It's Not Just Fauci: Power-Sunstein An AssClown Two-Fer That Doesn't Bode Well....,(REDUX from 3/8/21)

WaPo |  Almost all conversations about roadblocks Trump faces or opposition to his initiatives centered on what was perceived as the media’s biased portrayal of him and his administration, rather than on anything the Democrats were doing.

Republicans and conservatives have grumbled about unfair coverage from the “mainstream media” for decades. But the Trump era has brought us to a new plateau, one where the media has moved from adversarial to oppositional. Many observers, on both right and left, have come to see the media as the leader of the resistance.

If you care about journalism, it’s a disturbing trend. Many in the media would undoubtedly lay much of the blame on Trump’s “fake news” attacks. But peruse the pages or websites of most of our nation’s leading news providers, and it’s easy to understand why such a perception has taken hold, apart from Trump’s claims. 

Former Democratic president Jimmy Carter’s widely reported comments in Maureen Dowd’s recent New York Times column about the media’s coverage of Trump were a welcome acknowledgment of the obvious from someone other than a Trump loyalist. 

“I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about,” Carter said. “I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.” 

Out of curiosity, I checked the Democratic National Committee’s website this week. Some of the headlines were: “Trump abuses role as commander-in-chief in latest lie.” “Tom Perez on Trump’s executive order to sabotage Americans’ health care.” “Trump’s lapdog Pence must return wasted taxpayer dollars.” 

That’s what you would expect from the opposition party. The problem is, headlines accusing Trump of “sabotage,” “lies” and more are not uncommon from our major media outlets. That’s why I was curious whether the DNC was still bothering to employ a press staff when it has been made so redundant.

BidenCorp® - The Russia Problem Has Never Been About Human Rights Or Democracy

thepostil  |  Since 2007, Putin was systematically demonized in the West. Whether or not he is a “dictator” Is a matter of discussion; but it is worth noting that his approval rate in Russia never fell below 59 % in the last 20 years. I take my figures from the Levada Center, which is labeled as “foreign agent” in Russia, and hence doesn’t reflect the Kremlin’s views. It is also interesting to see that in France, some of the most influential so-called “experts” on Russia are in fact working for the British MI-6’s “Integrity Initiative.”

Third, in the West, there is a sense that you can do whatever you want if it is in the name of western values. This is why the Russian offensive in Ukraine is passionately sanctioned, while FUKUS (France, UK, US) wars get strong political support, even if they are notoriously based on lies. “Do what I say, not what I do!” One could ask what makes the conflict in Ukraine worse than other wars. In fact, each new sanction we apply to Russia highlights the sanctions we haven’t applied earlier to the US, the UK or France.

The purpose of this incredible polarization is to prevent any dialogue or negotiation with Russia. We are back to what happened in 1914, just before the start of WWI…

TP: What will Russia gain or lose with this involvement in the Ukraine (which is likely to be long-term)? Russia is facing a conflict on “two fronts,” it would seem: a military one and an economic one (with the endless sanctions and “canceling” of Russia).

JB: With the end of the Cold War, Russia expected being able to develop closer relations with its Western neighbors. It even considered joining NATO. But the US resisted every attempt of rapprochement. NATO structure does not allow for the coexistence of two nuclear superpowers. The US wanted to keep its supremacy.

Since 2002, the quality of the relations with Russia decayed slowly, but steadily. It reached a first negative “peak” in 2014 after the Maidan coup. The sanctions have become US and EU primary foreign policy tool. The Western narrative of a Russian intervention in Ukraine got traction, although it was never substantiated. Since 2014, I haven’t met any intelligence professional who could confirm any Russian military presence in the Donbass. In fact, Crimea became the main “evidence” of Russian “intervention.” Of course, Western historians ignore superbly that Crimea was separated from Ukraine by referendum in January 1990, six months before Ukrainian independence and under Soviet rule. In fact, it’s Ukraine that illegally annexed Crimea in 1995. Yet, western countries sanctioned Russia for that…

Since 2014 sanctions severely affected east-west relations. After the signature of the Minsk Agreements in September 2014 and February 2015, the West—namely France, Germany as guarantors for Ukraine, and the US—made no effort whatsoever to make Kiev comply, despite repeated requests from Moscow.

Russia’s perception is that whatever it will do, it will face an irrational response from the West. This is why, in February 2022, Vladimir Putin realized he would gain nothing in doing nothing. If you take into account his mounting approval rate in the country, the resilience of the Russian economy after the sanctions, the loss of trust in the US dollar, the threatening inflation in the West, the consolidation of the Moscow-Beijing axis with the support of India (which the US has failed to keep in the “Quad”), Putin’s calculation was unfortunately not wrong.

