After my original posting,
a lot of people suggested I ask Stephanie Seneff to sponsor me. In
fact, if I had a dime for everyone who suggested Stephanie, I could
retire :)
Stephanie and I are good friends (we talk all the time). She would do it if she were an MIT faculty member. But she isn’t.
I can tell you one thing though: it was absolutely stunning to me that she was the only person at MIT people suggested I ask. That in itself is remarkable.
The entire MIT faculty is wrong on this issue
There are over 1,000 faculty members at MIT and not a single one thinks the vaccines might be unsafe? Nobody?!?!?
OK, I can live with that. Apparently, they’ve all drunk the Kool-Aid at MIT.
But what is totally unacceptable is that they refuse to even consider the possibility that they could be wrong.
What ever happened to open-minded scientists?
I
know that there are a few faculty members who believe I should be able
to speak at MIT, but they are afraid of retribution from their peers. So
they avoid the controversy by doing nothing. They won’t even let me
publicly reveal who they are.
What’s even worse than that is that there are serious cases of vaccine injury at MIT that are not being reported
More on those stories later. They’ve been covered up.
MIT should be speaking out for what the science says, not actively suppressing scientific discourse. Fist tap Big Don.
ready.gov | Nuclear explosions can cause significant damage and casualties from
blast, heat, and radiation but you can keep your family safe by knowing
what to do and being prepared if it occurs.
A nuclear weapon is a device that uses a nuclear reaction to create an explosion.
Nuclear devices range from a small portable device carried by an individual to a weapon carried by a missile.
A nuclear explosion may occur with or without a few minutes warning.
Fallout is most dangerous in the first few hours after the detonation
when it is giving off the highest levels of radiation. It takes time
for fallout to arrive back to ground level, often more than 15 minutes
for areas outside of the immediate blast damage zones. This is enough
time for you to be able to prevent significant radiation exposure by
following these simple steps:
GET INSIDE
Get inside the nearest building to avoid radiation. Brick or concrete are best.
Remove contaminated clothing and wipe off or wash unprotected skin
if you were outside after the fallout arrived. Hand sanitizer does not
protect against fall out. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if
possible. Do not use disinfectant wipes on your skin.
Go to the basement or middle of the building. Stay
away from the outer walls and roof. Try to maintain a distance of at
least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your
household. If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who
are not a part of your household. Children under two years old, people
who have trouble breathing, and those who are unable to remove masks on
their own should not wear them.
STAY INSIDE
Stay inside for 24 hours unless local authorities provide other instructions. Continue
to practice social distancing by wearing a mask and by keeping a
distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who not part
of your household.
Family should stay where they are inside. Reunite later to avoid exposure to dangerous radiation.
Keep your pets inside.
STAY TUNED
Tune into any media available for official information such as when it is safe to exit and where you should go.
Battery operated and hand crank radios will function after a nuclear detonation.
Cell phone, text messaging, television, and internet services may be disrupted or unavailable.
HOW TO STAY SAFE IN THE EVENT OF A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION
Prepare NOW
Identify shelter locations. Identify
the best shelter location near where you spend a lot of time, such as
home, work, and school. The best locations are underground and in the
middle of larger buildings.
While commuting, identify appropriate shelters to seek in the event of a detonation. Due to COVID-19, many places you may pass on the way to and from work may be closed or may not have regular operating hours.
Outdoor areas, vehicles, mobile homes do NOT provide adequate shelter. Look for basements or the center of large multistory buildings.
Make sure you have an Emergency Supply Kit
for places you frequent and might have to stay for 24 hours. It should
include bottled water, packaged foods, emergency medicines, a hand-crank
or battery-powered radio to get information in case power is out, a
flashlight, and extra batteries for essential items. If possible, store
supplies for three or more days.
If you are able to, set aside items like soap, hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol, disinfecting wipes, and general household cleaning supplies
that you can use to disinfect surfaces you touch regularly. After a
flood, you may not have access to these supplies for days or even weeks.
Keep in mind each person’s specific needs, including medication. Don’t
forget the needs of pets. Obtain extra batteries and charging devices
for phones and other critical equipment.
Being prepared allows
you to avoid unnecessary excursions and to address minor medical issues
at home, alleviating the burden on urgent care centers and hospitals.
Remember
that not everyone can afford to respond by stocking up on necessities.
For those who can afford it, making essential purchases and slowly
building up supplies in advance will allow for longer time periods
between shopping trips. This helps to protect those who are unable to
procure essentials in advance of the pandemic and must shop more
frequently. In addition, consider avoiding WIC-labeled products so that
those who rely on these products can access them.
Survive DURING
If warned of an imminent attack, immediately get inside the
nearest building and move away from windows. This will help provide
protection from the blast, heat, and radiation of the detonation.
When you have reached a safe place,try to maintain a distance
of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of
your household. If possible, wear a maskif you’re sheltering with
people who are not a part of your household. Children under two years
old, people who have trouble breathing, and those who are unable to
remove masks on their own should not wear them.
If you are outdoors when a detonation occurs take
cover from the blast behind anything that might offer protection. Lie
face down to protect exposed skin from the heat and flying debris. Avoid
touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if possible. If you are in a
vehicle, stop safely, and duck down within the vehicle.
