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Zelensky’s Call for Nuclear War

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2022

Contrary to what Zelensky, President Biden, the Pentagon, the CIA, members of Congress, and other interventionists would like to believe, the war in Ukraine is not about freedom. It is about NATO, a corrupt bureaucratic entity that should have gone out of existence when the Cold War racket came to an end. 

Zelensky’s Call for Nuclear War

by Jacob G. Hornberger

n an emotional appeal that left some members of Congress with tears in their eyes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his plea that U.S. officials impose a “no-fly zone” over his country. What he failed to mention during the course of his talk, is the virtual certainty that such an action would lead to nuclear war between the United States and Russia. 

Contrary to what Zelensky, President Biden, the Pentagon, the CIA, members of Congress, and other interventionists would like to believe, the war in Ukraine is not about freedom. It is about NATO, a corrupt bureaucratic entity that should have gone out of existence when the Cold War racket came to an end. 

Zelensky wanted Ukraine to join NATO. So did Biden, the Pentagon, the CIA, and other interventionists. For some 25 years, Russia has made it clear that that is a “red line” for Russia. Why? Because if Ukraine joins NATO, the Pentagon and the CIA will be able to establish their nuclear missiles, tanks, weaponry, and military bases on Russia’s border. Russia has steadfastly opposed that notion as fiercely as the U.S. government would oppose the same thing happening in Cuba or along the Mexico border.

Moreover, all the way up to the invasion, Russia made it clear that if Zelensky gave up his hopes and dreams of having Ukraine join NATO, there would be no Russian invasion of his country.

Alas, Zelensky could not let go of his love for this Cold War dinosaur. His love of NATO got the best of him. In the final analysis, he decided to sacrifice tens of thousands of his citizens in the hopes that Ukraine could defeat Russia in a war and then join NATO. He undoubtedly figured that he could induce Biden, the Pentagon, and the CIA to come to his aid. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Biden, the Pentagon, and the CIA misled Zelensky into believing that he could count on their support once Russia invaded Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

And now that Zelensky realizes that his high-stakes gamble might not pay off, he’s willing to sacrifice the American people in a nuclear war with Russia. In other words, if he’s going down, which is very possible, he wants millions of Americans to go down with him — again, not for freedom, but for NATO. He wants millions of Americans to be willing to die for NATO, just like tens of thousands of Ukrainians are now dying for NATO.

Let’s break down exactly what a “no-fly zone” is that Zelensky wants the Pentagon to establish over Ukraine. It involves U.S. fighter aircraft shooting down Russian military planes over Ukraine. Those Russian planes would contain Russian soldiers, perhaps even hundreds of Russian soldiers in transport planes.

That’s not all. From the ground, Russian forces will be firing missiles intended to shoot down American planes. Thus, it would be necessary for American planes to fire missiles at the ground with the aim of knocking out those anti-aircraft missile facilities. People near those areas would be incinerated. (In fact, when U.S. officials established a “no-fly zone” over Iraq during the 1990s, I recall one incident in which an errant U.S. missile killed a young boy tending his sheep.)

The moment one Russian plane is shot down, the United States and Russia will be in a state of war. At that point, anything can happen. All bets are off. The war might remain conventional, in which case the United States would be almost certain to win, given its vast military superiority. 

But it then becomes in Russia’s interests to employ tactical nuclear weapons. But if that’s the case, everyone know where that is going to lead. Therefore, almost immediately both sides would have to calculate whether to be the first to fire their strategic missiles. There would be little time for thought and reflection. In a nuclear war, no one wants to be firing his nuclear arsenal second. It becomes in the interests of both nations to fire their nuclear arsenal first.

That’s what Zelensky is willing to risk with his call for a Pentagon-enforced “no-fly zone” over Ukraine — the entire United States radiated — hundreds of millions of Americans suddenly and unexpectedly killed in an all-out nuclear exchange — most of our country destroyed — just so that Ukraine can join NATO. 

