Tag Archives: US Foreign Policy

How “Food Shortages” & Economic Collapse Protects the Status Quo

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Engineered Food & Poverty Crises Secure Continued US Dominance

By Colin Todhunter

Source: Off-Guardian

In March 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.

Guterres said food, fuel and fertiliser prices were skyrocketing with supply chains being disrupted and added this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.

According to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, there is currently sufficient food and no risk of global food supply shortages.

We see an abundance of food but skyrocketing prices. The issue is not food shortage but speculation on food commodities and the manipulation of an inherently flawed global food system that serves the interests of corporate agribusiness traders and suppliers of inputs at the expense of people’s needs and genuine food security.

The war in Ukraine is a geopolitical trade and energy conflict. It is largely about the US engaging in a proxy war against Russia and Europe by attempting to separate Europe from Russia and imposing sanctions on Russia to harm Europe and make it further dependent on the US.

Economist Professor Michael Hudson recently stated that ultimately the war is against Europe and Germany. The purpose of the sanctions is to prevent Europe and other allies from increasing their trade and investment with Russia and China.

Neoliberal policies since the 1980s have hollowed out the US economy. With its productive base severely weakened, the only way for the US to maintain hegemony is to undermine China and Russia and weaken Europe.

Hudson says that, beginning a year ago, Biden and the US neocons attempted to block Nord Stream 2 and all (energy) trade with Russia so that the US could monopolise it itself.

Despite the ‘green agenda’ currently being pushed, the US still relies on fossil fuel-based energy to project its power abroad. Even as Russia and China move away from the dollar, the control and pricing of oil and gas (and resulting debt) in dollars remains key to US attempts to retain hegemony.

The US knew beforehand how sanctions on Russia would play out. They would serve to divide the world into two blocks and fuel a new cold war with the US and Europe on one side with China and Russia being the two main countries on the other.

US policymakers knew Europe would be devastated by higher energy and food prices and food importing countries in the Global South would suffer due to rising costs.

It is not the first time the US has engineered a major crisis to maintain global hegemony and a spike in key commodity prices that effectively trap countries into dependency and debt.

In 2009, Andrew Gavin Marshall described how in 1973 – not long after coming off the gold standard – Henry Kissinger was integral to manipulating events in the Middle East (the Arab-Israeli war and the ‘energy crisis’). This served to continue global hegemony for the US, which had virtually bankrupted itself due to its war in Vietnam and had been threatened by the economic rise of Germany and Japan.

Kissinger helped secure huge OPEC oil price rises and thus sufficient profits for Anglo-American oil companies that had over-leveraged themselves in North Sea oil. He also cemented the petrodollar system with the Saudis and subsequently placed African nations, which had embarked on a path of (oil-based) industrialisation, on a treadmill of dependency and debt due to the spike in oil prices.

It is widely believed that the high-priced oil policy was aimed at hurting Europe, Japan and the developing world.

Today, the US is again waging a war on vast swathes of humanity, whose impoverishment is intended to ensure they remain dependent on the US and the financial institutions it uses to create dependency and indebtedness – the World Bank and IMF.

Hundreds of millions will experience (are experiencing) poverty and hunger due to US policy. These people (the ones that the US and Pfizer et al supposedly cared so much about and wanted to get a jab into each of their arms) are regarded with contempt and collateral damage in the great geopolitical game.

Contrary to what many believe, the US has not miscalculated the outcome of the sanctions placed on Russia. Michael Hudson notes energy prices are increasing, benefiting US oil companies and US balance of payments as an energy exporter. Moreover, by sanctioning Russia, the aim is to curtail Russian exports (of wheat and gas used for fertiliser production) and for agricultural commodity prices to therefore increase. This too will also benefit the US as an agricultural exporter.

This is how the US seeks to maintain dominance over other countries.

Current policies are designed to create a food and debt crisis for poorer nations especially. The US can use this debt crisis to force countries to continue privatising and selling off their public assets in order to service the debts to pay for the higher oil and food imports.

This imperialist strategy comes on the back of ‘COVID relief’ loans which have served a similar purpose. In 2021, an Oxfam review of IMF COVID-19 loans showed that 33 African countries were encouraged to pursue austerity policies. The world’s poorest countries are due to pay $43 billion in debt repayments in 2022, which could otherwise cover the costs of their food imports.

