The Economics of War - Nordstream Sabotage
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Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute joins Mises Institute President Jeff Deist and economist Bob Murphy to discuss the economic and political ramifications of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline sabotage: The Economics of War - Nordstream Sabotage Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity
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The Federal Reserve has taken a major step in the direction of facilitating an ESG compliant monetary network that effectively acts as a parallel system to that of the Chinese Communist Party’s infamous social credit scoring system. The Fed said in a statement Thursday: “Six of the nation's largest banks will participate in a pilot climate scenario analysis exercise designed to enhance the ability of supervisors and firms to measure and manage climate-related financial risks. Scenario analysis—in which the resilience of financial institutions is assessed under different hypothetical climate scenarios—is an emerging tool to assess climate-related financial risks, and there will be no capital or supervisory implications from the pilot.”In other words, The Fed is working with the big banks to monitor their ability to comply with the ruling class’s preferred enviro statist technocratic tyranny. The unaccountable people behind the American money printer claim that this exercise is “exploratory in nature and does not have capital consequences.” The statement adds that the “scenario analysis can assist firms and supervisors in understanding how climate-related financial risks may manifest and differ from historical experience.” What exactly does this mean? The Fed is clearly leaning in to the climate hoax narrative, or the pseudoscientific idea that humans are catastrophically impacting the climate, but not because they somehow care about the environment. The climate narrative is the chief rhetorical facilitator for the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) movement. ESG acts as a trojan horse for the continuing centralization of the American financial system. ESG finance, popularized by hyper political asset management behemoths like BlackRock and Vanguard, acts to prevent outsiders from challenging the regime-connected insiders on Wall Street and in Washington, under the guise of acting to manifest a healthier planet. In other words, pro-ESG institutions are committed to attacking free market principles by means of deception, preferring the CCP-style “stakeholder capitalism” that allows for a small group of technocratic elites to make broad determinations about society. Unsurprisingly, the legacy media has thus far cheered The Fed’s plan, with The New York Times reporting “that it often lagged behind its global peers when it comes to talking about and coming up with a plan for policing risks related to climate change.” The ESG “green transition,” frequently popularized by powerful world governments and the Davos elite, has served as the main vehicle for this movement. Akin to the Chinese social credit score, which is used to coerce businesses, and, by extension, individuals, into specific actions, ESG rules force individuals and businesses in America to deploy capital through the gatekeepers of the system. The Federal Reserve statement continues: “By considering a range of possible future climate pathways and associated economic and financial developments, scenario analysis can assist firms and supervisors in understanding how climate-related financial risks may manifest and differ from historical experience.”The banks involved in this pilot program are Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. Of course, it’s just a scenario, until it’s not. The Fed pilot program is set to launch in early 2023. Reprinted with permission from The Dossier. Subscribe and support the author here. Federal Reserve announces major ‘pilot exercise’ for ESG social credit score system Click on the headline to read the full story from
Earlier this week in Germany and the Czech Republic, tens of thousands took to the streets to demand an end to Russia sanctions and the start of the NordStream II pipeline. Then someone blew it up. With better EU/Russia commercial ties no longer an option, how much stronger will protests become? Also today, Kamala Harris tries her hand at foreign policy at the Korea DMZ...with predictable result. Watch today's Liberty Report: Protests Break Out In Europe: Cold Winter Coming Click on the headline to read the full story from During an interview on the corporate media “Face the Nation” program, the “president” of the fake nation Ukraine, revealed how much of your money is being shoveled into the coffers of oligarchs infamous for theft and forming neo-Nazi paramilitaries. “The United States gives us $1.5 billion every month to support our budget to fight,” said Zelenskyy, and added that there is “a deficit of $5 billion in our budget,” as if the US, with a staggering deficit problem of its own, is somehow responsible for propping up the neo-Nazi infested “democracy.” See the entire interview here: Zelensky said, after revealing the astonishing $1.5 billion in aid on a monthly basis figure, “But believe me, it’s not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians. Why do we need this? We need the security in order to attract our Ukrainians to come back home.”In other words, we are responsible to make up for what the oligarchs and kleptocrats in Ukraine have