Statists are referring to Zelensky as a “George Washington.” But George Washington would never have been willing to sacrifice even one American or even one foreigner, much less millions of innocent people, for the sake of joining a corrupt bureaucratic entity like NATO or any other “entangling alliance.”

With friends like Zelensky, who needs enemies?

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John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis

Posted by M. C. on March 15, 2022

The political scientist believes the reckless expansion of NATO provoked Russia

https://archive.ph/artIo#selection-575.0-575.84

THE WAR in Ukraine is the most dangerous international conflict since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Understanding its root causes is essential if we are to prevent it from getting worse and, instead, to find a way to bring it to a close.

There is no question that Vladimir Putin started the war and is responsible for how it is being waged. But why he did so is another matter. The mainstream view in the West is that he is an irrational, out-of-touch aggressor bent on creating a greater Russia in the mould of the former Soviet Union. Thus, he alone bears full responsibility for the Ukraine crisis.

But that story is wrong. The West, and especially America, is principally responsible for the crisis which began in February 2014. It has now turned into a war that not only threatens to destroy Ukraine, but also has the potential to escalate into a nuclear war between Russia and NATO.

The trouble over Ukraine actually started at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April 2008, when George W. Bush’s administration pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members”. Russian leaders responded immediately with outrage, characterising this decision as an existential threat to Russia and vowing to thwart it. According to a respected Russian journalist, Mr Putin “flew into a rage” and warned that “if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions. It will simply fall apart.” America ignored Moscow’s red line, however, and pushed forward to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. That strategy included two other elements: bringing Ukraine closer to the EU and making it a pro-American democracy.

These efforts eventually sparked hostilities in February 2014, after an uprising (which was supported by America) caused Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. In response, Russia took Crimea from Ukraine and helped fuel a civil war that broke out in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

The next major confrontation came in December 2021 and led directly to the current war. The main cause was that Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of NATO. The process started in December 2017, when the Trump administration decided to sell Kyiv “defensive weapons”. What counts as “defensive” is hardly clear-cut, however, and these weapons certainly looked offensive to Moscow and its allies in the Donbas region. Other NATO countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training its armed forces and allowing it to participate in joint air and naval exercises. In July 2021, Ukraine and America co-hosted a major naval exercise in the Black Sea region involving navies from 32 countries. Operation Sea Breeze almost provoked Russia to fire at a British naval destroyer that deliberately entered what Russia considers its territorial waters.

The links between Ukraine and America continued growing under the Biden administration.

See the rest here

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Why Die for Biden?

Posted by M. C. on March 14, 2022

The Russians have made it amply clear what they want. They want a neutral Ukraine that is free of NATO. This is a reasonable demand. To start World War III over this would be an act of most regrettable foolishness.”

Why Die for Biden?

As you would expect from brain-dead Biden and the people controlling him, American policy has been moving in the wrong direction. Whatever you think about the situation in the Ukraine, one thing is obvious. It’s a crisis. Shouldn’t we try to stay out of danger? Instead, the US has led the way in imposing drastic economic sanctions on Russia, backing Putin to the wall. What if he gets desperate and uses atomic weapons? This could result in the end of civilized life on our planet. Is this what Americans want?

The danger isn’t just something I and other critics of American policy have conjured up.  “President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday [March 5] that Western sanctions on Russia were akin to a declaration of war and warned that any attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would lead to catastrophic consequences for the world. . . ‘These sanctions that are being imposed are akin to a declaration of war but thank God it has not come to that,’ Putin said, speaking to a group of flight attendants at an Aeroflot training centre near Moscow. He said any attempt by another power to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would be considered by Russia to be a step into the military conflict.”

