is almost always a truce which lasts for the time imposed by the expansive compulsion of the winners, and the need for revenge of the losers,” has never been more apposite.
In this context, the german humiliation represented by the American veto of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline is paradigmatic. On February 7, in the middle of the White House, and even before the Russian intervention in Ukraine, Joe Biden publicly disavows the newly appointed german chancellor Olaf Scholz, stating categorically that the Nord Stream II pipeline would be stopped.
This attitude could be considered the trigger for Russian intervention and the opening of Pandora’s Box for the new world that is opening. Besides representing, in symbolic terms, the humiliation of Germany as a sovereign country, it consolidates the definitive “Coup d’Etat” in the European integration project.
With Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky being a kind of spokesman of a script written in Washington – or, who knows, Hollywood – the repeated attacks on European leaders who have worked so hard for the normalization of Russian-European Union relations, as is the case of the recent attack on former chancellor Angela Merkel, indicate that the instruments of fourth generation war, already used by the United States in other regions of the planet, are intensifying in the heart of the western alliance.
Not only the maintenance, but the deepening of the continuous and unlimited reproduction and expansion of the American military empire is a reality that became even clearer after the first Russian tank entered Ukrainian territory, even if this meant destabilizing, or even destroying, old and loyal allies.
In this sense, the old premise carried by many scholars of the “realist” school of International Relations, as well as by great thinkers of the World System, that the concentration of global power in a single state would be an essential condition for lasting world peace, falls to the ground.
The “Hyperpower Paradox” is confirmed as a slap in the face of the enormous theoretical consensus developed since the mid-1970s of the last century.
In other words, since the first minute of the US bombing of Iraq in 1991, which followed the 48 military interventions of the 1990s, and the 24 interventions in the first two decades of the 21st century – which in turn culminated in 100,000 bombings around the globe – the International System is immersed in a somber process of permanent, or infinite, war, which contradicts the Kantian utopia of perpetual peace reflected in the idea of hegemonic stability.
Thus, it was a mistake to consider that the unipolar global power that emerged with the victory in the cold war could exercise its hegemony in the name of peace and global stability, assuming, therefore, a responsible leadership and in the name of a great global governance.
On the contrary, what we have witnessed over the last 30 years is the escalation of interstate competition, with the reaction of other states to the insane and inconsequential process of power expansion carried out by the American military empire.
As a result, we find ourselves before a world that seemed to belong only to the history books; where the national interests of the great powers return with the force that, as it turns out, they never stopped having, but were only dormant.
This new (old) geopolitics of nations, therefore, leaves its clearest mark with what Russia imposes in its intervention in Ukraine: contesting the primacy that only westerners have the legitimacy to impose their will through war.
This is the novelty that shakes the structures of the International System.
In the face of this imminent war of global proportions, resulting from the Russian challenge and the intensification of the arms race – with the alarming return of Germany and Japan to the game – we are inexorably heading for a deepening of the interstate systemic chaos, as well as the escalation of systemic social conflict, particularly in Europe.
As in other moments in the history of the World System, Europe is once again the nerve center of the global power struggle. And as in other tragic moments in history, the behavior of European leaders is once again irrational; in the midst of a negative-sum game. The Europeans lose.
Fabio Reis Vianna, lives in Rio de Janeiro, is a bachelor of laws (LL.B), MA student in International Relations at the University of Évora (Portugal), writer and geopolitical analyst. He currently maintains a column on international politics at the centennial Brazilian newspaper Monitor Mercantil.
The stunning spectacle of the European Union (EU) committing slow motion hara-kiri is something for the ages. Like a cheap Kurosawa remake, the movie is actually about the US-detonated demolition of the EU, complete with the rerouting of some key Russian commodities exports to the US at the expense of Europeans.
It helps to have a 5th columnist actress strategically placed – in this case astonishingly incompetent European Commission head Ursula von der Lugen – with her vociferous announcement of a crushing new sanctions package: Russian ships banned from EU ports; road transportation companies from Russia and Belarus prohibited from entering the EU; no more coal imports (over 4.4 billion euros a year).
