According to reliable sources, an American torpedo was found at the explosion site of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. It was the torpedo type carried by the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Ignatius (DDG 117) – RGM-84 harpoon missile. The Harpoon has been the primary anti-ship weapon in the United States Navy, it has a range of 300 km and is known as a “ship-killer”.
The U.S. provided Ukrainian forces with the Harpoon anti-ship missiles at the end of May this year, and then the Ukraine used Harpoon missiles to sink the Russian Navy’s Vasiliy Bekh tugboat around June 17. Actually, the U.S. Navy tested the destructive power of Harpoon missiles on the battlefield in Ukraine. Around the same time, the U.S. Sixth Fleet began collecting accurate mapping of the vicinity of the Nord Stream pipeline in order to perform remote sabotage.
All about Blowing up the NS! U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet carried out the sabotage
From Obama to Biden administrations, they all charged that the NS pipelines will deepen the extensive dependence of Germany and other portions of democratic Europe on Russian energy supplies, Biden has even threatened to “put an end” to the Nord Stream 2. Since 2022, the U.S. Navy has been making intensive displays of its military presence in the Baltic region, ostensibly dictated by the international situation and the new phase of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, the following timeline shows that the U.S. Navy’s “use of force” against the Nord Stream pipeline was deliberate.
First, quietly deploy commander familiar with underwater fast attacks
The U.S. Navy made a low-key personnel transfer on May 20, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III announced that Navy Rear Adm. Thomas E. Ishee for appointment to the grade of vice admiral, and assignment as commander, 6th Fleet. Thomas Ishee is well versed in underwater fast attack, and he commanded fast attack submarines and oversaw the operations of torpedo retrievers, floating dry dock and the Navy’s submarine rescue systems.
Second, by taking advantage of the military exercise, collect detailed data on the intended attack location in advance
The Baltic Operations (BALTOPS 22), led by U.S. Sixth Fleet, took place from June 5 to 17, the important scenarios include anti-submarine, mine clearance operations, unmanned underwater vehicles, explosive ordnance disposal, etc. Significantly, in period BALTOPS U.S. Navy 6th Fleet partnered with U.S. Navy research and warfare centers, training an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit near Bornholm island, Denmark (very close to the NS gas pipeline explosion sites), and collecting over 200 hours of undersea data – data which included precision mapping of the exact location of the Nord Stream pipelines that was sufficiently precise for remote sabotage.
USS Paul Ignatius (DDG 117) quickly left the Baltic Sea after completing its mission.
Sept. 15, USS Paul Ignatius arrived in Riga, Latvia for a scheduled port visit. Sept. 26, this destroyer docked in the port Gdynia, Poland after completing its “mission”, on the same day, explosions occurred at Nord Stream pipelines. After that, Paul Ignatius was immediately sent back to the Naval Station Rota, Spain to escape the accident site.
Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty (30th Anniversary Edition) (3-Volume Printed, Bound Book or PDF)
A three-volume, 750+ page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook. Still after all these years, this is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written. Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course. Available Now!
Dawning of the Corona Age: Navigating the Pandemic by Johnny Freedom (3rd Edition) (Printed, Bound Book or PDF)
This comprehensive book, goes far beyond the immediate impact of the “pandemic”, but, along with the reader, imagines how our human world may be altered, both positively and negatively, long into an uncertain future. Available Now!
If you have ever heard talk or been to a seminar about “sovereignty”, then very likely those conversations were influenced by the foundational research of the author and educator.
His research and educational journey reaching millions of people worldwide began in 1992 and culminated in 2022 with the 3-Volume book release – his final word on the subject.
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Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty (30th Anniversary Edition)
A three-volume, 750 page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook.
Still after all these years, it is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written.
Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course.
The 3 Volume Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty is textbook material for everyone including educators/teachers, homeschoolers, historians, activists, leaders/politicians, attorneys/judges/law schools, police officers, and state Citizens/Nationals.
Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty (30th Anniversary Edition) (3-Volume Printed, Bound Book or PDF)
A three-volume, 750+ page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook. Still after all these years, this is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written. Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course. Available Now!
Dawning of the Corona Age: Navigating the Pandemic by Johnny Freedom (3rd Edition) (Printed, Bound Book or PDF)
This comprehensive book, goes far beyond the immediate impact of the “pandemic”, but, along with the reader, imagines how our human world may be altered, both positively and negatively, long into an uncertain future. Available Now!
Zelenskyy recently described Putin’s “de-Nazification” of Ukraine as “laughable” and the brainwashed flock of the mainstream media certainly must agree.
They have been told that Nazis wave the American flag and vote Republican and the brainwashed flock always believe what they are told.
But those of us still cleaving to our sanity remember that Nazis were members of Hitler’s National Socialist Party from the 1930s and ’40s.
And not only were there thousands of Nazis in Western Ukraine back then, it is still a big part of their national pride.
