newsweek | How did Hunter Biden's depraved behavior and his and his family members' dubious dealings with adversaries and oligarchs compromise and corrupt Joe Biden? What did Joe know, when did he know it and did he directly or indirectly profit? To what extent would—and today, does—the Biden family's conduct loom over vital issues of American foreign policy, and thus national security?
We
were deprived of the answers to these critical questions during the
2020 election—deprived of hearing the questions asked themselves—because
of one of the gravest American information operations in history,
masquerading as a defense against a Russian information operation.
Now,
our Ruling Class' chief organ has admitted it. It took 17 months, and
24 paragraphs into an article at first glance unrelated, but buried in a
New York Times report
on the apparently sprawling federal investigation into Hunter Biden,
the "Paper of Record" revealed the truth we've long known: Hunter's "laptop from hell" is real.
We knew this before Joe Biden was elected. But millions of Americans
didn't because the corporate media, the Deep State for which it serves
as a conduit and the Big Tech that propagates their Official Narratives
conspired together to suppress the true story while amplifying the
politically beneficial one.
The
people who purport to defend "our democracy," in other words, thwarted
the republic by concealing from the public the kind of crucial
information on which war and peace hinges.
The
many layers to this scandal are worth recounting because they so
vividly reveal a pervasive rot at the core of our country that is poised
to fester absent a massive reckoning.
There's
the fact the corporate media unquestioningly ran with a narrative that
the story was "Russian disinformation" to justify its dismissal of it,
despite lacking a scintilla of concrete evidence to substantiate that
dubious claim.
There's the fact dozens of senior then-ex
intelligence community (IC) officials—people whose profession ostensibly
demands equipoise, analytical rigor and the setting aside of
politics—fed the corporate media that narrative, abusing their positions
with reckless abandon.
The more than 50 prominent IC members, former CIA
directors and on down, used their names and reputations to baselessly
speculate that the laptop contents and circumstances around their
release "ha[d] all the classic hallmarks of a Russian information
operation"—naturally in contravention of the ignored Trump
administration officials actually in command of the intelligence
apparatus at the time, who vigorously denied the charge. The
Trump-hating spooks, like the corporate media, presented not one
scintilla of evidence to justify their charge.
Sure, they hedged,
admitting that"we want to emphasize that we do not know if the
emails...are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian
involvement... ." But they knew well Politico and others would run with headlines like: "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say."
How
contrived was the operation? Consider that it was a former top aide to
former CIA Director John Brennan—perhaps the most Trump-deranged and
notoriously dishonest of the overwhelmingly Democrat-serving officials endorsing the letter—who arranged for the letter's distribution to Politico. He delivered it to one of the Trump-loathing Deep State's friendliest of reporters—perhaps most well-known for promoting the notorious Steele dossier at the heart of the Russiagate hoax—surely knowing this would set the narrative in motion.
newsweek | Russia's conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin
is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian
damage—and it reveals the Russian leader's strategic balancing act. If
Russia were more intentionally destructive, the clamoring for U.S. and NATO
intervention would be louder. And if Russia were all-in, Putin might
find himself with no way out. Instead, his goal is to take enough
territory on the ground to have something to negotiate with, while
putting the government of Ukraine in a position where they have to
negotiate.
Understanding the thinking behind Russia's limited attacks could help map a path towards peace, experts say.
In
nearly a month since Russia invaded, dozens of Ukrainian cities and
towns have fallen, and the fight over the country's largest cities
continues. United Nations human rights specialists say that some 900 civilians have died in the fighting (U.S. intelligence puts that number
at least five times UN estimates). About 6.5 million Ukrainians have
also become internally displaced (15 percent of the entire population),
half of them leaving the country to find safety.
"The destruction is massive," a senior analyst working at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) tells Newsweek, "especially when compared with what Europeans and Americans are used to seeing."
But, the analyst says, the damage associated with a contested ground
war involving peer opponents shouldn't blind people to what is really
happening. (The analyst requested anonymity in order to speak about
classified matters.) "The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And
almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military
targets."
In the capital, most observable to the west, Kyiv city
authorities say that some 55 buildings have been damaged and that 222
people have died since February 24. It is a city of 2.8 million people.
"We
need to understand Russia's actual conduct," says a retired Air Force
officer, a lawyer by training who has been involved in approving targets
for U.S. fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. The officer currently works as
an analyst with a large military contractor advising the Pentagon and was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly.
"If
we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately,
or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are
not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not
seeing the real conflict."
In the analyst's view, though the war
has led to unprecedented destruction in the south and east, the Russian
military has actually been showing restraint in its long-range attacks.
As
of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some
1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast,
the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons
in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). The vast majority of the
airstrikes are over the battlefield, with Russian aircraft providing
"close air support" to ground forces. The remainder—less than 20
percent, according to U.S. experts—has been aimed at military airfields,
barracks and supporting depots.
Can you imagine what would happen if, through Russian diplomacy, that
India and China were reconciled to each other and then went into
partnership that would include at its core China, Russia, India and Iran
with a whole bunch of ‘stans
tossed in for good measure? Just in terms of population and resources
alone it would leave us in the west in the dust and I am sure that
Africa and South America would be interested in signing trade treaties
with such an organization. For the fourth partner Iran and China sign 25-year cooperation agreement
For all we know,
it may just happen and sooner than we think.
“Yevgeni Primakov drafted the concept of a Russia, India, China strategic triangle as a counterbalance to the western alliance.”
In my assessment, the next phase of Putin’s and Xi’s confrontation with Biden is now moving to the Putin-Modi-Xi relationship.
Examining an Asia-Middle East map, you see that with geography, BRI
and bi-lateral agreements, China along with Russia have placed India in
an agricultural and industrial resources cauldron.
I believe Modi’s escape from this cauldron starts with repeating with
China the border adjustment effort that China made with Russia two
decades ago resulting in a mutually secure border.
I believe Xi is ready to accommodate Modi for their mutual interest in military and food security for their respective 1.4Billions of people.
Biden's puppeteers have made their third mistake:
Mistake 1: refusal to address Russia’s legitimate security concerns
forcing Putin to initiate a Preventive War (Just War Theory) against
Ukraine and by extension NATO.
Mistake 2: seizure of Russia’s Central Bank assets bringing into question (1) what is money; and (2) what is the US dollar.
Mistake 3: threatening China to take the US side against Russia.
In the next months the CCP will be conducting a number of important
events culminating with the re-confirmation of Xi as President.
If Xi accedes to Biden’s threats, China will start down the slippery
slope of vassalization to the US. Its stored wheat will be given to
MENA, US troops will occupy Taiwan, etc etc. Another century of
humiliation.