Oxfam and Development Finance International have also revealed that 43 out of 55 African Union member states face public expenditure cuts totalling $183 billion over the next five years.

The closure of the world economy in March 2020 (‘lockdown’) served to trigger an unprecedented process of global indebtedness.

Conditionalities mean national governments will have to capitulate to the demands of Western financial institutions. These debts are largely dollar-denominated, helping to strengthen the US dollar and US leverage over countries.

The US is creating a new world order and needs to ensure much of the Global South remains in its orbit of influence rather than ending up in the Russian and especially Chinese camp and its belt road initiative for economic prosperity.

Post-COVID, this is what the war in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and the engineered food and energy crisis are really about.

Back in 2014, Michael Hudson stated that the US has been able to dominate most of the Global South through agriculture and control of the food supply. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has transformed countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food crops.

The oil sector and agribusiness have been joined at the hip as part of US geopolitical strategy.

The dominant notion of ‘food security’ promoted by global agribusiness players like Cargill, Archer Daniel Midland, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus and supported by the World Bank is based on the ability of people and nations to purchase food. It has nothing to do with self-sufficiency and everything to do with global markets and supply chains controlled by giant agribusiness players.

Along with oil, the control of global agriculture has been a linchpin of US geopolitical strategy for many decades. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of oil-rich interests and poorer nations adopted agri-capital’s chemical- and oil-dependent model of agriculture that required loans for inputs and related infrastructure development.

It entailed trapping nations into a globalised food system that relies on export commodity mono-cropping to earn foreign exchange linked to sovereign dollar-denominated debt repayment and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives. What we have seen has been the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas.

And what we have also seen is countries being placed on commodity crop production treadmills. The need for foreign currency (US dollars) to buy oil and food entrenches the need to increase cash crop production for exports.

The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) set out the trade regime necessary for this type of corporate dependency that masquerades as ‘global food security’.

This is explained in a July 2022 report by Navdanya International – Sowing Hunger, Reaping Profits – A Food Crisis by Design – which notes international trade laws and trade liberalisation has benefited large agribusiness and continue to piggyback off the implementation of the Green Revolution.

The report states that US lobby and trade negotiations were headed by former Cargill Investors Service CEO and Goldman Sachs executive – Dan Amstutz – who in 1988 was appointed chief negotiator for the Uruguay round of GATT by Ronald Reagan. This helped to enshrine the interests of US agribusiness into the new rules that would govern the global trade of commodities and subsequent waves of industrial agriculture expansion.

The AoA removed protection of farmers from global market prices and fluctuations. At the same time, exceptions were made for the US and the EU to continue subsidising their agriculture to the advantage of large agribusiness.

Navdanya notes:

“With the removal of state tariff protections and subsidies, small farmers were left destitute. The result has been a disparity in what farmers earn for what they produce, versus what consumers pay, with farmers earning less and consumers paying more as agribusiness middlemen take the biggest cut.”

‘Food security’ has led to the dismantling of food sovereignty and food self-sufficiency for the sake of global market integration and corporate power.

We need look no further than India to see this in action. The now repealed recent farm legislation in India was aimed at giving the country the ‘shock therapy’ of neoliberalism that other countries have experienced.

The ‘liberalising’ legislation was in part aimed at benefiting US agribusiness interests and trapping India into food insecurity by compelling the country to eradicate its food buffer stocks – so vital to the nation’s food security – and then bid for food on a volatile global market from agribusiness traders with its foreign reserves.

The Indian government was only prevented from following this route by the massive, year-long farmer protest that occurred.

The current crisis is also being fuelled by speculation. Navdanya cites an investigation by Lighthouse Reports and The Wire to show how speculation by investment firms, banks and hedge funds on agricultural commodities are profiting off rising food prices. Commodity future prices are no longer linked to actual supply and demand in the market but are based purely on speculation.

Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus and investment funds like Black Rock and Vanguard continue to make huge financial killings, resulting in the price of bread almost doubling in some poorer countries.

The cynical ‘solution’ promoted by global agribusiness to the current food crisis is to urge farmers to produce more and seek better yields as if the crisis is that of underproduction. It means more chemical inputs, more genetic engineering techniques and suchlike, placing more farmers in debt and trapped in dependency.

It is the same old industry lie that the world will starve without its products and requires more of them. The reality is that the world is facing hunger and rising food prices because of the system big agribusiness has instituted.