stolen to pad their private fiefdoms and paramilitaries. As for his fellow Ukrainians, if billions of devalued US dollars defeat Russia (and it most certainly will not), this will convince those that have escaped war and misery, will decide “it’s safe [to] come, settle, work here and will pay taxes and then we won't have a deficit of $5 billion in our budget. So it will be a positive for everybody," Zelensky insisted. No mention here that thousands have fled Ukraine to escape neo-Nazi persecution, torture, and targeted assassination (for the crime of speaking Russian). "And then the United States will not have to continue, give us this support," he concluded, though the way things are going it could be years before the US might "not have to continue" the nonstop aid. Zelensky appeared to be trying to present a strange "win-win" for American, though again if average US taxpayers grasped the full enormity of it, they certainly might question that narrative. Right. And I have a bridge and a stable of pink ponies on the Moon for sale. On Monday, Reuters reported: Negotiators of a stop-gap spending bill in the US Congress have agreed to include nearly $12 billion in new military and economic aid to Ukraine, sources familiar with the talks said on Monday, reflecting continued bipartisan support for the Kyiv government in the wake of Russia's invasion.Reading this, one might believe neolibs and neocons, so prevalent in Congress and our government, are generously helping the Ukrainian people, but this is nothing short of a sick joke. In fact, the US national security state doesn’t give a fig about the fate of the Ukrainian people. It is using Ukraine as a battlefield in an undeclared war between Russia and NATO, a fight NATO has itched for since its inception in 1949. Of course, “defending” Europe from “Russian [and previously Soviet] aggression” is only part of the manufactured picture, as NATO has long been used as an enforcer in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. As for the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia by the neoliberal NATO hit squad, the late Ramsey Clark, a former senior official in the Kennedy and Johnson Justice Department, organized “Text of Indictment by the Independent Commission of Inquiry Hearing to Investigate US/NATO War Crimes Against the People of Yugoslavia.” Ramsey indicted The Government of every NATO country that participated directly in the assaults on Yugoslavia with aircraft, missiles, or personnel and Commanding Generals, Admirals, NATO personnel directly involved in designating targets, flight crews and deck crews of the NATO military bomber and assault aircraft, NATO military personnel directly involved in targeting, preparing and launching missiles at Yugoslavia, the governments of the NATO countries’ personnel causing, condoning or failing to prevent violence in Yugoslavia before and during NATO occupation and Others to be named.The document, of course, was ignored by NATO, the US, and the corporate war propaganda media. NATO prefers to take out media that does not support its murderous and unprovoked actions, as it did when Obama decided to use NATO to turn Libya into a third-world hellhole and slave market. A press conference held by the Broadcast Employees Libya declared: In an act of international terrorism and in violation of Security Council resolutions of the UN, NATO attacked the facilities of the Broadcasting Department of Libya during the early hours of [July 7, 2011]. Three of our technicians were killed and 15 injured while performing their professional duty as Libyan journalists… We are employees of Libyan state television. We are not a military target, we are not officers in the army and not a threat to civilians. We are doing our job as journalists in representing what from the bottom of my heart we believe is the reality of the NATO aggression and violence in Libya.According to research conducted by the Foundation to Battle Injustice, not only the United States, but also other members of the NATO, including the United Kingdom, are responsible for war crimes in the Middle East. So far, none of these States has suffered any economic or legal responsibility for their crimes, despite the confirmed and recognized facts of brutal reprisals against civilians and the use of prohibited weapons against civilians.NATO enforcers committed numerous war crimes, according to a November 2020 report. According to a report on the actions of the military in Afghanistan, which has long been classified, Australian soldiers deliberately killed farmers and civilians in Afghanistan as part of a rite of passage through which all recruits had to go. The report was published after a four-year investigation, during which more than 400 witnesses were interviewed and several thousand documents were examined. The report provides evidence that one of the Australian soldiers knocked a local unarmed resident to the ground and shot him in the back of the head, despite the fact that the civilian posed absolutely no threat. The investigation also learned about another incident when Australian mercenaries and patrol members “deliberately attacked” unarmed civilians, after which they planted weapons and ammunition on them, trying to create the impression that they were in danger. Soldiers also competed to outperform other patrols in the number of civilian enemies killed in combat.The manifest absurdity of NATO propaganda focusing on unproven and fake (e.g. Bucha) war crimes is intended to rationalize mass murder on a large scale.