Time to pull out the map.
China has a militarily-secure, economically-transparent 2,600 mile border with Russia.
Together with Russia via the CSTO, SCO, etc, China has moderately stable borders with Central Asia.
Its border with India and southern Asia is becoming uncomfortable as
Himalayan water is affected by rapid climate change and dam building.
But this issue can be (and must be) resolved with multi-national
agreements. India must step forward to initiate this process by asking
for border resolution negotiations similar to China with Russia two
decades ago. China’s door is open.
To the east are South Korea and Taiwan. Intel and others produce the
sapphires, rubies, etc of semiconductors but Samsung and TSMC produce
the diamonds.
Seoul is within artillery range of North Korea and Taipei is within cruise missile range of China.
I believe Xi must make increasingly explicit gestures supporting Putin’s Preventive War.
Perhaps starting with an airlift of medical supplies. Then next an
airlift of medical personnel with field hospitals. And continuing to
military items.
At some point Biden's puppeteers will make their fourth mistake.
RT | So America is bringing about exactly the opposite of what it
intended. It’s hopeless to somehow isolate Russia and then be able to go
after China without Russia. And instead, what it’s doing is integrating
the Eurasian core, Russia and China, exactly the policy that Henry
Kissinger warned against going all the way back to Mackinder a century
ago that said, Eurasia is the world island, Russia and China could be
the whole world center. That’s what the fight is all about.
Well, American sanctions are driving Russia and China together, and
America has gone to China and said, Please don’t support Russia. It most
recently, on Monday, March 14, Jake Sullivan came out and told China,
we will sanction countries that break our sanctions against Russia. And
basically, China said, fine. You know, we’ll just break off all the
trade between East and West now and the East, Eurasia is pretty much
self-sufficient. The West is not self-sufficient since it began to
industrialize, and it’s heavily dependent on Russia for not only oil and
gas, but palladium and many raw materials. So the sanctions are ending
up driving a wedge between the European countries.
Ross [00:03:31] Don’t people who apply these
sanctions think this through? Are they so short-sighted they don’t
understand that these sanctions are going to build further capacity
within Russia, push Russia further towards China, make that economic
alliance concrete and, ultimately, you’re not going to be able to keep
the lights on in in Europe? All the while underestimating the fact that
from a food security point of view – take the U.K., for instance, a net
importer of food – not appreciating the fact that, for instance,
Russia/Ukraine, they create twenty five percent, a quarter, of all wheat
annually. The estimation this year is one hundred and two million tons
Russia and Ukraine, wheat. Don’t people realize that there’s going to be
a massive knock on effect?
Michael Hudson [00:04:23]Yes, they do realize it. Yes, they’ve thought it all through. I worked with these people for more than 50 years.
Ross [00:04:31] Who are these people?
Michael Hudson [00:04:32]The neocons, basically, the
people who are in charge of U.S. foreign policy? Victoria Nuland and
her husband, Robert Kagan, the people that President Biden has appointed
all around him, from Blinken to Sullivan and right down the line. They
are basically urging people around the New American Century. They’re the
people who said America can run the whole world and create its own
reality.
And yes, they know that this is going to cause enormous problems for
Germany. They know that not only will it block the energy that Germany
and Italy and other countries in Europe need through their oil and gas,
but also it’ll block the use of gas for fertilizer, upping their
fertilizer production and decreasing their food production. They look at
this and they say, How can America gain from all of this? There’s
always a way of gaining what something looks to be bad. Well, one way
they’ll gain is oil prices are going way up. And that benefits the
United States whose foreign policy is based very largely on oil and gas.
The oil industry controls most of the world’s oil trade, and that
explains a lot of the US diplomacy. This is a fight to lock the world
energy trade into control by U.S. companies, excluding not only Iran and
Venezuela, but also excluding Russia.
Ross [00:06:16] So as Europe pushes towards more and
more green and renewable energy and this for the Americans they must
think it’s a dreadful scenario insofar as they can’t sell the oil as
Europe becomes or wants to become more self-sufficient. So ultimately,
and Britain net zero, whatever that means. But but going down the
renewables path, going down the solar path takes America’s dependency or
dependency on America out the game, doesn’t it?
Michael Hudson [00:06:49]This is exactly the point
that the European public has not realized. While most of the European
public wants to prevent global warming and prevent carbon into the
atmosphere, U.S. foreign policy is based on increasing, and even
accelerating, global warming, accelerating carbon emissions because
that’s the oil trade. Suppose that Europe got its way. Suppose if the
Greens got what they wanted and Germany and Europe were completely
dependent on solar energy panels, on wind energy and to some extent, on
nuclear power, perhaps? Well, if they were completely self-sufficient in
energy without oil or gas or coal, America would lose the primary
lever. It has over the ability to turn off the power and electricity and
oil of any country that didn’t follow U.S. diplomatic direction.
Ross [00:07:48] So when we take your analysis here
and we think about how the sanctions are going to build capacity, push
Russia and China together, when we start to look at sort of piggy in the
middle, if you like the EU, when we’re thinking about America, the EU
has had a sort of abusive relationship with the Americans for quite some
time now, hasn’t it?
Michael Hudson [00:08:06]Well, that’s true in the
sense that EU foreign policy has basically been turned over to NATO. So
instead of European voters and politicians making their policy, they’ve
relinquished European foreign policy to NATO, which is really an arm of
the US military. So yes, Europe has had a decent relationship with the
United States diplomatically by saying yes, yes, please or yes, thank
you by not being independent. Of course, if it were independent, the
relationship would not be so friendly and decent.
Ross [00:08:46] So for countries that are net
importers of food, need to keep the lights on, need heating and need
cheap oil. How does this pan out? What does it look like for the UK?
What does it look like for the EU?
Michael Hudson [00:08:59]Well, Vice President,
Kamala Harris the other day said to Americans, Yes, life is going to be
much more expensive. Our oil prices are going up and squeezing families.
But think of the poor Ukrainian babies that we’re saving. So take it on
the chin for the Ukrainian babies.
So basically the United States is presenting horror stories of the
Ukraine and saying, if you don’t willingly suffer now by isolating
Russia, then Russia is going to roll over you with tanks just like it
rolled over Central Europe after World War Two. I mean, it’s waving the
flag of Russian aggression, as if Russia or any country in today’s world
has an army that’s able to invade any other industrial nation. All
military can do today of any country is bomb and kill other populations
and industrial centers. No nation is able to occupy or rollover any
industrial country.
And the United States keeps trying to promote this mythology that
we’re still in the world of 1945. And that world ended really with the
Vietnam War when the military draught ended. And no country is able to
have a military draught to raise the army with necessary to fight to
invade. Russia can’t do it any more than Europe or the United States
could do it. So all the United States can do is wave warnings about how
awful Russia is and somehow convince Europe to follow the US position.