After the shock wave passes, get inside the nearest, best shelter location for protection from potential fallout. You will have 10 minutes or more to find an adequate shelter.
Be inside before the fallout arrives. The highest outdoor radiation levels from fallout occur immediately after the fallout arrives and then decrease with time.
Stay tuned for updated instructions from emergency
response officials. If advised to evacuate, listen for information about
routes, shelters, and procedures.
If you have evacuated, do not return until you are told it is safe to do so by local officials.
ianwalsh | There’s a lot of nonsense going around including talk of Russia
losing the war because less than 5 days into the war, they haven’t
conquered Ukraine.
The German blitz of Poland took 5 weeks. The conquest of France 6
weeks, and people were astonished. Ukraine is the largest country in
Europe except for Russia istself
The sources I respect say that Russia is taking losses, but the war
is not in question and they are advancing about as fast as the US did
into Iraq. Russia will win the war, though they may take more damage
than they expected (but since we have no idea what they expected, who
knows.) Ukraine is a modern equipped army: it isn’t Iraq with obsolete
equipment, or Libya or Afghanistan.
The question is not whether Russia wins the war, it is who wins the peace.
What the US and Europe want is to turn Ukraine into a guerilla
quagmire, like Afghanistan in the 80s, or Iraq and Afghanistan were for
the US.
What Russia wants is to turn Ukraine into a guaranteed neutral state
and withdraw its troops out of the country, minus Donbas and Luhansk.
The good result for the Ukraine, which most Westerners don’t seem to
get, is what the Russians want. Austria was neutral in the Cold War and
that was not horrid. A multi-year guerilla campaign will devastate
Ukraine in ways that will take generations to recover from, because if
the Russians have to fight an insurgency, they will be utterly brutal,
as they were (successfully) in Chechnya.
Moralist yapping about right to choose is off the board. The only
good result for Ukraine and Ukrainians is a negotiated settlement. The
West egged them on and left them to swing, as the smart people said they
would.
tomluongo | Up until February 23rd, 2022, the powerful countries of the world played a very rarified game.
Too many people try to analyze geopolitics like it is a game of
chess. Move, counter-move. Push a pawn? Threaten a knight, that type of
thing. It’s easy to understand and makes for good copy.
In the past I’ve tried to liken it to a multi-player version of Go,
with anywhere from four to 6 different colored stones on the board
trying to take territory. It was a better metaphor but nearly
impossible to describe adequately. In fact, at times, it was
exhausting.
The reality is that neither of these metaphors are explanatory.
You know that game. That’s the one from Calvin & Hobbes.
Contrary to your memory of the legendary comic strip, there were rules to Calvinball that went something like this: Calvin got to make the rules up as he went along.
In geopolitics it pretty much comes down to whoever is the strongest player got that power.
Here’s the thing. Up until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and yes, it
is an invasion, justifiable or otherwise) there was something called
the ‘rules-based order’ promoted mainly by the US but also supported
directly by the European Union and the Commonwealth.
The rules of the ‘rules-based order’ were simple. We make the rules,
you follow them. We reserve the right to change the rules whenever we
want to suit our purpose.
It was the geopolitical equivalent of Sam Francis’ idea of
‘anarcho-tyranny,’ which boils down to, “rules for thee, but not for
me.”
We’ve heard the Russian diplomats complain about this for years. Why have these rules if they are not ever enforced?
As I point out all the time when talking about leftist ideologues
purity spiraling towards self-destruction, we have these rules because
only others’ hypocrisy counts. Sub-humans are not allowed to talk or
even be a part of the conversation.
And in the world of diplomacy as practiced by the collective West,
the Russians are definitely sub-human, just like the unvaxxed, anyone to
the immediate right of Karl Marx and who isn’t a furry.
All that changed when Russian tanks crossed the border, stand off
missiles hit anti-aircraft and artillery batteries, and marines came
onshore in Ukraine.
consortiumnews |In
the time of the first Queen Elizabeth, British royal circles enjoyed
watching fierce dogs torment a captive bear for the fun of it. The bear
had done no harm to anyone, but the dogs were trained to provoke the
imprisoned beast and goad it into fighting back. Blood flowing from the
excited animals delighted the spectators.
This cruel practice has long since been banned as inhumane.
And
yet today, a version of bear baiting is being practiced every day
against whole nations on a gigantic international scale. It is called
United States foreign policy. It has become the regular practice of the
absurd international sports club called NATO.
United
States leaders, secure in their arrogance as “the indispensable
nation,” have no more respect for other countries than the Elizabethans
had for the animals they tormented. The list is long of targets of U.S.
bear baiting, but Russia stands out as prime example of constant
harassment. And this is no accident. The baiting is deliberately and
elaborately planned.
As
evidence, I call attention to a 2019 report by the RAND corporation to
the U.S. Army chief of staff entitled “Extending Russia.” Actually,
the RAND study itself is fairly cautious in its recommendations and
warns that many perfidious tricks might not work. However, I consider
the very existence of this report scandalous, not so much for its
content as for the fact that this is what the Pentagon pays its top
intellectuals to do: figure out ways to lure other nations into troubles
U.S. leaders hope to exploit.