The neocon warmongers brush this danger aside. They say that “we” have to do something to defend the Ukraine from an unprovoked Russian attack. But this totally distorts what is happening there. The Ukrainian government started things by moving against Donbass, a territory that declared independence and is allied with Russia. According to the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainians can secede from Russia but people can’t secede from the Ukraine. As Rick Rozoff pointed out in an article on February 2, “Two-thirds of Ukrainian army servicemen have been amassed along the Donbas contact line, Eduard Basurin, spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) militia, said on Thursday.

‘Another three brigades are on their way [to Donbas], which is 20,000 to 25,000 troops more. The total number will reach 150,000, not to mention the nationalists. This is about two-thirds of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ personnel,’ Basurin said on the Rossiya 1 television channel (VGTRK) on Thursday.

The Ukrainian troops are stationed along the 320-kilometer front line, he said. . . The situation in Donbass has reached a critical mark in the past week due to Ukraine’s aggressive actions, Donetsk People’s Republic representative at the Minsk talks, DPR Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova said on Thursday.”

But the provocative actions against Russia go much further back. Vasko Kohlmayer gives an excellent account of these and highlights the danger of nuclear war that reckless American policy has caused: “The war drums are, of course, beating for US involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.

‘Declare a NoFlyZone over Ukraine,’ tweeted Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).

Lindsey Graham, a powerful US Senator, went so far as to publicly advocate the assassination of the Russian head of state. Tweeted he:

Is there a Brutus in Russia?  Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country – and the world – a great service.

Such brazen incitement to murder by a highly positioned US official could be construed as a war act by the other side.

See the rest here

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TGIF: Russia in Ukraine: Qui Bono?

Posted by M. C. on March 14, 2022

Then there are the sheer economic benefits — the profits, compliments of the taxpayers — to the military-industrial complex, which has profited handsomely from NATO expansion since 1998 and from the increased military budgets in NATO countries. Crystal City, Va., will not be on hard times, no matter how the rest of us fare.

by Sheldon Richman

I don’t know if the U.S. foreign-policy elite wanted Russia to invade Ukraine — an argument could be made for the affirmative — but I’d hate to think it did. Yet given its long record of global mischief (a polite word for its machinations), we certainly cannot rule out the point a priori.

Perhaps the best evidence in favor of the proposition is that President Biden refused to take the few simple steps that might have averted the whole thing. (The attempt would have cost nothing.) But if an invasion might have been averted and was unwanted, why was so much weaponry and other military aid poured into Ukraine in apparent anticipation of a splendid little war?

I acknowledge that none of this constitutes a smoking gun (pun intended), but the question is worth asking. One might say it was a “just in case” move, but the risks were high because, first, U.S. support might have encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do something foolish, and second, the arms flow itself might have provoked a Russian response, particularly since the Ukrainian National Guard has the pro-Nazi Azov Battalion incorporated into it.

That said, I am far more confident that, from Biden on down — if I’m not giving him too much credit — the foreign-policy makers foresaw benefits in the reprehensible Russian invasion.

Benefits? Qui bono? To whom? Well, certainly not the Ukrainians who are dying, hurting, and fleeing their homes in terror. Nor do the beneficiaries include the rest of the world’s regular people, including Americans, who now must wonder if the end of the world is at hand, or if not that, then how they’ll cope with the inevitable economic hardship that war and sanctions impose: rising prices, food shortages, and so on.

But make no mistake: there are beneficiaries, as there are in all wars. (“There’s not much I can tell you about this war. It’s like all wars, I guess. The undertakers are winning.”) The American foreign-policy elite itself is a beneficiary because the heightened tensions and potential for conflict offer enormous political opportunities for bigger budgets, grander missions, and the prestige that comes from playing Winston Churchill.

Then there are the sheer economic benefits — the profits, compliments of the taxpayers — to the military-industrial complex, which has profited handsomely from NATO expansion since 1998 and from the increased military budgets in NATO countries. Crystal City, Va., will not be on hard times, no matter how the rest of us fare. (Remember when Salesman-in-Chief Donald Trump used to chide the NATO countries for spending too little on their militaries? Get it now? Did you really think he had the American taxpayers in mind?)