But most of all, it doesn’t really have to. Europe doesn’t really have a
voice, and this is what the complaint by Putin and Foreign Secretary
Lavrov have been saying. They say that Europe is just following the
United States and it doesn’t matter what the European people want or
what European politicians want. The United States is so deeply in
control that they really don’t have much of a choice.
Ross [00:11:15] When does the consumer start to feel
this? When does the European or British consumer start to feel the
pinch when these sanctions are enacted? And what does that look like?
Michael Hudson [00:11:25]Well, it depends on how
fast the sanctions work. The United States said Well, in another year
and a half, we’ll be able to provide Europe with liquefied natural gas.
Well, the problem is, first of all, they’re not the ports to handle the
liquefied natural gas to go into Europe. Secondly, there are not enough
ships and tankers to carry all of this gas to Europe. So unless there
are very warm winters, Europe is not going to have a very easy time for
the next few years.
oneworld | The top five geostrategic trends that were identified
in this analysis are also importantly occurring within the ongoing
'Great Reset'/'Fourth Industrial Revolution' (GR/4IR), the full-spectrum
paradigm-changing processes of which were accelerated by the
international community’s uncoordinated efforts to contain COVID-19
('World War C'), which even Russia has embraced to a certain extent in
line with its own interests as its leadership understands them to be.
US President Joe Biden declared
on Monday that “There’s going to be a new world order out there, and
we’ve got to lead it, and we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world
in doing it.” Up until this point, the very phrase “New World Order”
(NWO) was treated as a so-called “conspiracy theory” and ruthlessly
suppressed in the Mainstream Media (MSM) discourse despite former US
President George H. W. Bush having been responsible for introducing this
concept around the end of the Old Cold War. Nevertheless, now that
Biden publicly uttered that phrase, it’s no longer “politically
incorrect” to discuss it. In fact, it might even become part of the
official MSM narrative in the coming future. What the present piece aims
to do is identify the top five geostrategic trends of the NWO and
predict their future trajectory.
1. The US-Led Western Bloc Has Consolidated
The unprecedented and preplanned reaction of the US-led West to Russia’s ongoingspecialmilitaryoperation in Ukraine served to consolidate this bloc
under America’s hegemony. The EU sacrificed its strategic sovereignty
to its transatlantic patron under the pretext of “defending against the
Russian threat” despite this leading to enormous self-inflicted economic
consequences. That outcome will be exploited by the Anglo-American Axis
(AAA) to drive their companies’ competitors out of business, buy up
some of those that remain, and permanently handicap the bloc’s
comprehensive competitiveness in the coming future. The hegemonic model
being actively implemented by the US nowadays can also eventually be
employed to curtail and ultimately cut off Chinese-EU relations too.
2. Russia Will Accelerate Its Grand Strategic Reorientation
The
Eurasian Great Power has been reorientating its grand strategic focus
to the Global South since the initial onset of the US-led West’s
sanctions in 2014 but will accelerate this trend since it literally has
no alternative anymore. To its credit, though, Russia made impressive
strides all across the non-West in the past eight years. In brief, it
coordinates with China as dual engines of the emerging Multipolar World Order (MWO); relies on a combination of its UmmahPivot with majority-Muslim countries like Pakistan and its reaffirmed strategic partnership with envisioned Neo-NAM co-leader India
to preemptively avert disproportionate dependence on the People’s
Republic; became the kingmaker of West Asian affairs due to its irreplaceable role in Syria; and is rapidly expanding its influence in Africa and Latin America too.
3. Neutrality Has Been Reborn
The
fact that the vast majority of the international community has refused
to sanction Russia despite immense American pressure to do so speaks to
their desire to remain neutral in the New Cold War’s Western Eurasian
theater between Russia and the US. Major countries like China, India, Iran, and Pakistan also didn’t vote against Russia at the UNGA, nor did quite a few African countries either. The rebirth of principled neutrality
in International Relations, which will also predicably be practiced
once the Eastern Eurasian theater of the New Cold War between America
and China inevitably heats up along the lines of the Western Eurasian
model with Russia, proves that the US is no longer capable of
unilaterally exerting its will onto all others like during the 1990s and
early 2000s.
WaPo | On the eve of his murderous invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin
delivered a long and rambling discourse denying the existence of Ukraine
and Ukrainians, a speech many Western analysts found strange and
untethered. Strange, yes. Untethered, no. The analysis came directly
from the works of a fascist prophet of maximal Russian empire named
Aleksandr Dugin.
Dugin’s
intellectual influence over the Russian leader is well known to close
students of the post-Soviet period, among whom Dugin, 60, is sometimes
referred to as “Putin’s brain.” His work is also familiar to Europe’s “new right,” of which Dugin has been a leading figure for nearly three decades, and to America’s “alt-right.” Indeed, the Russian-born former wife of the white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, Nina Kouprianova, has translated some of Dugin’s work into English.
But
as the world watches with horror and disgust the indiscriminate bombing
of Ukraine, a broader understanding is needed of Dugin’s deadly ideas.
Russia has been running his playbook for the past 20 years, and it has
brought us here, to the brink of another world war.
A
product of late-period Soviet decline, Dugin belongs to the long,
dismal line of political theorists who invent a strong and glorious past
— infused with mysticism and obedient to authority — to explain a
failed present. The future lies in reclaiming this past from the
liberal, commercial, cosmopolitan present (often represented by the
Jewish people). Such thinkers had a heyday a century ago, in the
European wreckage of World War I: Julius Evola, the mad monk of Italian fascism; Charles Maurras, the reactionary French nationalist; Charles Coughlin, the American radio ranter; and even the author of a German book called “Mein Kampf.”
Dugin tells essentially the same story
from a Russian point of view. Before modernity ruined everything, a
spiritually motivated Russian people promised to unite Europe and Asia
into one great empire, appropriately ruled by ethnic Russians. Alas, a
competing sea-based empire of corrupt, money-grubbing individualists,
led by the United States and Britain, thwarted Russia’s destiny and
brought “Eurasia” — his term for the future Russian empire — low.
In his magnum opus, “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia,”
published in 1997, Dugin mapped out the game plan in detail. Russian
agents should foment racial, religious and sectional divisions within
the United States while promoting the United States’ isolationist
factions. (Sound familiar?) In Great Britain, the psy-ops effort should focus on exacerbating historic rifts
with Continental Europe and separatist movements in Scotland, Wales and
Ireland. Western Europe, meanwhile, should be drawn in Russia’s
direction by the lure of natural resources: oil, gas and food. NATO
would collapse from within.