And it is the same old story – pushing out new technologies in search of a problem and then using crises as justification for their rollout while ignoring the underlying reasons for such crises.

Navdanya sets out possible solutions to the current situation based on principles of agroecology, short supply lines, food sovereignty and economic democracy – policies that have been described at length in many articles and official reports over the years.

As for fighting back against the onslaught on ordinary people’s living standards, support is gathering among the labour movement in places like the UK. Rail union leader Mick Lynch is calling for a working class movement based on solidarity and class consciousness to fight back against a billionaire class that is acutely aware of its own class interests.

For too long, ‘class’ has been absent from mainstream political discourse. It is only through organised, united protest that ordinary people will have any chance of meaningful impact against the new world order of tyrannical authoritarianism and the devastating attacks on ordinary people’s rights, livelihoods and standards of living that we are witnessing.

The US is pushing the situation towards a clash of major nuclear powers

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By Valery Kulikov

Source: New Eastern Outlook

With its actions in recent months, the United States is blatantly pushing the international situation towards a clash of major nuclear powers. This is true of Washington’s blatantly provocative moves against both Russia and China.

US officials continue to inflame the situation, intimidating their own and the world public with “imaginary nuclear threats” from Russia by spreading fake information. For example, during a speech at the UN General Assembly, US President Biden cited non-existent quotes from Putin. Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called it at least “indecent” that US President Joe Biden falsely quoted Russian leader Vladimir Putin when he “attributed” to the Russian President saying that “our country threatens the world with nuclear weapons”. According to her, someone took advantage of the White House head’s inability to reflect on difficult subjects.

The anti-Russian actions of Joe Biden and members of his administration are now harshly criticized by numerous politicians and media both within and outside the US. The US President was harshly criticized in particular by Fox News political observer Tucker Carlson, who said that Biden was guilty of wanting to destroy Russia for the sake of American hegemony in the world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly reminded the Russian and international public in his recent speeches that Washington is pushing Kiev to move hostilities to Russian territory and has recently even resorted to nuclear blackmail. “Washington, London and Brussels are directly pushing Kiev to transfer hostilities to our territory, and they are already openly saying that Russia must be defeated by all means on the battlefield, followed by the deprivation of economic, political, cultural and any kind of sovereignty, and the complete pillaging of our country,” the Russian leader said in a televised address on September 21. “We are talking not only about Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporozhye NPP, which threatens a nuclear disaster, but also about statements by some high-ranking representatives of some NATO states about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, against Russia,” Putin explained.

As highlighted in an article by Russia’s Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov published in The National Interest magazine, Washington’s actions are pushing the situation towards a clash of major nuclear powers. Western countries appear to be testing Russia’s mettle. “Today it is obvious that the United States is directly involved in the military actions of the Kiev regime. Washington is openly building up the supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine and provides it with intelligence. They jointly plan military operations against the Russian Armed Forces. Ukrainians are being trained to use NATO military hardware in a fight,” the article notes.

Following US media reports in late September that the US was allegedly developing plans to hit the Russian military and political leadership and the Kremlin, the Russian Embassy in Washington commented on the hoaxes, stressing that this was someones’ delusion. The Russian Embassy expressed the hope that such delusional reasoning does not reflect the official position of the US military establishment, as Washington must be well aware of the escalating nature of such reckless rhetoric.

The fact that the US is actively working for an armed clash with Russia is evidenced not only by numerous policies, but also by documents.

The Swedish newspaper Nya Dagbladet, for example, published what it admitted was a “shocking document” about how the US was planning an armed conflict with Russia and an energy crisis in Europe in January. The source of this information was a “leak” from the RAND Corporation, the leading US think-tank responsible for making recommendations to the White House. The report, which was obtained by a Swedish publication, states in particular that one of the reasons for an armed clash between the West and Russia would be its push for military intervention in Ukraine in response to the aggressive foreign policy pursued by the Kiev regime under instructions from Washington. According to the pervasive key objective of this cynical strategy, as described in the document, one of the most important US objectives has been to destroy cooperation not only between Germany and Russia, but also between Berlin and Paris, dragging both of these Western European countries into the conflict in Ukraine.

