Did You Know That Russia Had Banned All GMO Foods?

loc.gov |  On June 29, 2016, the Federation Council of the Russian Federation Federal Assembly (the upper chamber of the legislature) adopted the Federal Law on Amending Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in Regard to Improvement of State Control in the Field of Genetic Engineering. (Press Release, Federation Council, Ban on Growing and Production of Genetically Modified Organisms on Russian Territory Is Established (June 29, 2016) (in Russian); text of the Law and Legislative Information available at Bill No. 714809-6, State Duma website (last visited June 30, 2016).)

The new Law imposes a ban on food stuffs produced using genetically modified plants or animals. As stated in the new Law, the legislation “strengthens measures aimed at monitoring of all types of activities associated with GMOs, preventing release of GMOs into the environment, and ameliorating the consequences if such a release occurs.” (Law, art. 1(1).) Among the federal laws amended by the new Law are the Law on Seed Production and the Environmental Protection Law. Provisions prohibiting “any use of seeds derived from through genetic modification, including those that cannot reproduce or transfer inherited genetic material,” and “reproduction of animals whose genetic program has been changed by using genetic engineering methods” were added to these acts. The only exemption is made for experimental research work. (Id. arts. 2 & 3.)

The new ban, which received expressions of support and approval from the legislative assemblies of eight Russian provinces, will enter into force as soon as it is officially published. (Id.)

Registration of GMOs

New registration procedures for genetically engineered or modified organisms and for the issuance of permits for work in this field are established by the new Law. Violations of the newly introduced prohibitions will be punished with increased fines; federal and local officials of the agencies in charge of monitoring activities related to GMOs have the right to issue these fines. (Id. art. 4.)

The new restrictions extend to imported products and the Law provides for new registration requirements and procedures applicable to importers as well. Import of genetically modified organisms and products containing GMOs is not totally prohibited, but is subject to registration with the federal government. The Law expands the right of the executive government to prohibit the importing of GMOs and products containing GMOs into Russia because of the potential harmful impact of such products on humans or the environment. (Legislative Information, supra.)

The Coming Surge In Food Prices Will Devastate The Poor

TAC  |  s a twenty-something living in Washington, you have to find ways to cut costs. A lot of people here go without cable. Others sell their cars and rely on public transport. I like television and the open road, so I gave up food instead.

I eat the same thing every week. It’s a joke around the office. On Saturday, I’ll buy chicken breasts, ground turkey, sweet potatoes, asparagus, protein bars, eggs, and wheat bread at the supermarket. If I play my cards right, I can walk out of the store having paid less than $60. For five days’ worth of food, that’s not bad. I cook some of it Sunday and the rest on Wednesday night. I hate it, but it’s been pretty good on my waistline.

Even on the Club Fed diet, I’m feeling the pinch of rising food prices. Bread has become more expensive in the past three months. Eggs have, too. Buying store-brand chicken is like buying Ibérico ham.

I’ll survive. I can always cut cable. For wannabe proles in the laptop class, the rise in food prices has been at most an inconvenience. But the outbreak of war in Ukraine and the coming disruptions in global food markets will immiserate the actual working class in this country and may kill thousands of the world’s poor.

Well before war broke out in Ukraine, prices in the food industry were surging. U.S. food prices rose a whopping 7.5 percent between 2021 and 2022. Indexed global food prices hit an all-time high last month.

The causes are familiar. Supply-chain disruptions have slowed production and slashed supply. The sight of barren grocery shelves has incentivized consumers to buy in bulk, sending aggregate demand skyward. Labor-retention issues and slumping workforce participation rates have reduced output and further cut supply. Labor issues have reached a point where meatpacking companies like Tyson plan to automate their processing plants to weather labor shortages.

At the same time, the prices of industry inputs like oil, animal feed, and fertilizer have soared. The price of urea—a popular, highly soluble nitrogen-based fertilizer—nearly doubled at the pivotal New Orleans port last year. In input-dependent industries like agriculture, where producers net only 15 percent of final retail cost, consumers inevitably bear most of the increase in input costs.

The effects of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed against the Russian government and economy threaten to accelerate these trends. Russia is the world’s leading producer of wheat; Ukraine is fifth. Together, they are responsible for some 30 percent of the world’s wheat exports. War will almost certainly disrupt planting season in both Russia and Ukraine.

What Will Russia Find In U.S. Bioweapons Labs In The Ukraine?

veteranstoday  |  I have often reported that the U.S., more specifically the Pentagon, operates several bioweapons labs in Ukraine. The last time I reported on this was on January 27. The U.S. has always refused international inspections of its labs, so no one knows what they are researching in these labs. But we can assume that Russian special forces will take a closer look at these labs in the coming days.

And this seems to be exactly a can of worms. A tweet was published on Twitter about this and the user was immediately blocked. I won’t go into the content of the tweet, which can still be found in an Internet archive. If you are interested, you can view it here [1].

My point is that Twitter was so quick to delete a tweet and its author merely because he pointed out that there are U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine and that it looks like their capture is one of the important targets of the Russian military operation.

The US Army regularly produces deadly viruses, bacteria, and toxins in direct violation of the UN Convention on the prohibition of Biological Weapons. Hundreds of thousands of unwitting people are systematically exposed to dangerous pathogens and other incurable diseases.

Biowarfare scientists using diplomatic cover test man-made viruses at Pentagon bio laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These US bio-laboratories are funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $ 2.1 billion military program– Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) and are located in former Soviet Union countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia, and Africa.

Biowarfare scientists under diplomatic cover

Among the set of bilateral agreements between the US and Ukraine is the establishment of the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU) – an International organization funded mainly by the US government which has been accorded diplomatic status.

The STCU officially supports projects of scientists previously involved in the Soviet biological weapons program. Over the past 20 years the STCU has invested over $285 million in funding and managing some 1,850 projects of scientists who previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.

The US personnel in Ukraine work under diplomatic cover.

364 Ukrainians died from Swine Flu

One of the Pentagon laboratories is located in Kharkiv, where in January 2016 at least 20 Ukrainian soldiers died from Flu-like virus in just two days with 200 more being hospitalized. The Ukrainian government did not report on the dead Ukrainian soldiers in Kharkiv.

As of March 2016, 364 deaths have been reported across Ukraine (81.3 % caused by Swine Flu A (H1N1) pdm09 – the same strain which caused the world pandemic in 2009).

 

 

Why Did Neftali Bennett Have To Urgently Pay V.V. Putin A Visit?

gilbertdoctorow  |  In recent days, in what is surely a coordinated action by NATO and European authorities acting hand in glove, Russian news broadcasters have been taken off servers in Europe and effectively made inaccessible to the entire European public.  This modern day “jamming” concerns not just RT or Sputnik, the best known state owned voices of Russia because they broadcast in English and other languages that we all know, but virtually every news outlet based in Russia, public and privately owned, and broadcasting in the Russian language.