I wonder whether Biden coming out and admitting that the Russian
hypersonic missile “is a consequential missile” that can penetrate any
US/Nato air defense system, when paired with the realization happening
right now in the cold light
of day that the damage inflicted by sanctions is a two way street
- together - signal a potential change in the US/EU calculus with respect to either fanning or
dousing the flames of war.
It’s highly unusual for a US president to
puncture the narrative infinitum that Russians
are technologically backward. This comes with yet other stupid bon mots like “their
missiles have probably fallen into disrepair”, they'll use chemical weapons on civilians. To say what Biden said is rather profound narrative breach at a time when the incentive is highest to project
Russia as weak and ineffectual.
Biden acknowledges that Russia’s hypersonic missile is simply unstoppable.
— Sentletse 🇷🇺🇿🇦 (@Sentletse) March 22, 2022
The hypersonics don’t show desperation, they show a degree of escalation
dominance outside the use of nuclear weapons. If reports are true, the
Kinzhal struck a Soviet nuclear bunker and was able to ignite the
ammunition stores inside it.
If other reports are true, Russia demonstrated that it can erase the
Pentagon without going nuclear and not only is there no defense, but
there’s a good chance there will be no warning. The time from over the
horizon identification to impact may be as short
as 3 seconds.
Ivano-Frankivsk got zero attention in the news. It was an old mine turned in 1955 into a nuclear weapons storage facility. It was emptied in 1993 when the weapons were transferred to Russia. In 2018 it was reopened as the barracks for 2 battalions of 10th Mountain Assault Brigade. Apparently also a conventional weapons storage, since the Ukrainians announced several secondary explosions on the site. It’s supposed to be nuclear missile proof, though, so either it actually wasn’t or there was a load of ammunition leaving or entering the place.
A warhead that weighs 500 kg travelling at hypersonic speed carries kinetic energy equivalent to the explosive force of 4000 odd kg of TNT. Delivered directly to the roof of an underground bunker, the kinetic punch would be greater than a small nuclear bomb exploding in the air above. The blast ‘overpressure’ would be as lethal as explosions and flying objects.
Just like with other previous weapons of such a nature, the ‘overpressure’ can be the killer, not just explosions and flying objects.
sciencedirect | Vapor
cloud explosions are caused by the rapid combustion of flammable gas,
mist, or small particles that generate pressure effects due to
confinement; they can occur inside process equipment or pipes,
buildings, and other contained areas. A vapor cloud explosion can be
either a deflagration or a detonation (the distinction is important when deciding on whether or not to use a flame arrestor in pressure relief systems).
A deflagration
occurs when a flame front propagates by transferring heat and mass to
the unburned air-vapor mixture ahead of the front. The combustion wave
travels at subsonic speeds
to unburned gas immediately ahead of the flame front. Flame speeds
range from 1 to 350 meters per second. At low speeds there is little
effect from the blast overpressure
while at high speeds, peak overpressures can be as high as 20 times the
initial pressure. Most vapor cloud explosions are deflagrations.
A detonation occurs when the flame velocity reaches supersonic speeds
above 600 meters per second (they are generally in the 2000 to 2500
meter per second range). Peak overpressures can be 20 to 100 times the
initial pressure. Detonation can be initiated either by use of a high
explosive charge or from a deflagration wave that accelerates due to
congestion and confinement. Certain chemicals are more prone to create
detonations than normal hydrocarbons. These include ethylene, acetylene,
and hydrogen.
The United
States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides tables and simple
equations for some of the more common chemicals to calculate the
distance of the overpressure waves. These tables are generally
conservative, i.e., they predict greater impact than would be likely to
actually occur. Nevertheless, they do provide a useful starting point.
Blast effects
The calculation of explosion effects is a complex topic involving many variables. Table 9.5 shows some overpressure values with typical effects.
WaPo | Sputnik that provided an early edge in the space race.
Milley,
noting that the term “Sputnik moment” had been used in some news
reports since the test, stopped short of that assessment in his
interview with Bloomberg. “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment,
but I think it’s very close to that,” he said, adding, “It has all of
our attention.”
Milley
noted that the United States also is “experimenting, and testing and
developing technologies to include hypersonics, artificial intelligence,
robotics — a whole wide range.”
Kirby,
speaking during a routine news briefing at the Pentagon, would not
detail how far along the United States is in its development of such
systems, except to say “our own pursuit of hypersonic capabilities is
real, it’s tangible and we are absolutely working toward being able to
develop that capability.”
“It’s
not a technology that is alien to us,” he added. “And I would argue
that it’s not just our own pursuit of this sort of technology, but our
mindfulness that we have defensive capabilities too that we need to
continue to hone and improve.”
Both
Kirby and Milley stressed that the test reflects just one weapon system
on Beijing’s side, with the general acknowledging China’s capabilities
“are much greater than that.” Referring to its growing capacities in
space, cyberspace and traditional domains of land, sea and air, he said,
“They’re expanding rapidly.”
“We’re
in one of the most significant changes in what I call the ‘character of
war,’ ” Milley said. “We’re going to have to adjust our military going
forward.”
China’s
test is a reminder that Beijing has become what Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin frequently calls the United States’ “pacing challenge”
militarily — and of the lack of consensus over how Washington should
respond.
China
has been secretive about its weapons testing — in fact, on Oct. 18, it
denied even conducting a hypersonic test. A spokesman for Beijing’s
foreign ministry argued that China merely had tested “regular
spacecraft” intended for “peaceful uses of outer space.”
Four of the six weapons Putin mentioned are, if Putin is to be
believed, already developed: the Sarmat heavy Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile (ICBM), a nuclear powered cruise missile, a nuclear powered
underwater drone, and an aircraft launched Kinzhai hypersonic missile.
They are breathtaking for their speed, range, maneuverability,
undetectability, and miniaturization of nuclear reactor technology. The
other two, the Avangard hypersonic projectile and laser weapons (which
Putin only cryptically mentioned), are believed to be still under
development.
Hypersonic means a minimum of at least 5 times the speed of sound
(Mach 1 or 741 mph, Mach 5 is 3705 mph). Putin claimed the Kinzhai
hypersonic missile travels at Mach 10 (7410 mph). The Avangard
hypersonic projectile may hit Mach 20 (14020 mph). Intercepting missiles
traveling at supersonic speeds (Mach 1 to Mach 5) has proven difficult
enough. Even in the limited, controlled tests that have been conducted,
present technology has not been 100 percent effective. Presumably, in
real world situations they would be even less effective. The
difficulties of intercepting weapons traveling at hypersonic speeds are
obvious and daunting.