Regardless of what Russia does, US and western strategy is to weaken it. From that point on, Russia has no real stake in its relations with us. Again, the US objective is not to have a “better” Ukraine or a “better” Russia, but a weaker Russia. But it also shows that the United States is not able to rise higher than Russia and that the only way to overcome it is to weaken it. This should ring an alarm bell in our countries…

TP: You have written a very interesting book on Putin. Please tell us a little about it.

JB: In fact, I started my book in October 2021, after a show on French state TV about Vladimir Putin. I am definitely not an admirer of Vladimir Putin, nor of any Western leader, by the way. But the so-called experts had so little understanding of Russia, international security and even of simple plain facts, that I decided to write a book. Later, as the situation around Ukraine developed, I adjusted my approach to cover this mounting conflict.
The idea was definitely not to relay Russian propaganda. In fact, my book is based exclusively on western sources, official reports, declassified intelligence reports, Ukrainian official medias, and reports provided by the Russian opposition. The approach was to demonstrate that we can have a sound and factual alternative understanding of the situation just with accessible information and without relying on what we call “Russian propaganda.”

The underlying thinking is that we can only achieve peace if we have a more balanced view of the situation. To achieve this, we have to go back to the facts. Now, these facts exist and are abundantly available and accessible. The problem is that some individuals make every effort to prevent this and tend to hide the facts that disturb them. This is exemplified by some so-called journalist who dubbed me “The spy who loved Putin!” This is the kind of “journalists” who live from stirring tensions and extremism. All figures and data provided by our media about the conflict come from Ukraine, and those coming from Russia are automatically dismissed as propaganda. My view is that both are propaganda. But as soon as you come up with western data that do not fit into the mainstream narrative, you have extremists claiming you “love Putin.”

Our media are so worried about finding rationality in Putin’s actions that they turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by Ukraine, thus generating a feeling of impunity for which Ukrainians are paying the price. This is the case of the attack on civilians by a missile in Kramatorsk—we no longer talk about it because the responsibility of Ukraine is very likely, but this means that the Ukrainians could do it again with impunity.

On the contrary, my book aims at reducing the current hysteria that prevent any political solution. I do not want to deny the Ukrainians the right to resist the invasion with arms. If I were Ukrainian, I would probably take the arms to defend my land. The issue here is that it must be their decision. The role of the international community should not be to add fuel to the fire by supplying arms but to promote a negotiated solution.

To move in this direction, we must make the conflict dispassionate and bring it back into the realm of rationality. In any conflict the problems come from both sides; but here, strangely, our media show us that they all come from one side only. This is obviously not true; and, in the end, it is the Ukrainian people who pay the price of our policy against Vladimir Putin.

TP: Why is Putin hated so much by the Western elite?

JB: Putin became Western elite’s “bête noire” in 2007 with his famous speech in Munich. Until then, Russia had only moderately reacted to NATO expansion. But as the US withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002 and started negotiations with some East European countries to deploy anti-ballistic missiles, Russia felt the heat and Putin virulently criticized the US and NATO.

This was the start of a relentless effort to demonize Vladimir Putin and to weaken Russia. The problem was definitely not human rights or democracy, but the fact that Putin dared to challenge the western approach. The Russians have in common with the Swiss the fact that they are very legalistic. They try to strictly follow the rules of international law. They tend to follow “law-based International order.” Of course, this is not the image we have, because we are used to hiding certain facts. Crimea is a case in point.

In the West, since the early 2000s, the US has started to impose a “rules-based international order.” As an example, although the US officially recognizes that there is only one China and that Taiwan is only a part of it, it maintains a military presence on the island and supplies weapons. Imagine if China would supply weapons to Hawaii (which was illegally annexed in the 19th century)!

What the West is promoting is an international order based on the “law of the strongest.” As long as the US was the sole superpower, everything was fine. But as soon as China and Russia started to emerge as world powers, the US tried to contain them. This is exactly what Joe Biden said in March 2021, shortly after taking office: “The rest of the world is closing in and closing in fast. We can’t allow this to continue.”

As Henry Kissinger said in the Washington Post: “For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” This is why I felt we need to have a more factual approach to this conflict.

TP: Do you know who was involved and when it was decided by the US and NATO that regime change in Russia was a primary geopolitical objective?

JB: I think everything started in the early 2000s. I am not sure the objective was a regime change in Moscow, but it was certainly to contain Russia. This is what we have witnessed since then. The 2014 events in Kiev have boosted US efforts.

These were clearly defined in 2019, in two publications of the RAND Corporation [James Dobbins, Raphael S. Cohen, Nathan Chandler, Bryan Frederick, Edward Geist, Paul DeLuca, Forrest E. Morgan, Howard J. Shatz, Brent Williams, “Extending Russia : Competing from Advantageous Ground,” RAND Corporation, 2019; James Dobbins & al., “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia,” RAND Corporation, (Doc Nr. RB-10014-A), 2019]. .This has nothing to do with the rule of law, democracy or human rights, but only with maintaining US supremacy in the world. In other words, nobody cares about Ukraine. This is why the international community (that is, Western countries) make every effort to prolong the conflict.