Nazi war criminal, Stepan Bandera is a national hero and there are actual Nazi organizations still thriving in Ukraine, including the Azov Regiment, which is now a part of Ukraine’s armed forces.
The Nazification of Ukraine is well-documented and easily-verified, as is the Nazification of America.
During the 1930s, there were many notable Americans who supported the Nazis, such as Prescott Bush, Henry Ford and Fred Koch; banks, such as JP Morgan and Chase Manhattan; companies such as General Motors, Standard Oil, Shell and IBM.
Major General Smedley Butler of the US Marines was asked by these powerful entities to install National Socialism in the United States and when that plan failed, war broke out with the support of the banks and these American entities.
After World War II, only about a dozen were brought to justice at the Nuremberg Trials.
The Catholic Church and the Vatican helped thousands of Nazis evade capture, via the rat lines, which brought them mostly to South America, where they built an entire town in Argentina.
In Operation Paperclip, the United States secretly absorbed thousands of Nazis into the US Government, where they led the NASA Space Program and helped pioneer the military-industrial complex, as well as Big Pharma.
Many believe being a Nazi is synonymous with being anti-Jewish, which may have been true in 1930s Germany but it’s complicated. Many high-ranking Nazis, themselves, including Adolf Hitler were Ashkenazi Jews, who cold be traced back to the notorious Khazars, who mysteriously mass-converted to Judaism about 1,300 years ago in the region now known as Ukraine.
Ashkenazi Jews ran the political Zionist Party in Germany and for several years, the Zionists were the only political party allowed to operate inside Germany by the Nazis.
Both the Zionists and the Nazis wanted their own ethnically-pure state and for years, before their Final Solution, the Nazis helped the Zionists in their efforts to establish the State of Israel within Palestine. It was far more complicated than mere racial hatred.
Nazism can best be described as Fascism and Fascism is godlessness. The word “Nazi” is a made-up slur but the word “Fascist” is clearly-defined. It stems from the Latin word, “Fascis”, which is a bundle of sticks banded together to form a deadly weapon; an old school meme that represents the deadly power of an organized mob, a gang.
When men lack a personal relationship with God, they inevitably band together, out of fear, submitting to the small man for a taste of dominance, they become just another beast in the jungle.
And today, we can clearly see this Fascist mentality in all of these godless groups: the woke, the Satanists, the transhumanists and the genocidal mass-murderers of the Great Reset are all merging together into one giant fascis; godless men and women banded together out of fear; Fascists serving the straw man.
Spiritually-speaking, these are the weakest among us and so far, we’re allowing them to destroy everything.
The current Russian invasion of Ukraine could have been avoided, and it demonstrates a failure that the U.S. leadership couldn’t effectively communicate with its Russian counterpart, according to Gen. Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who briefly served as the National Security Advisor to former President Donald Trump.
“Russia, Ukraine, Europe … what’s happening? At the 60,000-foot level, this is a totally avoidable war. Totally avoidable,” Flynn recently told NTD’s “Capitol Report” program.
“It really goes back to 1994, what was called the Budapest Accords, in Budapest, Hungary, at the end of the Cold War,” said Flynn.
On Dec. 5, 1994, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed an agreement with Ukraine called The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in Budapest, Hungary. The three nuclear powers gave their assurances on independence and sovereignty of Ukraine in exchange for removing all nuclear weapons from its territory and becoming a member of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Two other nuclear powers, China and France, gave their assurances in separate documents.
These nuclear powers also signed identical security assurances with Belarus and Kazakhstan at the time.
U.S. President Bill Clinton (L), Russian President Boris Yeltsin (C), and Ukrainian counterpart Leonid M. Kravchuk (R) join hands after signing the nuclear disarmament agreement in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on Jan. 14, 1994. Under the agreement, Ukraine, the world’s third-largest nuclear power, said it would turn all of its strategic nuclear arms over to Russia for destruction. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)
“One of the big-ticket items that came out of the Budapest accords was no further encroachment of NATO against this new Russian Federation,” Flynn said, explaining that no country leaders wanted to have nuclear missiles across the boundary between Russia and European countries.
The Budapest Memo (pdf) didn’t mention the NATO expansion. However, Western leaders had promised no NATO eastward expansion throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991. The most famous one is then-Secretary of State James Baker’s “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990.
According to recently declassified documents by the National Security Archive at George Washington University published on Nov. 24, 2021, before and after the Budapest meeting in 1994, then-President Bill Clinton kept assuring then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin that any NATO enlargement would be slow, with no surprises, building a Europe that was inclusive not exclusive, and in “partnership” with Russia.
In a Sep. 28, 1994 conversation, Clinton told Yeltsin that he had never said that Russia could not be considered for NATO membership, and that “when we talk about NATO expanding, we are emphasizing inclusion, not exclusion,” and “there is no imminent timetable.”