In this regard, EU Member States are waging an Information War of greatest significance that is absolutely not mentioned, let alone discussed in Western media, whether mainstream or otherwise. The victim is the European public, which, if bad turns to worse, will not know what hit them and why when cruise or hypersonic missiles descend on NATO bases or infrastructure. This enforced silence prevents Western civil society from taking any steps to save its own neck in what have become wartime conditions on the Continent.

The blockage is not uniformly enforced at all times, so that some Russian print and video producers can be accessed at one moment or another before going black.

In particular, one vitally important 3.30 minute video of Russian military spokesman Igor Konoshenkov yesterday and this morning remains accessible on youtube. I will detail below what he was saying, because the messenger and the message concern whether you and I will live to see another day.

Konoshenkov’s points in this video were the following:

1) Russia has now destroyed the entire Ukrainian air force that remained within the confines of Ukraine

2) There are also Ukrainian fighter jets that left the country and are now parked in Romania and other neighboring countries. If these planes are allowed by local authorities to take off from Romania, etc. and enter Ukrainian air space, Russia will consider the country from which they took off as a co-belligerent and will take appropriate action against them. The subtext is that Russia is ready to make missile strikes against NATO airfields that transgress the rules of war.

3) Russia is now about to destroy all military industrial complex factories in Ukraine and has formally warned all employees of these factories to leave the premises and stay away

4) Russia has received documentation from Ukrainian health authorities on the production of biological weapons  (anthrax, Siberian plague and much more) by Ukrainian labs in Kharkiv and elsewhere in cooperation with the United States. Stocks of such weapons were being stored in direct violation of international conventions.  On 24 February, in advance of the start of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, the Ukrainian health authorities destroyed these illicit biological weapons. However, Russia has obtained the official documentation certifying this destruction of what should never have been there. Moscow is now studying this documentation, which indicates United States participation in the development of the biological weapons and will publish the incriminating documents, starting from yesterday.

5) Russia has also obtained documentation proving that Ukraine, in cooperation with the United States, was since the presidency of Petro Petrushenko, actively developing nuclear weapons, including “dirty” nuclear devices using readily available fuel from its reactors.  Such activity was going on in the Zaporozhye nuclear plants, and it is very likely that the fire reported at a ‘training unit’ adjacent to an active reactor two days ago related to destruction of incriminating papers, if it was not otherwise a ‘false flag’ operation to allege a Russian attack on the power station, in violation of international law.

When The Zelensky Toilet Paper Hit The Biden/Schwab Butt Crack....,

thehill |  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday slammed NATO as being "weak" and "underconfident" for refusing to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine as his country fights in "the worst invasion since World War II."

In a Facebook video shared and translated by Axios on Friday, Zelensky said Ukrainians have fought fearlessly against Russians invading their country — and will continue to — but have been thrown into "nine days of darkness" without assistance from NATO.

"Knowing that new strikes and casualties are inevitable, NATO deliberately decided not to close the sky over Ukraine," Zelensky said in an emotional video address.

The president urged NATO to think about "all those people who will die because of you."

"Because of your weakness, because of your disunity, all the alliance has managed to do so far is to carry fifty tons of diesel fuel for Ukraine," he said. "Is this the alliance you were building?"

A no-fly zone, implemented to prohibit enemy aircraft from flying into a region and attacking, would cut off Russian air support and blunt the advance of Russian troops toward Kyiv.

The Biden administration, along with the NATO security alliance, has so far rebuffed Ukrainian calls to establish a no-fly zone over fears that it could spark a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia.

“It would require, essentially, the U.S. military shooting down Russian planes and prompting a potential direct war with Russia, the exact step that we want to avoid," press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.

In his video address, Zelensky disputed the fact that it would result in a direct confrontation between NATO countries and Russia, calling it "self-hypnosis."

"I do not know how you can protect and whether you can protect NATO countries," Zelensky said. "You will not be able to buy us off with liters of fuel for liters of our blood."

How Does A Worm Like Zelensky Live With Itself?

southfront |  What can we deduce from this short interview:

1. Russia will prevail and Ukraine will lose.
2. Ukraine is going to be partitioned. Putin is going to create the buffer he needs to assure his country’s security.
3. Whoever governs the western part of Ukraine will be required to declare their “neutrality” (in writing) and reject any offers for NATO membership. If they violate that promise, they will be removed by force.

But here’s the important thing: All of the main actors in this fiasco knew from the very beginning that Ukraine had no chance of defeating the Russian army. That was a foregone conclusion. So–what we want to know– is why Zelenskyy didn’t take steps to avoid the tragedy before it unfolded?

The answer to this question helps to reveal ‘who Zelenskyy really is’.

Ask yourself this: Why didn’t Zelenskyy negotiate with Putin when he had the chance? Why didn’t he pull back his 60,000 troops from the east? Why didn’t he stop Washington’s weapons shipments? Why didn’t he implement the Minsk Treaty? Why didn’t he reject NATO’s offer for membership?

Finally, why was so intent on doing the things that he knew would anger Moscow and increase the likelihood of a war?

These questions are not hard to answer.

Zelenskyy has been acting on orders from Washington from the get-go. We know that. He’s also been implementing Washington’s agenda not his own and certainly not Ukraine’s. We know that, too. But that does not absolve him from responsibility. After all, he is a full-grown adult capable of distinguishing between right from wrong. He knows what he’s doing, and he knows that it’s wrong; worse than wrong, it’s inexcusable. He’s sending men to die in a war he knows they can’t win; he’s inflicting incalculable suffering and injury on his own people for no reason at all; and –worst of all– he’s cleared the way for the dissolution of Ukraine itself, the country he was sworn to defend. That country is going to be broken into bits as part of a final settlement with Russia, and Zelenskyy will share a good part of the blame.

How does a man like this live with himself?

Does The West Err In Imagining Russians Want To Be Degenerate Consumers Too?

turcopolier  |  Putin’s target is just as much domestic constituencies as it is the West, perhaps more so. The aim is to force Russia’s Western-leaning élites into line – and that includes the Central Bank. A total rift with the West was never going to be possible otherwise. This way he presents the split as a fait accompli and all patriots will be expected to get behind his policies. If it is successful Putin will go down in history as one of the most brilliant statesmen of all time. Judo is most certainly at play in nailing shut the door. 

For example, our sanctions on the oligarchs who stash their wealth outside the country ought to help repatriate some of that wealth to Russia. The ones who choose to stay abroad Russia does not want anyhow. Putin sees this as a civilizational war, with Russian civilization incompatible with increasingly degenerate Western values. 

My perspective is Russia is being enormously strengtened by the current reaction of the West, the same way it happened in 1941. It is a huge miscalculation and is not good.