In practice, that translates into Washington shaking down its wealthiest western clients/puppets. Russia, of course, is too powerful to directly challenge militarily, and the US badly needs some of its key exports, especially minerals. So, the Americans will instead nudge the EU into imposing ever-increasing sanctions that will willfully collapse their national economies, while allowing the US to scoop everything up.
Cue to the coming catastrophic economic consequences felt by Europeans in their daily life (but not by the wealthiest five percent): inflation devouring salaries and savings; next winter energy bills packing a mean punch; products disappearing from supermarkets; holiday bookings almost frozen. France’s Le Petit Roi Emmanuel Macron – perhaps facing a nasty electoral surprise – has even announced: “food stamps like in WWII are possible.”
We have Germany facing the returning ghost of Weimar hyperinflation. BlackRock President Rob Kapito said, in Texas,“for the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want.” African farmers are unable to afford fertilizer at all this year, reducing agricultural production by an amount capable of feeding 100 million people.
Zoltan Poszar, former NY Fed and US Treasury guru, current Credit Suisse grand vizir, has been on a streak, stressing how commodity reserves – and, here, Russia is unrivaled – will be an essential feature of what he calls Bretton Woods III (although, what’s being designed by Russia, China, Iran and the Eurasia Economic Union is a post-Bretton Woods).
Poszar remarks that wars, historically, are won by those who have more food and energy supplies, in the past to power horses and soldiers; today to feed soldiers and fuel tanks and fighter jets. China, incidentally, has amassed large stocks of virtually everything.
Poszar notes how our current Bretton Woods II system has a deflationary impulse (globalization, open trade, just-in-time supply chains) while Bretton Woods 3 will provide an inflationary impulse (de-globalization, autarky, hoarding of raw materials) of supply chains and extra military spending to be able to protect what will remain of seaborne trade.
The implications are of course overwhelming. What’s implicit, ominously, is that this state of affairs may even lead to WWIII.
Rublegas or American LNG?
The Russian roundtable Valdai Club has conducted an essential expert discussion on what we at The Cradle have defined as Rublegas – the real geoeconomic game-changer at the heart of the post-petrodollar era. Alexander Losev, a member of the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, offered the contours of the Big Picture. But it was up to Alexey Gromov, Chief Energy Director of the Institute of Energy and Finance, to come up with crucial nitty-gritty.
Russia, so far, was selling 155 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe each year. The EU rhetorically promises to get rid of it by 2027, and reduce supply by the end of 2022 by 100 billion cubic meters. Gromov asked “how,” and remarked, “any expert has no answer. Most of Russia’s natural gas is shipped over pipelines. This cannot simply be replaced by Liquified Natural Gas (LNG).”
The risible European answer has been “start saving,” as in “prepare to be worse off” and “reduce the temperature in households.” Gromov noted how, in Russia, “22 to 25 degrees in winter is the norm. Europe is promoting 16 degrees as ‘healthy’, and wearing sweaters at night.”
The EU won’t be able to get the gas it needs from Norway or Algeria (which is privileging domestic consumption). Azerbaijan would be able to provide at best 10 billion cubic meters a year, but “that will take 2 or 3 years” to happen.
Gromov stressed how “there’s no surplus in the market today for US and Qatar LNG,” and how prices for Asian customers are always higher. The bottom line is that “by the end of 2022, Europe won’t be able to significantly reduce” what it buys from Russia: “they might cut by 50 billion cubic meters, maximum.” And prices in the spot market will be higher – at least $1,300 per cubic meter.
An important development is that “Russia changed the logistical supply chains to Asia already.” That applies for gas and oil as well: “You can impose sanctions if there’s a surplus in the market. Now there’s a shortage of at least 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. We’ll be sending our supplies to Asia – with a discount.” As it stands, Asia is already paying a premium, from 3 to 5 dollars more per barrel of oil.
On oil shipments, Gromov also commented on the key issue of insurance: “Insurance premiums are higher. Before Ukraine, it was all based on the Free on Board (FOB) system. Now buyers are saying ‘we don’t want to take the risk of taking your cargo to our ports.’ So they are applying the Cost, Insurance and Freight (CIF) system, where the seller has to insure and transport the cargo. That of course impacts revenues.”