In a Nov. 30, 1994, letter to Clinton, Yeltsin said, “We have agreed with you that there will be no surprises, that first we should pass through this phase of partnership, whereas issues of further evolution of NATO should not be decided without due account to the opinion and interests of Russia.”
U.S. President Bill Clinton (R) and Russian President Boris Yeltsin greet each other in the Green room at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on Jan. 13, 1994. (Luke Frazza/AFP via Getty Images)
The war also shows the Biden administration’s failure to communicate with Russia in an effective way to prevent the escalation of the Ukraine situation, said Flynn.
“War is a failure of policy and diplomacy,” said Flynn. “Anytime you see states, nations, nation-states, at war with each other, it’s because there’s a failure to communicate some way somehow. And that’s what happened.”
Flynn said Russian President Vladimir Putin kept saying Ukraine shouldn’t join NATO and it should declare neutrality, but “we won’t come into play here, and they never did.”
Current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had pushed for joining NATO after taking office. Joining NATO and the European Union has been put into the constitution of Ukraine during his tenure.
Last month, Zelenskyy said his country has to accept that it will not become a member of NATOIn a Mar. 26 speech in Poland, Biden said of Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
“Immediately after he said it, they had to start walking it back. They had to start walking it back,” said Flynn. “Because it’s so wrong to say that.”
The White House and the State Department clarified that Biden didn’t talk about regime change.
Biden defended himself two days later.
“I want to make it clear: I wasn’t then, nor am I now, articulating a policy change. I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel, and I make no apologies for it,” Biden said.
No country has successfully challenged the U.S. dollar’s global hegemony—until now. How did this happen and what will it mean?
Foreign critics have long chafed at the “exorbitant privilege” of the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency. The U.S. can issue this currency backed by nothing but the “full faith and credit of the United States.” Foreign governments, needing dollars, not only accept them in trade but buy U.S. securities with them, effectively funding the U.S. government and its foreign wars. But no government has been powerful enough to break that arrangement – until now. How did that happen and what will it mean for the U.S. and global economies?
The Rise and Fall of the PetroDollar
First, some history: The U.S. dollar was adopted as the global reserve currency at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, when the dollar was still backed by gold on global markets. The agreement was that gold and the dollar would be accepted interchangeably as global reserves, the dollars to be redeemable in gold on demand at $35 an ounce. Exchange rates of other currencies were fixed against the dollar.
But that deal was broken after President Lyndon Johnson’s “guns and butter” policy exhausted the U.S. kitty by funding war in Vietnam along with his “Great Society” social programs at home. French President Charles de Gaulle, suspecting the U.S. was running out of money, cashed in a major portion of France’s dollars for gold and threatened to cash in the rest; and other countries followed suit or threatened to.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar to gold internationally (known as “closing the gold window”), in order to avoid draining U.S. gold reserves. The value of the dollar then plummeted relative to other currencies on global exchanges. To prop it up, Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a deal with Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries that OPEC would sell oil only in dollars, and that the dollars would be deposited in Wall Street and City of London banks. In return, the U.S. would defend the OPEC countries militarily. Economic researcher William Engdahl also presents evidence of a promise that the price of oil would be quadrupled. An oil crisis triggered by a brief Middle Eastern war did cause the price of oil to quadruple, and the OPEC agreement was finalized in 1974.
The deal held firm until 2000, when Saddam Hussein broke it by selling Iraqi oil in euros. Libyan president Omar Qaddafi followed suit. Both presidents wound up assassinated, and their countries were decimated in war with the United States. Canadian researcher Matthew Ehret observes:
We should not forget that the Sudan-Libya-Egypt alliance under the combined leadership of Mubarak, Qadhafi and Bashir, had moved to establish a new gold-backed financial system outside of the IMF/World Bank to fund large scale development in Africa. Had this program not been undermined by a NATO-led destruction of Libya, the carving up of Sudan and regime change in Egypt, then the world would have seen the emergence of a major regional block of African states shaping their own destinies outside of the rigged game of Anglo-American controlled finance for the first time in history.
The Rise of the PetroRuble
The first challenge by a major power to what became known as the petrodollar has come in 2022. In the month after the Ukraine conflict began, the U.S. and its European allies imposed heavy financial sanctions on Russia in response to the illegal military invasion. The Western measures included freezing nearly half of the Russian central bank’s 640 billion U.S. dollars in financial reserves, expelling several of Russia’s largest banks from the SWIFT global payment system, imposing export controls aimed at limiting Russia’s access to advanced technologies, closing down their airspace and ports to Russian planes and ships, and instituting personal sanctions against senior Russian officials and high-profile tycoons. Worried Russians rushed to withdraw rubles from their banks, and the value of the ruble plunged on global markets just as the U.S. dollar had in the early 1970s.