NATO war propaganda has remained an integral part of the “alliance” since its inception. NATO’s pernicious media spin has focused on the Cold War, anticommunism, the arms race, the Vietnam War, “Team B” (to overestimate the effectiveness of the Soviet military), the propaganda by Le Cercle, also known as the “Piny Group” (mostly from intelligence services), the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, and the effort to turn the “war on terror” into a noble cause (as if 900,000 deaths and $8 trillion squandered was worth it, as the late Madeline Albright might have said). All of the above should provide enough evidence of the murderous character of NATO, the serial murdering midget created by the US national security state to enforce neoliberal doctrine on the reluctant. Ukraine hopes for a surplus of gravy from the United States and, despite public opposition, will get pretty much what it wants, including missiles able to reach the interior of Russia, including its nuclear power plants (a truly psychopathic proposal of murder en masse). Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics. Subscribe and support the author here. Zelenskyy’s $13 Billion OCD Problem Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity In his remarkable book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, the Flemish psychologist Mathias Desmet explains how collective psychosis can cause people to lose their critical faculties. He cites a famous experiment in which a person can be made to say that one line on a diagram is the same length as another, when in fact it is longer, if seven or eight actors have pretended to come to the same conclusion before him. Desmet is writing mainly about the coercive psychosis of Covid. But the same arguments apply to the current collective psychosis about Russia. For years and decades now, we have been fed horror stories about Russia. These have of course only increased in intensity since the invasion of Ukraine. We have now reached a situation in which entire sections of the media, and their respective national governments, claim to believe things which are simply impossible. The latest example is the apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Russia has been immediately blamed but the accusation is not credible, for the following reasons. I defy any person endowed with normal critical faculties to show the opposite. The Americans have been opposed to Nord Stream 2 for years. It was Germany, on the orders of the USA, that decided not to open the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in February. Joe Biden said in front of Olaf Scholz, ‘We will put an end to it.’ When asked how the US would do this, he replied, ‘I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.’[1] Victoria Nuland made it even more clear in January.[2] This is a long-standing American position. Under the Trump administration, extraterritorial sanctions were imposed on European companies working on the construction of the pipeline. Trump attended the Three Seas summit in Warsaw in 2018, an initiative to encourage the building of infrastructure to make Europe able to receive American liquefied natural gas in place of Russian gas. There is therefore a very long-standing US opposition to the continuing and increased supply of gas by Russia to Germany. The Americans, together with the Poles and the Ukrainians, have been mounting a vociferous campaign against Nord Stream 2 for years, the Poles comparing the pipeline to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of September 1939. The former German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has been vilified and nearly expelled from his own party for working for Nord Stream 2. In the face of all this hostility, Russia has continued to build the pipeline, completing it last year to the absolute fury of all the above-mentioned countries. Why would Russia blow it up after spending billions on it? Russia has no motive to destroy the pipelines, but instead has an active interest in their remaining operational, including for political reasons. In the current situation, Germany refused to open Nord Stream 2 and then the Russians, ostensibly for technical reasons, idled Nord Stream 1. If you believe that the technical reasons are just a pretext, and that in reality the Russians idled Nord Stream 1 to put pressure on the Europeans, as has been widely alleged, then only possible logical conclusion is that that the pressure in question is being wielded in an attempt to force the Europeans to open Nord Stream 2, by making them realise they need it. As Russia continues to supply gas through the overland Yamal and Druzhba (Friendship) pipelines, and as Russia recently foiled a plot to blow up the Turk Stream pipeline[3], it is incredible to allege that Russia wants to stop supplying Europe with gas. On the contrary, the continued supply of gas, which is now sold for roubles, has helped