I’m from Eastern Europe – a native Bulgarian and I also know Russian because I studied in school at the times of the Soviet Union. We are probably culturally closer to Russians than even Ukrainians in some aspects.

In the Eastern Ortodoxy doctrine, the closer to the truth you are, the closer you are to God. That means the beliefs are not oriented towards commercial success, like in the Protestant world for example, where hard work will get you closer to heaven. Only doing the right thing will grant you a path to heaven, and if you need to be poor, then so be it. Even though releigion is not something significant today, it has shaped the mind of the whole Eastern Ortodox civilization. And what it means in practice is news about markets and inflation and poverty are having much smaller effect on Russians than what Westerners think. Of course Russians are worried about inflation and price rises – but at the same time they pride themselves because of doing the right thing, and this is stronger. The recent sharp increase in Putin’s rating confirms that – no amount of misery will stop such minded people when they beleive they are on the right path.

Unlike the West, where the Law defines public truth, in the Eastern Ortodoxy it is not the Law, but your own feeling of righteousness. If the law is against your gut feeling, it is not something you generally need to do. Hence the chaos and lack of strict rule of law in the whole Eastern Ortodox world – from parking & driving, to personal quarrels. The West sees this as some form of corruption, which it is not – it is just people beleiving in their own righteousness, not in the righteousness of the law . By the way, Geoffrey of Villehardouin “On the Conquest of Constantinople” says basically the same, and he has written his book in 1204. That is in essence the dilemma of the East, the ruler is expected to be a saint, and when he is not, people are allowed to follow their own judgement.

So what is happening now is Russians are rallying around their leader and are getting enormously dedicated to destroy the “unjust” and “unrighteous”. Nuclear war is a very real option unless the West doesn’t ease tensions – it is really obvious to me. In the Russian collective mind, Realpolitic that was played was heresy.

N.B. I’m not pro-Russian – there is ambivalent relationship between us and the Russians. Going back in history, we gave them the Cyrilic alphabet (sponsored by Bulgarian king), our monks brought Ortodox Christianity there (not Byzantines, it was Bulgarians like St Cyprian that converted our wild Northern cousins in the middle ages; “Old church slavonic” is the same as “Old Bulgarian” ). In their turn they liberated us from the Ottomans, but wanted to turn us into Russians which we really hated, and then they unsuccessfully attacked us in WW1 and occupied us after WW2. I’m just saying they see things differently and I’m trying to give a perspective.

Russians are done with the West. They regard the US especially as breakers of their word, hence, untrustworthy (“agreement-incapable”), without honor, and morally degenerate”. Even Russian liberals like Medvedev are reversing course away from the West.

We can surmise that the Chinese have a similar take, but they were never Western-oriented like the Russian liberals anyway. People in the West, and in the US especially, don’t know that a core issue for Russia in the Ukraine matter is neo-Nazism because this has been suppressed in the narrative in the US. They are not kidding when they say this is about de-Nazification and bring to justice those guilty of “genocide” in Donbass, where over 10, 000 Russian Ukrainians have been killed by the Azov Battalion forces, who view Russians as Untermenschen.

 

 

Who Is A Fan Of T-Shirt Churchill's Greatest Hits?

“Zelensky was elected in a landslide victory in 2019 on the promise of easing tensions with Russia and resolving the crisis in the breakaway republics in east Ukraine. He has made no attempt to keep his word on either issue.” https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-man-who-sold-ukraine/#comment-5212744  He betrayed the electorate.

slate |  Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the public response from pundits and online observers alike has largely involved going bananas over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. For a guy who used to be a comedian, his leadership has demonstrated qualities many people—particularly in the military subreddits I’ve been reading, full of young service members and vets—just haven’t witnessed except in movies and history books. Having come of age in a world where major world leaders are so insulated from personal risk that they’re whisked away by security teams at the first whiff of danger, many members of the American military are stunned that a commander in chief would actually risk his or her own skin—let alone brashly announce, when the United States offered him safety, that he needs “ammunition, not a ride.” The U.S. Marine Corps subreddit contains a post titled “Volodymyr Zelensky is about as motivating of a leader as I’ve seen in our lifetime,” with one sample reply reading: “Yep. I’d follow that guy into hell.” The idea of a political leader willing to die with his people has struck many outside the military, too, as unthinkably brave. And more than a little thrilling. Zelensky has become a hero to much of the world—even inspiring citizens of other nations to ask how to volunteer to fight for Ukraine. To the extent that this has been an information war for hearts and minds in much of the world, Ukraine has undoubtedly won.

An information war that successful deserves to be examined, both for its own sake and in order to better understand the desires the Ukrainian spectacle seems to be so spectacularly satisfying in the international audience (beyond the natural moral sympathy the country is receiving). The Zelensky legend, while not being false, also isn’t purely organic. It’s being quite skillfully produced. This is a mediated war, calibrated to appeal to a specific brand of international solidarity—of sides in a global struggle—that hasn’t been around in a very long time.

And it’s working: There’s a drunkenness to the explosion of pro-Ukrainian sentiment. Public anger on behalf of Ukrainians has gone beyond official sanctions and into a plethora of bizarrely small-bore initiatives—like bars no longer serving Russian vodka—intended to recognize the aggressor’s villainy. Pro-Ukrainian observers are saying some wild things as they try to explain their outrage and grief at the invasion, and the expressive extremes are telling. One journalist said, for instance, that “the unthinkable has happened to them. This is not a developing Third World nation. This is Europe.” CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata said last Friday that Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European—I have to choose those words carefully, too—city, where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.” Civilized. He later apologized, but it’s essential that we understand exactly what he meant, because it may not be elegant or inclusive, but it is telling. These aren’t isolated episodes. Something weird is happening, and I think it’s this: Pro-Ukraine feelings in search of an organizing principle are coalescing around a category of identification that hasn’t enjoyed real, popular international relevance in a good long while. I’m speaking of “the West”—a category Vladimir Putin has long railed against, but which Westerners themselves haven’t, at least in recent years, claimed with much personal attachment or ideological loyalty.

And these are feelings being shaped and inspired in part by the “cinematic” quality of the media coming out of Ukraine.

Take Zelensky. He’s become a star because he already was one. The man has great dramatic instincts. He is doing brave things and he’s very ably disseminating media of himself doing it. In one viral clip, he’s in only a T-shirt, unshaven, answering questions before being informed on camera that the Holocaust memorial was being bombed and saying, “That is Russia, my congratulations.” The clip has mostly circulated as a “reaction video”; people are extremely interested in watching Zelensky react.

 

Situation Report On The Economic War With Russia

johnhelmer |  The ancient difference between the confiscation of your assets and a tax by force was the mandate of Heaven. This was the public announcement from God, transmitted through fellows wearing funny hats and costumes accompanied by drumbeats and whistles. When God wants to stick you up, they said, you’d better hand over your money or your life.