The
official U.S. line is that the Kremlin threatens Europe by its
aggressive expansionism, but when the strategists talk among themselves
the story is very different. Their goal is to use sanctions, propaganda
and other measures to provokeRussia into taking the very sort of negative measures (“over-extension”) that the U.S. can exploit to Russia’s detriment.
The RAND study explains its goals:
“We
examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia’s
actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia’s
military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and
abroad. The steps we examine would not have either defense or deterrence
as their prime purpose, although they might contribute to both. Rather,
these steps are conceived of as elements in a campaign designed to
unbalance the adversary, leading Russia to compete in domains or regions
where the United States has a competitive advantage, and causing Russia
to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime
to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.”
Clearly,
in U.S. ruling circles, this is considered “normal” behavior, just as
teasing is normal behavior for the schoolyard bully, and sting
operations are normal for corrupt FBI agents.
This
description perfectly fits U.S. operations in Ukraine, intended to
“exploit Russia’s vulnerabilities and anxieties” by advancing a hostile
military alliance onto its doorstep, while describing Russia’s totally
predictable reactions as gratuitous aggression. Diplomacy involves
understanding the position of the other party. But verbal bear baiting
requires total refusal to understand the other, and constant deliberate
misinterpretation of whatever the other party says or does.
What
is truly diabolical is that, while constantly accusing the Russian bear
of plotting to expand, the whole policy is directed at goading it into
expanding! Because then we can issue punishing sanctions, raise the
Pentagon budget a few notches higher and tighten the NATO Protection
Racket noose tighter around our precious European “allies.”
themostimportantnews | We now have a war that the vast majority of us never wanted. All of
our lives are going to be turned upside down, the global economy is
going to be absolutely eviscerated, and countless numbers of people are going to die.
I am very angry with Vladimir Putin and the Russians for launching a
full-blown invasion, because it didn’t need to happen. And I am also
very angry with the Biden administration because it would have been so
easy to find a diplomatic solution to this crisis. Unfortunately, the
time for diplomacy is now over and World War III has begun.
On Thursday, State Department spokesman Ned Price made a stunning admission regarding what this war is really all about.
According to Price, Russia and China “also want a world order”, but he warned that if they win their world order “would be profoundly illiberal”…
China has given “tacit approval” for Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine, in the judgment of U.S.
officials, as part of a joint effort to undermine the institutions that
American and allied leaders established to minimize conflict in the
decades following World War II.
“Russia and the PRC also want a world order,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday. “But
this is an order that is and would be profoundly illiberal. … It is an
order that is, in many ways, destructive rather than additive.”
It would take an entire book to unpack everything that Price said there.
First of all, by stating that Russia and China “also want a world
order”, he was tacitly admitting that the United States and other
western nations desire to have a “world order” of their own.
And he implied that what we are witnessing is a battle over who will ultimately run the “world order”.
That should deeply alarm all of us.
Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where nobody had global domination as their goal?
I also want to point out that Price used the term “profoundly
illiberal” to describe a “world order” led by Russia and China, and that
suggests that a “world order” led by the United States and other
western nations would be “liberal”.
And that is actually quite an accurate statement. In virtually every
western nation today, even the political parties that are supposed to
be “conservative” are extremely liberal.
If you Google the phrase “liberal world order”, you will find that it
has been used by elitists for many years. But I certainly don’t want a
“liberal world order” and neither should you.
Of course I don’t want a “world order” run by Russia and China either.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that we get a vote in this.
kunstler | The Ukraine blow-up is more a humiliation for “Joe Biden” and his
faction than for the US per se, for the truth is that we have scant
interest in that corner of the world and what goes on there is none of
our business, and never was….
It is fair to say that the “Joe Biden” government dearly wanted a
Russian invasion of Ukraine in order to divert attention from the “Joe
Biden” government’s war on its own people in the United States. The
table was nicely laid for it over many years, including, by the way, Mr.
Trump’s vaunted gift of weaponry to Ukraine, which enabled and
emboldened the Kiev regime to harass the Russian-speaking population of
Donbas without relent. And the situation was aggravated by the
deliberate negotiation-unworthiness (Russian term) of “Joe
Biden” and Company, who refused to discuss the chief issue between the
US and Russia, namely, the dishonest effort, in violation of written
agreements dating from 1990, to enlist Ukraine in NATO, and thereby to
place missiles on Russia’s border. The US disallowed something very
similar in 1962, when the old USSR tried to put missiles in Cuba.
You are also seeing payback for the Maidan color revolution of 2014,
engineered by John Kerry’s State Department and John Brennan’s CIA. We
have been managing Ukraine backstage since then and, alas for that poor
country, quite deceitfully. If you bother to read the recent statements
of both “Joe Biden” and Mr. Putin, you will see exactly why and how the
situation developed. You will also see an appalling difference in the
quality of public utterance — as, say, the difference between Zippy the
Pinhead and a Metternich.
I’ll get back to all that presently, but first let’s be clear about
what “Joe Biden” & Co. seek to divert public attention from: the
complete implosion of all the narratives that support the “Joe
Biden” regime — and the campaign against Western Civ more generally by
the sinister likes of Klaus Schwab and his global gang of Great
Re-setters, including Bill Gates, George Soros, and many actors in
America’s own Deep State.