the rouble become one of the strongest performing currencies in the world, its strength enabling the Russian Central Bank to cut interest rates and recover from the initial shock caused by the sanctions in March. Russia has every interest in continuing to sell gas, including in the current conditions of economic warfare. By the same token, Russia’s enemies have every motive for removing this leverage from Russia. If you argue, as does the President of the European Commission, that Russia is trying to blackmail Europe by cutting gas supplies, then by what possible logic would Russia sabotage the pipeline? The destruction of the pipeline removes precisely any ability of Russia to blackmail anyone. That is presumably why it was sabotaged. Could Russia have done it? The crazier media have been full of speculation about Russian frogmen carrying out a secret mission. Anything is possible. But if this is the truth, then it shows up Nato in rather a bad light. The explosions occurred just a few kilometres or a few dozen kilometres from the Polish, Danish and German coasts – all Nato members. If Nato is not capable of protecting a key item of European infrastructure, then what is the use of it? By contrast, the Americans conducted exercises in June 2022 on Bornholm, the Danish island where the pipeline blew up, testing underwater explosives and drones.[4] So while it is very difficult to see how Russian frogmen could have carried out an operation under Nato’s very nose, it is easy to see how the Americans could have done it because they were practicing that very thing right there three months ago. Maybe that is what the exercises were really all about. However, if you do believe that the Russians could have sent a secret hit squad to blow up a pipeline under the Baltic Sea, then it is inconceivable that they would blow up their own pipeline and not Baltic Pipe, which (coincidentally?) was officially opened on the very day after Nord Stream 2 was attacked. Baltic Pipe is a Norwegian-Danish-Polish project designed to supply gas from Norway to Denmark and Poland and to reduce dependency on Russia. If you think that Russia is trying to sabotage Europe’s gas supplies, you must surely conclude that it would blow up Baltic Pipe instead. If Russia wants to starve Europe of gas, it needs only not to put any gas into Nord Stream 2, it does not need to blow it up. F*ck the EU The US Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland, who as we saw above, said in January that she had told the Germans Nord Stream 2 would not go ahead, famously had a phone conversation in 2014 with the then US ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, in which the two of them decided the composition of the new Ukrainian government.[5] At one point, Nuland expressed in vulgar but succinct terms US policy over Ukraine: “Fuck the EU.” That is exactly what the Americans have just done. At least, that is what the former Polish Foreign Minister and former Defence Minister, Radek Sikorski, thinks. One of the most vicious Russophobes in a very Russophobic country, Sikorski is very close to the security services. On the day of the attack, he tweeted quite simply, with a photo of the gas bubbling up to the surface of the sea, “Thank you, USA.”[6] [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=95&v=OS4O8rGRLf8&feature=youtu.be [2]https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1486818088016355336 [3]https://tass.com/society/1511625 [4]https://seapowermagazine.org/baltops-22-a-perfect-opportunity-for-research-and-resting-new-technology/ [5]https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/07/eu-us-diplomat-victoria-nuland-phonecall-leaked-video [6]https://twitter.com/radeksikorski/status/1574800653724966915 Reprinted with author's permission from Forum for Democracy. John Laughland is Director of Forum for Democracy International and a Member of the Academic Board of the Ron Paul Institute. He is a Visiting Fellow at Mathais Corvinius College in Budapest, Hungary. The Americans Did It Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity
Former Polish Defense Minister Radek Sikorski (husband of US neocon Anne Applebaum) publicly thanked the US government for blowing up NordStream I and II on Twitter yesterday, a move that made even his own fellow countrymen feel awkward. The seeming terrorist attack was less a move against Russia than against Germany. So who did it? Why? Also today, Sen. McConnell rolls over on even more billions to Ukraine. And...is Elon turning his eyes toward Rumble? Watch today's Liberty Report: Who Blew Up The Pipeline? The Plot Thickens! Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity 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.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 US 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.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. Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.com. What a Coincidence! Click on the headline to read the full story from The messages are coming in loud and clear today – from the crashing pound, to repudiation of establishment governments in Italy, Sweden and more to come, to Hungarian Prime Minister Orban’s call to end the Sanctions War and do so pronto. So let’s be clear: Washington’s dunderheaded intervention in the intramural spat between Russia and Ukraine and the accompanying global Sanctions War is the surely the stupidest, most destructive project to arise from the banks of the Potomac in modern times. And the architects of this perfidious folly – Biden, Blinkin, Sullivan, Nuland, et. al. – cannot be condemned harshly enough. After all, this madness is being pursued in the name of abstract policy norms – the rule of law and sanctity of borders – that make Washington a laughing stock. More than any other nation on planet earth (and by a long-shot), it has serially and blatantly violated these standards scores of times in recent decades. Among other actions, Washington’s interventions in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, etc. were not only pointless; they were also a self-evident violation of the very rule of law and sanctity of borders upon which Washington now beats its breasts ever more stridently. Moreover, by wallowing in this unhinged hypocrisy Washington has abandoned every semblance of commonsense as to why this conflict happened in the first place and why it is wholly irrelevant to the national security of the American homeland, or, for that matter, Europe, as well. The fundamental fact is, aside from the historically short interval of iron-fisted communist rule during the Soviet era, Ukraine had never been a nation-state within its post-1991 happenstance borders. In fact, for upwards of 275 years before 1918 much of its territories were borderlands, vassals and outright provinces of Czarist Russia. So we are not dealing with the invasion of a long-established, ethnically and linguistically coherent state by its aggressive neighbor, but with the leftover potpourri of separate tongues, territories, economies, and histories that were smashed together by brutal communist rulers between 1918 and 1991. Accordingly, the fast-approaching dark, cold winter of stagflationary collapse in Europe is not being done in heroic defense of the grand principles proffered by Washington and NATO. To the contrary, it amounts to the pointless and grubby business of preserving a vile status quo ante that was confected on the lands north of the Black Sea, not by the ordinary course of historical evolution and nation-state accretion, but by the bloody-hands of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. In any event, the staggering economic costs for the everyday peoples of Europe in pursuit of such a threadbare and illegitimate purpose is starting to register among the long-suffering victims of Brussels’ elitist rulers. Hence the thunderbolts from the Italian elections this weekend and Viktor Orbán’s parallel appeal to the European Union to lift sanctions and thereby potentially reduce energy prices by half in one swell swoop. Nor is Orbán the only one calling for an end to sanctions, with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotaki calling for a repeal of Russian sanctions as well. Other political leaders, such as Matteo Salvini, who leads the conservative League party and will be a major force in Italy’s new government, says that Europe needs a "rethink" on Russian sanctions due to the harmful economic effects. Likewise, the conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has also been pushing for an end to sanctions and an re-opening of the Nord Stream 1 & 2 gas pipelines due to soaring energy costs in Germany. AfD member of the Bundestag, Mariana Harder-Kühnel, for instance, recently echoed Orbán’s call. "The EU bureaucracy has turned the screw on the sanctions, and now we are paying the bill," she said. In this context, the ructions since Friday in the FX market for the pound sterling speak more powerfully than anything else. The British pound briefly plunged to its lowest level ever early this AM, touching $1.0349 during Asian trading hours, breaking through its previous record low of 1985. Moreover, today’s cliff-dive followed a tumble of 3% on Friday, after the new Truss government announced sweeping tax cuts and a massive energy bailout for businesses and individuals. Likewise, the price of U.K. government debt has fallen in tandem with the pound, with yields rising sharply again today. The 10-year government bond was yielding 4.11%, up 28 basis points from Friday and a staggering 342% from the 0.93% yield of just one year ago. (bigger) For want of doubt, here is the path of pound sterling over the last twelve months. That’s a massive thumbs down by the FX markets if there ever was one. (bigger) But the relevant point here is not all the Keynesian