michaelshellenberger |Sri Lanka has fallen. Protesters breached the official
residences of Sri Lanka's Prime Minister and President, who have fled to
undisclosed locations out of fear of death. The proximate reason is
that the nation is bankrupt, suffering its worst financial crisis in decades.
Millions are struggling to purchase food, medicine and fuel. Energy
shortages and inflation were major factors behind the crisis. Inflation
in June in Sri Lanka was over 50%. Food prices rose by 80%. And a half-million people fell into poverty over the last year.
But
the underlying reason for the fall of Sri Lanka is that its leaders
fell under the spell of Western green elites peddling organic
agriculture and “ESG,” which refers to investments made following
supposedly higher Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria. Sri
Lanka has a near-perfect ESG score (98) which is higher than Sweden (96) or the United States (51), notes a commentator.
To be sure, there were other factors behind Sri Lanka’s fall. COVID-19 lockdowns and a 2019 bombing hurt tourism, a $3 billion to 5 billion-per-year industry. Sri Lanka’s leaders insisted on paying China back
for various “Belt and Road” infrastructure projects when other nations
refused to do so. And higher oil prices meant transportation prices rose 128% since May.
But
the biggest and main problem causing Sri Lanka’s fall was its ban on
chemical fertilizers in April 2021. Over 90% of Sri Lanka’s farmers had
used chemical fertilizers and, after the ban, 85% experienced crop losses. After the fertilizer ban, rice production fell 20% and prices skyrocketed 50 percent
in just six months. Sri Lanka had to import $450 million worth of rice
despite having been self-sufficient in the grain just months earlier.
The price of carrots and tomatoes rose
five-fold. Tea, the nation’s main export, also suffered, thereby
undermining the nation’s foreign currency and ability to purchase
products from abroad.
While there are 2 million farmers in Sri Lanka, 70% of the nation’s 22 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on farming. “We are furious!” said one rice farmer in May. “Angry! Not just me - but all the farmers who cultivated here are angry.”
lefteast | Amid the geopolitical and humanitarian crisis generated by the war in
Ukraine, another crisis is unfolding globally which is also heavily
affected by the war. Global food supply problems
could cause food shortages and famine in several low-income countries
in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Global food prices,
increasing since the early 2000s, had already reached new peaks in the
last years. Owing to the important role of Ukraine and Russia in the
global food system (they are both among the largest grain exporters in
the world, and Russia has a significant role in the fertilizer industry
as well), they are expected to further accelerate to highest-ever
levels. The war also reveals how important local food systems
are in providing nutrition in Ukraine: people fleeing the cities are
depending at the moment on food produced by small family farms. The
solidarity of Romanian farmers providing Ukrainian family farms with
seeds also shows the power of alternative ways of thinking outside the
logic of the global food system.
The growing food crisis points to characteristics of the global food
system that has emerged in relationship to the capitalist economy. The
global food system’s dependence on fossil fuels, commercial seeds, and
chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides), and its devastating
societal effects in certain parts of the world make the system
unsustainable. Rural societies in general, but more specifically small
producers and rural communities in peripheral and semi-peripheral
regions, are affected by the global food system in a way that is
inherently unjust. The marginalization of small producers and peasant
communities who lack the capacity to successfully integrate into the
global food system (but are also unable to remove themselves from it ),
and inequalities in access to land and natural resources caused by land
concentration or land grabbing are significant consequences of the
global food system. The global division of labor means that while
peripheral and semi-peripheral regions more frequently specialize in the
more labor-intensive and less profitable activities in the global
commodity chain, core countries are generally involved with more capital
and technology-intensive production and more profitable activities,
reproducing global inequalities in the accumulation of capital.
Liberalization of the land market in semi-peripheries and peripheries,
rather than aiding small or medium farms, has tended to benefit mostly
the local elite (a minority of the rural society) or multinational
corporations based in core countries. In semi-peripheral Hungary, the
food-processing industry and supermarkets, which realize a great amount
of profit from the food commodity chain are also to a significant extent
operated by foreign capital.
The global food system has negative effects on society and more
broadly a damaging impact on the environment. It is a main culprit in
the loss of biodiversity and a major driver of climate change. Negative
environmental effects like the emergence of herbicide-resistant
superweeds, the loss of pollinators, and the increasingly prevalent
droughts hit back at the global food system. Requiring costly
interventions in agroecosystems such as new pesticides, artificial
pollination, and irrigation, they contribute to higher food prices.
The concept of food sovereignty was developed and propagated by the
international peasant movement La Via Campesina (The Peasant Way).
Originally rooted in autonomous peasant organizations in Latin America,
the movement later became global, and now has members from Africa, Asia,
North America, and Europe. La Via Campesina centers its work around
claims of social justice, the right of peasants to produce food, and
more equal access to lands and other resources (like water or seed). It
also focuses on the localization of food systems and emphasizes the
right to control one’s food and the right to access healthy, culturally
appropriate food instead of producing for and consuming the products of
the profit-focused global food system. Food sovereignty not only
concentrates on the health of people, but the health of the environment
as well, it argues for ecologically sound and sustainable agriculture.
In its thematic issue on food sovereignty
(#29), the Hungarian critical journal Fordulat addresses how the
operation of the global food system affects rural society and ecosystems
in Hungary and discusses the struggles and strategies of small
producers, including those of women who work in agriculture. The first
part of the issue contains five original articles and a translation,
tied together by the concept of food sovereignty and what it entails. It
gathers theoretical and empirical works that show how the history of
struggles of rural societies for more fair distribution of land and
natural resources and environmental degradation have developed in tandem
with capitalism, focusing specifically on transformations in Hungary’s
agriculture. It shows how the dialectical relationship between nature,
society, and the capitalist system to a large extent shapes rural life
in this semi-peripheral context today. The second part of the issue
presents three book reviews that reintroduce anthropological works
discussing local conditions, practices, and the changing meanings of
food and farming as well as resistance and struggle, amid the capitalist
and socialist transformations of the food systems in peripheral and
semi-peripheral places. While these books were written several decades
ago, they still hold relevance for understanding struggles in these
rural areas today.
journal-neo |Sadly, the Fed and
other central bankers lie. Raising interest rates is not to cure
inflation. It is to force a global reset in control over the world’s
assets, it’s wealth, whether real estate, farmland, commodity
production, industry, even water. The Fed knows very well that Inflation
is only beginning to rip across the global economy. What is unique is
that now Green Energy mandates across the industrial world are driving
this inflation crisis for the first time, something deliberately ignored
by Washington or Brussels or Berlin.
The global shortages
of fertilizers, soaring prices of natural gas, and grain supply losses
from global draught or exploding costs of fertilizers and fuel or the
war in Ukraine, guarantee that, at latest this September-October harvest
time, we will undergo a global additional food and energy price
explosion. Those shortages all are a result of deliberate policies.
Moreover, far worse
inflation is certain, due to the pathological insistence of the world’s
leading industrial economies led by the Biden Administration’s
anti-hydrocarbon agenda. That agenda is typified by the astonishing
nonsense of the US Energy Secretary stating, “buy E-autos instead” as
the answer to exploding gasoline prices.
Similarly, the
European Union has decided to phase out Russian oil and gas with no
viable substitute as its leading economy, Germany, moves to shut its
last nuclear reactor and close more coal plants. Germany and other EU
economies as a result will see power blackouts this winter and natural
gas prices will continue to soar. In the second week of June in Germany
gas prices rose another 60% alone. Both the Green-controlled German
government and the Green Agenda “Fit for 55” by the EU Commission
continue to push unreliable and costly wind and solar at the expense of
far cheaper and reliable hydrocarbons, insuring an unprecedented
energy-led inflation.
Fed has pulled the plug
With the 0.75% Fed
rate hike, largest in almost 30 years, and promise of more to come, the
US central bank has now guaranteed a collapse of not merely the US debt
bubble, but also much of the post-2008 global debt of $303 trillion.
Rising interest rates after almost 15 years mean collapsing bond values.
Bonds, not stocks, are the heart of the global financial system.
US mortgage rates
have now doubled in just 5 months to above 6%, and home sales were
already plunging before the latest rate hike. US corporations took on
record debt owing to the years of ultra-low rates. Some 70% of that debt
is rated just above “junk” status. That corporate non-financial debt
totaled $9 trillion in 2006. Today it exceeds $18 trillion. Now a large
number of those marginal companies will not be able to rollover the old
debt with new, and bankruptcies will follow in coming months. The
cosmetics giant Revlon just declared bankruptcy.