An absolutely key issue for Russia is how to make the transition to China as its key gas customer. It’s all about the Power of Siberia 2, a new 2600-km pipeline originating in the Russian Bovanenkovo and Kharasavey gas fields in Yamal, in northwest Siberia – which will reach full capacity only in 2024. And, first, the interconnector through Mongolia must be built – “we need 3 years to build this pipeline” – so everything will be in place only around 2025.
On the Yamal pipeline, “most of the gas goes to Asia. If the Europeans don’t buy anymore we can redirect.” And then there’s the Arctic LNG 2 project – which is even larger than Yamal: “the first phase should be finished soon, it’s 80 percent ready.” An extra problem may be posed by the Russian “Unfriendlies” in Asia: Japan and South Korea. LNG infrastructure produced in Russia still depends on foreign technologies.
That’s what leads Gromov to note that, “the model of mobilization-based economy is not so good.” But that’s what Russia needs to deal with at least in the short to medium term.
The positives are that the new paradigm will allow “more cooperation within the BRICS (the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that have been meeting annually since 2009);” the expansion of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC); and more interaction and integration with “Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Iran.”
Only in terms of Iran and Russia, swaps in the Caspian Sea are already in the works, as Iran produces more than it needs, and is set to increase cooperation with Russia in the framework of their strengthened strategic partnership.
Hypersonic geoeconomics
It was up to Chinese energy expert Fu Chengyu to offer a concise explanation of why the EU drive of replacing Russian gas with American LNG is, well, a pipe dream. Essentially the US offer is “too limited and too costly.”
Fu Chengyu showed how a lengthy, tricky process depends on four contracts: between the gas developer and the LNG company; between the LNG company and the buyer company; between the LNG buyer and the cargo company (which builds vessels); and between the buyer and the end user.
“Each contract,” he pointed out, “takes a long time to finish. Without all these signed contracts, no party will invest – be it investment on infrastructure or gas field development.” So actual delivery of American LNG to Europe assumes all these interconnected resources are available – and moving like clockwork.
Fu Chengyu’s verdict is stark: this EU obsession on ditching Russian gas will provoke “an impact on global economic growth, and recession. They are pushing their own people – and the world. In the energy sector, we will all be harmed.”
It was quite enlightening to juxtapose the coming geoeconomic turbulence – the EU obsession in bypassing Russian gas and the onset of Rublegas – with the real reasons behind Operation Z in Ukraine, completely obscured by western media and analysts.
A US Deep State old pro, now retired, and quite familiar with the inner workings of the old OSS, the CIA precursor, all the way to the neocon dementia of today, provided some sobering insights:
“The whole Ukraine issue is over hypersonic missiles that can reach Moscow in less than four minutes. The US wants them there, in Poland, Romania, Baltic States, Sweden, Finland. This is in direct violation of the agreements in 1991 that NATO will not expand in Eastern Europe. The US does not have hypersonic missiles now but should – in a year or two. This is an existential threat to Russia. So they had to go into the Ukraine to stop this. Next will be Poland and Romania where launchers have been built in Romania and are being built in Poland.”
From a completely different geopolitical perspective, what’s really telling is that his analysis happens to dovetail with Zoltan Poszar’s geoeconomics: “The US and NATO are totally belligerent. This presents a real danger to Russia. The idea that nuclear war is unthinkable is a myth. If you look at the firebombing of Tokyo against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more people died in Tokyo than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These cities were rebuilt. The radiation goes away and life can restart. The difference between firebombing and nuclear bombing is only efficiency. NATO provocations are so extreme, Russia had to place their nuclear missiles on standby alert. This is a gravely serious matter. But the US ignored it.”
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.