palaver about the "mistake" of lowering the 45% top income tax rate and removing other disincentives to work and investment that take UK marginal rates as high as 60%. These reductions in the crushing tax rates that Conservative and Labor government alike have erected atop the UK’s lavish Welfare State are long-overdue and will, in fact, stimulate compensatory economic activity. What’s actually going to destroy the remnants of the UK’s fiscal sustainability is Truss’ utterly foolish plan to freeze all energy prices for all citizens and businesses at a cost of upwards of $200 billion per year or 5% of GDP. But that’s neocon insanity run amok. If London wants to relieve its consumers of onerous energy prices and utility bills it only need follow Orban’s advice and terminate its Sanctions War against Russian energy, food and other commodity exports. And it wouldn’t cost the Exchequer a dime. That is to say, the pound’s crash ought to be a general wake-up call to Europe and Washington, too. By declaring war on the productive and peaceful commerce with Russia that previously prevailed, Europe’s leaders – -especially the new government of United Kingdom – have sacrificed their own prosperity and the living standards of their citizens in behalf of a prodigiously corrupt, anti-democratic regime in Kiev that is dedicated to preserving intact nothing more noble than the dead hand of the Soviet Presidium. Or as our friend James Howard Kunstler rightly summarized: Let us agree that the place called Ukraine was never any of America’s business. For centuries we ignored it, through all the colorful cavalry charges to-and-fro of Turks and Tatars, the reign of the dashing Zaporozhian Cossacks, the cruel abuses of Stalin, then Hitler, and the dull, gray Khrushchev-to-Yeltsin years. But then, having destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and sundry other places all on a great hegemonic lark, the professional warmongers of our land and their catamites in Washington made Ukraine their next special project. They engineered the 2014 coup in Kiev that ousted the elected president, Mr. Yanyukovich, to set up a giant grifting parlor and international money-laundromat. The other strategic aim was to prepare Ukraine for NATO membership, which would have made it, in effect, a forward missile base right up against Russia’s border. Because, well, Russia, Russia, Russia!So we return to the question at hand: Every Ukrainian presidential election since 1991 has revealed a nation radically split between pro-Russian populations in the east and south and anti-Russian nationalists in the center and west. When the mailed fist of communist rule was removed, in fact, Ukraine became a territory yearning to be partitioned into more amenable jurisdictions of governance. For instance, here is the results of the 2010 election that put a pro-Russian politician in the president’s office and at length gave rise to Washington’s putsch during the Maiden uprising that soon drove the country into civil war. (bigger) The above map barely does justice to the actual figures. In many of the yellow Tymoshenko-supporting areas the vote was 80% or higher in favor of the latter’s nationalist candidacy, while in the much of the blue area the pro-Russian Yanukovych won be similar massive pluralities. Yet this wasn’t a one-time fluke of short-term electoral politics: It was actually the recrudescence of the manner in which the fake nation of Ukraine was put together during the last three centuries. Prior to the end of WWI, there was no Ukrainian state. Like the artificial and unsustainable polities of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, which were confected by self-serving politicians at Versailles (especially the domestic vote seeking Woodrow Wilson), Ukraine was a product of geopolitical engineering – in this case by the new rulers of the Soviet Union. Indeed, the historical provenance of "Ukraine" can be described in a nutshell. What was to become Ukraine joined Russia in 1654 when Bohdan Khmelnitsky, a Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, petitioned Russian czar Alexey to accept the Zaporozhian Host into Russia. That is to say, Imperial Russia spawned the latter day polity of Ukraine by annexing into its service the fearsome Cossack Warriors who inhabited its central region. The army and a small territory then under Hetman control was called "u kraine," which means in Russian "at the edge," a term that had originated in the twelfth century to describe lands on the border of Russia. During the next 250 years the expansionist Czars annexed more and more of the adjacent territory, designating the eastern and southern regions as "Novorussiya" (New Russia), which territories included Catherine the Great’s purchase of Crimea from the Ottoman’s in 1783. That is to say, at the time of America’s own independence the heart of today’s Ukraine was ruled by the long arm of Czarist