The
highly-speculative, unregulated Crypto market, led by Bitcoin, is
collapsing as investors realize there is no bailout there. Last November
the Crypto world had a $3 trillion valuation. Today it is less than
half, and with more collapse underway. Even before the latest Fed rate
hike the stock value of the US megabanks had lost some $300 billion. Now
with stock market further panic selling guaranteed as a global economic
collapse grows, those banks are pre-programmed for a new severe bank
crisis over the coming months.
As US economist Doug
Noland recently noted, “Today, there’s a massive “periphery” loaded with
“subprime” junk bonds, leveraged loans, buy-now-pay-later, auto, credit
card, housing, and solar securitizations, franchise loans, private
Credit, crypto Credit, DeFi, and on and on. A massive infrastructure has
evolved over this long cycle to spur consumption for tens of millions,
while financing thousands of uneconomic enterprises. The “periphery” has
become systemic like never before. And things have started to Break.”
The Federal
Government will now find its interest cost of carrying a record $30
trillion in Federal debt far more costly. Unlike the 1930s Great
Depression when Federal debt was near nothing, today the Government,
especially since the Biden budget measures, is at the limits. The US is
becoming a Third World economy. If the Fed no longer buys trillions of
US debt, who will? China? Japan? Not likely.
thestar | A
transcript of an Oval Office interview Thursday with President Joe Biden
by AP White House reporter Josh Boak. Where the audio recording of the
interview is unclear, ellipses or a notation that the recording was
unintelligible are used.
AP: I wanted to thank you for taking the time to do this.
BIDEN: Sure, happy to.
AP:
And I’m really interested in how you’re thinking and how you’re making
choices during what seems like a really unique time in American history.
BIDEN: Well, I’m making choices.
It’s an interesting question. I’m making choices like I always have, in
the sense that circumstances change but my objective doesn’t change.
Does that make sense to you? For example, I have, uh, from the time I’ve
entered public life, it’s been about how to give ordinary working-class
and middle-class folks a shot (inaudible) .. instead of everything
being viewed as from the top down. I’m not a big, is it working (a
reference to the tape recorder).
AP: Yeah, we’re good.
BIDEN:
I’m not a big believer in trickle-down economy, and, um, and so
everything I look at from the time I took this office, but even before
that when I was a senator all those years, is what’s the best shot to
grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out because when that
happens everybody does well. The wealthy do very, very well. And the
biggest thing I think that, when I came into this job, that I have the
greatest frustration with the last four years, is that, um, uh,
everything was constructed and built and arranged in order for the top 1
to 3% of the population to do very well. The rest was sort of, I mean
that literally, everything else seemed to be an afterthought.
AP:
So, let me ask about that, right, because you’ve seen the polls.
There’s a lot of voters who are very pessimistic. When I look at the
consumer sentiment survey the University of Michigan puts out, even
Democrats began to get really worried about a year ago regarding the
economy and we’ve had people that have basically been through a
pandemic, shortages of basic goods, inflation, some of the political
divisions you’re seeing right now on the Hill with the Jan. 6 hearings,
and also a war in Europe. And how do you as a president provide a sense
of stability and strength ... (crosstalk)
BIDEN: Well, if you notice, until gas
prices started going up, which was about the same time, the University
of Michigan survey, they had a very different view. Things were much
more, they were much more optimistic. We came in and we started to grow
the economy in significant ways. We were able to, ah, you know, go from 2
million shots in arms to 225 million. People were having access to
dealing with the pandemic. We started opening up businesses, and opening
up access to go back to work, etc. But then, in my experience, the way I
was raised, if you want a direct barometer of what people are going to
talk about at the kitchen table and the dining room table and whether
things are going well, it’s the cost of food and what’s the cost of, of
gasoline at the pump. I mean literally at the pump.
And
if you notice, you know, uh, gasoline went up a, you know, $1.25 right
off the bat, almost, when, the, Putin’s war started. Um, and as I said
at the time, by the way, I made it clear with helping Ukraine, and
organizing NATO to help Ukraine, that this was going to cost. There was
going to be a price to pay for it. It was, this is not going to be
cost-free, but we had, the option of doing nothing was worse. If he in
fact moved into Ukraine, took hold of Ukraine, and Belarus, where it is,
and he’s been a threat to NATO, all those things would have even been
more dire.
AP: Why is that? Because it seems like you knew the risks on Ukraine with regard to higher gasoline prices ...
BIDEN: Sure.
AP: ... that carried political risks for you at home ...
BIDEN: Sure.
AP:
... so when, when your aides said, “Look at the situation,” how did you
make that choice? What would you tell someone in Latrobe, Pennsylvania?
BIDEN:
I’m the president of the United States. It’s not about my political
survival. It’s about what’s best for the country. No kidding. No
kidding. So what happens? What happens if the strongest power, NATO, an
organizational structure we put together, walked away from Russian
aggression of over 100,000 troops marching across a border to try to, to
occupy and wipe out a culture of an entire people. What, then, then
what happens? What happens next? What do we do next?
Pernicious frauds have tricked miseducated subjects into the absurd delusion that the whole
Russian awakening and change of course has been the result Putin's
takeover. But ask yourself, who chose him and made Yeltsin put him up as
PM?
Russia may not have the deep state in the
same way that the U.S. does, but influential and respected Russian elders had and continue to have a way to
make themselves heard. Very obviously, a group of elder
Russian statesmen got together - worried about Russia going to the dogs - and
engineered a quiet changeover. However it happened,
Putin did not make it to the top by himself, and most certainly he has
not been alone in running things, as the West would like its most simple-minded subjects to believe.
So
do not worry about Valodya's health and Russian leadership's succession. Everyone in Russia has learned
the lesson from the 1990s. The support that
Russians extend to Putin is not so much personal, it is instead support for his policies for making Russia strong, independent and
proud.
The idea that the Russian people would fall
for Western "beads" again is ludicrous.
RG-RU.Translate.Goog |Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much! Dear Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich! Dear friends, colleagues!
I greet the participants and guests of the anniversary XXV St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
It
is taking place at a difficult time for the entire world community,
when the economy, markets, and the very principles of the global
economic system are under attack. Many trade, production, and logistics ties that were previously disrupted by the pandemic are now going through new tests. Moreover,
such key concepts for business as business reputation, inviolability of
property and trust in world currencies have been thoroughly undermined -
undermined, unfortunately, by our partners in the West, and this was
done intentionally, for the sake of ambition, in the name of preserving
outdated geopolitical illusions.
Today
ours - when I say "ours" I mean the Russian leadership - has its own
view of the situation in which the global economy finds itself. I
will dwell in detail on how Russia is acting in these conditions and
how it is planning its development in a dynamically changing
environment.
A
year and a half ago, speaking at the Davos Forum, I once again
emphasized that the era of the unipolar world order is over - I want to
start with this, there is no getting away from it - it has ended despite
all attempts to preserve it, to conserve it by any means. Changes
are a natural course of history, since the civilizational diversity of
the planet, the richness of cultures is difficult to combine with
political, economic and other patterns, patterns do not work here,
patterns that are rudely, without alternative, imposed from one center.
The
flaw lies in the very idea, according to which there is one, albeit a
strong power with a limited circle of approximate or, as they say,
states admitted to it, and all the rules of business and international
relations - when it becomes necessary - are interpreted exclusively in
the interests of this power , as they say, work in one direction, the
game goes in one direction. A world based on such "dogmas" is definitely unsustainable.
The
United States, having declared victory in the Cold War, declared itself
to be the messengers of the Lord on Earth, who have no obligations, but
only interests, and these interests are declared sacred. They
do not seem to notice that over the past decades, new powerful centers
have been formed on the planet and are louder and louder. Each
of them develops its own political systems and public institutions,
implements its own models of economic growth and, of course, has the
right to protect them, to ensure national sovereignty.
We
are talking about objective processes, about truly revolutionary,
tectonic changes in geopolitics, the global economy, in the
technological sphere, in the entire system of international relations,
where the role of dynamic, promising states and regions is significantly
increasing, whose interests can no longer be ignored.
I repeat: these changes are fundamental, pivotal and inexorable. And
it is a mistake to believe that the time of turbulent changes can, as
they say, sit out, wait out, that, supposedly, everything will return to
normal, everything will be as before. Will not.