The Covid-19 story is blowing up, and in a very ugly way for the
American people. The news is finally wriggling free of our combined news
media / social media censorship machine and that news is as follows:
Covid-19 was a trip laid on the world to get rid of the irascible Mr.
Trump and usher-in a system of digital social controls. The mRNA
“vaccines” were all patented and ready to go before the virus even took
off. The mRNA “vaccines” turned out to be ineffective and arguably more
damaging than the Covid-19 virus. That last bit of news is now coming
out in reports from the life insurance and funeral industries, which are
showing an alarming increase in all-causes death, especially in people
under 60 years of age.
It is also coming out that the CDC has wildly and recklessly
falsified its own data throughout the Covid crisis, and that the
“vaccine” safety trials were a complete fraud — which has led to the
prospect of Moderna and Pfizer losing their liability shields, and,
recently, to the crash of their share prices. The public is also
learning that they were cruelly denied early treatments with well-proven
off-label drugs that might have saved millions of lives. And yet,
knowing all this, “Joe Biden” and his Democratic Party are to this day
urging Americans to “go out and get vaccinated, get boosted,” in the
words last week of the US president. You can’t be faulted if you suspect
that they are deliberately trying to kill a lot of people.
The blow-up of the Covid-19 story will come to horrify even those
Americans hypnotically locked into mass formation, and will lead to
countless lawsuits and prosecutions. But in the meantime, we will be
preoccupied with the blow-up of the financial system and the economy it
is supposed to serve. The inflation horses are out of the barn and
running wild. The Federal Reserve has finally succeeded in destroying
the value of the dollar and, consequently, destroying the little that is
left of middle-class life in the USA. At the same time, they have
unleashed forces that will also destroy the fortunes of many upper-class
people, too, as the stock and bond markets go south. Financial collapse
is at hand, and “Joe Biden” doesn’t want you to pay attention to it.
The Ukraine melodrama is a compelling distraction.
thesaker | This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny
rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born in breathtaking
speed.
From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a history lesson delivered by President Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins –
the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to their
appeal to President Putin to intervene militarily to expel the
NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a
seamless process.
The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced
its paws to pounce – was Zelensky the Comedian, back from the
Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like
a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised
and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed.
That would be the equivalent of a nuclear Mexico south of the Hegemon.
Putin immediately turned Responsibility to Protect (R2P) upside down:
an American concept invented to launch wars in MENA (remember Libya?)
was retrofitted to stop a slow-motion genocide in Donbass.
First came the recognition of the Baby Twins – Putin’s most important
foreign policy decision since going to Syria in 2015. That was the
preamble for the next game-changer: a “special military operation (…)
aimed at demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”, as Putin
defined it.
Up to the last minute, the Kremlin was trying to rely on diplomacy,
explaining to Kiev the necessary imperatives to prevent heavy metal
thunder: recognition of Crimea as Russian; abandon any plans to join
NATO; negotiate directly with the Baby Twins – an anathema for the
Americans since 2015; finally, demilitarize and declare Ukraine as
neutral.
Kiev’s handlers, predictably, would never accept the package – as
they didn’t accept the Master Package that really matters: the Russian
demand for “indivisible security”.
The sequence, then, became inevitable. In a flash, all Ukrainian
forces between the so-called line of contact and the original borders of
Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were boxed in as the occupying force of
territories of two Russian allies that Moscow had just sworn to protect.
So it was Get Out – Or Else. “Or else” came as rolling thunder: the
Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense were not bluffing. Timed to
the end of Putin’s speech announcing the operation, the Russians
decapitated with precision missiles everything that mattered in terms of
the Ukrainian military in just one hour: Air Force, Navy, airfields,
bridges, command and control centers, the whole Turkish Bayraktar drone
fleet.
And it was not only Russian raw power. It was the artillery of one of
the Baby Twins, the DPR, that hit the HQ of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
in Donbass, which actually housed the entire Ukrainian military
command. This means that the Ukrainian General Staff instantly lost
control of all its troops.
This was Shock and Awe against Iraq, 19 years ago, in reverse: not
for conquest, not as a prelude for an invasion and occupation. The
political-military leadership in Kiev did not even have time to declare
war. They froze. Demoralized troops started deserting. Total defeat – in
one hour.
The water supply to Crimea was instantly re-established. Humanitarian
corridors were set up for the deserters. “Remnants” now include mostly
surviving Azov batallion Nazis, mercenaries trained by the usual
Blackwater/Academi suspects, and a bunch of Salafi-jihadis.
Predictably, Western corporate media has already gone totally berserk
branding it as the much-awaited Russian “invasion”. A reminder: when
Israel routinely bombs Syria and when the House of One Saudi routinely
bombs Yemeni civilians, there is never any peep in NATOstan media.
As it stands, realpolitik spells out a possible endgame (see
Donetsk’s head, Denis Pushilin: “The special operation in Donbass will
soon be over and all the cities will be liberated.”)
We could soon witness the birth of an independent Novorossiya – east
of the Dnieper, south along Sea of Azov/Black Sea, the way it was when
attached to Ukraine by Lenin in 1922. But now totally aligned with
Russia, and providing a land bridge to Transnistria.