Compounding those difficulties are the weapons’ range and
maneuverability. The Sarmat ICBM is believed to have range of at least
10,500 miles (Putin said it has “practically no range restrictions”) and
can attack targets via either the North or South Pole (US missile
defenses are oriented towards the North Pole). It is able to constantly
maneuver at a speed of what is believed to be Mach 5 or Mach 6, and to
carry 15 warheads with yields estimated at 150 to 300 kilotons (the
Nagasaki atomic bomb had a yield of 23 kilotons).
Powering cruise missiles and underwater drones (both of which can
carry nuclear warheads) with miniature nuclear reactors gives them
virtually unlimited range. Putin claimed the Kinzhai missile, “can also
manoeuvre at all phases of its flight trajectory, which also allows it
to overcome all existing and, I think, prospective anti-aircraft
and anti-missile defence systems.”
nakedcapitalism | His bottom line is, as he says near the top of a two hour-talk:
The Russians are grinding down the Ukrainians and they
are doing it with flipped math. 200,000 guys are grinding down 600,000
guys. It’s one of the most amazing things. When this story is finally
told, people are going to be stunned. All these people now are saying,
“Oh, the Russians, they are doing so poorly, the Russians this…”. Maybe
they are. Maybe I’m getting this all wrong. But you know, I’ve studied
military history, I think I know how to read a map, I think I know how
to look at the balance of forces, I think I know how to study logistics
and stuff, and I think I’m reading this right….This war is closer to
being over than many people think.
Ritter also argues, interestingly, that it is of paramount importance
that Zelensky surrenders to Russia, or the functional equivalent by
signing a peace on Russian terms. Ritter argues that at this juncture,
that means Russians cannot win too quickly. Ukraine has to look like it
has exhausted its options.
Not that this is factoring into how Russia proceeds on the field, but
a slower tempo favors Russia politically. Whether Zelensky accedes to
Russia’s demands is ultimately a US call, unless he has found a way to
go rogue. The West is at present unprepared to accept that, given that
they believe their own/Ukraine’s propaganda that Russia is losing the
war and that Russia’s economy is collapsing under the sanctions.
Western leaders and pundits appear not to have worked out that the
rouble falling (so far much less than in the 1998 crisis) is not the
same as a domestic economic seize-up. Aside from Western goods being
hoovered up after the sanctions hit, we have yet to hear of domestic
shortages. Admittedly, new hardships could kick in starting in a few
months as important speciality items from the West like car parts become
unattainable.
But the US and Europe are about to see energy price pain kick in in
April, and that may soften them up with respect to a Ukraine settlement.
We linked to this story on Saturday, but it’s important to keep in
mind. From the Financial Times, IEA calls for driving restrictions and air travel curbs to reduce oil demand:
How the West Helped Putin With Sanctions
Ritter is amped up on the topic of sanctions. He argues that Saddam
Hussein would have been shot by his own generals after the loss of the
1991 war save for Western sanctions, which unified the country behind
him.
As for Putin, Ritter contends that Putin, who was originally
pro-Western, became convinced of the time of the need to distance Russia
from Europe, but was hampered by the roughly 20% of Russians who are
middle class, normally politically indifferent, but would turn on Putin
if he threatened their access to European goods and vacations. Per
Ritter:
The West just did Putin the greatest favor in the world.
They don’t even realize how stupid they were. The West divorced itself
from Russia. Putin said, “Thank you. Thanks you very much! You’ve now
allowed me to do what I needed to do.”
dailybeast | As soon as Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine,
Gonzalo Lira started sharing his thoughts and observations on the
conflict in a run of YouTube videos and posts on Telegram and Twitter.
“The commentary and analysis I post is without picking sides,” Lira, an
American who’s lived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv for years and was in Kyiv at the start of the offensive, wrote in a recent post, “trying to be as balanced and factually accurate as I can be.”
He
began showing up on niche but notable podcasts and livestreams, where
hosts introduced him as an unmediated font of on-the-ground insights, as
someone willing to share truths about the complex conflict that the
mainstream media either can’t or won’t. He’s also gained a slew of new
followers—his Telegram has about 45,000 followers, up from 20,000 on
March 1, and seems to be gaining hundreds more every day. Many people
seem to view him as a valuable source, and have taken to signal-boosting
his content.
But his “fair-and-balanced” accounts often involve wild claims about the supposedly obvious “evil” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The comedian-turned-politician is a known “cokehead,” Lira has
claimed—a man who uses his people as shields, has provided arms to
criminals who have terrorized the streets of Kyiv, and has possibly
“deliberately tried to have a nuclear accident” to pin it on Russia and
possibly drag America into his war. Meanwhile, Lira has portrayed the
Russian assault as provoked—and as “one of the most brilliant invasions
in military history.” He hasinsisted that the invaders don’t want to harm civilians or civilian infrastructure and are in facttaking pains not
to, that the Russian advance has not stalled but is in fact right on
course, and that Russian domination will likely be good for Ukraine in
the end.
He has also shared widely debunked conspiracy theories to
support or build out his narratives, many of them revolving around
Russian claims that they’ve found evidence of American bioweapons labs and research in Ukraine.
He has decried stories about Ukrainian resistance as obvious Western
propaganda. And he has accused people who contradict his assessments of
being idiots or paid shills.
Independent experts who follow the conflict closely, of course, vigorously disagree.
“His
claims are nonsense,” Alexander Motyl, an expert on Ukrainian affairs
at Rutgers University who’s been monitoring the conflict, told The Daily
Beast.
Not only do Lira's narratives fly in the face of a vast amount of
credible on-the-ground reporting, they “fit perfectly with what Putin
and his associates have been claiming for months,” as Motyl put it. In
fact, Lira has been in such striking lockstep with Russian narratives
on the conflict—sometimes even posting official government statements
as definitive truths about it—that Russian propaganda outlets have used
clips of him as a supposed source of external, on-the-ground support for
its stories.
More telling: When Alexandra Hrycak, a Ukrainian
affairs expert who works at Reed College and has been monitoring the
conflict, first reviewed Lira’s claims, she assumed he was likely a
fictional persona created by the Kremlin to spread its message. These
sorts of covert mouthpieces often claim to be fair and balanced outside
experts, she noted, “and [tend to argue] that their opponents are
irrational, emotional, and need to consider the facts.”
Lira is
not fake. Nor is there any evidence that he’s a paid Russian agent. In
fact, he’s actually attempted to publicly distance himself from
propaganda content that uses his clips.
These are the first authoritative remarks by a top Chinese official acknowledging that“the
Ukraine crisis provides a mirror for us to observe the situation in the
Asia-Pacific. We cannot but ask, how can we prevent a crisis like this
from happening in the Asia-Pacific?” They have followed immediately
after the 2-hour long phone conversation between President Xi Jinping
and President Biden.