However, it seems that the ruling elites of some Western states are just in this kind of illusion. They do not want to notice obvious things, but stubbornly cling to the shadows of the past. For example, they believe that the dominance of the West in global politics and economics is an unchanging, eternal value. Nothing is eternal.
Moreover, our colleagues do not simply deny reality. They are trying to counteract the course of history. They think in terms of the last century. They
are captivated by their own delusions about countries outside the
so-called "golden billion": they consider everything else to be the
periphery, their backyard, they still treat them like a colony, and the
peoples living there consider them second-class people, because consider
themselves exceptional. If they are exceptional, then everyone else is second-class.
Hence
- an irrepressible desire to punish, economically crush the one who
stands out from the general ranks, does not want to blindly obey. Moreover,
they rudely and shamelessly impose their own ethics, views on culture
and ideas about history, and sometimes question the sovereignty and
integrity of states, create a threat to their existence. Suffice it to recall the fate of Yugoslavia and Syria, Libya and Iraq.
If some "rebel" cannot be hounded, pacified, then they try to isolate him or, as they say now, "cancel". Everything
is used, even sports, the Olympic movement, a ban on culture,
masterpieces of art - for the sole reason that their authors are of the
"wrong" origin.
This is the nature of the current attack of Russophobia in the West and insane sanctions against Russia. Crazy and, I would say, thoughtless. Their number, as well as the speed of stamping, knows no precedents.
thesaker | If the unprecedented tidal wave of sanctions which the West had sent
toward Russia had produced some sort of tangible effect during the first
two or three months of Russia’s special operation in the Ukraine, then
this strategy would have been quite enough to ease suffering Western
masses through the shock of the unfolding crisis (although the crisis
would continue to unfold even if the Russian economy had collapsed). But
over the longer term this strategy stops working. First, the “blame
Putin” narrative is rather monotonous and gets old quickly. Second, and
far more importantly, at the level of mass subconscious, it creates the
impression that Putin is a god: super-powerful, super-influential and
able to influence processes both global and local through subtle and
invisible means. Moreover, Putin the god is Zeus-like and has powerful
atomic thunderbolts at his disposal, adding terrifying appeal to his
already frightful image.
Sooner or later the Western mass subconscious will form a simple and
perfectly logical thought: if Putin is all-powerful and
super-influential, and if we with our feeble “sanctions from Hell” can
do nothing to weaken or dislodge him over three, then five, then seven
months, then, obviously, we must come to terms with him and accede to
his demands before things get any worse for us! And while it would be
demeaning for the Western mass subconscious to negotiate with a petty
tyrant or a mad despot, negotiating with an all-powerful demigod who
holds the fate of humanity in his hands is not shameful at all but a
necessary, unavoidable, eminently reasonable measure. Moreover, it
should be possible to portray such a compromise in flattering terms: as a
magnanimous gift from the community of civilized nations offered in
good faith in order to save the world from nuclear armageddon about to
be unleashed by an angry, all-powerful demigod.
In turn, if Western politicians are, as one might expect, reluctant
to negotiate with Putin and to compromise, suffering Western masses will
blame them for any delay. If Putin is all-powerful and
super-influential, then why aren’t they negotiating and seeking
compromise? What are they waiting for? What’s wrong with them? The
better-informed element among the Western masses might even be able to
vaguely guess at a seldom-discussed but rather obvious fact: what Putin
wants is not at all unreasonable. He just wants some of Ukraine (not
necessarily even all of it—just the enthusiastically, patriotically
Russian bits) and he also wants NATO the hell away from Russia’s
borders. “What do we want this Ukraine for anyway?” this enlightened
element might inquire. After all, most people in the West lived many
happy years not knowing that the Ukraine even existed. What’s more,
their recent discovery of its existence has coincided with the onset of a
very nasty crisis—and they still can’t find the damned place on a map!
And now they have to suffer with sky-high gas prices, with unaffordable
food, galloping inflation, shortages of baby formula—all because some
idiot politicians are refusing to give Putin this fucking Ukraine which
nobody else wants anyway? (Well, Poland does, but who the heck is
Poland?) Come on! Be reasonable! Get rid of this stupid Hunter Biden
playground and let’s get on with it!
That is the new narrative that is inevitably forming in the mass
subconscious of the West, and as time passes, energy prices continue to
increase, shortages of all sorts of things become commonplace… and
meanwhile the ruble strengthens and Russia gets richer and richer in
spite of “sanctions from Hell,” unhurriedly moving its fabled wall of
artillery fire westward across the Ukrainian landscape, this narrative
will become stronger and stronger and will eventually become dominant.
At that point, any attempt to “blame Putin” will be met with boos,
hisses and a volley of rotten vegetables. What should we expect Western
politicians to do under such circumstances? We should not expect any
surprises; they will do what they have always done: they will try to
suppress the new, competing narrative. They will “cancel” anyone who
tries to articulate it within the media space. (Tucker Carlson beware!)
In doing so, the West will neatly echo what’s happened within the
Ukraine itself—a symptom of a creeping Ukrainization of the West. In the
Ukraine, for every single disastrous, catastrophic failure that had
occurred in 2014 and 2015, the Kiev regime blamed it squarely on Putin
personally. Over time it has succeeded in forming a sort of quasi-cult
of Putin as an all-powerful evil deity hell-bent on destroying poor,
sore-beset little cuddly Ukraine. As a result, by 2018 give or take a
year, in the Ukrainian mass subconscious there formed a new narrative:
“What do we need this Russian-infested Crimea or this ornery Donbass
for? Why can’t we just give them to Putin, so that he leaves us alone
and lets us develop as a European-oriented country?”
What did the Kiev regime do about this new narrative? It did whatever
it could to suppress it. This wasn’t any sort of independent initiative
on its part; it is, after all, a colonial administration run from
Washington. And since Washington was busy architecting a Ukrainian war
against Russia, any narrative that involved making peace with Russia was
simply not allowed. That’s why all Ukrainian opposition political
parties were banned, all non-government-controlled television channels
were shut down and anyone who ventured to guess that giving de facto
independent territories a chance to decide their own fate might be a
good idea were charged with separatism and imprisoned or killed. As a
result, the West got what it wanted: a Ukrainian war with Russia.
But then something went horribly wrong. Putin pre-empted the
Ukrainian attack and lit a backfire by sending in tank columns into
territory previously controlled by the Kiev regime, scrambling its
logistics throwing its battle plans into ghastly disarray. Then he set
about methodically blowing up the Ukraine’s warmaking capacity using
standoff weapons. According to schedule, it will be all gone later this
month, Western military aid notwithstanding. And then it turned out that
Russia was ready for “sanctions from Hell,” having spent eight years
preparing for them, and was able to sustain the blow, which then bounced
back onto the West and started smashing it to bits. The West
reflexively continued to follow the Ukrainian pattern and blame it all
on Putin. By now the alternative narrative of an all-powerful Lord Putin
is fully formed and we should expect to hear more and more voices
clamoring for negotiation and compromise with him.
The aforementioned Tucker Carlson is one of these voices, and his
influence on his vast audience sets the tone for a significant chunk of
electorate in the US—not that their vote counts for much. Much more
surprisingly, the same opinion was voiced at Davos by none other than
that talking fossil Henry Kissinger! In response, the Ukrainians added
Kissinger to their… terrorist database. Various Kiev regime mouthpieces
positively choked from fury. How could he? Doesn’t he know that
negotiating with Putin is strictly verboten? That narrative must be
suppressed—in the Ukraine and in the West!
The strategy of blaming it all on Putin has backfired grandly in both
the Ukraine and in the West and will continue backfiring, eating away at
the social fabric and demoralizing the population. But that’s not all!
This strategy is also immensely helpful to Russia. Ignoring the obvious
thought that anything that is detrimental to the West is automatically
beneficial for Russia, there is another, much more significant benefit
that this strategy provides to Russia directly: it works to raise
Russia’s, and Putin’s, prestige in the rest of the world, which is
already much more important to Russia than the West will ever be again.
michael-hudson | Is the proxy war in Ukraine turning out to be only a lead-up to
something larger, involving world famine and a foreign-exchange crisis
for food- and oil-deficit countries?