The trust placed in the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency, backed by “the full faith and credit of the United States,” had finally been fully broken. RussianPresident Vladimir Putin said in a speech on March 16 that the U.S. and EU had defaulted on their obligations, and that freezing Russia’s reserves marks the end of the reliability of so-called first class assets. On March 23, Putin announced that Russia’s natural gas would be sold to “unfriendly countries” only in Russian rubles, rather than the euros or dollars currently used. Forty-eight nations are counted by Russia as “unfriendly,” including the United States, Britain, Ukraine, Switzerland, South Korea, Singapore, Norway, Canada and Japan.
Putin noted that more than half the global population remains “friendly” to Russia. Countries not voting to support the sanctions include two major powers – China and India – along with major oil producer Venezuela, Turkey, and other countries in the “Global South.” “Friendly” countries, said Putin, could now buy from Russia in various currencies.
On March 24, Russian lawmaker Pavel Zavalny said at a news conference that gas could be sold to the West for rubles or gold, and to “friendly” countries for either national currency or bitcoin.
Energy ministers from the G7 nations rejected Putin’s demand, claiming it violated gas contract terms requiring sale in euros or dollars. But on March 28, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was “not engaged in charity” and won’t supply gas to Europe for free (which it would be doing if sales were in euros or dollars it cannot currently use in trade). Sanctions themselves are a breach of the agreement to honor the currencies on global markets.
Bloomberg reports that on March 30, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower Russian house of parliament, suggested in a Telegram post that Russia may expand the list of commodities for which it demands payment from the West in rubles (or gold) to include grain, oil, metals and more. Russia’s economy is much smaller than that of the U.S. and the European Union, but Russia is a major global supplier of key commodities – including not just oil, natural gas and grains, but timber, fertilizers, nickel, titanium, palladium, coal, nitrogen, and rare earth metals used in the production of computer chips, electric vehicles and airplanes.
On April 2, Russian gas giant Gazprom officially halted all deliveries to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, a critical artery for European energy supplies.
U.K. professor of economics Richard Werner calls the Russian move a clever one – a replay of what the U.S. did in the 1970s. To get Russian commodities, “unfriendly” countries will have to buy rubles, driving up the value of the ruble on global exchanges just as the need for petrodollars propped up the U.S. dollar after 1974. Indeed, by March 30, the ruble had already risen to where it was a month earlier.
A Page Out of the “American System” Playbook
Russia is following the U.S. not just in hitching its national currency to sales of a critical commodity but in an earlier protocol – what 19th century American leaders called the “American System” of sovereign money and credit. Its three pillars were (a) federal subsidies for internal improvements and to nurture the nation’s fledgling industries, (b) tariffs to protect those industries, and (c) easy credit issued by a national bank.
Michael Hudson, a research professor of economics and author of “Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire” among many other books, notes that the sanctions are forcing Russia to do what it has been reluctant to do itself – cut reliance on imports and develop its own industries and infrastructure. The effect, he says, is equivalent to that of protective tariffs. In an article titled “The American Empire Self-destructs,” Hudson writes of the Russian sanctions (which actually date back to 2014):
Russia had remained too enthralled by free-market ideology to take steps to protect its own agriculture or industry. The United States provided the help that was needed by imposing domestic self-reliance on Russia (via sanctions). When the Baltic states lost the Russian market for cheese and other farm products, Russia quickly created its own cheese and dairy sector – while becoming the world’s leading grain exporter.
Russia is discovering (or is on the verge of discovering) that it does not need U.S. dollars as backing for the ruble’s exchange rate. Its central bank can create the rubles needed to pay domestic wages and finance capital formation. The U.S. confiscations thus may finally lead Russia to end neoliberal monetary philosophy, as Sergei Glaziev has long been advocating in favor of MMT [Modern Monetary Theory]. …
What foreign countries have not done for themselves – replacing the IMF, World Bank and other arms of U.S. diplomacy – American politicians are forcing them to do. Instead of European, Near Eastern and Global South countries breaking away out of their own calculation of their long-term economic interests, America is driving them away, as it has done with Russia and China.
Glazyev and the Eurasian Reset
Sergei Glazyev, mentioned by Hudson above, is a former adviser to President Vladimir Putin and the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Commission, the regulatory body of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). He has proposed using tools similar to those of the “American System,” including converting the Central Bank of Russia to a “national bank” issuing Russia’s own currency and credit for internal development. On February 25, Glazyev published an analysis of U.S. sanctions titled “Sanctions and Sovereignty,” in which he stated:
[T]he damage caused by US financial sanctions is inextricably linked to the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia …. Its essence boils down to a tight binding of the ruble issue to export earnings, and the ruble exchange rate to the dollar. In fact, an artificial shortage of money is being created in the economy, and the strict policy of the Central Bank leads to an increase in the cost of lending, which kills business activity and hinders the development of infrastructure in the country.