These days the rulers of the US, the European Union (EU) and Canada call this the “Rules Based Order”. That’s to say:  I make the rules, you take my orders. The meaning is still the ancient one – your money or your life.

The Chinese empire has been famous for a dress-up ceremony in which those who made the rules received the agreement of those who took the orders. It was called the kowtow. Nine kowtow was the standard,  plus expensive gifts.   The Roman empire and most of its successors, called it tributum, tribute.  Over the years, other names for it have been tax, protection money, and a gender specific form of kowtow popular in England and France called the ius primae noctis, droit de seigneur, or lord’s right.

The quaintness of the ceremony varies from place to place.  The British empire demanded its colonial peoples wave a small Union Jack in the left-hand corner of their independence flag. They also required their subject children’s pilgrimage at least once in their lives to the fence of Buckingham Palace in London for at least one performance of the Changing of the Guard.

In keeping with the times since 1945, the US empire has been more straightforward. It doesn’t require pilgrimages to the White House fence for children of tender age.  It does require you keep the US dollar in your pocket, or the local currency whose value is fixed in proportion, and whose state surpluses of taxation and pension funds must be stored in US Treasury notes, as well as the dollar.

In Russia, starting in 1991, Boris Yeltsin innovated on these measures by inviting US advisors  to run the Russian economy, which Yeltsin paid for by imposing a 100% tax on ordinary Russians’ salaries. This started the system of oligarchs whom Yeltsin allowed to dispatch and store, tax free, in the US, UK and EU as much state capital and income as they could carry off.  How that system has worked for the past thirty years, oligarch by oligarch, has been the subject of analysis here.    The effort has not gone without recognition.

At this very moment, the oligarchs are facing a Christian tax, but it’s not the Russian one you might think they have earned.  Instead, the 100% tax is being imposed in the form of  confiscation statutes by the US, UK and EU.   This is  not economic warfare so much as the application of the principle that what the oligarchs have been doing to Russians should now be done to them, according to the Mandate of Heaven as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31.

The Mandate of Heaven can also be found on the bottom of the US dollar note. That’s the signature line where the Treasurer of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury promise to pay “all debts public and private”. Like other US treaty signatures, this no longer applies to  Russians, common ones, oligarchs, or the state, according to this novelty in the Rules Based Order. Russians must now sell everything in the country of value for US dollars – oil, gas, coal, uranium, aluminium, titanium, wheat, potash, urea, bank loan debts, airplane leases, etc. But  those dollars cannot be used by Russians to buy anything else. That value has been confiscated.

The response is still being formulated in Moscow. Russian government officials, members of the State Duma, the Central Bank of Russia, the General Staff, the oligarchs and their lobbyists have yet to agree. The terms of the debate are still largely secret; here was an opening shot against the Central Bank by Sergei Glazyev.

Who Is America's Greatest Rival? Russia? China? Or Europe?

colinsims |  First of all, who is America’s greatest rival? Is it Russia? China?

What about Europe?

Think about it. The U.S. has already demonstrated its willingness to expend extraordinary levels of blood and treasure to topple any Middle Eastern dictator who so much as thinks the word “euro” while he lies awake at night. So, what about the Europeans themselves? After all, they’re the ones who issued the dreaded euro in the first place. The Chinese yuan—for a myriad of reasons—isn’t going to replace the dollar any time soon. Neither is the Russian ruble. But the euro stands a chance. It’s the world’s second largest reserve currency and could easily become number one. If it succeeds, the economic blow to the United States would be catastrophic. The effects would be far more devastating than anything Russia or China could do, short of launching a full-scale nuclear attack. So I ask you again, who is America’s greatest rival?

It’s Europe.

So, from that perspective, let’s take a look at what America’s objectives truly are with Ukraine, regardless of dubious public pronouncements.

A December, 2021 article from the BBC quoted an anonymous high-ranking European intelligence official who said, “Let's not be blind. If Russia initiates a scenario of any kind it will also initiate action against Nato members.” The official added, “To think war could be contained to one nation would be foolish.”

It is also likely that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would greatly exacerbate growing tensions within the European Union. For example, E.U. diplomats have already stated that a Russian incursion will be met with severe economic repercussions. However, as one security analyst at the European Policy Centre put it, “Putting tough sanctions on Russia can also have consequences for the E.U. because the economies (Russia’s and Europe’s) are linked … There could be costs to pay that some member states do not want to pay.”

That statement crystalizes one of the E.U.’s biggest problems: economic policies—especially monetary ones from the European Central Bank—are seldom one-size-fits-all. So, what’s good for northern states like Germany or Denmark is not always good for southern states like Greece or Italy. This “North-South” divide has fostered a growing fissure within the E.U. for years, and if Russia invades Ukraine, it will grow even wider.

In short, that’s good news for the U.S. dollar. The more division within Europe the better, because it calls into question the euro’s future existence—no one is going to invest in that, it’s too risky. That leaves the dollar as the only option. So, no matter how screwed up America is, either at home or abroad, it’s still a better bet than anyone else. That is U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell.

But what about Russia? Does the U.S. gain anything from Russia getting bogged down in a Ukrainian quagmire?

Absolutely!

In the book, “Implosion: The End of Russia and What it Means for America,” author Ilan Berman argues that the biggest worry regarding Russia is not its strength, but its weakness. This is primarily due to the country’s rapidly shrinking population and abysmal mortality rate. (The average Russian male dies at 59.) The problem with this, from a Western perspective, is that if the Russian government collapses, who is going to safeguard the roughly 7,000 nuclear weapons currently at its disposal?

Isn't De-Dollarization A Necessary Pre-Requisite For A Global Digital Currency?

thecradle  |  On the confiscation of Russian foreign reserves and cut-off from SWIFT, the main point is “it will take some time for Russia to put in a new system, with China. The result will end dollarization for good, as countries threatened with ‘democracy’ or displaying diplomatic independence will be afraid to use US banks.”

This, Hudson says, leads us to “the great question: whether Europe and the Dollar Bloc can buy Russian raw materials – cobalt, palladium, etc, and whether China will join Russia in a minerals boycott.”

Hudson is adamant that “Russia’s Central Bank, of course, has foreign bank assets in order to intervene in exchange markets to defend its currency from fluctuations. The ruble has plunged. There will be new exchange rates. Yet it’s up to Russia to decide whether to sell its wheat to West Asia, that needs it; or to stop selling gas to Europe via Ukraine, now that the US can grab it.”

About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system bypassing SWIFT, and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), Hudson has no doubts “the Russian-China system will be implemented. The Global South will seek to join and at the same time keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”

I’m going to de-dollarize myself

So the US itself, in another massive strategic blunder, will speed up de-dollarization. As the managing director of Bocom International Hong Hao told the Global Times, with energy trade between Europe and Russia de-dollarized, “that will be the beginning of the disintegration of dollar hegemony.”