As the European media is already reporting, although there are still hopes and opportunities to stop the Western-initiated conflict with Russia, they are being increasingly dashed by unprecedented propaganda, the spread of war hysteria through the media and the fanatical insanity of Western politicians. All this shows that military decisions have long been made and there is less and less realistic possibility of stopping the conflict. This has been seriously illustrated by the active calls by the US and its NATO allies for their citizens to urgently leave Russian territory, which, in a well-known historical analogy, is usually done on the eve of the outbreak of a serious armed conflict.

On September 28, the US Embassy in Moscow, for example, called on compatriots to urgently leave the territory of the Russian Federation. In particular, one of the recent reports published on the Embassy’s website said: “US citizens should not travel to Russia and those residing or travelling in Russia should depart Russia immediately while limited commercial travel options remain”.

The Polish Foreign Ministry on September 27 also advised its citizens “leave [Russian] territory using the available commercial and private means”. At the same time, Polish citizens are warned that “in case of a drastic deterioration of the security situation, the closure of borders or other unforeseen circumstances, evacuation may prove significantly impeded or even impossible”. At the same time, according to the Deputy Minister of Interior and Administration Błażej Poboży, an inspection of bomb shelters, even those that are not in the possession of the city authorities, has been launched on the territory of Poland.

The Italian Embassy in Moscow, Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and several other NATO foreign ministries also advised fellow citizens to leave Russia on September 29.

Although the Latvian authorities admit that the situation on the Latvian-Russian border is stable, calm and under strict control, the country introduced an emergency situation for the next three months. At the same time, the North Atlantic Alliance Command reported the deployment of two HIMARS MLRSs by the US in Latvia, ostensibly in preparation for the NAMEJS exercise.  The exact same MLRSs are already being actively used by the US in military operations in Ukraine to shell Donbas territory by the Kiev regime under the guidance of US military advisors.

While the current US leadership has long acted adventurously and irresponsibly towards the people of eastern Ukraine and the Russian Federation, supporting and fomenting hostilities with its arms deliveries, it must understand that a nuclear conflict, if it occurs, cannot remain a regional issue. And if, through the fault of the White House, the conflict with Moscow descends into nuclear war, such war would be global. It will primarily destroy the United States, as well as the countries where NATO armaments are located and from where the security of Russia and Russian citizens will be threatened. And Washington should be clear that this risk is higher than what the current US political elite expects.

U.S. Government Likely Perpetrated Biggest-Ever Catastrophic Global Warming Event

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: The Duran

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.

What a Coincidence! Poland Inaugurates New Gas Pipeline Amid Nord Stream Leaks

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By Larry Johnson

Source: Global Research

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.

How about this–Poland on Tuesday inaugurated a new pipeline that will transport gas from Norway through Denmark and the Baltic Sea? That is it!!! What a coincidence!! Or is it?

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.

One month later, Poland pitched a Kielbasi fit:

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.”

See this.

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.

Senile Hypocrite Biden On UN Charter

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By Kurt Nimmo

Source: Kurt Nimmo Blog

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.

Europe, more than Putin, must shoulder the blame for the energy crisis

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The same arrogant, self-righteous posturing from the West that fuelled the Ukraine war is now plunging Europe into recession

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky appears on a giant screen as he addresses a Nato summit in Madrid, 29 June 2022 (AFP)

By Jonathan Cook

Source: Middle East Eye

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. 

Rather, the goal has been to weaken his authority and – in some fantasy scenario – encourage his subordinates to turn on him. The West’s game plan – if it can be dignified with that term – is to force Putin to over-extend Russian forces in Ukraine by flooding the battlefield with armaments, and then watch his government collapse under the weight of popular discontent at home.

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.

Nato flirted openly with Ukraine, suggesting that it too might be admitted to their anti-Russia alliance.

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.

And all the while, Nato secretly cooperated with and trained that same Ukrainian army.

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.

Iraq’s weapons of mass distraction were only 45 minutes away – until we learned they did not, in fact, exist.

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.

Ordinary people and small businesses are being told by European leaders to brace for a recession as energy companies once again clock up “eye-watering” profits.

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. 

How America Is Crushing Europe

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: Modern Diplomacy

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. 

AMERICA’s GRAND MASTERS CHECKMATE THE BALTIC SEA

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The net result of these terrorist attacks is to render obsolete German popular demands to open Nord Stream 2, Declan Hayes writes.

By Declan Hayes

Source: The 21st Century

The CIA’s terrorist attack off the Danish coast on the Nord Stream pipelines Germany depends on may best be understood through the prism of Zbigniew Brzezinski‘s The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, America’s game plan to control the world and rid it of competitors

First off, there can be no doubt that Joe Biden’s America is the culprit.