Many more people are likely to die of famine and economic disruption
than on the Ukrainian battlefield. It thus is appropriate to ask whether
what appeared to be the Ukraine proxy war is part of a larger strategy
to lock in U.S. control over international trade and payments. We are
seeing a financially weaponized power grab by the U.S. Dollar Area over
the Global South as well as over Western Europe. Without dollar credit
from the United States and its IMF subsidiary, how can countries stay
afloat? How hard will the U.S. act to block them from de-dollarizing,
opting out of the U.S. economic orbit?
U.S. Cold War strategy is not alone in thinking how to benefit from
provoking a famine, oil and balance-of-payments crisis. Klaus Schwab’s
World Economic Forum worries that the world is overpopulated – at least
with the “wrong kind” of people. As Microsoft philanthropist (the
customary euphemism for rentier monopolist) Bill Gates has explained:
“Population growth in Africa is a challenge.” His lobbying foundation’s
2018 “Goalkeepers” report warned: “According to U.N. data, Africa is
expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth
between 2015 and 2050. Its population is projected to double by 2050,”
with “more than 40 percent of world’s extremely poor people … in just
two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.”
Gates advocates cutting this projected population increase by 30
percent by improving access to birth control and expanding education to
“enable more girls and women to stay in school longer, have children
later.” But how can that be afforded with this summer’s looming food and
oil squeeze on government budgets?
South Americans and some Asian countries are subject to the same jump
in import prices resulting from NATO’s demands to isolate Russia.
JPMorgan Chase head Jamie Dimon recently warned attendees at a Wall
Street investor conference that the sanctions will cause a global
“economic hurricane.” He echoed the warning by IMF Managing Director
Kristalina Georgieva in April that, “To put it simply: we are facing a
crisis on top of a crisis.” Pointing out that the Covid pandemic has
been capped by inflation as the war in Ukraine has made matters “much
worse, and threatens to further increase inequality” she concluded that:
“The economic consequences from the war spread fast and far, to
neighbors and beyond, hitting hardest the world’s most vulnerable
people. Hundreds of millions of families were already struggling with
lower incomes and higher energy and food prices.”
The Biden administration blames Russia for “unprovoked aggression.”
But it is his administration’s pressure on NATO and other Dollar Area
satellites that has blocked Russian exports of grain, oil and gas. But
many oil- and food-deficit countries see themselves as the primary
victims of “collateral damage” caused by US/NATO pressure.
Is world famine and balance-of-payments crisis a deliberate US/NATO policy?
On June 3, African Union Chairperson Macky Sall, President
of Senegal, went to Moscow to plan how to avoid a disruption in Africa’s
food and oil trade by refusing to become pawns in the US/NATO
sanctions. So far in 2022, President Putin noted: “Our trade is growing.
In the first months of this year it grew by 34 percent.” But Senegal’s
President Sall worried that: “Anti-Russia sanctions have made this
situation worse and now we do not have access to grain from Russia,
primarily to wheat. And, most importantly, we do not have access
to fertilizer.”
U.S. diplomats are forcing countries to choose whether, in George W.
Bush’s words, “you are either for us or against us.” The litmus test is
whether they are willing to force their populations to starve and shut
down their economies for lack of food and oil by stopping trade with the
world’s Eurasian core of China, Russia, India, Iran and their
neighbors.
The US and its allies can impose sanctions without broad international
support, and can claim that the “whole world” supports them, and nations
can draw their own conclusions. But these are not national sanctions. The SWIFT prohibition isn’t, the
seizure of Russia’s FX assets wasn’t, and the EU not being a nation,
none of the EU sanction packages were national or sovereign sanctions either.
The US has actively and aggressively been trying to get other nations to
hew to its Russia sanctions, see its threats to China, Saudi Arabia,
India. But it's not the government of the U.S. which has imposed any of its sanctions regime.
This is an important and insightful way of thinking about sanctions: Sanctions are beyond the Rule of Law and Due Process. For
instance, this Russian or that Russian is sanctioned, absent any due process. I
would also classify the actions against the Unvaccinated as sanctions,
executive or bureaucratic orders
without due process. Even if there might be fair and just due process,
it is too late and expensive.
“Economic sanctions are the modern equivalent of ancient sieges,
trying to starve populations into submission. The devastating impacts of
sieges on access to food, health and other basic services are
well-known.” Sanctions are meant to hurt civilian populations–which makes them
the tactic of choice of cowards unwilling to send in their own
cannon fodder. Civilians dying in sanctioned countries don’t make it into
U.S. newspapers–not when there are blond Ukrainians to photograph.
jomodevplus |Sanctions cut both ways Unless
approved by the UN Security Council (UNSC), sanctions are not
authorized by international law. With Russia’s veto in the UNSC,
unilateral sanctions by the US and its allies have surged following the
Ukraine invasion.
During 1950-2016, ‘comprehensive’ trade sanctions have cut bilateral trade between sanctioning countries and their victims by 77% on average. The US has imposed more sanctions regimes, and for longer periods, than any other country.
The
US has increased using sanctions since 2016, imposing them on more than
1,000 entities or individuals yearly, on average, from 2016 to 2020 –
nearly 80% more than in 2008-2015. The one-term Trump administration
raised the US share of all new sanctions to almost half from a third before.
During January-May 2022, 75 countries implemented 19,268 restrictive trade measures.
Such measures on food and fertilizers (85%) greatly exceed those on raw
materials and fuels (15%). Unsurprisingly, the world now faces less
supplies and higher prices for fuel and food.
Monetary
authorities have been raising interest rates to curb inflation, but such
efforts do not address the main causes of higher prices now. Worse,
they are likely to deepen and prolong stagnation, increasing the
likelihood of ‘stagflation’.
Sanctions were supposed to bring Russia to its knees. But less than three months after the rouble plunged, its exchange rate is back to pre-war levels,
rising from the ‘rouble rubble’ promised by Western economic
warmongers. With enough public support, the Russian regime is in no
hurry to submit to sanctions.
thesaker | Make no mistake about it: The tragic war that is currently taking
place on Ukrainian battlefields is not between the Russian Federation
and the Ukraine, but between the Russian Federation and the
US-controlled NATO. The latter, also called ‘the collective West’,
promotes an aggressive ideology of organised violence, a politically-
economically- and militarily-enforced doctrine euphemistically known as
‘Globalism’. This means hegemony by the Western world, which arrogantly
calls itself ‘the international community’, over the whole planet. NATO
is losing that war, which uses NATO-trained Ukrainians as its proxy
cannon fodder, in three spheres, political, economic and military.
Firstly,
politically, the West has finally understood that it cannot execute
regime change in Moscow. Its pipedream of replacing the highly popular
President Putin with is CIA stooge Navalny is not going to happen. As
for the West’s puppet-president in Kiev, he is only a creature of
Washington and its oligarchs. A professional actor, he is unable to
speak for himself, but is a spokesman for the NATO which he loves.
Secondly,
economically, the West faces serious resistance to the 6,000 sanctions
it has imposed on Russia and Russians. Those sanctions have
backfired. In the West, we can testify to this every time we buy fuel or
food. The combination of high inflation (10% +) and even higher energy
prices, caused almost solely by these illegal anti-Russian sanctions,
are threatening the collapse of Western economies, much more than
threatening Russia or China. As a result of this reverse effect of
sanctions against Russia, the rouble is at a three-year high, standing
at about 64 to the US dollar and rising, though immediately after the
sanctions it had briefly gone down to 150 to the dollar.
After
strenuously denying that they would do it, already most countries in
Europe (at least 17 for now), including Germany and Italy, have agreed
to open accounts with Gazprombank, as Russia advised them to do and to
pay for oil and gas in roubles. And this number is growing by the week.
The problems will be even greater with food shortages, as the world food
chain is highly integrated and the agricultural production of Russia
and the Ukraine (now controlled by Russia) is at least 40% of the
world’s grain production. Just days ago it was announced that Russia
expects record grain production this year (130 million tonnes). Russia
may yet demand payment in roubles for all this as well.
The sanctions against Russia have divided Europe and are threatening to divide NATO. President
Erdogan of Turkey, a NATO member, has announced that he would veto the
entry to NATO of Finland and Sweden into NATO. At the same time, Russia
has announced that it will cut off Finland’s natural gas supply. Swedish
leaders are re-thinking their entry to NATO.