Glazyev said that if the central bank replaced the loans withdrawn by its Western partners with its own loans, Russian credit capacity would greatly increase, preventing a decline in economic activity without creating inflation.
Russia has agreed to sell oil to India in India’s own sovereign currency, the rupee; to China in yuan; and to Turkey in lira. These national currencies can then be spent on the goods and services sold by those countries. Arguably, every country should be able to trade in global markets in its own sovereign currency; that is what a fiat currency is – a medium of exchange backed by the agreement of the people to accept it at value for their goods and services, backed by the “full faith and credit” of the nation.
But that sort of global barter system would break down just as local barter systems do, if one party to the trade did not want the goods or services of the other party. In that case, some intermediate reserve currency would be necessary to serve as a medium of exchange.
Glazyev and his counterparts are working on that. In a translated interview posted on The Saker, Glazyev stated:
We are currently working on a draft international agreement on the introduction of a new world settlement currency, pegged to the national currencies of the participating countries and to exchange-traded goods that determine real values. We won’t need American and European banks. A new payment system based on modern digital technologies with a blockchain is developing in the world, where banks are losing their importance.
Russia and China have both developed alternatives to the SWIFT messaging system from which certain Russian banks have been blocked. London-based commentator Alexander Mercouris makes the interesting observation that going outside SWIFT means Western banks cannot track Russian and Chinese trades.
It was a long time coming, but finally some key lineaments of the multipolar world’s new foundations are being revealed.
On Friday [March 11], after a videoconference meeting, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China agreed to design the mechanism for an independent international monetary and financial system. The EAEU consists of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia, is establishing free trade deals with other Eurasian nations, and is progressively interconnecting with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
For all practical purposes, the idea comes from Sergei Glazyev, Russia’s foremost independent economist ….
Quite diplomatically, Glazyev attributed the fruition of the idea to “the common challenges and risks associated with the global economic slowdown and restrictive measures against the EAEU states and China.”
Translation: as China is as much a Eurasian power as Russia, they need to coordinate their strategies to bypass the US unipolar system.
The Eurasian system will be based on “a new international currency,” most probably with the yuan as reference, calculated as an index of the national currencies of the participating countries, as well as commodity prices. …
The Eurasian system is bound to become a serious alternative to the US dollar, as the EAEU may attract not only nations that have joined BRI … but also the leading players in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as well as ASEAN. West Asian actors – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon – will be inevitably interested.
Exorbitant Privilege or Exorbitant Burden?
If that system succeeds, what will the effect be on the U.S. economy? Investment strategist Lynn Alden writes in a detailed analysis titled “The Fraying of the US Global Currency Reserve System” that there will be short-term pain, but, in the long run, it will benefit the U.S. economy. The subject is complicated, but the bottom line is that reserve currency dominance has resulted in the destruction of our manufacturing base and the buildup of a massive federal debt. Sharing the reserve currency load would have the effect that sanctions are having on the Russian economy – nurturing domestic industries as a tariff would, allowing the American manufacturing base to be rebuilt.
Other commentators also say that being the sole global reserve currency is less an exorbitant privilege than an exorbitant burden. Losing that status would not end the importance of the U.S. dollar, which is too heavily embedded in global finance to be dislodged. But it could well mean the end of the petrodollar as sole global reserve currency, and the end of the devastating petroleum wars it has funded to maintain its dominance.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, whose firm oversees investments equivalent to about half of US GDP, has predicted that efforts to punish Russia over its invasion of Ukraine would lead to the unraveling of globalism as decision-makers reconsider their foreign vulnerabilities.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades,” Fink said on Thursday in a letter to investors. “We had already seen connectivity between nations, companies and even people strained by two years of the pandemic. It has left many communities and people feeling isolated and looking inward. I believe this has exacerbated the polarization and extremist behavior we are seeing across society today.”
Western nations responded to the Ukraine crisis by launching an “economic war” against Moscow, including the unprecedented step of barring the Russian central bank from deploying its foreign currency reserves, Fink noted. Capital markets, financial institutions and other businesses have gone beyond the sanctions imposed by their governments, cutting off their Russian ties and operations.
“Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and its subsequent decoupling from the global economy is going to prompt companies and governments worldwide to re-evaluate their dependencies and re-analyze their manufacturing and assembly footprints – something that COVID-19 had already spurred many to start doing,” Fink said. As a result, he added, companies will move more operations to their home countries or to neighboring nations, leading to higher costs and prices.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has “upended the world order” that has been in place since the Cold War ended and will require BlackRock to adjust to “long-term structural changes,” such as deglobalization and higher inflation, Fink said. He added that central banks will have to either accept increased inflation – even beyond the 40-year high that was set last month in the US – or reduced economic activity and employment.
New York-based BlackRock handles $10 trillion in assets, making it the world’s largest money manager, so Fink’s views are closely watched by investors. In fact, the billionaire wields so much financial clout that his thoughts can be self-fulfilling, to some degree. Among other implications, he said he sees the Ukraine crisis accelerating the development of digital currencies and speeding the shift away from fossil fuels.