The sharp rise in natural gas price in Europe is entirely due to Western hysteria and stupidity. According to the EU’s own data, Europe is dependent on Russia for 46% of its natural gas. In the face of such extraordinary dependency on Russian energy, the moronic European “leaders” are falling all over themselves imposing impotent sanctions on Russia. The idiotic German Chancellor actually punished the German people for Russia’s recognition of the Donbass republics by “cancelling” the Nord 2 pipeline. This foolish act was a prime reason for the hysteria that has caused a sharp rise in prices. The price rise helps Russia–if she continues to supply Europe with energy. It hurts Europe and whoever financed the Nord 2 pipeline. If the pipeline sits not operating, it cannot produce a revenue stream to service the capital invested in the pipeline. I do not know who financed the pipeline. If it was Germany, then the chancellor’s sanctions on Russia have twice injured the Germans.
The EU’s 46% dependency on Russian natural gas is independent of the Nord 2 pipeline, the opening of which has been on hold due to Washington’s pressure on Germany. Therefore, the rise in gas price is not due to a reduction of supply, but due to speculation that Russia will reduce or cut off supply. Europe is served by other pipelines. What if Russia responds to the EU’s “sanctions” by closing the pipelines that deliver 46% of Europe’s natural gas? What would Europe’s fate be?
Russia has accepted sanctions without replying in kind. Perhaps it is time for Russia to impose sanctions to teach the West a lesson.
In my opinion there is no reason for Russia to deplete its own energy resources by sharing them with its European enemies. Perhaps the Russian government’s idea was that energy sales would be a source of foreign exchange earnings and that providing Europe with energy was in the interest of good relations with the West.
Now that the West has demonstrated that the West has no interest in good relations with Russia there is no point in the Russian energy sales. As I pointed out ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/02/22/russia-and-china-should-go-their-own-way/ ) Russia has no need for foreign exchange. The Russian central bank can finance Russian economic development with no need of foreign involvement. Russia’s holdings of instruments denominated in dollars or euros would just be confiscated by sanctions.
To summarize: Europe brought the high energy price on itself with its thoughtless sanctions; the high prices benefit Russia and hurt Europe; Russia should consider turning off all natural gas to Europe and conserve its energy source for its own and China’s development.
Europe is nothing but a thorn in Russia’s side, a collection of Washington’s puppets. Russia owes Europe nothing.
And so, as 2021 goose-steps toward its fanatical finish, it is time for my traditional year-end wrap-up. It’s “The Year of the Ox” in the Chinese zodiac, but I’m christening it “The Year of the New Normal Fascist.”
But this isn’t just a story about New Normal Germany, or New Normal Europe, or New Normal Australia. And it isn’t just a story about mass hysteria, or an “overreaction” to a corona virus. The “New Normal” is a global GloboCap co-production, a multi-trillion-dollar co-production, which has been in development for quite some time, and this year has gone exactly to script.
Given all the drama over the past 12 months, it’s easy to forget that the year began with the occupation of Washington DC by thousands of US (i.e., GloboCap) forces in the wake of the “Terrorist Assault on the Capitol” (a/k/a the “January 6 Insurrection,” or the “Attempted Coup,” or some such nonsense) carried out by a few hundred totally unarmed Donald Trump supporters, who were allegedly intent on “overthrowing the government” and “destroying Democracy” with … well, their bare hands.
This was the long-awaited “Return to Normal” spectacle that had been in the pipeline for the previous four years, the public humiliation of the Unauthorized President (and the “populists” who put him in office) and the GloboCap show of force that followed. Here’s how I described it back in January:
“In other words, GloboCap is teaching us a lesson. I don’t know how much clearer they could make it. They just installed a new puppet president, who can’t even simulate mental acuity, in a locked-down, military-guarded ceremony which no one was allowed to attend, except for a few members of the ruling classes. They got some epigone of Albert Speer to convert the Mall (where the public normally gathers) into a ‘field of flags,’ symbolizing ‘unity.’ They even did the Nazi Lichtdom thing. To hammer the point home, they got Lady Gaga to dress up as a Hunger Games character with a ‘Mockingjay’ brooch and sing the National Anthem. They broadcast this spectacle to the entire world.”
As I assume is obvious to everyone by now, the “Return to Normal” was a “Return to the New Normal,” which the global-capitalist ruling establishment was already imposing on the entire world. The message couldn’t possibly be clearer. As Arnold Schwarzenegger succinctly put it, the message is, “screw your freedom.” The message is, shut up and toe the fucking line. The message is, show me your fucking papers. Use the fucking pronouns. Eat the fucking bugs. Get the fucking “vaccinations.” Do not fucking ask us “how many.” The answer is, “as many as we fucking tell you.”