Ukraine, of course, would lose any access to the Black Sea. History
loves playing tricks: what was a “gift” to Ukraine in 1922 may become a
parting gift a hundred years later.
goldmoney | Ukraine is part of a far bigger geopolitical picture.
Russia and China want US hegemonic influence in the Eurasian continent
marginalised. Following defeats for US foreign policy in Syria and
Afghanistan and following Brexit, Putin is driving a wedge between
America and the non-Anglo-Saxon EU.
Due to
global monetary expansion, rising energy prices are benefiting Russia,
which can afford to squeeze Germany and other EU states dependent on
Russian natural gas. The squeeze will only stop when America backs off.
Being
keenly aware that its dominant role in NATO is under threat, America
has been trying to escalate the Ukraine crisis to suck Russia into an
untenable occupation. Putin won’t fall for it.
The
danger for us all is not a boots-on-the-ground war — that’s likely to
only involve the pre-emptive attacks on military installations Putin
initiated last night — but a financial war for which Russia is fully
prepared.
Both sides probably do not know how
fragile the Eurozone banking system is, with both the ECB and its
national central bank shareholders already having liabilities greater
than their assets. In other words, rising interest rates have broken the
euro system and an economic and financial catastrophe on its eastern
flank will probably trigger its collapse.
he developing tension over Ukraine is part of a bigger picture — a
struggle between America and the two Eurasian hegemons, Russia and
China. The prize is ultimate control over Mackinder’s World Island.
Halford
Mackinder is acknowledged as the founder of geopolitics: the study of
factors such as geography, geology, economics, demography, politics, and
foreign policy and their interaction. His original paper was entitled
“The Geographical Pivot of History”, presented at the Royal Geographical
Society in 1905 in which he first formulated his Heartland Theory,
which extended geopolitical analysis to encompass the entire globe.
In
this and a subsequent paper (Democratic Ideals and Reality: A study in
the Politics of Reconstruction, 1919) he built on his Heartland Theory,
and from which his famous quote has been passed down to us: “Who rules
East Europe commands the World Island [Eurasia]; Who rules the World
Island rules the World”. Stalin was said to have been interested in this
theory, and while it is not generally admitted, the leaders and
administrations of Russia, China and America are almost certainly aware
of Mackinder’s theory and its implications.
We cannot know if the
Russian and Chinese leaders and administrations are avid Mackinder
fans, but their partnership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is
consistent with his World Island Theory. Since commencing as a
post-Soviet, post-Mao security agreement between Russia and China
founded in 2001 to suppress Islamic fundamentalism, the SCO has evolved
into a political and economic intergovernmental organisation, which with
its members, observer states, and dialog partners accounts for over 3.5
billion people, half the world’s population.
braveneweurope | Perry Anderson’s evisceration of the European Union’s past and
present in three long articles in the London Review of Books is
remarkable in at least three ways. First, for its lucidity and
intellectual richness: my summary can in no way substitute for reading
the whole, which I strongly recommend. If many of its arguments are
broadly familiar to critics of the EU, they have rarely been so cogently
expressed, or with such controlled anger and command of detail.
Second, because it comes from a leading Left-wing intellectual—though
this will be no surprise to Left-inclined Leavers or to those who have
followed some of Anderson’s earlier writings. Third, because it appears
in a journal whose overwhelming majority of readers must be archetypal
metropolitan Remainers: so all credit to the LRB’s editors. I look
forward with anticipation to a flurry of Letters to the Editor
attempting to reply to Anderson’s indictment. But so far, not one.
The first article, ‘The European coup’
(17 December) is an extended discussion of the political history of
European ‘integration’ (apparently an American term), focusing on a book
by a Dutch philosopher-historian, Luuk van Middelaar, The Passage to Europe: How a Continent Became a Union
(Yale, 2013). The significance of this book is that it has been widely
praised as the most intellectually penetrating and stimulating of the
many (often deadly dull) histories of European integration. Donald Tusk
hailed it as ‘the most insightful book on European politics today’.
Sir Ivan Rogers described it as ‘brilliant’. Its triumphalist
vindication of the European project won its author plaudits and
prestigious appointments as advisor to a succession of prominent EU
politicians.
Anderson thus chooses to analyse the history of the EU, and its pre-history in the early 19th
century Restoration, through the eyes of one of its most intelligent
apologists. But he turns Middelaar’s triumphant saga into a withering
examination of the political means by which it was carried out.
Middelaar unashamedly presents the EU as created through a series of
‘coups’, through which powers were taken and changes made by
short-circuiting or simply overriding legal and democratically
sanctioned procedures in the name of political necessity—an idea, as
Anderson shows, that draws on a strand of European political thought
going back to Machiavelli.
One of the most crucial of these ‘coups’ was in Milan in 1985, when
Bettino Craxi, as chairman of the European Council, ruled that an
inter-governmental conference was not needed to change the Treaty of
Rome, as this was merely a question of procedure, not of substance.