Le
Yucheng took note that the Asia-Pacific is in “promising situation”
today — an anchor of peace and stability, an engine for growth and a
“pace-setter” for development. The region faces two choices between
building “an open and inclusive family for win-win cooperation or go for
small blocs based on the Cold War mentality and group confrontation.”
Le
Yucheng explained this binary choice as between: “peace and not
undermining regional tranquility; so-called absolute security and common
security; mutual respect and wanton interference in others’ internal
affairs; and, unity and cooperation versus division and confrontation.
Without doubt, he was sounding alert about the Us’ so-called
Indo-Pacific strategy.
Le
Yucheng underscored that the India-Pacific strategy characterised by
acts of provocation, formation of “closed and exclusive small circles or
groups”, and fragmentation and bloc-based division can only lead to a
situation “as dangerous as the NATO strategy of eastward expansion in
Europe… (which) would bring unimaginable consequences, and ultimately
push the Asia-Pacific over the edge of an abyss.”He underscored
the criticality of the regional states pursuing “independent, balanced
and prudent foreign policies” that dovetail with the process of regional
integration.
The
parallels between the situations around Ukraine and Taiwan respectively,
are being discussed explicitly in the Chinese commentaries and
articulation — while the US “squeezed Russia’s strategic space” through
NATO expansion and simultaneously incited Kiev to confront Russia, when
it comes to Taiwan too, Washington is instigating the secessionist
forces in the island upgrading arms sales to provoke Beijing.
Of
course, the US has refrained from direct intervention in Ukraine, as
Russia is not only a military power but also a nuclear power. The big
question is whether China will arrive at a conclusion that its best
opportunity “to solve its internal Taiwan question” lies in confronting
the US at the present juncture when “the US is short of confidence and
needs to bluster to embolden itself” and when the NATO’s hands are full
in Eurasia and it is unlikely that the US’ allies in the Asia-Pacific
will want to intervene in Taiwan.
thesaker | In 2009, after helping to rescue the US from the GFC, Zhou Xiaochuan,
Governor of the Peoples Bank of China, said, “The world needs an
international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual
nations and able to remain stable in the long run, removing the inherent
deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.”
After helping rescue America from the GFC, PBOC Governor Zhou
Xiaochuan observed, “The world needs an international reserve currency
that is disconnected from individual nations and able to remain stable
in the long run, removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using
credit-based national currencies.”
Zhou proposed SDRs, Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic reserve
currency dynamically revalued against a basket of trading currencies and
commodities. Broad, deep, stable, and impossible to manipulate.
Nobelists Fred Bergsten, Robert Mundell, and Joseph Stieglitz approved:
“The creation of a global currency would restore a needed coherence to
the international monetary system, give the IMF a function that would
help it to promote stability and be a catalyst for international
harmony”. Here’s what’s happened since:
2012: Beijing began valuing the yuan against a currency/commodity basket
2014: The IMF issued the first SDR loan
2016: The World Bank issued the first SDR bond
2017: Standard Chartered Bank issued the first commercial SDR notes.
2019: All central banks began stating currency reserves in SDRs
Mar. 14, 2022: “In two weeks, China and the Eurasian Economic Union –
Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan – will reveal
an independent international monetary and financial system. It will be
based on a new international currency, calculated from an index of
national currencies of the participating countries and international
commodity prices”.
The currency resembles Keynes’ invention Special Drawing Rights.SDRs
are a synthetic currency which derives its value from a global,
publicly traded basket of currencies and commodities. Immense beyond
imaging, and stable as the Pyramids. Everyone gets a seat at the table
and a vote. It may eventually be administered by an arm of the UN.
SDRs pose a serious alternative to the US dollar, both for the EAEU,
the BRI’s 145 member states, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO), ASEAN, and the RCEP. Middle East countries, including Egypt,
Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, are keenly interested.
Less well known is that the EAEU, the BRI, the SCO, ASEAN, and the RCEP were discussing a merger before the currency news hit.
It is reasonable to expect them to join this new, cooperatively
managed, stable reserve currency regime in which they can settle their
trades in stable, neutral, predictable SDRs.
Biological labs
China is not losing any opportunity to bring this front and center. This is their last list of questions:
If the concerns are “disinformation”, why doesn’t the U.S. release
detailed materials to prove its innocence? – Question by Chinese Foreign
Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
What did the U.S. spend the $200 million on? – Question by Chinese
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on U.S.-funded biolabs in
Ukraine.
What kind of research has the U.S. conducted on which pathogens? –
Question by Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on
U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
What is it trying to hide when the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine deleted
all relevant documents on its website? – Question by Chinese Foreign
Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
Why does the U.S. insist on being the only country in the world to
oppose the establishment of a multilateral verification mechanism though
it claims to abide by the Biological Weapons Convention? – Question by
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian on U.S.-funded biolabs
in Ukraine.
Whitehouse Version | President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with President Xi Jinping of
the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The conversation focused on
Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. President Biden outlined the
views of the United States and our Allies and partners on this crisis.
President Biden detailed our efforts to prevent and then respond to the
invasion, including by imposing costs on Russia. He described the
implications and consequences if China provides material support to
Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and
civilians. The President underscored his support for a diplomatic
resolution to the crisis. The two leaders also agreed on the importance
of maintaining open lines of communication, to manage the competition
between our two countries. The President reiterated that U.S. policy on
Taiwan has not changed, and emphasized that the United States continues
to oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo. The two leaders
tasked their teams to follow up on today’s conversation in the critical
period ahead.
President
Xi noted the new major developments in the international landscape
since their first virtual meeting last November. The prevailing trend of
peace and development is facing serious challenges. The world is
neither tranquil nor stable. As permanent members of the UN Security
Council and the world’s two leading economies, China and the US must not
only guide their relations forward along the right track, but also
shoulder their share of international responsibilities and work for
world peace and tranquility.
President
Xi stressed that he and President Biden share the view that China and
the US need to respect each other, coexist in peace and avoid
confrontation, and that the two sides should increase communication and
dialogue at all levels and in all fields. President Biden has just
reiterated that the US does not seek to have a new Cold War with China,
to change China’s system, or to revitalize alliances against China, and
that the US does not support “Taiwan independence” or intend to seek a
conflict with China. “I take these remarks very seriously,” said
President Xi.
President
Xi pointed out that the China-US relationship, instead of getting out
of the predicament created by the previous US administration, has
encountered a growing number of challenges. What’s worth noting in
particular is that some people in the US have sent a wrong signal to
“Taiwan independence” forces. This is very dangerous. Mishandling of the
Taiwan question will have a disruptive impact on the bilateral ties.