It’s a refrain the US administration was quietly hearing last week from some of its own largest multinational banks, including notables like JPMorgan and Citigroup.

A Bloomberg article sums up their collective fears:

“Booting Russia from the critical global system – which handles 42 million messages a day and serves as a lifeline to some of the world’s biggest financial institutions – could backfire, sending inflation higher, pushing Russia closer to China, and shielding financial transactions from scrutiny by the west. It might also encourage the development of a SWIFT alternative that could eventually damage the supremacy of the US dollar.”

Those with IQs over 50 in the European Union (EU) must have understood that Russia simply could not be totally excluded from SWIFT, but maybe only a few of its banks: after all, European traders depend on Russian energy.

From Moscow’s point of view, that’s a minor issue. A number of Russian banks are already connected to China’s CIPS system. For instance, if someone wants to buy Russian oil and gas with CIPS, payment must be in the Chinese yuan currency. CIPS is independent of SWIFT.

Additionally, Moscow already linked its SPFS payment system not only to China but also to India and member nations of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). SPFS already links to approximately 400 banks.

With more Russian companies using SPFS and CIPS, even before they merge, and other maneuvers to bypass SWIFT, such as barter trade – largely used by sanctioned Iran – and agent banks, Russia could make up for at least 50 percent in trade losses.

The key fact is that the flight from the US-dominated western financial system is now irreversible across Eurasia – and that will proceed in tandem with the internationalization of the yuan.

The Vaccine Credentialing Initiative WILL NOT Be Cancelled...,

off-guardian |  It was fitting that an MP recently asked in Canada’s parliament just who does the government serve: Klaus Schawb and the World Economic Forum (WEF) or Canadian citizens?

A pertinent question. But any enquiry should also look to include the wider digital-financial-industrial complex which has used COVID as cover for bailing out financial markets and restructuring capitalism and trying to manage the long-term falling rate of profit.

These issues are at the heart of the ‘Great Reset’ or ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ that Klauss Schwab and others talk of. Concepts that – like neoliberal globalisation in the 1980s – are given a positive spin and which supposedly symbolise a brave new techno-utopian future.

The WEF, Big Finance, Big Tech, the Gates Foundation and Big Pharma have been heavily promoting the COVID-Great Reset agenda from the start. This has to date resulted in the reinvigoration of an ailing pharma sector with a multi-billion-dollar windfall, the eradication of smaller firms and jobs, cementing the dominance of the online retail giants, global chains and the digital payments sector and the injection of much-needed liquidity into what were by late 2019/early 2020 collapsing financial markets.

In the 1980s, to help legitimise the deregulated neoliberal agenda, government and media instigated an ideological onslaught, pressing home the notion of individual rights and responsibility and emphasising a shift away from the state, trade unions and the public sector. This reflected economic changes underpinned by notions of the primacy of the market and individual consumer choice.

But there is now a new ideological shift.

We hear claims of a ‘democratic deficit’, whereby individual rights are said to be undermining the wider needs of society. The message is that individual freedom is posing a threat to ‘national security’, ‘public health’ and ‘safety’.

As a result, there must be clampdowns on the right to travel, associate and protest and on freedom of speech.

As stated by journalist Iain Davis in a recent article, a commitment to the ‘public interest’, ‘safety’ and protecting the population from ‘harm’ will replace freedom and democracy.

As in the 1980s, this messaging is being driven by economic factors. Neoliberalism has privatised, deregulated, exploited workers and optimised debt to the limit. We have collapsing markets kept afloat by endless financial injections and an overall declining rate of profit with firms suffocating under mountains of debt.

AI and advanced automation of production, distribution and service provision (3D manufacturing, drone technology, driverless vehicles, lab grown food, farmerless farms, robotics, etc) are also on the horizon.

A mass labour force – and therefore mass education, mass welfare, mass healthcare provision and entire systems that were in place to reproduce labour for capitalist economic activity – might in the near future no longer be required. Labour’s relationship to capital is being transformed.

So, if labour is the condition for the existence of the working class, why bother with the working class?

COVID has accelerated economic restructuring and the shift towards an authoritarian form of capitalism that is ultimately to be based on a Chinese-style social credit system to ensure the population complies with its coming servitude.

Former WEF-sponsored ‘young global leaders’ like Trudeau, Macron, Merkel and Arden rose to the political helm of various countries after having been suitably groomed. They will continue to fulfil their roles by managing dissent through mass surveillance and clamping down on civil rights as the effects of inflation (induced by the liquidity injected into the system), joblessness and post-COVID austerity measures kick in.

Retail Bank Branches And ATMS An Endangered Species In Kansas City For A Minute Now...,

dailymail |  As Australian banks continue to focus on digital transactions for customers, ATMs and bank branches are disappearing across the country, according to new data.

The analysis revealed close to 460 bank branches have shut down across the nation in recent years, and dating back to 2020, approximately 3800 previously active ATMs have been removed.

NSW alone now has 140 fewer in-store banks, and almost 300 suburbs don't have a singular ATM to withdraw cash.

It is a similar story in Victoria, where 120 branches have permanently closed their doors to customers.

'Closures have a devastating impact on local communities,' Finance Sector Union national secretary Julia Angrisano said.

'Jobs are lost, business is impacted, and another local service disappears.'

The closures have hit hard in regional and rural areas, and for older citizens, Ms Angrisano added.

Another key factor for the branch closures and reduced ATM's is the fact that banks are bringing in a small fortune from daily digital transactions.

As Australia accelerates towards a cashless society, fees from either the customer or vender for online banking have become common place.

In a modern-day digital world, an estimated 80 per cent of Aussies prefer to bank online.

But the remaining 20 per cent, namely the disabled or those who are not digital savvy, have been left stranded.

Tellingly, CBA now has 875 bank branches nationwide - compared to 1134 in February 2020. 

Their number of ATMs has reduced to just over 2000 - in 2019 there were 4118 ATM's in circulation.

Last year, ANZ head of distribution Kath Bray said bank branch closures were a sign of the times, with digital transactions now the primary focus for many.

 

Sergei Lavrov Patiently Explains The What's Why's And Wherefore's To Al-Jazeera

vk  |   Question: Many people did not fully believe that Russia would launch a special military operation in Ukraine. The Russian side has repeatedly voiced the reasons, including the threat of a military-strategic nature from Kiev. What threats did Ukraine have or may have, forcing Russia to launch a military operation?