And let’s face it, NATO needed a shot in the arm. The Soviet Union was long gone, and international terrorism has just not lived up to its ominous billing. It hasn’t had the staying power to justify the sinecures that the obsolete alliance had provided over the years. Now things have changed — in Finland and Sweden, historically neutral countries, “public support for joining NATO has surged to record levels,” Yasmeen Serhan writes in The Atlantic.

Nor should we underrate the satisfaction that the elite expects to get from the likely prolonged Russian quagmire. As Scott Horton writes,

Weapons to Ukraine had all been supposedly “calibrated” they said, “not to provoke Mr. Putin,” officials told the New York Times. Maybe arming an insurgency truly is Plan B after an invasion they truly meant to deter and these Democrats are just very poor at “calibration.” But they sure seem to be thinking ahead to how an invasion could hurt Russia, with the poor Ukrainians serving as merely an instrument against them.

“The level of military support would make our efforts in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union [in the 1980s] look puny by comparison,” said former Hillary Clinton adviser retired Adm. James Stavridis. I sense some anticipatory glee.

See the rest here

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The American Empire Self-Destructs

Posted by M. C. on March 9, 2022

Trying to force Russia to respond militarily and thereby look bad to the rest of the world is turning out to be a stunt aimed simply at ensuring Europe contribute more to NATO, buy more U.S. military hardware and lock itself deeper into trade and monetary dependence on the United States. The instability that this has caused is turning out to have the effect of making the United States look as threatening as Russia is claimed to be by the NATO West.

https://www.unz.com/mhudson/the-american-empire-self-destructs/

Michael Hudson

Empires often follow the course of a Greek tragedy, bringing about precisely the fate that they sought to avoid. That certainly is the case with the American Empire as it dismantles itself in not-so-slow motion.

The basic assumption of economic and diplomatic forecasting is that every country will act in its own self-interest. Such reasoning is of no help in today’s world. Observers across the political spectrum are using phrases like “shooting themselves in their own foot” to describe U.S. diplomatic confrontation with Russia and allies alike.

For more than a generation the most prominent U.S. diplomats have warned about what they thought would represent the ultimate external threat: an alliance of Russia and China dominating Eurasia. America’s economic sanctions and military confrontation have driven these two countries together, and are driving other countries into their emerging Eurasian orbit.

American economic and financial power was expected to avert this fate. During the half-century since the United States went off gold in 1971, the world’s central banks have operated on the Dollar Standard, holding their international monetary reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury securities, U.S. bank deposits and U.S. stocks and bonds. The resulting Treasury-bill Standard has enabled America to finance its foreign military spending and investment takeover of other countries simply by creating dollar IOUs. U.S. balance-of-payments deficits end up in the central banks of payments-surplus countries as their reserves, while Global South debtors need dollars to pay their bondholders and conduct their foreign trade.

This monetary privilege – dollar seignorage – has enabled U.S. diplomacy to impose neoliberal policies on the rest of the world, without having to use much military force of its own except to grab Near Eastern oil.

The recent escalation of U.S. sanctions blocking Europe, Asia and other countries from trade and investment with Russia, Iran and China has imposed enormous opportunity costs – the cost of lost opportunities – on U.S. allies. And the recent confiscation of the gold and foreign reserves of Venezuela and Afghanistan, and now the foreign reserves of Russia,[1] along with the targeted grabbing of bank accounts of wealthy foreigners (hoping to win their hearts and minds, enticed by the hope for the return of their sequestered accounts), has ended the idea that dollar holdings – and holdings in the sterling and euro NATO subsidiaries of the dollar – are a safe investment haven when world economic conditions become shaky.