Thirdly, militarily,
it is clear that the Ukraine, with huge numbers of desertions and
surrenders, has no chance of winning the war against Russia. Most of its
military equipment has already been wiped out and newly-delivered and
often antiquated Western equipment will make little difference, even if
it is not destroyed by Russian missiles as soon as it reaches the
Ukraine. The conflict could now be over within weeks, rather than
months. The US ‘Defense Secretary’ (= Minister for Offense), Lloyd
Austin, has desperately called the Russian Defence Minister Sergey
Shoigu to beg for a ceasefire. Would you agree to a ceasefire when in
less than three months and with only 10% of your military forces you
have already occupied an area greater than England inside the Ukraine,
an area that produces 75% of Ukrainian GDP?
The panic of financial
disaster in the West has begun to set in. As a result, the French
President Macron has told President Zelensky (that is, told Washington)
to give up part of Ukraine’s sovereignty and at last start serious
negotiations with Russia. Macron is also trying to free French
mercenaries from Azovstal in Mariupol, but the problem is much bigger
than this, as the whole of Europe is facing economic meltdown. And the
Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, has asked President Biden to
contact President Putin and ‘give peace a chance’. Note that Mario
Draghi is a former president of the European Central Bank and a Goldman
Sachs puppet – just as Macron is a Rothschild puppet.
There have
always been empires and invasions throughout history. However, they have
always been local and not been justified as the only possible global
ideology, a ‘New World Order’, to be imposed by violence all over the
planet. After the NATO war is over, lost by ‘the collective West’, NATO
Centralism, the ideology of a ‘Unipolar World’, controlled from
Washington, must end. However, Centralism must also come to an end
everywhere else, like that under Soviet-period Moscow (1).
I suggest those with all types of arcane imperialist
motives for why BidenCorp® is determined to maintain the proxy war for
as long as possible, consider Mike Hudson's comments to Halper &
Mate in his
interview on useful idiots.
Hudson is
really worth putting the work into to listen to
on this subject.
Prof Hudson maintains that the huge inflation
combined with a shortage of food that is the result of this war and
the concomitant sanctions, is not a bug, it is a feature. In fact, according to Hudson, it is the number
one reason for the conflict.
He tells us that most of the 'global south' that is
Africa, Latin America and some parts of Asia are going to be ripped
apart by un-affordable food prices throughout 2022 and 2023. BidenCorp® has created a special loans deal through the IMF to 'assist' these nations.
However in order to qualify for the loans, nations
must sign up to a deal whereby they agree to reduce wages, destroy any
organised labor and agree to privatize all state functions, particularly health and education. In addition, public utilities
and producer boards will also be made private, leaving those nations which attempt to prevent
their populations from starving to death, with economies run entirely by
outsiders, plus a huge debt which they will struggle to service, much
less repay.
Hudson maintains that the plan emanated from the
WEF, where billionaires maintained that there are 20% too many people on
this planet. They claim to want to get rid of the 'unproductive
people'.
That last assertion by the WEF is insane when one considers that in the
third world, global south, whatever you want to call it, unproductive
people already die. There are virtually no means of supporting such
types in a poverty ridden society.
It is types like most of us, aging baby boomers,
living off pensions, superannuation and bourgeois family until we hit 90
or so - who most qualify for that. One part of me says they don't target us because (i) we consume, or
(ii)we vote for their puppets in great numbers or (iii) they had a go
with covid, while the last part says we'll be next.
journal-neo |In what is clearly
becoming a US Administration war on food, the situation is being
dramatically aggravated by USDA demands for chicken farmers to kill off
millions of chickens in now 27 states, allegedly for signs of Bird Flu
infection. The H5N1 Bird Flu “virus” was exposed in 2015 as a complete
hoax. The tests used by the US government inspectors to determine bird
flu now are the same unreliable PCR tests used for COVID in humans. The
test is worthless for that. US Government officials estimate that since
first cases were “tested” positive in February, at least 23 million
chickens and turkeys have been culled to allegedly contain the spread of
a disease whose cause could be the incredibly unsanitary cage
confinement of mass industrial chicken CAFOs. The
upshot is sharp rises in prices of egg by some 300% since November and
severe loss of chicken protein sources for American consumers at a time
when overall cost of living inflation is at a 40-year high.
To make matters
worse, California and Oregon are again declaring water emergency amid a
multi-year drought and are sharply reducing irrigation water to farmers
in California, who produce the major share of US fresh vegetables and
fruits. That drought has since spread to cover most agriculture land
west of the Mississippi River, meaning much of US farmland.
US food security is
under threat as never before since the 1930s Dust Bowl, and the Biden
Administration “Green Agenda” is doing everything to make the impact
worse for its citizens.
In recent comments US
President Biden remarked without elaborating that the US food shortages
are “going to be real.” His administration also is deaf to pleas of
farmer organizations to allow cultivation of some 4 million acres of
farmland ordered left out of cultivation for “environmental reasons.
However this is not the only part of the world where crisis in food is
developing.
Global Disaster
These deliberate Washington actions are taking
place at a time a global series of food disasters create the worst food
supply situation in decades, perhaps since the World War II end.
In the EU, which is
significantly dependent on Russia, Belarus and Ukraine for feed grains,
fertilizers and energy, sanctions are making the covid-induced food
shortages dramatically worse. The EU uses its foolish Green Agenda as an
excuse to forbid the Italian government from ignoring EU rules limiting
state aid to farmers. In Germany, the new Green Party Agriculture
Minister Cem Özdemir, who wants to phase out traditional agriculture
allegedly for its “greenhouse gas” emissions, has given farmers who want
to grow more food a cold response. The EU faces many of the same
disastrous threats to food security as the USA and even more dependence
on Russian energy which is about to be suicidally sanctioned by the EU.
The major food
producing countries in South America, especially Argentina and Paraguay,
are in the midst of a severe drought attributed to a periodic La Niña
Pacific anomaly that has crippled crops there. Sanctions on Belarus and
Russia fertilizers are threatening Brazil crops, aggravated with
bottlenecks in ocean transport.
China just announced
that owing to severe rains in 2021, this year’s winter wheat crop could
be the worst in its history. The CCP also has instituted severe measures
to get farmers to expand cultivation to non-farm lands with little
reported effect. According to a report by China watcher Erik Mertz, “In
China’s Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning provinces, officials have
reported one in three farmers lack sufficient seed and fertilizer
supplies to begin planting for the optimum spring window…According
to sources within these areas, they are stuck waiting on seed and
fertilizer which have been imported to China from overseas – and which
are stuck in the cargo ships sitting off the coast of Shanghai.”
Shanghai, the world’s largest container port, has been under a bizarre
“Zero Covid” total quarantine for more than four weeks with no end in
sight. In a desperate bid by the CCP “ordering” increased food
production, local CP officials throughout China have begun transforming
basketball courts and even roads into cropland. The
food situation in China is forcing the country to import far more at a
time of global shortages, driving world grain and food prices even
higher.
Africa is also
severely impacted by the US-imposed sanctions and war ending food and
fertilizer exports from Russia and Ukraine. Thirty five African
countries get food from Russia and Ukraine. Twenty two African countries
import fertilizer from there. Alternatives are seriously lacking as
prices soar and supply collapses. Famine is predicted.
David M. Beasley,
executive director of the UN World Food Program, declared recently on
the global food outlook, “There is no precedent even close to this since
World War II.”
guardian | The past week furnished a grim glimpse of the
future that awaits if Putin is able to continue to wage war with
impunity, commit more heinous crimes, threaten nuclear and chemical
blackmail and trash the UN charter. Drastically downgrading its growth
forecasts due to the conflict, the International Monetary Fund predicted
global economic fragmentation, rising debt and social unrest.
David Malpass, head of the World Bank, said a “human catastrophe” loomed as an unprecedented, estimated 37% rise in food prices,
caused by war-related disruption to supplies, pushed millions into
poverty, increased malnutrition, and reduced funding for education and
healthcare for the least well-off.
More than 5
million people have fled Ukraine in two months, and more will follow,
exacerbating an international migration emergency that extends from
Afghanistan to the Sahel. In drought-hit east Africa, the World Food
Programme says 20 million people may face starvation this year. Putin’s war did not create the drought, but the UN warns it could hurt efforts to reduce global heating, thereby triggering further displacement and forced migration.
The
broader, negative political impact of the war, should it rage on
indefinitely, is almost incalculable. The UN’s future as an
authoritative global forum, lawmaker and peacekeeper is in jeopardy, as
more than 200 former officials warned Guterres last week. At risk, too, is the credibility of the international court of justice, whose injunction to withdraw was scorned by Putin, and the entire system of war crimes prosecutions.