“The ramifications of this war are not limited to Eastern Europe,” Fink said. “They are layered on top of a pandemic that has already had profound effects on political, economic and social trends. The impact will reverberate for decades to come in ways we can’t yet predict.”
Although Fink and Russian leaders don’t see eye-to-eye on the Ukraine conflict – the money manager blames Moscow for causing the crisis – they agree that the world order is changing. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that sanctions against Moscow mark the end of an era, portending an end to the West’s “global dominance” both politically and economically. Ex-President Dmitry Medvedev echoed those comments this week, saying, “The unipolar world has come to an end.”
The recent appalling Russian invasion of Ukraine must be condemned. It’s yet another atrocious aggression in a long series of violations of international law by several countries including the US, Britain, Russia and Israel. It is terribly disappointing that humanity has failed to advance beyond the use of warfare (military, economic and cyber) to settle problems. Lobbying by the merchants of death, that is, the military-industrial complex, certainly plays a role in this disastrous failure.
US hypocrisy on international law
Many nations and their media, particularly Western nations, have rightly emphasized this horrific violation of the rule of law by Russia. Ironically, it is the US – arguably the nation that has done the most to undermine international law through its widespread military aggressions, support for coups, illegal use of economic warfare (unilateral sanctions), protection of Israel from sanctions, and non-participation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) – that now proclaims most loudly the sanctity of international law.
Selective coverage of attacks
The Western media were less critical of other violations of international law by the US, Britain and Israel. For example, the US and Britain lied about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In 2003, they led a coalition of nations in a unspeakable war crime that devastated Iraq, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and led to the destabilization of the Middle East. Iraqis are still suffering horrendous consequences of this years-long war crime. The US media certainly didn’t emphasize that this unprovoked aggression was a violation of international law. In addition, the corporate-dominated US media didn’t call for then President George W. Bush and other members of his administration to be investigated by the ICC for war crimes. This US media hypocrisy seriously undercuts its credibility and shows that it’s a key component of the US propaganda system. In addition, the US media’s failure along with the cowardice of European nations about pointing out US violations have contributed to the undermining of international law.
Lack of context
Returning to today, the media have failed to provide any context for this shameful Russian war crime. The context doesn’t justify Russia’s use of force, but it’s important to understand how we arrived at this awful situation. Unfortunately, this terrible war crime was the predictable result of lies and actions by the US and NATO and their unwillingness to take Russia’s legitimate security concerns seriously.
Promise not to expand eastward
Russia, with documentation from numerous investigations by Western sources, has reminded the world of the 1991 US, German, UK and French promise not to expand NATO one inch to the east in exchange for the Soviet Union allowing the reunification of Germany. Given previous devastating invasions by Western European nations, one can understand why the Soviets might want this promise. For example, during WWII, estimates are that the Soviet Union lost over 26 million people, about 13% of its 1939 population.
George Kennan, architect of the U.S. containment policy towards the Soviet Union, was interviewed by Thomas Friedman in 1998 about NATO’s eastward expansion. Kennan said: ”I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”
Even before there was any expansion, Russia made clear its concern over the expansion to no avail. NATO has since expanded eastward from 16 members to 30 members today. NATO weapons are not far from Russia’s borders, in some areas approximately the same distance as Soviet weapons in Cuba were from the US. The US risked nuclear war to deny Cuba’s sovereignty over having Soviet weapons. Hence Russia’s demands about keeping NATO weapons away from its borders shouldn’t be a surprise
A predicted crisis
In 2008, then US Ambassador to Russia William Burns, now director of the CIA, warned US officials about the danger of holding out the prospect of NATO membership to Ukraine. He warned that it could lead to civil war and present Russia with a crisis on its border in which it could be forced to intervene. Instead of trying to prevent this situation from happening, the US acted in ways that resulted in this predicted crisis occurring.
The predicted civil war then happened in the Donbas area when the new Ukrainian government almost immediately targeted the use of the Russian language. This language policy was quickly overturned, but the damage had already been done. Additional violent acts by neo-Nazi forces led to protests by people in Donbas. In addition, Russia took control of Crimea and the residents of Crimea subsequently overwhelmingly voted to join Russia.
The coup government militarily moved to stop the protests in the Donbas area causing the predicted Russian intervention there. Fighting has been going on in this area at a low level for much of the past 8 years despite the Minsk II accords that were agreed to in 2015 but not implemented.