China hopes that the US will give due attention to this issue. The
direct cause for the current situation in the China-US relationship is
that some people on the US side have not followed through on the
important common understanding reached by the two Presidents and have
not acted on President Biden’s positive statements. The US has
misperceived and miscalculated China’s strategic intention.
President
Xi underscored that there have been and will continue to be differences
between China and the US. What matters is to keep such differences
under control. A steadily growing relationship is in the interest of
both sides.
The two sides exchanged views on the situation in Ukraine.
President
Biden expounded on the US position, and expressed readiness for
communication with China to prevent the situation from exacerbating.
President
Xi pointed out that China does not want to see the situation in Ukraine
to come to this. China stands for peace and opposes war. This is
embedded in China’s history and culture. China makes a conclusion
independently based on the merits of each matter. China advocates
upholding international law and universally recognized norms governing
international relations. China adheres to the UN Charter and promotes
the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable
security. These are the major principles that underpin China’s approach
to the Ukraine crisis. China has put forward a six-point initiative on
the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, and is ready to provide further
humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and other affected countries. All
sides need to jointly support Russia and Ukraine in having dialogue and
negotiation that will produce results and lead to peace. The US and NATO
should also have dialogue with Russia to address the crux of the
Ukraine crisis and ease the security concerns of both Russia and
Ukraine.
President
Xi stressed that with the need to fight COVID-19 on the one hand and
protect the economy and people’s livelihood on the other, things are
already very difficult for countries around the world. As leaders of
major countries, we need to think about how to properly address global
hotspot issues and, more importantly, keep in mind global stability and
the work and life of billions of people. Sweeping and indiscriminate
sanctions would only make the people suffer. If further escalated, they
could trigger serious crises in global economy and trade, finance,
energy, food, and industrial and supply chains, crippling the already
languishing world economy and causing irrevocable losses. The more
complex the situation, the greater the need to remain cool-headed and
rational. Whatever the circumstances, there is always a need for
political courage to create space for peace and leave room for political
settlement. As two Chinese sayings go, “It takes two hands to clap.”
“He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off.” It is imperative
that the parties involved demonstrate political will and find a proper
settlement in view of both immediate and long-term needs. Other parties
can and should create conditions to that end. The pressing priority is
to keep the dialogue and negotiation going, avoid civilian casualties,
prevent a humanitarian crisis, and cease hostilities as soon as
possible. An enduring solution would be for major countries to respect
each other, reject the Cold War mentality, refrain from bloc
confrontation, and build step by step a balanced, effective and
sustainable security architecture for the region and for the world.
China has been doing its best for peace and will continue to play a
constructive role.
The
two Presidents agreed that the video call is constructive. They
directed their teams to promptly follow up and take concrete actions to
put China-US relations back on the track of steady development, and make
respective efforts for the proper settlement of the Ukraine crisis.
The Russian Defence Ministry continues to study materials received from employees of Ukrainian laboratories on the implementation of military biological programs of the United States and its NATO allies on the territory of Ukraine.
Western mass media and some biologists, who most often have a second American citizenship, express doubts about the reliability of the materials published by us. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the documents have the signatures of real officials and are certified by the seals of organizations.
We believe that components of biological weapons were created on the territory of Ukraine.
Here is a document dated March 6, 2015, confirming the Pentagon’s direct participation in the financing of military biological projects in Ukraine.
According to established practice, American projects in the field of sanitation in third countries, including in Africa and Asia, are funded through national health authorities.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the agreement on joint biological activities was concluded between the US Military Department and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. However, the real recipient of funds are the laboratories of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence located in Kiev, Odessa, Lvov and Kharkov. The total funding amounted to $32 million.
It is no coincidence that these biolabs were chosen by the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the contractor company Black & Veatch as the executors of the U-P-8 project aimed at studying the pathogens of the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis and hantaviruses. The corresponding request of the Pentagon to involve Ukrainian laboratories for the implementation of the project is presented on the slide. From our point of view, the interest of US military biologists is due to the fact that these pathogens have natural foci both on the territory of Ukraine and in Russia, and their use can be disguised as natural outbreaks of diseases. That is why this project has received additional funding, and the terms of its implementation have been extended.
A study of the documents in the part of the P-781 project on the study of ways of transmitting diseases to humans through bats showed that the work was carried out on the basis of a laboratory in Kharkov together with the infamous R. Lugar Center in Tbilisi. The total costs of the Pentagon for its implementation in Ukraine and Georgia amounted to $ 1.6 million, most of which was received by Ukraine as the main contractor.
The documents received by the Russian Ministry of Defence indicate that research in this area is systematic and has been conducted since at least 2009 under the direct supervision of specialists from the United States within the framework of projects P-382, P-444 and P-568. One of the curators of this activity was the head of the DTRA office at the US Embassy in Kiev, Joanna Wintrall. Maybe journalists should talk to her?
During the implementation of these projects, six families of viruses (including coronaviruses) and three types of pathogenic bacteria (pathogens of plague, brucellosis and leptospirosis) were identified. This is due to the main characteristics of these pathogens that make them favourable for the purposes of infection: resistance to drugs, rapid speed of spread from animals to humans, etc.
NYPost | They are the supposed nonpartisan group of top spies looking out for the best interest of the nation.
But the 51 former “intelligence” officials who cast doubt on The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop
stories in a public letter really were just desperate to get Joe Biden
elected president. And more than a year later, even after their Deep
State sabotage has been shown again and again to be a lie, they refuse
to own up to how they undermined an election.
The officials, including CNN pundit and professional fabricator James Clapper
— a man who was nearly charged for perjury for lying to Congress —
signed a letter saying that the laptop “has the classic earmarks of a
Russian information operation.”
What proof did they have? By their own admission, none. “We do not
know if the emails . . . are genuine or not,” the letter said. They’re
just “suspicious.” Why? Because they hurt Biden’s campaign, that’s
evidence enough.
Keep in mind this was written Oct. 19, 2020, five days after The Post published its first story. Neither Joe Biden nor Hunter Biden had denied the story, they
simply deflected questions. Didn’t these security experts think that if
this was disinformation, the Biden campaign would have yelled to the
heavens that the story was false?
ineteconomics | The roots of the neoliberal perspective sprung from a world shattered
by the collapse of empires and the chaos produced by the first World
War. Austrian economists and business advocates in the 1920s and ‘30s,
like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, working at the time in the
Vienna Chamber of Commerce, worried about how a rump nation like Austria
could get along in the new global landscape. The specter of socialism
and communism in Hungary, part of the old Habsburg Empire, which briefly
went red in 1919, added to their anxiety. They were also afraid of
rising nation-states calling the shots on economic matters by doing
things like raising tariffs – especially nations governed by democracies
that recognized the interests of regular people. The spread of
universal male voting rights set off alarm bells that power was
shifting.