In
terms of democratic norms and human rights, the full or partial
subjugation of Ukraine would spell disaster for the international
rules-based order – and a triumph for autocrats everywhere. What message
would it send, for example, to China over Taiwan, or indeed to Putin as
he covets the vulnerable Baltic republics? Islamist terrorists who now furtively plot to exploit the west’s Ukraine distraction would relish such a victory for violence.
Failure
to stop the war, rescue Ukraine and punish Russia’s rogue regime to the
fullest extent possible would come at an especially high price for
Europe and the EU. In prospect is a second cold war with permanent Nato bases on Russia’s borders,
massively increased defence spending, an accelerating nuclear arms
race, unceasing cyber and information warfare, endemic energy shortages,
rocketing living costs, and more French-style, Russian-backed rightwing
populist extremism.
In short, the dawn of a new age of instability. Why on earth would politicians such as America’s Joe Biden, Germany’s Olaf Scholz,
and France’s Emmanuel Macron tolerate so fraught and dangerous a future
when, by taking a more robust stand now, they might prevent much of it
from materialising? By supposedly avoiding risks today, they ensure a
much riskier tomorrow.
BAR |Joe Biden may appear to be a confused old man when he blurts out
whatever comes to mind. But his outbursts shouldn't be ignored. They
always reveal his plans.
“I mean what I say when I say it!” Those words were spoken by
president elect Joe Biden in December 2020 during a meeting with a group
described as “civil rights leaders.” Video of the meeting was leaked and Biden’s insulting and dismissive
attitude towards Black people was clear even to those who ignored this
tendency he has shown throughout his 50 years of public life.
Biden did us a favor by revealing himself and by telling us to pay
attention when he speaks. That advice should be followed no matter how
strange his words may seem. Even in his bad tempered confusion, Biden
always reveals what he is doing.
He recently made news for all the wrong reasons during his recent
trip to Europe where he attended a combination G7 summit and NATO
meeting in Brussels followed by a trip to Poland.
At the NATO meeting he rather nonchalantly informed the people of the world that they will all suffer
because of the misguided effort to punish Russia with sanctions. “With
regard to food shortages, yes we did talk about food shortages and it’s
going to be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon
Russia. It's imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including
European countries and our country as well. And because both Russia and
Ukraine have been the bread basket of Europe in terms of wheat for
example.” Ukraine won’t have a good harvest in the near future and
Russia won’t be able to sell what it grows. That means rising prices for
those scarce wheat products that may still be available. Biden’s casual
tone is an indication he thinks people and governments all over the
world should accept the oncoming disaster he created without complaint.
Not content to disrupt global food supplies he also announced his future plans for Ukraine. He said this to 82nd Airborne
troops stationed in Poland. "And you’re going to see when you’re
there. And you — some — some of you have been there. You’re going to
see — you’re going to see women, young people standing — standing the
middle of — in front of a damn tank, just saying, 'I’m not leaving. I’m
holding my ground.' They’re incredible." Why are U.S. troops going to
see anything in Ukraine? He tried to clean it up with “you may have
already seen it” but he was saying that he intends to have US troops
deployed in a country where Russia already has forces. His photo
opportunity turned into the announcement of a hot war.
The most remarkable Biden statement that his apologists call a “gaffe”
also took place in Poland. He gave what was supposed to be a
conventional speech portraying the U.S. as the beacon of freedom and
democracy while Russia is really bad. His remarks should have been
fairly standard and unexceptional but as always Biden told us what he
was up to. In referring to Vladimir Putin he said, "This man cannot
remain in power."
The clarifications and backpedaling were immediate, but no one could
unhear Biden’s words. Despite all denials to the contrary, Biden is
after regime change against the Russian government and his actions prove
it. The very idea that Russia’s government will fall because of
sanctions pressure is ludicrous. But once again, Biden gave a heads up
in July 2021.
“When I was with Mr. Putin, who has a real problem. He's sitting on
top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing
else. Nothing else. Their economy is, what, the eighth smallest in the
world now, largest in the world? He knows he's in real trouble, which
makes him even more dangerous, in my view."
The trope of Russia being a “gas station masquerading as a country”
or some other such insult is untrue and a sign that this country’s
foreign policy is run by people who are out of touch with reality. It
explains why Biden thought he could instigate a proxy war between
Ukraine and the Donbas region which would be used to kill the
NordStreamII project and sanction Russia. Biden told us that on January 19, 2022.
"And so, I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held
accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one
thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about
what to do and not do, etc." Biden and his team of amateurs actually
thought they could create a limited crisis in Ukraine that would not
result in a serious response from Russia.
popularresistance | Margaret Flowers: You’re listening to Clearing the FOG,
speaking truth to expose the forces of greed, with Margaret Flowers. And
now I turn to my guest, Michael Hudson. Michael is the president of the
Institute for the Study of Long-term, Economic Trends, ISLET. He’s a
Wall Street financial analyst and a distinguished research professor of
Economics at the University of Missouri, in Kansas City. He’s also the
author of numerous books and recently updated his book, “Super
Imperialism: The economic strategy of American Empire.” Thank you for
taking time to speak with me today, Michael.
Michael Hudson: Well, thanks for having me on Margaret.
MF: You’ve talked a lot and written a lot about dollar hegemony and
what’s happening now with de-dollarization. Can you start out by
explaining to my listeners what dollar hegemony is and how it has
benefited the wealthy class in the United States?
MH: Dollar hegemony seems to be the position that has just ended as
of this week very abruptly. Dollar hegemony was when America’s war in
Vietnam and the military spending of the 1960s and 70s drove the United
States off gold. The entire US balance of payments deficit was military
spending, and it began to run down the gold supply. So, in 1971,
President Nixon took the dollar off gold. Well, everybody thought
America has been controlling the world economy since World War I by
having most of the gold and by being the creditor to the world. And they
thought what is going to happen now that the United States is running a
deficit, instead of being a creditor.
Well, what happened was that, as I’ve described in Super Imperialism,
when the United States went off gold, foreign central banks didn’t have
anything to buy with their dollars that were flowing into their
countries – again, mainly from the US military deficit but also from the
investment takeovers. And they found that these dollars came in, the
only thing they could do would be to recycle them to the United States.
And what do central banks hold? They don’t buy property, usually, back
then they didn’t. They buy Treasury bonds. And so, the United States
would be spending dollars abroad and foreign central banks didn’t really
have anything to do but send it right back to buy treasury bonds to
finance not only the balance of payments deficit, but also the budget
deficit that was largely military in character. So, dollar hegemony was
the system where foreign central banks keep their monetary and
international savings reserves in dollars and the dollars are used to
finance the military bases around the world, almost eight hundred
military bases surrounding them. So, basically central banks have to
keep their savings by weaponizing them, by militarizing them, by lending
them to the United States, to keep spending abroad.
This gave America a free ride. Imagine if you went to the grocery
store and you just paid by giving them an IOU. And then the next week
you want to buy more groceries and you give them another IOU. And they
say, wait a minute, you have an IOU before and you say, well just use
the IOU to pay the milk company that delivers, or the farmers that
deliver. You can use this as your money and just you’ll as a customer,
keep writing IOU’s and you never have to pay anything because your IOU
is other people’s money. Well, that’s what dollar hegemony was, and it
was a free ride. And it all ended last Wednesday when the United States
grabbed Russia’s reserves having grabbed Afghanistan’s foreign reserves
and Venezuela’s foreign reserves and those of other countries.
And all of a sudden, this means that other countries can no longer
safely hold their reserves by sending their money back, depositing them
in US banks or buying US Treasury Securities, or having other US
investments because they could simply be grabbed as happened to Russia.
So, all of a sudden this last week, you’re seeing the world economy
fracture into two parts, a dollarized part and other countries that do
not follow the neoliberal policies that the United States insists that
its allies follow. We’re seeing the birth of a new dual World economy.
MF: Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there. So, are we seeing then other
countries starting to disinvest in US dollars? You’ve written about how
the treasury bonds that these central banks buy up have been basically
funding our domestic economy. Are they starting to shed those bonds or
what’s happening?
indianpunchline | Succinctly put, the big-power struggle in faraway Europe,
precipitated by the Biden administration for geopolitical purposes to
isolate and weaken Russia, erupted at a most critical juncture when
India has been increasingly sceptical about American policies and
statesmanship. The picture that the US is presenting itself is far from
convincing either: a battleground of tribalism and culture wars, an
ageing superpower in decline with dwindling influence globally.