Negotiations are the key
Unfortunately, this totally unnecessary conflict between Russia and the US turned into a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine when Russia invaded. The people of Ukraine are paying a terribly high price serving as an (unwitting?) proxy for the US. Ordinary Russians, who had no say about the criminal attack, are also facing a much harsher life as a result of this war crime against Ukraine. In order to avoid an escalation into a much broader and more deadly conflict, both sides must quickly make some uncomfortable compromises. Otherwise …
Ron Forthofer is a retired professor of biostatistics, having taught at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. Since retirement in 1991, has been an activist for peace and social justice. He ran for Congress and for governor of Colorado for the Green Party.
Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia.
Their hypocrisy and nihilistic thirst for death and destruction are so extreme that it boggles my mind. They accuse Russia of starting a New Cold War when they did so decades ago and have been pushing the envelope ever since. Now they act shocked that Russia, after many years of patience, has struck back in Ukraine.
In 2017, Oliver Stone released his four-part interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Putin Interviews were conducted between 2015, the year after the US engineered the coup d’état in Ukraine installing Nazis to power in that country bordering Russia, and 2017.
Stone was of course bashed for daring to respectfully ask questions and receive answers from the Russian leader who the American media has always cast, like all the mythic bogeymen, as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world, when it is the United States, not Russia, that has over 750 military bases throughout the world and has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – the list is endless.
In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin and the matters that concern him as the leader of Russia. In 2018, I wrote of those interviews:
…he [Putin] makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts.
that the US needs an external enemy (“I know that, I feel that.”).
the USA engineered the coup d’état in the Ukraine on Russia’s border.
the US has surrounded Russia with US/NATO troops and bases armed with anti-ballistic missiles that can, as Putin rightly says to Stone, be converted in hours to regular offensive nuclear missile aimed at Russia.
This is a factual and true statement that should make any fair-minded person stand up in horror. If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable? What would CNN and The New York Times have to say?
Yet these same people readily find it impossible to see the legitimacy in Russia’s position, resorting to name calling and illogical rhetoric. Russia is surrounded with U.S/NATO troops and missiles and yet Russia is the aggressor.
In the years since those interviews, U.S./NATO has consistently tightened the noose around Russia, including fueling the Ukrainian attacks on the Donbass, killing thousands, all the while pleading innocent and expecting no reply. Now the reply has come.
Although I have no inside information, I get the sense that the Western Empire is planning/initiating counter-measures far more extreme than the highly publicized economic sanctions.
While it is true, as many commentators such as Ray McGovern and Pepe Escobar have pointed out, that a paradigm shift is underway and the once dominant US/NATO bully boys must now contend with the Sino-Russian alliance that has ushered in a dramatic change, nevertheless, as in the past decades, the so-called leaders of the US are a dumb bunch driven by unquenchable demons.
As McGovern says:
Yet, there remain unsettling indications coming from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan that senior administration ‘dolts’ (copyright North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) in the Washington Swamp still don’t get it.
I’m afraid they don’t and never will. That is what frightens me. While it seems counterintuitive and totally irrational that these people would be planning to use some type of nuclear weapon in this current situation, I am not so sure.
They obviously pushed Russia to have no alternative but to attack Ukraine, and now that they have accomplished that goal, it seems to me that they will up the ante. Diplomacy is not their way; violence is.
This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born at breathtaking speed.
From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a UN history lesson delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to the breakaway republics’ appeal to Putin to intervene militarily to expel the NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a seamless process, executed at warp speed.
The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced it to pounce – was Comedian/Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky, back from the Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed.
As usual, his analysis is correct, but it may fail to grasp the unspeakable nature of the madness that drives desperadoes.
If those running US foreign policy feel that a new geo-political order is being born “at breathtaking speed” as a result of Russia’s move into Ukraine, then they are capable of extreme acts. And they have all the mainstream western media behind them, barking out their non-stop propaganda.
We are inexorably moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international movement doesn’t quickly arise to stop it. Most people bemoan the thought of such a war to end all wars, but refuse to analyze the factors leading to it.
It seems so unimaginable, but It happens step-by-step, and many steps have already been taken with more coming soon. It’s so obvious that most can’t see it, or don’t want to.
The corporate mainstream media are clearly part of the continuation of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, and those who still rely on them for the truth are beyond reach. We need to use all alternative means to raise the alarm and make sure the ultimate nightmare never occurs.
Perhaps hyperbole is the only way to do so, for it may be closer to the truth than we want to believe.
Editor’s Note: The Democratic Party is not likely to maintain control over the U.S. House of Representatives after the upcoming 2022 mid-term elections (should honest elections actually be held in the swing states), therefore these radical leftists are eager to distract not only from its incompetence at governing under Biden, but its ineptness in managing the alleged COVID-19 pandemic response, the stupidity of ignoring an invasion of illegals and criminals at the southern border with Mexico, hyperinflation, energy-policy, etc. The Russia-Ukraine conflict, and its postering for world war, gives the Democratic Party a small boost among war mongers and defense contractors, and their war mongering allies in the Republican Party as well.This show is all partisan politics and dangerous media theatrics which may very well be the end-game for civilization and a fast-track for species (human) extinction.