The message is, there will be no more unauthorized presidents, no more leaving the European Union, no more “populist” rebellions against the global hegemony of global-capitalism and its soul-crushing, valueless “woke” ideology. GloboCap is done playing grab-ass. They announced that back in March of 2020. They informed us in unmistakable terms that our lives were about to change, forever. They branded and advertised this change as “the New Normal,” in case we were … you know, cognitively challenged. They did not hide it. They wanted us to understand exactly what was coming, a global-capitalist version of totalitarianism, in which we will all be happy little fascist “consumers” showing each other our “compliance certificates” in order to be allowed to live our lives.
I’d like to end on an optimistic note, because, Jesus, this fascism business is depressing. So I’ll just mention that, as you have probably noticed, more and more people are now “waking up,” or relocating their intestinal fortitude, and finally speaking out against “vaccine” mandates, and “vaccination passes,” and social segregation, and all the rest of the fascist New Normal program. I intend to encourage this “awakening” vociferously. I hope that those — and you know who you are — who have been reporting the facts and opposing the New Normal, and have been ridiculed, demonized, gaslighted, censored, slandered, threatened, and otherwise abused, on a daily basis for 21 months, as our more “prominent” colleagues — and you know who you are — sat by in silence, or took part in the Hate Fest, will join me in applauding and welcoming these “prominent” colleagues to the fight … finally.
Oh, and, if you’re one of those “prominent” colleagues and you start beating your chest and sounding off like you’ve just rediscovered investigative journalism and are now leading the charge against the New Normal for your YouTube viewers or your Substack readers, please understand if we get a little cranky. Speaking for myself, yes, it’s been a bit stressful, doing your job and taking the shit for you out here in the trenches for the past 21 months. Not to mention how it has virtually killed my comedy … and I’m supposed to be a political satirist.
But there I go, getting all “angry” again … whatever. As the doctor said, “buy the ticket, take the ride.” And it’s the season of joy, love, and forgiveness, and publicly crucifying dissidents, and paranoia, and mass hysteria, and persecuting “Unvaccinated” relatives, and, OK, I might have had one too many. Happy holidays to one and all, except, of course, to the New Normal fascists, especially the ones that are torturing the children. God, forgive me, but I hope they fucking choke.
Blinken is staying close to his boss during the whirlwind tour, because Biden is liable to spin out of control and reap an embarrassing collapse.
It’s a big ask for a frail 78-year-old U.S. president to rally the world around a series of myths and falsehoods. Biden flies to Europe this week to galvanize allies under strong American leadership of supposed shared “democratic values” in a “historic confrontation” with the “autocracies” of China and Russia.
President Joe Biden’s worldview is so disconnected from reality that it is going to prove difficult mentally for him to consistently and coherently make the case over a series of summits in the next week.
That’s why he has his more youthful Secretary of State Antony Blinken (59) tagging along when Biden meets G7 leaders in England on June 11-13, followed by a NATO summit on June 14 in Brussels as well as top-level discussions with European Union leaders. After all that, Blinken is “to participate” in the face-to-face meeting between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 16 in Geneva, according to the U.S. State Department.
The latter detail in the busy itinerary – Biden’s first overseas trip since taking office in January – is the most salient. It is unprecedented that the U.S. foreign secretary should “participate” in what was previously billed as a one-on-one meeting between the American and Russian leaders. There is no indication so far from Russian media reports that Sergei Lavrov – Blinken’s counterpart – is to take part in the Geneva summit.
What this unusual arrangement suggests is that Biden is not up to the task of dealing with Putin in an equal setting. The American president’s health and mental acuity have been under the media spotlight after several public gaffes in which Biden has forgotten names of his aides and has seemed befuddled in recalling details. The Democrat-supporting U.S. media have been criticized for giving Biden an easy time from their soft approach towards the president.