Sergey Lavrov: This story dates back to much earlier. And not even in 2014, when a bloody coup d'état was committed in Ukraine with the support of the West, but in the early 1990s, while the USSR ceased to exist. The Soviet (then Russian) leaders Boris Yeltsin and Eduard Shevardnadze were promised by their Western colleagues that there would be no geopolitical turning point, NATO would not take advantage of the new situation and would not move its infrastructure to the east. Moreover, it will not accept new members. The British archives published the relevant records of the negotiations. Once again, it became crystal clear.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken out on this issue in his public speeches. Instead of fulfilling the promise and ensuring stability in Europe, NATO undertook five waves of eastward expansion. Moreover, all of them were accompanied by the deployment of the armed forces of the alliance members in these territories. They said that "on a temporary basis," but it quickly turned into a permanent one – all the time creating a military infrastructure. Now neutral EU member states or states such as Switzerland are also trying to involve NATO in meeting the needs. The "Military Mobility" project forces Austria, Sweden, Finland to provide transport capabilities so that NATO can transfer its armed forces. "NATOcentricity" becomes all-encompassing. The European Union, for all its slogans about the need for "strategic autonomy of Europe", is by no means inspired by this topic and perfectly agrees to be an obedient "appendage" of the North Atlantic Alliance.

This period was accompanied by a frank provocation of the post-Soviet states (primarily Ukraine): they say, you have to decide who you are with – with Russia or the West. They sounded directly "head-on", starting from the first "Maidan" in 2003, and this was also the case at the subsequent stage, when Ukraine under V.F. Yanukovych decided to wait a little with the signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union, because it contradicted the long-existing agreement on a free trade zone with the CIS. Viktor Yanukovych understood that it was necessary to harmonize the trade regime with Russia and other CIS countries and with Europe. That is why Brussels organized the "Maidan" and the protests, which resulted in bloody confrontations in February 2014.

Then "peace" had already been achieved. A settlement agreement was signed with Viktor Yanukovych. He resigned from all powers and held elections ahead of schedule (which he would not have won). Poland, France and Germany, who guaranteed this agreement, after the opposition committed a coup d'état and trampled on their guarantees, remained silent, as we say, "in a rag." They even began to welcome the forces that came to power, by and large, the putschists. These putschists first of all announced that they were abolishing the special status of the Russian language in Ukraine, did not want to see Russians in the Crimea, and sent armed gangs there. Crimeans refused to obey those who committed the coup d'état.

That's when it all happened. It all started at that time. People who openly encouraged neo-Nazi sentiments in society, the creation of appropriate organizations marching on torchlight processions with portraits of Hitler's criminals with openly neo-Nazi and Russophobic slogans came to power. The West accepted all this without meekness. Many even supported and encouraged in every possible way. Then the topic of Ukraine's accession to NATO began. V.A. Zelensky came to power under the slogans of peace and the need to save human lives, to prevent the death of either Ukrainians or Russians. In the end, he became the same Russophobe as the government of P.A. Poroshenko. V.A. Zelensky called people in Donbass "individuals". Under the previous president, Prime Minister A.P. Yatsenyuk called them "non-humans".

V.A. Zelensky did not do anything about the ongoing bloody war against his own people. He, in fact, lied, promising to restore order when they signed numerous agreements with representatives of the Donbass. He violated them without blinking an eye. All these eight years, we have tried to appeal to the conscience of the West and to reason with this regime, which has acquired all the outlines of ultra-radical and neo-Nazi. There was nothing the West could do. I think he did not even want to do anything, because even then Ukraine (and until 2014) was used as a tool to contain Russia. The whole current situation has developed due to the fact that the West refused to recognize the Equal Rights of the Russian Federation in the organization of the European security architecture.

This is confirmed by the reaction of the leading NATO countries, primarily the United States, to the initiatives that President Vladimir Putin put forward in December 2021 on the need to honestly implement what was agreed. No one should, even choosing their possible military alliances, do anything that would infringe on the security of any other country. This commitment was approved at the highest level, signed by the presidents and heads of government of the OSCE countries within the framework of the NATO-Russia Council. The West categorically refuses to comply with it. Zelensky said that if Russia does not stop demanding that Ukraine fulfill its obligations, then he will think about Ukraine regaining its nuclear weapons. It was a little too much.

Q: Was that the most important thing?

Sergey Lavrov: No. It all piled up. There are drops that overflow the cup of patience. I would suggest considering all that I have listed as an everyday argument, a phenomenon that convinced us day after day that the West had set a course for using Ukraine to contain Russia, to create an "anti-Russia", a "hostile belt". For a couple of years, Ukraine has been pumped with weapons, and recently it has been especially active. The Americans and the British built military and naval bases there, for example, on the Sea of Azov. Through the Pentagon, military biological laboratories were created in order to continue experiments on bacteria. This program of the Americans is classified. It exists in other countries of the former Soviet Union right along the perimeter of the Russian Federation. Pumping Ukraine with a military component hostile to us was very active. Let me remind you that President of Russia Vladimir Putin has spoken about this more than once. In 2014, probably, nothing would have happened, there would have been no unrest in the east of Ukraine, there would have been no referendum in Crimea, if the agreement guaranteed by the Germans, the French and the Poles had been implemented. But they have shown their inability to force Kiev to respect the signatures of the so-called Eurogrands. Now there is a conversation about how the European Union can play an independent role in efforts to ensure European security. I think that the European Union played its main "role" in 2014, when it could not force it to respect its guarantees. A putsch took place, putschists moved gangs of armed militants to Crimea when Crimea held a referendum, rejected the putschists and reunited with the Russian Federation. This is the EU's greatest contribution to European security. If this had not happened in Crimea, if it had remained Ukrainian, now there would be NATO military bases, which is categorically unacceptable for Russia.

Question: Does Ukraine have the potential to create nuclear weapons, a threat to Russia?

Sergey Lavrov: There is technical and technological potential. President Vladimir Putin spoke about this, and our experts also commented on this situation. I can responsibly state that we will not allow this to happen. The purpose of the operation, which was announced by President of Russia Vladimir Putin and which continues, is to protect people, primarily in Donbass, who have been bombed and killed for eight years in the complete absence of attention and compassion from Western societies and the media. In general, they tried to avoid presenting their viewers and listeners with what is happening "on the ground" and sought to replace objective reports with unfounded accusations of Russia that it, allegedly, does not fulfill the Minsk agreements.

Within the framework of this special military operation, a clear task has been set, taking into account the experience of the last decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to ensure the demilitarization of Ukraine. Specific types of strike weapons that will never be deployed or created in Ukraine should be identified. At the same time, denazification. We cannot watch how in modern Europe the participants of the torchlight processions march under fascist, neo-Nazi banners, how they shout (just as during the "Maidan" in 2013-2014): "Moskalyaka na gilyaka", "kill Russians, kill Moskals" – we can not.

John Mearsheimer Patiently Explains The What's Why's and Wherefore's To The New Yorker

newyorker |  The political scientist John Mearsheimer has been one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps best known for the book he wrote with Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Mearsheimer is a proponent of great-power politics—a school of realist international relations that assumes that, in a self-interested attempt to preserve national security, states will preëmptively act in anticipation of adversaries. For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand NATO eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin’s aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis.”