autocracy. After the Bolshevik revolution, of course, the map changed radically. In 1919 Lenin created the socialist state of Ukraine on part of the territory of the former Russian Empire. Ukraine officially became the Ukrainian People’s Republic with the capital of Kharkov in 1922 (moved to Kiev in 1934). Accordingly, the new communist state swallowed up Novorussiya per the eastern and southern portions of the green area in the map below, including Donetsk, and Lugansk regions, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions bordering the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea that are the sites of today’s Russia-sponsored succession referendums. Then in 1939, as a result of the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact, Stalin annexed the eastern territories of Poland, as designated by the yellow areas of the map. Thus, the historic territory of Galicia and the Polish city of Lvov were incorporated into Ukraine by the joint decree of Stalin and Hitler. In June of 1940, Stalin next annexed Northern Bukovina (brown area) from Romania. And then at the Yalta conference in 1945, upon Stalin’s insistence to Churchill and Roosevelt, the Hungarian Carpathian Ruthenia was incorporated into the Soviet Union and added to Ukraine. Taken together, these Stalinist seizures are now known as Western Ukraine, the people’s of which understandably do not cotton to things Russian. At the same time, the 85% Russian-speaking population inhabiting the purple area (Crimea) was gifted to Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1954 for the very reason of extending his own accession to the communist dictatorship. Nevertheless, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited these communist-confected borders within which there were upwards of 40 millions Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Tartars and countless lesser nationalities – all trapped in a newly declared country in which they didn’t especially wish to reside. (bigger) Indeed, the reason that the hapless state of "Ukraine" needs relief in partition, not a war to preserve the handiwork if Czars and Commissars, was well summarized by Alexander G. Markovsky in the American Thinker: Today’s Ukrainian civil war is thus greatly exacerbated by the fact that unlike pluralistic societies such as the USA, Canada, Switzerland, and Russia, which are tolerant of different cultures, religions, and languages, Ukraine is not. Unsurprisingly, devotion to pluralism proved not to be her forte. Even though the Kiev regime had no historical roots in the real estate it inhabited, it imposed Ukrainian rules and the Ukrainian language on non-Ukrainian people after declaring independence.Needless to say, partition of the fake state of Ukraine is not remotely on Washington’s mind. After all, it would remove the latest neocon reason for spreading the blessings of Forever Wars to the fairest parts of the planet. David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader. Washington’s Pointless War on Behalf of a Fake Nation Click on the headline to read the full story from
It appears as if some kind of explosion blew three huge holes in the NordStream I and II pipelines near Danish waters. Massive leaks are showing up on the surface of the Baltic Sea. Whodunnit? Would Washington blow up Russia's pipeline? Germany? Russia? Also today, the Democrats have become the party of war. Finally: Another $12 billion for Ukraine snuck into "must-pass" spending bill. Watch today's Liberty Report: Sabotage? Both NordStream Pipelines Blown Up! Click on the headline to read the full story from The former Coca-Cola scholar, Jake Sullivan, now dispensing “advice” to the cognitively impaired Joe Biden, has warned Russia the US will act “decisively” if Russia uses tactical nukes in Ukraine. “We have communicated directly, privately, and at very high levels to the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia, that the US and our allies will respond decisively, and we have been clear and specific about what that will entail,” Sullivan told CBS’s Face The Nation and also ABC This Week. Naturally, a real neocon had to set the stage, as the ever vociferous and absurd Max Boot did prior to Sullivan’s remarks: Naturally, Yalie Sullivan didn’t specify what “catastrophic consequences” the US would take, but we can guess, considering the US is the only state to ever use nuclear weapons, specifically on civilians. Sullivan said that the Russian leader Putin had been “waving around the nuclear card at various points through this conflict”, and it was a matter that Biden’s administration has “to take deadly seriously because it is a matter of paramount seriousness – the possible use of nuclear weapons for the first time since the second world war”.No mention here by this professional truth spinner and tutored Clintonite singling out the party responsible for using nukes at the end of WWII. I’d guess the