This for the first time overrode the opposition of a minority of member
states, including Britain. Middelaar hails it as a brilliant bluff, a
‘coup disguised as a procedural decision’. What Middelaar typically
ignores, but Anderson points out, is that Craxi was ‘the single most
corrupt Italian politician of his time’, who had to flee into gilded
exile in Tunisia to live off his ill-gotten gains. Thanks to Craxi,
‘the gate was unbarred’ to a series of treaty changes decided by heads
of government alone and which created the EU. The article ends
tellingly by quoting EU President Herman van Rumpuy (to whom Middelaar
was a close advisor): ‘I believe the Union is over-democratised.’
The second article, ‘Ever Closer Union?’
(7 January) is a close examination of the history and functioning of
the EU’s principal institutions: the Court, the Commission, the Council,
the Parliament and the Central Bank. The founding fathers of the
Court, notes Anderson, included former Nazis, an Italian fascist, and a
French collaborator: nearly all appointees were not lawyers but
politicians, as they remain. The Court has always been ‘the driving
force of integration’ at the expense of the legal rights of nations and
civil-society bodies such as trade unions. It has brazenly ignored or
distorted European treaties and laws, acting beyond its powers in more
of Middelaar’s ‘coups’. Most fundamental was its assertion that
European law overrode national law—a theory first formulated by another
former Nazi lawyer, Hans Peter Ipsen, but which had no basis in the
European treaties. Most significant of all, the Court is unique in the
world in being entirely unaccountable to anyone. Its decisions are
secretive, final and effectively irreversible. In short, powers ‘that
no analogue in a democracy has ever possessed.’
Anderson subjects the other EU institutions to similar scrutiny.
Their common features are secretiveness, democratic unaccountability,
and ‘consensus’—‘a façade of unanimity’ principally imposed by Germany
and France. The exception is the Parliament, but this ‘least
consequential component of the Union’ merely provides ‘the appearance of
a democratic assembly behind which oligarchic coteries are comfortably
entrenched.’ The Central Bank, like the Court, is unique for being
completely unaccountable to any outside authority, let alone any
democratic institution, and so it is able to break the treaties which in
theory empower it.
What has been created is a system of interlocking oligarchies on a
pre-democratic pattern. The horizontal relations between governments of
‘member-states’ (no longer independent sovereign states) are more
important than the vertical relations between those governments and
their citizens, to whom political decisions are presented as faits accomplis unconnected with, and sometimes clearly opposed to, popular mandates.
Who benefits? Certain countries (principally Germany) and certain economic interests. And of course, the oligarchy itself:
gilbertdoctorow | “The entire course of developments and analysis of the incoming
information show that a clash between Russia and these forces is
inevitable. It is only a question of time: they are getting ready, they
are waiting for a suitable moment. Now they are also claiming the right
to own nuclear weapons. We will not allow them to do this.
“As I said before, after the collapse of the USSR Russia accepted the
new geopolitical realities. We have behaved respectfully and will
continue to be respectful to all the newly formed countries in
post-Soviet space. We respect and will respect their sovereignty and an
example for that is the help we extended to Kazakhstan, which
experienced tragic events that challenged its statehood and integrity.
But Russia cannot feel secure, develop, exist under a constant threat
coming from the territory of contemporary Ukraine….
“They left us with no other possibility than to defend /Russia, our
people than what we are compelled to do today. The circumstances demand
of us decisive and immediate actions. The Peoples Republics of the
Donbas turned to Russia asking for help. In this connection…I have taken
the decision to carry out a special military operation.
“Its objective is to defend people who in the course of eight years
have been subjected to mockery, to genocide from the Kiev regime. And
for this purpose we will strive to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine,
as well as to turn over to courts those who committed numerous bloody
crimes against civilians, including citizens of the Russian Federation.
“All the while we have no plans for an occupation of Ukrainian
territories. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force. ..
“At the basis of our policy is freedom, freedom of choice for
everyone to independently determine their future and the future of their
children. And we consider it to be important that this right, the right
of free choice, may be exercised by all peoples living on the
territory of present-day Ukraine, by all who so wish.”
As regards the Ukrainian armed forces, Putin issued the following appeal:
“Respected comrades. Your fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers
did not fight against the Nazis and defend our common Motherland just to
see today’s neo-Nazis seize power in Ukraine. You took an oath of
loyalty to the Ukrainian people and not to a junta against the people
which is robbing Ukraine and has only contempt for the people.
“Do not carry out criminal orders. I call upon you to immediately lay
down your arms and to go home. Let me explain: all servicemen in the
Ukrainian army who carry out this demand can freely leave the area of
combat and go back to their families.”
As regards third party countries:
“Now several very important words for those who may be tempted to
intervene in the events presently occurring. Whoever tries to hinder us,
or still worse to create threats to our country, to our people, must
know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such
consequences as you never experienced in your history. We are ready for
any development of events. All necessary decisions in this regard have
already been taken. I hope that I will be heard.”
Rabobank | “…Chicago wholesale prices rose by 77% between June 1914 and February
1915, when prices peaked. Of that 77% rise, 22% occurred prior to the
closing of the Dardanelles Strait in October 1914. The remaining 45%
increase occurred once the Dardanelles Strait was closed…Russia and
Ukraine account for ~30% of global wheat exports at present. Between
1905/6 and 1909/10 Russia accounted for only 22% of wheat exports. It
can be argued that due to an increased global reliance on Black Sea
wheat, a price rise could now be larger. Further, wheat stocks excluding
Russia are currently lower compared to the average versus 1914/15.”