So I am somewhat chagrined as I watch the speed at which this U.S.-centered financialized system has de-dollarized over the span of just a year or two. The basic theme of my Super Imperialism has been how, for the past fifty years, the U.S. Treasury-bill standard has channeled foreign savings to U.S. financial markets and banks, giving Dollar Diplomacy a free ride. I thought that de-dollarization would be led by China and Russia moving to take control of their economies to avoid the kind of financial polarization that is imposing austerity on the United States.[2] But U.S. officials are forcing Russia, China and other nations not locked into the U.S. orbit to see the writing on the wall and overcome whatever hesitancy they had to de-dollarize.

See the rest here

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The End of Cryptocurrency Coming?

Posted by M. C. on March 9, 2022

The End of Cryptocurrency Coming?

by Martin Armstrong

I warned ion the private blog that cryptocurrencies may end up being suspended. The excuse will be Russia and the news is out now that Biden will sign an Executive Order to regulate cryptos because Russia can use it to circumvent sanctions. Not only is Biden authorizing the regulation of digital currencies, but he is also instructing to move forward with a central bank cryptocurrency. Once that is done, all other cryptocurrencies will be seized and folded into the government’s crypto. There will be no competition. Money historically has also been the Divine Privilege of Kings and Tyrants.

Biden is now proposing to ban all Russian Energy sales to the West. Prices will rise sharply still and Biden is blaming Putin claiming this is the “price of freedom” for Ukraine which is all BS so governments can avoid responsibility for the collapse in the supply chain thanks to COVID and their shutting down fossil fuels for Climate Change.

Now it is time to blame Putin for the continued rise in gasoline which is their agenda to save the planet. Their clock in NYC that they were telling the world we had only 7 years left if we did not ban fossil fuels is being accomplished under the pretense of “freedom” for Ukraine.

Macron desperately needs this war to fulfill his agenda and role in the grand scheme. Macron has been arguing for a European Army and they need this war to justify not NATO, but a new EU Army that is not bound by NATO rules and treaties. The EU Commission has been working on its proposal to establish a joint budget for the Eurozone since 2017, which is the endgame of federalization. The aim was to cement the monetary union in place and thereby prevent any more BREXIT nonsense from their view. Now they are pushing to issue an EU Bond and they are now using this war with Russia as a power grab to federalize Europe.

We now have private companies throwing Russians out in every possible context. The Russians have replaced the Jews of Germany. They are now regarded as swine and nobody should do any business with them whatsoever. This war is part of the Great Reset. They can no longer fund the governments and Keynesian Economics has collapsed. This is all part of the agenda and it is being carried out in sequence.

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Poland Is Playing A Dangerous Game

Posted by M. C. on March 8, 2022

The U.S. and Ukraine are manipulating everyone for the Globalist agenda, damn the consequences.

NATO is a paper tiger that has never been tested. When the day comes that it is finally tested, when the shells start flying and the laser guided bombs flatten buildings, Poland is only ensuring that it is her cities and her people that are flattened first.

They’d better follow Hungary’s lead and dispense with their America-as-savior fantasies and historical differences with Russia in a hurry. Western hyenas will keep poking the bear into a darker and darker corner. Putin has shown tremendous patience with these bloodthirsty animals over the years, but every bear has his limits.

https://thegoodcitizen.substack.com/p/poland-is-playing-a-dangerous-game?s=w

Good Citizen

Update March 8: Does Tucker Carlson read The Good Citizen?

In Carlson’s monologue last night he begins by showing the CBS Blinken interview on Sunday that also inspired this piece. Blinken goes on TV and nonchalantly sells out Poland as ground zero for a NATO war with Russia. Despite Poland’s relentless insistence that the WILL NOT be sending any fighter jets to Ukraine, Blinken callously ignores them on live TV. This is how the U.S. treats its allies, with reckless disregard and back stabbing PR diplomacy. Tucker also shows the Lindsay Graham rah rah speech to Ukrainian soldiers from 2016 I embedded at the end of this piece yesterday, where he says war with Russia is coming and the U.S. has their back.