In
the Indian economy’s tryst with destiny, the US is of no help. On the
other hand, the waning multilateralism and the new constraints imposed
on growth by the US’ growing propensity to weaponise the dollar,
threaten to blight the shoots of post-pandemic growth in the Indian
economy.
On Monday, Biden celebrated a Business Roundtable with the CEOs
of the largest corporations in the American economy. He boasted: “6.7
million jobs last year –- the most ever created in one year; more than 7
million now. 678,000 created just last month, in one month.
Unemployment down to 3.8 percent. Our economy grew at 5.7 percent last
year, and the strongest in nearly 40 years… We reduced the deficit by
$360 billion last year… And we’re on track to reduce it by over $1
trillion this year.”
Biden
is understandably thrilled beyond words. Yet, when he deliberately
orchestrated a confrontation with Russia at this juncture, it didn’t
occur to him what crippling impact and downstream consequences his
draconian “sanctions from hell” against a major G20 economy would have
on the developing economies.
A UNCTAD report on March 16, titled The Impact on Trade and Development of the War in Ukraine,
concludes, “The results confirm a rapidly worsening outlook for the
world economy, underpinned by rising food, fuel and fertiliser prices,
heightened financial volatility, sustainable development divestment,
complex global supply chain reconfigurations and mounting trade costs.
“This
rapidly evolving situation is alarming for developing countries, and
especially for African and least developed countries, some of which are
particularly exposed to the war in Ukraine and its effect on trade
costs, commodity prices and financial markets. The risk of civil unrest,
food shortages and inflation-induced recessions cannot be discounted…”
Does
Biden even know that at least 25 African countries depend on Russia for
meeting more than one-third of their wheat imports? Or, that Benin
actually meets 100% on Russia for its wheat imports? And that Russia
supplies wheat at concessional price for these poor countries?
Now,
how do these meek and wretched countries of the planet import from
Russia when Biden and EU chief Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen join hands
to block the banking channels for trading with Russia? Can Delaware find
a solution?
The cruelty and cynical complacency with which the
Biden Administration and the EU conduct their foreign polices is
absolutely stunning. And, mind you, all this is happening in the name of
“democratic values” and “international law”!
India
cannot agree with the US and EU’s reckless attempt to weaponise global
economic links. The fact of the matter is that the US and EU may not
even win this war in Ukraine. Russia has almost completed 90 percent of
its special operations. Unless Biden allows Kiev to agree to a peace
settlement, the division of Ukraine along the Dnieper river is in the
cards.
The US is
destabilising the European security order while the western sanctions
are destabilising the global economic order. The US and EU must bear
responsibility for this collateral damage. The West is in panic that the
world is living in the Asian century already.
RT | So America is bringing about exactly the opposite of what it
intended. It’s hopeless to somehow isolate Russia and then be able to go
after China without Russia. And instead, what it’s doing is integrating
the Eurasian core, Russia and China, exactly the policy that Henry
Kissinger warned against going all the way back to Mackinder a century
ago that said, Eurasia is the world island, Russia and China could be
the whole world center. That’s what the fight is all about.
Well, American sanctions are driving Russia and China together, and
America has gone to China and said, Please don’t support Russia. It most
recently, on Monday, March 14, Jake Sullivan came out and told China,
we will sanction countries that break our sanctions against Russia. And
basically, China said, fine. You know, we’ll just break off all the
trade between East and West now and the East, Eurasia is pretty much
self-sufficient. The West is not self-sufficient since it began to
industrialize, and it’s heavily dependent on Russia for not only oil and
gas, but palladium and many raw materials. So the sanctions are ending
up driving a wedge between the European countries.
Ross [00:03:31] Don’t people who apply these
sanctions think this through? Are they so short-sighted they don’t
understand that these sanctions are going to build further capacity
within Russia, push Russia further towards China, make that economic
alliance concrete and, ultimately, you’re not going to be able to keep
the lights on in in Europe? All the while underestimating the fact that
from a food security point of view – take the U.K., for instance, a net
importer of food – not appreciating the fact that, for instance,
Russia/Ukraine, they create twenty five percent, a quarter, of all wheat
annually. The estimation this year is one hundred and two million tons
Russia and Ukraine, wheat. Don’t people realize that there’s going to be
a massive knock on effect?
Michael Hudson [00:04:23]Yes, they do realize it. Yes, they’ve thought it all through. I worked with these people for more than 50 years.
Ross [00:04:31] Who are these people?
Michael Hudson [00:04:32]The neocons, basically, the
people who are in charge of U.S. foreign policy? Victoria Nuland and
her husband, Robert Kagan, the people that President Biden has appointed
all around him, from Blinken to Sullivan and right down the line. They
are basically urging people around the New American Century. They’re the
people who said America can run the whole world and create its own
reality.
And yes, they know that this is going to cause enormous problems for
Germany. They know that not only will it block the energy that Germany
and Italy and other countries in Europe need through their oil and gas,
but also it’ll block the use of gas for fertilizer, upping their
fertilizer production and decreasing their food production. They look at
this and they say, How can America gain from all of this? There’s
always a way of gaining what something looks to be bad. Well, one way
they’ll gain is oil prices are going way up. And that benefits the
United States whose foreign policy is based very largely on oil and gas.
The oil industry controls most of the world’s oil trade, and that
explains a lot of the US diplomacy. This is a fight to lock the world
energy trade into control by U.S. companies, excluding not only Iran and
Venezuela, but also excluding Russia.
Ross [00:06:16] So as Europe pushes towards more and
more green and renewable energy and this for the Americans they must
think it’s a dreadful scenario insofar as they can’t sell the oil as
Europe becomes or wants to become more self-sufficient. So ultimately,
and Britain net zero, whatever that means. But but going down the
renewables path, going down the solar path takes America’s dependency or
dependency on America out the game, doesn’t it?
Michael Hudson [00:06:49]This is exactly the point
that the European public has not realized. While most of the European
public wants to prevent global warming and prevent carbon into the
atmosphere, U.S. foreign policy is based on increasing, and even
accelerating, global warming, accelerating carbon emissions because
that’s the oil trade. Suppose that Europe got its way. Suppose if the
Greens got what they wanted and Germany and Europe were completely
dependent on solar energy panels, on wind energy and to some extent, on
nuclear power, perhaps? Well, if they were completely self-sufficient in
energy without oil or gas or coal, America would lose the primary
lever. It has over the ability to turn off the power and electricity and
oil of any country that didn’t follow U.S. diplomatic direction.
Ross [00:07:48] So when we take your analysis here
and we think about how the sanctions are going to build capacity, push
Russia and China together, when we start to look at sort of piggy in the
middle, if you like the EU, when we’re thinking about America, the EU
has had a sort of abusive relationship with the Americans for quite some
time now, hasn’t it?
Michael Hudson [00:08:06]Well, that’s true in the
sense that EU foreign policy has basically been turned over to NATO. So
instead of European voters and politicians making their policy, they’ve
relinquished European foreign policy to NATO, which is really an arm of
the US military. So yes, Europe has had a decent relationship with the
United States diplomatically by saying yes, yes, please or yes, thank
you by not being independent. Of course, if it were independent, the
relationship would not be so friendly and decent.
Ross [00:08:46] So for countries that are net
importers of food, need to keep the lights on, need heating and need
cheap oil. How does this pan out? What does it look like for the UK?
What does it look like for the EU?
Michael Hudson [00:08:59]Well, Vice President,
Kamala Harris the other day said to Americans, Yes, life is going to be
much more expensive. Our oil prices are going up and squeezing families.
But think of the poor Ukrainian babies that we’re saving. So take it on
the chin for the Ukrainian babies.
So basically the United States is presenting horror stories of the
Ukraine and saying, if you don’t willingly suffer now by isolating
Russia, then Russia is going to roll over you with tanks just like it
rolled over Central Europe after World War Two. I mean, it’s waving the
flag of Russian aggression, as if Russia or any country in today’s world
has an army that’s able to invade any other industrial nation. All
military can do today of any country is bomb and kill other populations
and industrial centers. No nation is able to occupy or rollover any
industrial country.
And the United States keeps trying to promote this mythology that
we’re still in the world of 1945. And that world ended really with the
Vietnam War when the military draught ended. And no country is able to
have a military draught to raise the army with necessary to fight to
invade. Russia can’t do it any more than Europe or the United States
could do it. So all the United States can do is wave warnings about how
awful Russia is and somehow convince Europe to follow the US position.