Putin sent the majority of his amphibious forces to the Mediterranean and Black Seas to accomplish two objectives:
(1) to punish Odessa for the neo-Nazis’ 2014 genocide of Russian-speakers.
(2) to inflict costly but repairable damage to
Odessa’s port facilities through which Ukraine’s wheat and corn is
exported to MENA nations.
Europe will be left rescuing the MENA nations from starvation or facing another mass migration into its cities.
I am 100% serious. I was also optimistic. I believed Russia would not occupy Odessa but now I think it will.
Last November for the first time, food security appeared as a priority in China’s national security strategy.
Russia and Ukraine provide a quarter of the world’s
exported wheat and corn. China will be first in line for those exports.
The previous MENA recipients will be Europe’s burden to feed.
Similarly Russia has halted ammonium nitrate fertilizer exports until April. Its plans beyond that are not apparent.
For seafood, China has created a three prong fleet:
hundreds of thousands of fishing ships; the world’s largest coast
guard; and the world’s second largest navy. And it has developed,
trained and demonstrated integrated coercive grayzone
fishery operations with that fleet.
Putin and Xi deeply accept the ramifications of rapid climate change and are acting to protect their populations.
SWIFT Banking Sanctions: Opposed by Austria, France, Germany and Italy.
Energy Embargo: Opposed by most NATO member states.
Luxury Goods Embargo: Opposed by France and Italy. France exposed directly and via Italy.
Diamond Embargo: Opposed by Belgium and the Netherlands.
Railway Infrastructure: Opposed by France and Italy.
1) The long-term Russian contracts to supply gas to western Europe end in 2024. The two pipelines to China being completed will add more than twice the capacity now used to send gas to Europe. That is not counting the Kamchatka gas going there already.
2) Russia has $630 billion in foreign reserves, equal to 30+ percent of GNP so it can ride-out sanctions.
3) The OSCE web page on shelling should be a first stop every morning, The shelling in both directions has been heavy. There is a bit of opera bouffe here. It takes serious effort on both sides to fire more than 1,000 rounds each day and in a heavily populated region and hit nobody. Good work guys.
4) The rights of Russian language speakers in the Ukraine is a very big issue. Type into Google “first language of people in the Ukraine map” and see for yourself what the problem looks like. The 2014 new Ukrainian government’s decree that Russian could not be the language of schools is what precipitated the Donbass breakaway. According to the Russian speech at the UN General Assembly, the 6 Russian language TV stations in the Ukraine were shut down months ago. Ukrainian government leaders have been quoted as saying “If they (Russian speakers) don’t like it they should leave”. If the line of contact stays “hot” then a Russian takeover of all parts of the two regions may be in the cards.
5) Every nation has a memory of trauma. The south has the civil war. Blacks have slavery. The Jews have the exterminations. The Ukrainians have the 1920s famine. The Russians have the great civilian evacuations and shelling of 1941. Yesterday was Fatherland Day in Russia. Mess with your adversaries traumatic memories at your own peril.
This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border
8/ People, hold @TulsiGabbard's feet to the fire on her association with Dark Sith Lord Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum. When she makes public statements that seem to be on the side of the people but actually push for more government police powers, she's working evil.
caitlinjohnstone | "Canada strongly condemns Russia’s recognition of so-called 'independent states' in Ukraine," tweeted
Justin Trudeau. "This is a blatant violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty
and international law. Canada stands strong in its support for Ukraine –
and we will impose economic sanctions for these actions."
"Tomorrow
we will be announcing new sanctions on Russia in response to their
breach of international law and attack on Ukraine's sovereignty and
territorial integrity," tweeted UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
"This
further undermines Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,
erodes efforts towards a resolution of the conflict, and violates the
Minsk Agreements, to which Russia is a party," says NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
There
are all kinds of criticisms that one can level against this move by
Moscow, if one feels that the entire western political/media class
screaming all of these criticisms in unison does not have enough
amplification. For myself, I would just like to point out that the
US-centralized empire is the very last institution on this planet who
has any business babbling about the "sovereignty" of other nations.
Absolute dead last.
I say this not out of any kind of fondness for
Putin or support for his decisions, but because the absolute worst
violator of national sovereignty in the entire world by a truly gargantuan margin complaining about violations of national sovereignty is bat shit insane.
Had Biden admin been willing to give up on making Ukraine a proxy on Russia’s border, it could’ve had a demilitarized Donbas in a neutral Ukraine. It instead shunned Minsk & targeted Nordstream 2. Rather than a Russian invasion, it got Russia’s recognition of breakaway republics.
Pointing
out things the US empire has done while it shrieks about the actions of
a foreign government will get you accused of "whataboutism", but it's
not a whataboutism. It's pointing out that the US is the absolute least
qualified government on earth to comment on the issue at hand, so it
should shut the whole entire fuck up about it. If the US wants to
legitimately complain about the transgressions of unaligned governments,
then it must cease being the worst transgressor.
Some might say,
"Two wrongs don't make a right." Okay. But inflicting ten thousand
wrongs definitely means you should shut the fuck up about anyone doing
one wrong.
CTH | Everyone knows Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is an empty
vessel. He carries himself as a generally unintelligent fellow with a
sub-par IQ and a childish demeanor that is often inappropriate.