During an ABC interview today, White House Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki gave away the game for the Biden Administration’s intent on exploiting the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
Keep in mind, as the Biden team were getting pummeled for negative economic outcomes, massive inflation, skyrocketing energy costs and gas prices set to double, the White House worked to create an urgent defense by manufacturing the crisis.
While Joe Biden ate his pudding, the people behind the scenes told Zelenskyy and Putin that Ukraine was about to enter NATO {December 2021}. The White House then seeded details through China knowing the intel would get back to Putin. Russia took the bait and intervened.
The collective left (far more western leader beneficiaries on a global scale) now have a quick and strategic pivot point to go from COVID-19 as the excuse for all the economic ills, to Russia. The Russia-Ukraine crisis transfers the cost of the Build Back Better climate change agenda from COVID-19 to Russia/Ukraine. We can now watch COVID just disappear.
The BBB agenda, domestically known as the Green New Deal, intentionally makes energy costs skyrocket. By creating the Ukraine crisis, gas prices specifically are no longer blamed on COVID-19 (the original fraudulent justification). Gas prices are now rising because of Russia and the villainous Vladimir Putin. Climate change policy outcomes are made palatable by blaming Putin.
Editor’s Note:For ten years NATO and the European Union (EU) have been expanding its influence and military might into Eastern Europe without regard for Russian sovereignty or the security of its border with Ukraine. Putin made his move into Ukraine not only to secure their borders, something the United States should be doing on the southern border of Mexico, but refuses to do so. Putin is aware that the government of Ukraine has become a hostile force since the “color revolution” of 2014 not only towards Russia, but towards two separatist regions of Ukraine which have asked for military protection from the government of Ukraine who is bent on genociding those two separatist regions. They have asked for protection and Putin is providing it. The power-drunk New World Order/Deep State’World Economic Forum/Mainstream Media/CIA forces are using the Russian-Ukraine conflict as a pretext for furthering their global totalitarian agenda – an agenda perpetrated by governments and public health officials for two years during the alleged COVID-19 pandemic (which it never was). Because the pandemic panic, mandates and lockdowns are winding down due to mass resistance to the totalitarian policies of these tyrants (now exposed for all to see) and the rise of truth (amidst the waking giant of humanity), this new pretext for war has quickly become the focus of global polarization and today’s headlines.
The propaganda pouring out of Ukraine from the U.S. State Department and the taxpayer funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) is, in a modern scale, historic.
In their collective effort to make #Ukraine the modern image of The Alamo (where the last stand to defend all mankind is taking place), the corporate media, state dept and NGO’s are utilizing their Hollywood directed#BringBackOurGirls and #KonySurrender techniques in the extreme.
Pay no attention to the absence of any war fighting actually taking place, meaning the lack of actual fighting shooting and stuff in a modern era where everyone has cell phone cameras, and instead focus your attention to the ‘story telling.’
After all, the White House was very clear that the winner of this contest to defend all humanity from the Russian villain Vladimir Putin, would depend on who could tell a “better story.”
Thus, you do not need to see shooting or actual war type stuff. Instead, the contest to save the planet is boiled down to who can take a better selfie.
As Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh stated last week, the U.S. government has rallied the collective west to defeat Russia using the cultural weapon of social likeability. Vladimir Putin is getting pummeled.
It’s all a grand pantomime folks. All of it. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the newest Michael Avenatti.
Ukraine has been the playground for the U.S. State Dept, NGO’s, intelligence schemes and DC political grift for well over a decade. You know it, because it has been well documented. Yet suddenly, the same Ukraine is the modern Alamo in the battle to save all mankind. Oh, okay, and we’re supposed to forget the first stuff.
If you’re wondering, why has it taken the Russia army four days to travel 30 miles? You must believe it is, because Ukrainians with their free Kalashnikov rifles and Molotov cocktails have beaten back the onslaught of heavily mechanized armored tank divisions. You must believe it, because you are being told by the most trusted names in news.
If you don’t believe it… and if you think it all just seems odd as Ukrainian politicians are taking selfies amid this monumental military encounter… well, you must be a Russian agent, or something.
Comrades, just wait until tomorrow, when Russia will bomb the baby formula factories, then perhaps you will take it seriously. How can you not feel sympathy for the babies, the mothers, teachers, crying on the television as they tell stories about saving their children from the scourge of the artillery fire that must be heard in the ever familiar “off in the distance.”
It’s weird how no journalist will actually go to that “distant” place they all talk about. Alas, I digress….
Bottom line folks… the Russia -vs- Ukraine crisis is cover for the outcomes of Joe Biden’s energy policy, so that American voters do not attach $10/gal gasoline to his climate change agenda, and instead apportion the blame to Russia and Vladimir Putin.
Again, “never let a crisis go to waste,” and if you can’t find the crisis to use, make one.
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