This raises further questions about Biden’s health condition when he has to have his top diplomat at his side during the forthcoming summits, especially the final one with Putin whom the American president disparaged previously as a “killer”.
It is all the more taxing on Biden given that his mission is more about contriving a narrative than actually engaging with reality. The contrived narrative is the attempt to rally European and other Western allies under American leadership against “autocratic adversaries” China and Russia. In other words, fabricating a new Cold War. The trouble is the fabrication is based on myths, falsehoods, smears, delusions, and outright lies. All in all, that’s a tall order for a president who tends to get people and names mixed up and who appears to struggle at finishing press conferences with coherent thoughts.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post before his big tour of Europe, Biden presented his mission thus: “My trip to Europe is about America rallying the world’s democracies”.
In a familiar mantra of the 46th president, he demarcated the world into two camps: one under “strong American leadership” with “shared democratic values”, and the other purportedly represented by rival “autocracies” of China and Russia. This is nothing but the recreation of a Cold War whereby Washington polarizes the world into hostile entities in order to give itself a position of “moral leadership” as a guise for imperialist hegemony.
To accept this mythical framing of the world, then it is necessary to demonize the designated adversaries. Lamentably, the European allies of America (more accurately, “vassals”) are all too credulous in accepting the provocative fantasies.
Nevertheless, sometimes self-interests intrude and the Europeans find the American depiction of the world too much to bear. Hence, there is pushback from the European Union on Biden’s attempts to sabotage the economic partnership between the 27-member bloc and China. There are limits to which the EU will go in damaging the landmark Comprehensive Investment Agreement it signed with Beijing in December.
Likewise, Germany is not tolerating any attempts by the Biden administration to scupper the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia which will be vital for fuelling German industry. Again, self-interest kicks in to bring mundane common sense into conflict with the American mythology of a Cold War.
Notwithstanding, Biden’s itinerary is purposed to orchestrate an adversarial transatlantic position towards Russia and China.
In his Washington Post op-ed, Biden pointedly outlines how his first meetings are aimed at drumming up American leadership pitted against Moscow.
The president wrote: “So, when I meet with Vladimir Putin in Geneva, it will be after high-level discussions with friends, partners and allies who see the world through the same lens as the United States, and with whom we have renewed our connections and shared purpose. We are standing united to address Russia’s challenges to European security, starting with its aggression in Ukraine, and there will be no doubt about the resolve of the United States to defend our democratic values, which we cannot separate from our interests.”
Note the inane assertion as if fact that Russia is threatening Europe’s security and is aggressing Ukraine, when in reality it is the U.S. and NATO powers that are weaponizing a rogue regime in Kiev against Russia. The U.S. has supplied $2 billion in weaponry to Kiev since the Western-backed coup d’état in 2014 and NATO forces are on the ground in Ukraine. It is NATO forces building up offensive power around Russia, not the other way around.
Biden threw in a few bromides such as “the United States does not seek conflict” with Russia, and he mentioned his extension of the New START treaty back in February (preventing an arms race is hardly a claim to virtue). But these platitudes aside, Biden went on to make lame accusations about Russia’s “interference in our democratic elections”.
It can be confidently posited that President Putin will demolish the baseless claims that Biden is attempting to put forward in Geneva. It will be an intellectual slamming match, not simply due to Putin’s formidable command of detail and argumentation, but largely because the American side has an untenable case owing to its fundamental fallacies.
Let’s just say, the American case against Russia and China is a weak charade of myths and lies, full of hypocrisy and contradiction. It would be hard enough for an agile mind to maintain the implausible narrative that underpins America’s bid for global hegemony. It’s all the more difficult for an aging president to keep up the performance.
That’s why Blinken is staying close to his boss during the whirlwind tour. Because Biden is liable to spin out of control and reap an embarrassing collapse.
The State Department said Biden will be coming from his meeting with allies with “the wind at his back” as he goes on to challenge Putin. More accurately, it should be said, with Blinken propping up the president by reminding him of the dubious script.
Washington runs its global air piracy with the full, silent complicity of European governments. If the Europeans expressed opposition to that global piracy then they might just have a bit of moral authority to comment on the Belarus incident.