How could capitalists survive without a vast network of colonies to
rely on for resources? How could they protect themselves from continuing
interference in business and seizures of private property? How might
they resist increasing democratic demands for more broadly shared
economic resources?
These were big questions, and neoliberal answers reflected their
fears. From their viewpoint, the political world looked frightening and
uncertain – a place where the masses were constantly agitating to
disrupt the realm of private enterprise by forming labor unions,
conducting protests, and making demands to reallocate resources.
What neoliberals wanted was a sacred space free from such turmoil – a
transcendent world economy where capital and goods could flow without
restraint. They imagined a place where capitalists were secure from
democratic processes and protected by carefully constructed institutions
and laws — and by force, if necessary. Neoliberals weren’t fully
opposed to democracies as long as they could be constrained to provide a
safe haven for capitalists, but if they didn’t, many thought that
authoritarianism would do just fine, too.
These early stirrings of neoliberalism were thus a kind of theology, a
utopian longing for an abstract, invisible world of numbers that humans
could not spoil. In this promised land, talk of social justice and
economic plans to enhance the public good was heresy. “Society” was a
realm which, at best, should be kept strictly separate from the economy.
At worst, it was the enemy of the global economy — the troublesome
domain of nonmarket values and popular concerns that got in the way of
capitalist transcendence.
After World War II, the neoliberals organized formally as the Mount
Pelerin Society, in which key figures like Hayek pushed the vision of a
“competitive order” where competition among producers, employers, and
consumers would keep the global economy humming along smoothly and
protect everybody from abuse (quite an idea, that). Protections like
social insurance and regulatory frameworks were unnecessary.
Basically, the market was God, and people were here to serve it – not the other way around.
For neoliberals, the twentieth century wasn’t about the Cold War,
which didn’t much interest them. It was about fighting against things
like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and what they considered dangerous
totalitarian schemes of economic equality. As historian Quinn Slobodian
put it in his book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism,
they set their sights on the “development of a planet linked by money,
information, and goods where the signature achievement of the century
was not an international community, a global civil society, or the
deepening of democracy, but an ever-integrating object called the world
economy and the institutions designated to encase it.”
Neoliberals dedicated themselves to protecting unrestricted global
trade, crushing labor unions, deregulating business, and usurping
government’s role in providing for the common good with privatization
and austerity. While it’s true that most Western governments, as well as
powerful global institutions like the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund, are deeply influenced by neoliberalism today, it really
wasn’t until the 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis that most people had
even heard of the movement.
That’s because, for a long time, neoliberalism invaded our lives like a stealth virus.
gilbertdoctorow | As the USA and Europe have each day piled on new sanctions against
Russia, the awareness of a ‘total war’ situation has penetrated the
consciousness of Russia’s leadership and the tone of public discourse
about the war has hardened noticeably in recent days. Talk shows which I
follow regularly have changed course yet again from what I reported a
week ago. On the Vladimir Solovyov evening programs, the bearer of grim
expectations about war prospects, Mosfilm general director Karen
Shakhnazarov, has disappeared, his place taken by others who take the
conversation in a wholly different direction, including fierce
denunciations of unpatriotic personalities within Russia. Still other
newcomers are presenting their own half-baked speculations on how the
entire Russian economy and society has to be reorganized to respond to
the new realities of a total permanent break with the West. While the
Putin government remains resolutely pro-business and
pro-entrepreneurship, though with a heavy dose of state direction of the
economy, the new panelists in talk shows denounce free markets as just
one more manifestation of the West’s hijacking in the 1990s Russia’s
domestic political economy. Still other panelists on the Russian talk
shows are talking about purging the government and all public
institutions of Liberals, who are synonymous with Fifth Column traitors
and have no place in Russian society under conditions of a war for the
country’s survival.
As BBC and other Western journalists have remarked, Vladimir Putin
addressed the issue of the Fifth Column in a televised speech yesterday
that was otherwise dedicated to the increases in pensions and social
benefits that he just announced to counteract negative results of the
newly imposed Western sanctions. In the BBC interpretation, the scum and
traitors denounced by Putin are the oligarchs. These are the people who
live there, meaning in the West, either physically or just mentally,
while earning their money in Russia.
However, this identification with the oligarchs only shows how little
Western news organizations, Western think tanks and Western government
leaders know about Russia and about what makes it tick. No, oligarchs
were not in the sights of Vladimir Putin yesterday: it was the multitude
of little traitors to the country and its people who have in recent
weeks come out of the woodwork and taken flight in an attempt to avoid
having to publicly take sides in the conflict and so lose their fortunes
and/or their social standing.
The broad Russian public has been utterly shocked at the departure of
a good many stars in the entertainment industry, the kind of folks who
in the West are images on the covers of People magazine and of
the yellow press more generally. Veteran singer Alla Pugacheva and her
husband Galkin have been darlings of Russian television and music halls
across the country for decades. They are known to have quietly flown to
Israel, where so many of their friends from show business and from high
society have already found refuge earlier still. Then there is one of
the two leading television news presenters, Sergey Briullov, host of The
News of the Week on Saturday nights. Sergey carries a British as well
as Russian passport; his family is based in their home in England and
his children study there. About a week ago, Briullov disappeared from
Russia and eventually surfaced in Brazil, where he says he is doing a
film project about the Brazilian attitude to the Ukraine-Russia War. No
one is fooled for a moment about the fact that Briullov is just one
more traitor to his homeland, and comments on the Russian portals bear
this out daily.
No, Messrs BBC News, it is not oligarchs whose behavior if not their
very existence has embittered the middle and lower class Russians during
the current war. Those middle and lower classes constitute the 70% of
the population which backs Putin through thick and thin. It is the
smaller fish of Fifth Column populations who exist in much greater
numbers: as, for example, Russian lawyers who have homes near the
Champs Elysees and split their time between France and their law offices
in Moscow, whence the money from their servicing oligarchs comes. Then
there is the intelligentsia, the university dons, the occupants of often
important offices in government and private public institutions who
loathed Putin from his first election to the presidency in 2000 and have
never relented. Their contempt for the broad Russian public, which they
see as the great unwashed, as a herd of animals, was never well hidden,
and this contempt is now being reciprocated on Russian state television
and on the internet.
Chat GPT chooses 42
-
Ask ChatGPT to pick a number between 1 and 100 - which does it pick?
(by @Leniolabs_) pic.twitter.com/94xqfucd9C
— Information is Beautiful (@infobeautifu...
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