[Get the in-depth analysis and on-the-ground reporting you need to understand the war in Ukraine. Subscribe today »]

The current invasion of Ukraine has renewed several long-standing debates about the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Although many critics of Putin have argued that he would pursue an aggressive foreign policy in former Soviet Republics regardless of Western involvement, Mearsheimer maintains his position that the U.S. is at fault for provoking him. I recently spoke with Mearsheimer by phone. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether the current war could have been prevented, whether it makes sense to think of Russia as an imperial power, and Putin’s ultimate plans for Ukraine.

Looking at the situation now with Russia and Ukraine, how do you think the world got here?

I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Of course, this includes more than just NATO expansion. NATO expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat.

You said that it’s about “turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.” I don’t put much trust or much faith in America “turning” places into liberal democracies. What if Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, want to live in a pro-American liberal democracy?

If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.

The U.S. Wouldn't Negotiate With Putin Because It Wanted The Invasion Of Ukraine

mtracey  |  If there is any “threat” that “Western” elites have been most exercised about for the past several years, it’s this supposed international surge of populist illiberalism and/or right-wing radicalism, and Putin was appointed as the main global exporter and string-puller. Which made it all the more untenable over the course of the latest Ukraine standoff for a Democratic Administration, especially one that campaigned on “confronting” Russia, to offer any significant concession to the world’s Number 1 progenitor of white supremacist extremism. You know, the same extremism that we are told nearly toppled the US Government on January 6.

It was consequently ruled out as unthinkable “appeasement” to give Putin a concession on Ukraine’s NATO membership that wouldn’t have actually conceded anything, but might have averted war. Yes, there did already exist a baseline attachment to the sacrosanct principle of NATO expansion, but that’s mostly confined to cloistered NatSec elites. The principle is now endorsed with such fevered gusto on account of Putin emerging as an all-purpose global villain — the man behind the curtain of horrendous White Nationalists, conspiracy theorists, and even “anti-vaxxers.”

You can see the contours of this new ideological conflict all over the place. Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, tied the trucker “siege” earlier this month to the broader phenomenon of “liberal democracies being confronted with serious and repeated threats” by nefarious right-wing agitators — whose Grand Poobah we’ve long been told is none other than, you guessed it, Putin. So there was very little compunction about imposing some of the most extreme due process-shredding Emergency measures in Canada’s history to squash these “insurrectionists.” Doing so even swelled everyone with a sense of tingling patriotic pride, as the “siege” was said to be just another front in a seismic global struggle. “Canada and our allies will defend democracy,” declared Justin Trudeau as he froze bank accounts without judicial review and empowered police to seize private property. “We are taking these actions today to stand against authoritarianism.”

Of course, it’s important to note that — as per usual — this grandiose ideological vision of Russia’s designs mostly exists in the addled imaginations of think tankers. While it’s apparent that Russia has grown more authoritarian in recent years, the US “intelligence community” actually just studied the question of whether Putin was really backing all these horribly de-stabilizing right-wing insurrectionists all across the world. The strongest conclusion that their subsequent Report could muster is that the Russian Government “probably tolerates” support by “private Russian entities” for some dangerously motivated international extremists — but as the authors sorrowfully concede, “we lack indications of Russian Government direct support.” (With “support” defined as “financing, material support, training, or guidance.”) Really, the CIA and FBI couldn’t even come up with any evidence that the Russian Government has provided “guidance” to these sinister factions? What a bummer. This less-than-fervent finding might explain why it took approximately seven months for the Report — written in July 2021 by the Director of National Intelligence — to see the light of day when it was published on February 10 by Yahoo News, and even then it appears to have hardly made a ripple.

Naturally, this largely-buried Report had zero effect on changing the general perception of Putin as the standard-bearer of global right-wing extremism, or that he subverted the 2016 election on behalf of these evil ideological aims, or that he’s fueling insurrectionist turmoil all over the world — including perhaps in Canada, or at the Capitol on January 6. Yes, it’s true that a marginal contingent of the Right has expressed some half-baked affinity with whatever gestures Putin does make about ethnic nationalism, but this contingent is almost entirely irrelevant for practical purposes. I’d also note that for all the depictions of Putin as the savior of ethnic nationalism, at his annual end-of-the-year press conference in December 2021, he hailed Russia as having “a very solid foundation as an ethnically diverse state.”

There are a huge array of factors that led to this invasion. Some are necessarily a matter of speculation, like what’s going on inside Putin’s brain. Others are tangible and available for all to see, such as that certain demands were made by Russia, and any accommodation to those demands was rejected out-of-hand by the US — thus negating any real diplomatic process. To understand why this happened, you have to survey the ideological battlefield that was already being fought on for years. And if you think examining any of this “defends Putin,” there are plenty of other media outlets right now that will be happy to spoon-feed your preferred infantile pablum.

 

Has Putin Miscalculated?

oilprice |  While it was no surprise that China abstained when the UN Security Council voted to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the abstentions from the UAE and India were more surprising. 

This vote highlights that Washington’s ability to counter the influence of China and Russia in the Middle East is limited. 

The fading influence of the U.S. in the Middle East is a result of its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, its withdrawal from Syria, and its failure in Afghanistan.

Last week’s failure of the UAE and India – along with just China – to vote in favor of the UN Security Council’s resolution to condemn Russia's aggression against Ukraine and to demand the immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal of Russian forces from the neighboring country earned all three countries the explicit thanks of Russia. It also highlights the broader shift in the once clear-cut global political alliances to the two principal power blocs in the world: the U.S. and its allies on the one hand, and China-Russia and its allies on the other. 

Nowhere has this shift been more evident in recent months than in the cases of the UAE - which on 13 August 2020 became the first country to sign a U.S.-sponsored ‘relationship normalization’ deal with Israel - and of India. Saudi Arabia is on the same level, as is analyzed in-depth in my new book on the global oil markets, and reinforced this with the very recent statement that it is still committed to working alongside Russia in OPEC+. The clear and principal purpose of the U.S. in brokering these relationship normalization deals, and those that followed, was to counter the burgeoning influence of China and Russia in the Middle East. However, not only has the UAE in recent months been keen to distance itself from such a unipolar view of its global political allegiances but also now India – which had been intended by the U.S. as a replacement global bid for China in the oil market – has stepped back from fully committing the role envisaged for it by Washington. 

Shortly after the concept of the relationship normalization deals between Israel and as many countries in the Middle East and North Africa as possible had been originated in the U.S., various high-level sources in Washington let it be known that its new oil and gas market world order would, as far as the Middle East was concerned, involve Gulf states selling oil and gas predominantly to U.S. allies, including India, and that India as well would be the big back-up global bid for the commodities. This meant that in times of crisis, such as is now occurring in Ukraine, energy supplies to Western powers would not be subject to the potentially devastating threats that could proceed from Russia simply cutting off its gas supplies to Europe or, as has more recently happened with widespread sanctions against Russia, leave many U.S. allies in Europe scrabbling around to find alternative energy supplies. It was thought, as also analyzed in-depth in my new book on the global oil markets, that the relationship normalization deals would allow the U.S. and its allies to, in effect, corner large elements of the oil and gas supply in the Middle East. It was also thought by Washington that, by positioning India as the global replacement buyer for oil and gas instead of China, China’s geopolitical position in its own backyard of Asia Pacific would be weakened over time. 