But most of all, it doesn’t really have to. Europe doesn’t really have a
voice, and this is what the complaint by Putin and Foreign Secretary
Lavrov have been saying. They say that Europe is just following the
United States and it doesn’t matter what the European people want or
what European politicians want. The United States is so deeply in
control that they really don’t have much of a choice.
Ross [00:11:15] When does the consumer start to feel
this? When does the European or British consumer start to feel the
pinch when these sanctions are enacted? And what does that look like?
Michael Hudson [00:11:25]Well, it depends on how
fast the sanctions work. The United States said Well, in another year
and a half, we’ll be able to provide Europe with liquefied natural gas.
Well, the problem is, first of all, they’re not the ports to handle the
liquefied natural gas to go into Europe. Secondly, there are not enough
ships and tankers to carry all of this gas to Europe. So unless there
are very warm winters, Europe is not going to have a very easy time for
the next few years.
kremlin.ru | Taking part in our meeting are senior Government officials,
plenipotentiary presidential envoys in the federal districts and heads of Russian regions.
We
are meeting in a complicate period as our Armed Forces are conducting
a special military operation in Ukraine and Donbass. I would like
to remind you
that at the beginning, on the morning of February 24, I publicly
announced the reasons for and the main goal of Russia’s actions. It is
to help our people in Donbass, who have been subjected to real genocide
for nearly eight years in the most barbarous ways, that is, through
blockade, large-scale punitive
operations, terrorist attacks and constant artillery raids. Their only
guilt was
that they demanded basic human rights: to live according to their
forefathers’
laws and traditions, to speak their native language, and to bring up
their
children as they want.
During these years, the Kiev authorities
have ignored and sabotaged the implementation of the Minsk Package
of Measures for a peaceful settlement of the crisis and ultimately late
last year openly refused to implement it.
They also started to implement plans to join NATO. Moreover, the Kiev
authorities also announced their intention to have nuclear weapons and delivery
vehicles. This was a real threat. With foreign technical support, the pro-Nazi
Kiev regime would have obtained weapons of mass destruction in the foreseeable
future and, of course, would have targeted them against Russia.
There
was a network of dozens of laboratories in Ukraine, where military
biological programmes were conducted under the guidance and with
the financial
support of the Pentagon, including experiments with coronavirus strains,
anthrax, cholera, African swine fever and other deadly diseases. Frantic
attempts
are being made to conceal traces of these secret programmes. However, we
have
grounds to assume that components of biological weapons were being
created in direct proximity to Russia on the territory of Ukraine.
Our
numerous warnings that such developments posed a direct threat
to the security of Russia were rejected with open and cynical arrogance
by Ukraine
and its US and NATO patrons.
In other words, all our diplomatic efforts were fully in vain. We have
been left with no peaceful alternative to settle the problems that developed
through no fault of ours. In this situation, we were forced to begin this
special military operation.
The movement of Russian forces against
Kiev and other Ukrainian cities is
not connected with a desire to occupy that country. This is not our
goal, as I pointed out openly in my statement on February 24.
As for the combat tactics drafted by the Defence Ministry of Russia and the General Staff, this has fully justified itself.
Our fellows – soldiers and officers – are displaying courage and heroism and are
doing all they can to avoid civilian losses in Ukrainian cities.
This is what I would like to say for the first time: at the very start of the operation in Donbass, the Kiev authorities
were offered opportunities to avoid hostilities, via different channels, to simply
withdraw their troops from Donbass as an alternative to bloodshed. They did not
want to do this. Well, this was their decision; now they will understand what
is happening in reality, on the ground.
The operation is being carried out successfully,
in strict conformity with the approved plan.
I must note that,
encouraged by the United
States and other Western countries, Ukraine was purposefully preparing
for a scenario
of force, a massacre and an ethnic cleansing in Donbass. A massive
onslaught on Donbass and later Crimea was just a matter of time.
However, our Armed Forces have
shattered these plans.
Kiev was not just preparing for war,
for aggression against Russia – it was conducting it. There were endless attempts
to stage acts of subversion and organise a terrorist underground in Crimea.
Hostilities in Donbass and the shelling of peaceful residential areas have continued
all these years. Almost 14,000 civilians, including children have been killed
over this time.
As you know, there was a missile
strike at the centre of Donetsk on March 14. This was an overt bloody
act of terror
that took over 20 lives. Shelling has been ongoing during the past few
days.
They are striking randomly at squares with the fervor of fanatics
and the exasperation
of the doomed. They are acting like the Nazis did when they tried
to drag as many innocent victims as they could to their graves.
But what is shocking in its extreme cynicism
is not just Kiev’s blatant lies and statements that Russia allegedly launched this
missile at Donetsk (they have gone as far as this), but the attitude of the so-called
civilised world. The European and American press did not even notice this tragedy
in Donetsk, as if nothing happened.
This is how they have been
hypocritically looking the other way over the past eight years as mothers
buried their children in Donbass, as elderly people were killed. This is simply
moral degradation, complete de-humanisation.
It was no longer
possible to tolerate
this outrageous attitude towards the people of Donbass. To put an end
to this genocide,
Russia recognized the people’s republics of Donbass and signed treaties
of friendship and mutual aid with them. Based on these treaties,
the republics
appealed to Russia for military aid in rebuffing the aggression. We
rendered this
aid because we simply could not do otherwise. We had no right to act
otherwise.
I would like to emphasise this point
and draw your attention to it: if our troops had acted only within
the people's
republics and helped them liberate their territory, it would not have
been a final
solution, it would not have led to peace and would not have ultimately
removed the threat – to our country, this time to Russia.
On the contrary, a new frontline
would have been extended around Donbass and its borders, and shelling
and provocations would have continued. In other words, this armed
conflict would
have continued indefinitely. It would have been fuelled
by the revanchist
hysteria of the Kiev regime, as NATO deployed its military
infrastructure faster
and more aggressively. In this case, we would have been faced with
the fact
that the attack, the offensive weapons of the alliance were already
at our
borders.
I will repeat – we had no alternative
for self-defence, for ensuring Russia's security, to this special military
operation. We will reach the goals we set. We will certainly ensure the security
of Russia and our people and will never allow Ukraine to be a bridgehead for aggressive
actions against our country.
We remain ready to discuss matters
of fundamental importance to Russia’s future during the talks. This includes Ukraine’s
status as a neutral country, and demilitarisation and denazification. Our
country has done everything it could to organise and hold these talks realising
that it is important to use every opportunity to save people and their lives.
But
time and time again we see that
the Kiev regime, which its Western handlers have charged with the task
of creating
an aggressive “anti-Russia” stance, does not care about the future
of the people of Ukraine. They do not care that people are dying, that
hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people had to flee their
homes, and that a horrendous
humanitarian disaster is unfolding in the cities controlled
by the neo-Nazis
and armed criminals who were cut loose.
Clearly, Kiev’s Western patrons are just
pushing them to continue the bloodshed. They incessantly supply Kiev with
weapons and intelligence, as well as other types of assistance, including
military advisers and mercenaries.
They are using economic,
financial,
trade and other sanctions against Russia as weapons, but these sanctions
have
backfired in Europe and in the United States where prices of gasoline,
energy and food have shot up, and jobs in the industries associated with
the Russian
market have been cut. So, do not shift the blame on us and do not accuse
our
country of everything that goes wrong in your countries.
I want
ordinary Western people hear
me, too. You are being persistently told that your current difficulties
are the result of Russia’s hostile actions and that you have to pay
for the efforts to counter
the alleged Russian threat from your own pockets. All of that is a lie.
The truth
is that the problems faced
by millions of people in the West are the result of many years
of actions by the ruling elite of your respective countries, their
mistakes, and short-sighted
policies and ambitions. This elite is not thinking about how to improve
the lives
of their citizens in Western countries. They are obsessed with their own
self-serving
interests and super profits.
This can be seen in the data provided
by international organisations, which clearly show that social problems, even
in the leading Western countries, have exacerbated in recent years, that
inequality and the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, and racial
and ethnic conflicts are making themselves felt. The myth of the Western
welfare society, the so-called golden billion, is crumbling.
To reiterate, the whole planet is
now paying for the West’s ambitions and the West’s attempts to maintain its elusive
dominance by any means possible.
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