There were volcanic eruptions of outrage and condemnation from American and European states after Belarus forced a commercial airliner to land in order to arrest a wanted opposition activist.
Western media headlines were dominated with expressions of “shock” and fury over what was labeled a “hijacking”, “air piracy” and an “act of state terrorism”.
European leaders who were meeting at a summit on Monday called for renewed sanctions on Belarus. U.S. President Joe Biden is being urged to raise the air incident with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin owing to Moscow’s friendly relations with Belarus, a former Soviet republic.
The Western reaction is hysterical and hypocritical. Admittedly, what took place in Belarusian airspace was irregular and possibly illegal. But the United States and European allies are in no position to sermonize about “hijacking” and “state terrorism”.
The Ryanair flight from Athens was heading for the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on Sunday. As it transited Belarusian airspace, the pilots were ordered by air traffic control to divert to Minsk. A suspected onboard bomb was cited. But that seems to have been a ploy. No device was found, and the plane departed from Minsk arriving in Vilnius six hours later.
It was opposition activist Roman Protasevich whom the Belarusian authorities wanted. He was taken off the plane in Minsk and into detention along with a female companion. Protasevich (26) has been a key player in organizing anti-government protests in Belarus since a disputed election in August 2020 which saw President Alexander Lukashenko re-elected. The Belarusian authorities claim that their country is being subjected to a “color revolution” orchestrated by the United States and European allies.
Protasevich was living in exile in Lithuania and Poland before the street protests took off. He set up an opposition media channel that has fomented demonstrations and has been accused of spreading false information damaging the Belarusian authorities. The U.S. government-funded propaganda service Radio Free Europe is associated with the Belarusian protests and several of its figures are based in the Baltic states and Poland which Minsk accuses of foreign interference in its internal affairs.
Belarus had requested those European states to hand over exile opposition figures on the basis of international arrest warrants. The exiles like Protasevich have been charged with inciting violence and could face lengthy jail sentences.
The refusal by European states to respond to Belarusian arrest warrants was no doubt what prompted Minsk to take the controversial step of forcing the airliner to land.
What should be really shocking, however, is the blatant double standards being applied by Western states. Belarus is vilified as the “last dictatorship in Europe” and the airline incident is described as an “unprecedented” violation of international aviation.
How short is the memory of the Americans and Europeans. In July 2013, the private jet of Bolivian President Evo Morales was hijacked by European states on the orders of Washington. Morales was flying back from an energy conference in Russia when France, Italy, Spain and Portugal suddenly closed off their airspace. The Americans suspected that the NSA/CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden was onboard Morales’ plane. The pilot was forced to land in Vienna where Austrian security agents searched the jet. Of course, Snowden was not on it and Morales was eventually allowed to continue his journey after several hours’ delay.
South American nations condemned the act of “state terrorism” and the violation of Bolivia’s sovereignty. It was a flagrant act of banditry perpetrated by the United States and its European minions. Then French President Francois Hollande offered a pathetic apology subsequently.
Another breach of aviation regulations that was met with silence from Washington and Europe was the forced landing of a Belarusian airliner in October 2016 by Ukraine. The plane had taken off from Kiev but was ordered to return under threat of fighter jets being scrambled. Onboard was Armenian journalist Armen Martirosyan who worked for Russian media critical of the Kiev regime. The journalist was briefly detained in Kiev before being allowed to travel on to Minsk. Somehow the American and European backers of the Ukrainian regime did not find that incident worthy of “outrage” and headlines screaming with condemnation.
If we are genuinely interested in condemning air piracy then the European governments should be far more concerned by the systematic abuse of their airspace by the American CIA and its “extraordinary rendition” program. Countless “terrorist suspects” unlawfully kidnapped by American military forces operating illegally all over the world have been transited covertly through European airports on their way to Guantanamo Bay or some black site for torture.
Washington runs its global air piracy with the full, silent complicity of European governments. Now perhaps if the Europeans expressed opposition to that global piracy then they might just have a bit of moral authority to comment on the Belarus incident. But the Europeans are craven in their support for American aviation hijacking and violations. So their selective protestations are null and void.
After the Crash 