There is every reason to expect this strategy to work, provided that the U.S. begins to ‘encourage’ the countries involved to understand that the new world order (as clearly heralded by the Russian invasion of Ukraine) is a zero-sum game, with one side ultimately winning at the other’s expense, and that all countries need to pick a side and be prepared to be judged by which side they pick. At the time that the U.S. made the decision to substitute China with India in the global oil and gas markets, military units of India and China had clashed on 15 June 2020 in the disputed territory of the Galwan Valley in the Himalayas. As also examined in my new book on the global oil markets, this clash reflected a much greater change in the core relationship between the two countries than the relatively small number of casualties might have implied. It marked a new ‘push back’ strategy from India against China’s policy of seeking to increase its economic and military alliances from Asia through the Middle East and into Southern Europe, in line with its multi-layered multi-generational project, ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR). Until China dramatically upped the tempo of this OBOR-related policy – at around the same time as the U.S. signaled its lack of interest in continuing its own large-scale activities in the Middle East through its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran and its withdrawal from much of Syria – India had stuck to a policy of trying to contain China. With the announcement in August 2020 of the U.S.-brokered Israel-UAE ‘normalization deal’ it appeared that a new corridor of co-operation was being developed from the U.S. (and Israel), through the UAE (and Kuwait, Bahrain, and in part Saudi Arabia) to India, as a regional counterbalance to China’s growing sphere of influence.

 

Amazon Whole Foods "Just Walk Out?" - What Kind Of Self-Respecting Man Ever Bothered To Walk In?

NYTimes  |  “Would you like to sign in with your palm?”

That was the question a cheerful Amazon employee posed when greeting me last week at the opening of a Whole Foods Market in Washington’s Glover Park neighborhood. She blithely added, “You can also begin shopping by scanning the QR code in your Amazon app.”

“Let’s go for the palm,” I said.

In less than a minute, I scanned both hands on a kiosk and linked them to my Amazon account. Then I hovered my right palm over the turnstile reader to enter the nation’s most technologically sophisticated grocery store.

For the next 30 minutes, I shopped. I picked up a bag of cauliflower florets, grapefruit sparkling water, a carton of strawberries and a package of organic chicken sausages. Cameras and sensors recorded each of my moves, creating a virtual shopping cart for me in real time. Then I simply walked out, no cashier necessary. Whole Foods — or rather Amazon — would bill my account later.

More than four years ago, Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13 billion. Now the Amazon-ification of the grocery chain is physically complete, as showcased by the revamped Whole Foods store in Glover Park.

For a long time, Amazon made only small steps toward putting its mark on the more than 500 Whole Foods stores in the United States and Britain. The main evidence of change were the discounts and free home delivery for Amazon Prime members.

But this 21,000-square-foot Whole Foods just north of Georgetown has catapulted Amazon’s involvement forward. Along with another prototype Whole Foods store, which will open in Los Angeles this year, Amazon designed my local grocer to be almost completely run by tracking and robotic tools for the first time.

The technology, known as Just Walk Out, consists of hundreds of cameras with a god’s-eye view of customers. Sensors are placed under each apple, carton of oatmeal and boule of multigrain bread. Behind the scenes, deep-learning software analyzes the shopping activity to detect patterns and increase the accuracy of its charges.

While You're Transfixed By The Ukraine Antics, The Vaccine Credential Initiative Rolls On...,

nakedcapitalism  |  As the world is transfixed by the escalating war in Ukraine and its economic fallout, big moves concerning vaccine passports are taking place behind closed doors.

An article published last Thursday by Politico, citing a source from the so-called Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI™), reported that the World Health Organization is poised to convene member States and representatives of Covid-19 immunization credential technology groups to recognize different vaccine certificates across nations and regions. In other words, as countries around the world drop almost all of their COVID-19 public health measures, it looks like digital vaccine passports are going to be made not just universal but permanent (as I warned would happen in April 2021):

The WHO is bringing together the groups to develop a “trust framework” that would allow countries to verify whether vaccine credentials are legitimate, said Brian Anderson, chief digital health physician at MITRE and a co-founder of the VCI.

Why it matters: The effort would aid international travel by allowing proof of vaccination to be more easilyshared and verified, Anderson said. Many countries and regions have different standards for proof of inoculation, creating confusion for travelers and officials.

“It’s piecemeal, not coordinated and done nation to nation,” Anderson said. “It can be a real challenge.”

The WHO would say only that news on the topic should be coming “soon.”

The VCI is behind SMART Health Cards, which have become the de facto standard for digital vaccine credentials in the U.S., with dozens of states developing or adopting the technology. The group will participate in the initiative.

The Vaccine Credentials Initiative (VCI™) is one of a number of private partnerships working to harmonize vaccine passport standards and systems at a global level. The VCI™ is leading the development and implementation of the open-source SMART Health Card Framework and specifications. Its partners include U.S. government contractor MITRE Corporation, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Oracle, Sales Force and Mayo Clinic.

According to its own website, the VCI™ has helped to implement SMART health cards in 15 jurisdictions: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Hong Kong, Israel, the Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Senegal, Qatar, Rwanda, North Macedonia and Aruba. It has also helped to “quietly” roll out digital vaccine certificates across 21 US states, as Forbes recently reported:

While the United States government has not issued a federal digital vaccine pass, a national standard has nevertheless emerged. To date, 21 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico offer accessibility to the SMART Health Card, a verifiable digital proof of vaccination developed through the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), a global coalition of public and private stakeholders…

And very soon, at least four more states will be rolling out access to SMART Health Cards. “We’ve seen a notable uptick in states that have officially launched public portals where individuals can get verifiable vaccination credentials in the form of SMART Health Cards with a QR code,” says Dr. Brian Anderson, co-founder of the VCI and chief digital health physician at MITRE.

Another global partnership seeking to standardize vaccine passports is the Commons Project Foundation (CPJ), which was founded by the Rockefeller Foundation and is supported by the World Economic Forum.

There is also the Good Health Pass Collaborative, which was founded last year by Mastercard, IBM, Grameen Foundation and the International Chamber of Commerce. The organization is the brainchild of the world’s largest digital identity advocacy group, the New York-based ID2020 Alliance, which itself was set up in 2016 with seed money from Microsoft, Accenture, PwC, the Rockefeller Foundation, Cisco and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The ID2020 Alliance’s goal is to “enable access to digital identity for every person on the planet.”