Not only had the USA the most to gain by this terrorist act which only a handful of militaries could have pulled off but, as Tucker Carlson shows, both Victoria Fuck the EU Nuland and Joe Biden himself had each earlier promised to decommission these pipelines by any necessary means and, as the same clip shows, these terrorist acts are part and parcel of America’s green energy policies, which Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and a host of other American assets have long promulgated.

The net result of these terrorist attacks is to render obsolete German popular demands to open Nord Stream 2 as both pipelines are now out of service for the foreseeable future.

Good news for the new Norwegian-Polish pipeline which opened on the same day the Americans blew up Nord Stream but bad news for German industry, which is relocating to the United States to survive these never ending below the belt blows to their viability.

Good news also for MEP Radek Sikorski and America’s other clowns who run Poland and who, like the American cat’s paw that they are, now believe themselves to be the king makers as to which West European countries will get oil and from whom.

And that is at the heart of Poland’s EU problem.

Because it has a large population, it demands to be an EU heavyweight, much as Germany and France are, rather than being the American lapdog that it currently is in this and all other matters.

The Jack Russell Baltic countries are likewise schizophrenic: fond as these Jack Russells may be of barking and sniping, they are, at day’s end, little mutts of no great consequence.

The same is increasingly becoming the case with Germany, which is allowing herself to be pulled like a rag doll hither and thither by the United States and her agents, who have holed the bedrocks of a stable currency and low inflation, upon which post-war German prosperity was built.

Back in saner days, German leaders like Angela Merkel commanded respect.

Bolstered by cheap Russian energy and her own technological, logistical and industrial relations genius, Germany was not only the beating economic heart of the European Union but was very much a major global player as well.

Now, Germany’s erstwhile leaders kowtow to Ursula von der Leyen and America’s other unelectable EU puppet assets.

Whilst trying to compete with the rising Chinese behemoth, Germany finds herself betrayed at every turn, most especially by her American overseer, who covets not only Germany’s export markets but her domestic ones as well.

Given that Germany’s major producer of toilet paper has folded, it seems Germany will be importing toilet paper as well as other “luxury goods” from the United States this winter.

Germany is really in dire straits.

And Germany’s shortage of toilet paper is at the heart of the matter.

Whereas Germany and the Netherlands are on their knees, the American economy is booming, at least until the mid term elections are over.

Without the CIA’s systematic destruction of the German and allied economies, it is quite likely that would not be the case and Biden’s war mongering Democrats would be annihilated in the November elections.

However, thanks to the self immolation of the German and British economies, that will not be the case and Biden’s cronies will be able to make some sort of argument that they kept the Good Ship America afloat.

And, should Biden prevail, Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg, Ursula von der Leyen and those others who capsized the German economy should take their share of the credit.

As, perhaps, should those of us who vote for political parties that collude with Uncle Sam and thereby collude with Brzezinski’s blueprint for American hegemony.

Brzezinski’s basic thesis is that the United States must micro manage the conflicts and relationships it instigates in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East so that no rival superpower can arise to threaten the benefits that accrue to America by exploiting those regions.

It is within Brzezinski’s framework that American terrorism in Denmark, Armenia, Iraq, Ukraine and Syria all congeal into the one over riding thesis that America’s desire for hegemony is at the root of all our ills and Hollywood’s corresponding antithesis that America is a beacon of goodwill, democracy and all the other puerile garbage NATO’s studios churn out.

But it also helps to explain NATO’s phantom fears of red-green brown and similarly multi-colored alliances, where the far right, the far left and disaffected Muslims would unite to give them and their thieving ways the heave ho.

NATO, Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen fear no such thing.

What they do fear is a strong sovereign people, an alliance of Dutch or German citizens who would demand, as the French demanded in 1789, that these parasites and the self-serving political system they have cocooned themselves in get off their backs once and for all.

Now, though I don’t believe that the Germans are suddenly going to storm their equivalent of the Bastille, I would hope and even pray that Germany’s industrial, financial and labor leaders would lead Europe in calling time on Biden, von der Leyen and all their cronies who insist that we emulate Australian school children and eat crickets to save the environment, whilst Joe and Hunter Biden cause massive environmental havoc in the Baltic Sea, as well as in Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Armenia and the countless other sovereign nations they have destroyed.