However, recently due to the increased attention upon Canada as they
descend into lunatic leftism, the role of Trudeau as a puppet has become
more evident.
His Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, is well known to people
here for her prior key role in the creation of the USMCA trade
agreement, her busybody demeanor and her snarky ideological annoyances.
However, Chrystia is also the person who puts the words in Justin’s
mouth, literally.
Watch a few seconds of this video from Trudeau’s statements about
Ukraine yesterday and pay attention to the mannerisms of Freeland as the
Canadian Prime Minister reads his prepared remarks. Watch her closely and what you will notice is that Freeland wrote the remarks. She is visibly saying them in her head while physically mirroring the exact cadence Trudeau uses as he delivers her script.
craigmurray | In the massive propaganda blitz over Ukraine, there is one place
where you can find, in enormous detail, the truth about what is
happening in the civil war conflict zone on a daily basis. That is in the daily reports of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Monitoring Mission.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe is a
brilliant organisation set up to monitor implementation of agreements on
human rights and arms control during the Cold War period. It includes
Russia, the UK and the USA among its 57 members as well as all EU states. It has been operating in conflict zones for over half a century.
Over 40 member states have monitors in the Ukraine monitoring mission. The head of the mission
is Turkish, and almost all members have a military or diplomatic
background. There are 700 monitors, and they have been in Ukraine since
2014. Their job is to patrol both sides of the civil war conflict zone
and to record infringements of the ceasefire and de-escalation
agreements, bringing these to the attention of the relevant authorities.
Their work is very comprehensive indeed, and their detailed daily reports
are public. These provide the most fantastic journalistic resource for
what is actually happening on the ground – which is why Western
mainstream media never use this resource, because the truth is the
opposite of the picture they wish to paint.
For example, three OSCE monitors attended the site of the famous
“kindergarten missile” attack, to verify what kind of missile was used,
where it came from, and then tally this against the OSCE’s detailed
record of weapons on both sides in the area and their daily movements.
This is, literally, the basic everyday job of the mission. The team of
OSCE expert observers – two of whom were from European Union countries –
were denied access by the Ukrainian government to the kindergarten when
they arrived to determine what kind of missile it was and where it came
from. This is in direct violation of the ceasefire accord.
For those of us who saw the kindergarten attack stunt as propaganda to begin with, this is powerful corroboration.
Damage to a working kindergarten in Stanytsia Luhanska, Luhansk region On 17 February, the Mission followed up on reports of damage to a working kindergarten in the north-western part of Stanytsia Luhanska (government-controlled, 16km north-east of Luhansk), located about 4.5km north-west of the north-western edge of the disengagement areanear Stanytsia Luhanska.
At 22 Depovska Street, about 20m south-west of a two-storey kindergarten building, the SMM observed a crater in the kindergarten playground, as well as marks assessed as caused byshrapnel on the inner side of a concrete wall surrounding the building. Also, it observed a hole(about 1m in diameter), and one shattered window on the north-eastern facade of the same building, and two shattered windows on the building’s north-west facing wall (on its groundand first floor). The SMM assessed the damage as recent but was unable to determine the weapon used or thedirection of fire.
Staff from the Youth Affairs Department of the Stanytsia Luhanska Civil-Military Administration told the Mission that 20 children had been in the kindergarten at the time of theincident, but reported no injuries.
The SMM was only able to conduct its assessment from a distance of about 50m from the
north-eastern facade and of about 30m from the south-western facade of the damaged building,as a law enforcement officer did not allow the Mission to access the site saying that aninvestigation was ongoing.
That same report records numerous violations of the ceasefire
agreement by the Ukrainian government in moving heavy weaponry in to
menace separatist held areas and in keeping weaponry outside agreed
storage facilities. It equally reports precisely the same kind of
violations by separatist rebels. None of which balance has been recorded
by the same western media which loves to give detailed accounts of
troop movements within Russia.
The US and Germany agreed to no NATO expansion with Gorbachev. Then Clinton and Albright bombed Yugoslavia. What to make of these neocon think tanks? Organized Grima Wormtongues chock full of grand children of middle European aristocratic refugees dreaming revenge fantasies including return to the family castle, ancestral titles, and estates destroyed by the Soviets.
These elderly buffoons are aided and abetted by financiers who see war as an opportunity to make a buck.
The neocons and neoliberals who have run both foreign and economic policy across administrations and Congresses of BOTH political parties – the nominal left and right – who have brought about the diminution of US strength and moral standing in world affairs and the offshoring and consequent dependence on other countries in our economic affairs.
Yet, not only do thet continue to dominate our ruling class - but they have in fact - consolidated their power to near absolute power.
As we are seeing now in Canada - dissent is not only being canceled but criminalized. We saw through their covidian policies not only in Democrat run states but even in some Republican run states. Authoritarian policies were enacted ostensibly for the “greater good” although they never did any of that. Instead they favored the laptop class and pummeled the working class and the poor and of course the kids who’ve been saddled with massive debt and denied an opportunity for an education to pay for all that debt.
It’s amazing how psychopaths are so good at keeping their subordinate politicians loyal to the overclass. It’s almost as if they are being blackmailed.
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