Since 2014, this is exactly what happened. Everything the West did was to fulfill US strategic objectives.

BidenCorp® - What Has Become Of India Chastiser And Russia Sanctions Architect Daleep Singh?

Firstpost |  The first event was the ‘sudden departure from the scene’ of US Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, who was the architect of the brutal sanctions imposed on Russia. Such an apt instance of a pithy phrase trademarked by a TV journalist named Karan Thapar about Narendra Modi: A Freudian slip that confirmed what we suspected was Thapar’s deep desire.

The second event is the God-awful keening and weeping by the lunatic-fringe-Left and Deep State over the proposed purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk. One would have thought that the heavens were, literally, falling. It’s merely that one rather popular social media site is being taken over by someone who claims he is fed up with their partisan censorship. Funny, these are the same people who ‘cancelled’ Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

I must admit to a certain prejudice against Daleep Singh for his hatchet-job in India, where he threatened grave but unnamed “consequences” if India didn’t abjectly toe the US line on sanctions. In the event, in one of those “the dog it was that died” scenarios that show how Karma loves a good joke, it was Singh who lost his job, and the Russian rouble is at levels above where it was before his supposedly crippling sanctions were imposed.

I figure I am permitted schadenfreude for a moment about Singh, but then reality strikes. (In truth, you can’t blame him alone: There are tons of Indian-origin people in the US who work assiduously against India’s interests, such as Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Vijay Prashad, Biju Mathews, Sunitha Viswanathan, et al). But the real story is how badly his sanctions have fared.

Despite the coercive pressure on India to not buy Russian oil, which India has largely adhered to, at significant cost because the Russians are willing to give large discounts, it turns out that the US itself has bought more Russian oil than India since the war began. Not to speak of massive EU oil and gas purchases, and most recently Poland and Hungary agreed to pay in roubles. So the gamble has failed, but EU energy security has been damaged.

In fact, the entire gamut of Western actions could be seen as counter-productive. The only cohort that has benefited at all is the Deep State, especially the Military Industrial Complex in the US, which needs a good little war somewhere to support its raison d’etre and to make reliable profits. The $80 billion of arms left behind in Afghanistan is water under the bridge (the US taxpayer has already paid for it), and nobody cares where it ends up (probably in India).

The sanctions on Russia are not quite so crippling because the EU needs Russian gas, if it is to keep the factories humming. For instance, the German economy may grind to a halt if the Russians turn off the taps. There is the irony that all the climate-change noise has eviscerated alternatives such as coal and nuclear, and there simply isn’t enough renewable energy available to compensate. This is what happens when you outsource policy to teen-aged Greta Thunberg.

But there are other, longer-term consequences for the US as well. The nascent rouble trade and even the declaration that the rouble will be backed by gold (although I am not sure how practicable that is) suggests that there will be a bifurcation of the global financial system, which has long dominated by the US dollar. For instance, China would just love it if more and more trade happened in the renminbi/yuan.

The threat of confiscation of national forex reserves held in the US is also non-trivial. The US recently did this with Afghanistan’s reserves, arbitrarily allocating a significant portion of it to the families of the victims of 9/11. India has the majority of its gold reserves (some 400 tons out of a total of 700) held in the UK and at the Bank of International Settlements. Are these safe?

Technical solutions may come to the rescue of the rouble which is now out of the SWIFT inter-bank transfer system. There was a news item that Russian banks have tied up with China’s UPI-like digital payments infrastructure. So why not with UPI, if the downside risks are judged worthwhile by the Indian government? It is possible to visualise a fragmented financial system, with increasing transaction costs, where the US dollar is only primus inter pares.

This may affect the US economy and the lifestyle of Americans. There are several issues: One is that the US has become the largest debtor nation in the world, and has been pretty much living beyond its means. For instance, China is sending its massive savings, along with its plethora of products, to the US, and this cannot go on forever. The effects of the deindustrialisation of America are being exacerbated by the war.

As Brahma Chellaney puts it, “For China, Biden’s coming to power has been the gift that keeps on giving. US pressure on it has eased. China’s trade surplus with the US jumped 21.5 per cent in 2021 over a year earlier to $396.6 billion, and now makes up 58.6 per cent of China’s total trade surplus.”

American reliability is also in question. Quoting the South China Morning Post, here’s Chellaney again: “Team Biden, even at the risk of leaving Taiwan vulnerable to a Chinese amphibious invasion, informs Taipei that the delivery of an important artillery system would be delayed until 2026 at the earliest. Biden has prioritised Ukraine over Taiwan’s defence.”