average American, especially the sort “educated” in “public” (state) schools (indoctrination centers), does not know, either. Most have swallowed whole the lie that nuking babies and grandmothers saved the lives of a million or more American soldiers prepared to invade Japan (this would have included my father). Most probably also don’t know that the Japanese were ready to surrender if a deal on the fate of the emperor could be arranged. As for the largely ignorant younger generation, steeped in a tidal wave of historical lies and misinformation, the following graphic novel should be required reading: The sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians had little to do with a Japanese surrender. It was about showing the Soviet Union the US possessed a new and frightening atomic weapon. But never mind. Sullivan and the rest of this befuddled and “woke” (the latter a showy pretense that will soon enough face betrayal) administration are looking for excuses to escalate the crisis. Sullivan and the rest of the demo-cons (cousins of the neocons) know Russia will not use nuclear weapons unless there is an existential threat levied against them. Sullivan’s remarks are simply more propagandistic hogwash for the average, ill-informed, and often intellectually lazy American to ponder. Nothing scares like vaporization, radiation sickness, or nuclear winter starvation. “We will continue to support Ukraine in its efforts to defend its country and defend its democracy,” Sullivan said, pointing to more than $15bn in weapons, including air defense systems, hundreds of artillery pieces and rounds of artillery, that the US has supplied to Ukraine.The lies seem to be endless and Mr. Sullivan apparently revels in telling them while maintaining his “professional” arrogant demeanor. Of course, it is “too soon to make comprehensive predictions” about the inevitable collapse of the CIA’s currently favorite anti-Russian puppet. Regardless, the corrupt kleptocracy imposed by Ukrainian oligarchs after the fall of the Soviet Union and assisted by nazified militias will fall, and with a whimper. For weeks now on end, we have been told by the pathologically lying corporate propaganda media that Russia’s special operation is collapsing and Putin is about to have a nervous breakdown. Nonsense. Russia is taking its time. I admit I do not support the invasion of any country for any reason beyond self-defense—and yet this is precisely what Russia is doing. Imagine American-hating and ruthlessly barbaric Nazis amassing in Ottawa or British Columbia, maybe on the Mexican border, and asking Russia for missiles and kamikaze drones to strike Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Seattle, any city near or on the border. How long would it take to eradicate this threat and what country would condemn the exercise of self-defense? Again, never mind. For the US, the war in Ukraine is not about an existential threat. It is about the 70-plus-year-old effort to surround and destroy Russia, even though the boogeyman communists are now a minority of largely politically powerless nostalgists. The idea was not to defeat the threat of communism, as we were endlessly told, but to weaken all rivals. Libya used its oil exports to raise the living standards of the average Libyan. It didn’t allow transnational corporations to steal its precious natural resources. That is why Muammar Gaddafi had to be assassinated in the most brutal and public way. It was such a grotesque display, the psychopath Hillary Clinton was obliged to chuckle and cheer on national television. Both Russia and China stand in the way of the financial elite’s parasitical neoliberal hegemonic world scheme, an effort to rob, steal, and kill without serious repercussions or resistance. Period. It has nothing to do with Putin, his supposed desire to nuke everyone and everything. It’s about, as the late Zbigniew Brzeziński wrote: the “three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy… to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” The “barbarians,” of course, are those who wish to determine their own fate, maintain their own sovereignty, and decide upon the development and distribution of their natural resources. Even the geopolitically clueless Donald Trump realizes continued escalation in Ukraine will not have a happy ending: The effort to keep the “barbarians” (in this case Russia, viscerally hated by the ethnic Pole Zbigniew Brzeziński) from “coming together” will in fact be a complete success if implemented—there will no longer be much humanity to manipulate, only nuclear winter, mass starvation, and, if we are lucky, a return to the Dark Ages. Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics. Subscribe and support, here. Biden’s Brain: Jake Sullivan Warns Russia of 'Catastrophic Consequences' Click on the headline to read the full story from |
Ron Paul
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