On September 11, 2002, the Bush anniversary speech of 9/11 I recall hearing him name Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the speech and knew right then and there he was manufacturing consent for an invasion of Iraq despite the country have zero connections to the 9/11 attacks. I explicitly remember yelling to family members around me that the U.S. will invade Iraq next. They were so wrapped up in the superficial emotionalism of the speech and the moment, they told me I was crazy and to sit down and shut up. Family, eh?

When I watched the Blinken CBS interview Sunday, I got the same chills I got watching the Bush speech that day. It made me sick. This is how the U.S. psychologically manipulates its population into wars and in this case uses Poland as a sacrificial lamb for what would surely be a destructive global conflict. According to one analyst Tucker cites in his monologue, who war gamed a U.S.-Russia conflict in 2019, it would result in a billion dead. A billion.

Turns out the coronavirus and jabs didn’t do enough on the depopulation front, so it’s on to steps 2, 3 and 4. War, energy crisis, and mass starvation. Those Georgia guide stones aren’t going to be realized on their own.

The whole 22 minute Tucker piece is worth the watch as he shows how the blood thirsty hyenas explicitly wanted Russia to invade and do not want the war to end. Strangely the entire rest of the western corporate media completely ignore this Poland sell-out story even though it may be the first public signal from the U.S. of a desire to start World War Three.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/1PC7DzTRS7A?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0


Dancing with The Globalists
The propaganda is endless and everywhere. The images of babies and elderly people fleeing war blasted across western “news” sites with unsubtle headlines like:

PUTIN HAS THIS BABY’S BLOOD ON HIS HANDS!

There was once a masterful art to effective propaganda as psychological manipulation. Subtlety is no longer required with so many eager to assimilate to the latest media created madness, socially conditioned to reveal their stupidity in the comment sections: “Putin is the next Hitler! Someone needs to stop him at once!”

The citizens are seamlessly assimilating to this prepared Ukrainian Borg, happy to outsource their brains to a western corporate media who command them to only devote their emotions to the cause and nothing more.

Everything is designed to pull at the heart strings of people to manufacture consent for this conflict that should never have started and could be immediately ended with Ukraine disavowing NATO membership and allowing three majority Russian regions to rejoin their mother.

This is what the west wants, more war, more refugees, more propaganda to be used for their efforts to topple Putin in Russia. The warring neoliberals and neocons have been planning this for years and are loving every minute of the show.

See the rest here

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US, Allies Sending Weapons to Ukraine from Secret Airfield in Eastern EuropeA US official told CNN the US and other NATO countries have sent 17,000 anti-tank missiles and 2,000 anti-aircraft missiles into Ukraine

Posted by M. C. on March 8, 2022

https://news.antiwar.com/2022/03/07/

by Dave DeCamp

The US and its NATO allies are sending weapons into Ukraine from an undisclosed airfield near the Ukrainian border in Eastern Europe, CNN reported on Monday.

An unnamed senior Pentagon official told CNN that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley visited the airfield last week and examined the shipment activity. It’s not clear where the base is, but last week, Western officials told the Economist that one of the main routes to deliver weapons into Ukraine is via the Polish-Ukrainian border.

Since the weapons being sent into Ukraine are meant to kill Russian troops, there are fears that Russia might target the deliveries. The Pentagon official told CNN that so far, the Russians haven’t targeted the shipments.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, 14 countries have pledged to send weapons to Ukraine. Another US official told CNN that the US and its allies have sent Ukraine 17,000 anti-tank missiles and 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

Demonstrating the speed at which these arms are being shipped, the official said that the “vast majority” of a $350 million US military aid package that was announced on February 26 had already been delivered. As of Friday, $240 million of the package had reached Ukraine.

Despite the risk of provoking Russia, the Biden administration is determined to send even more advanced weaponry into Ukraine and has given the green light to Poland to transfer Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. In exchange, the US would replace the planes Poland gives to Ukraine with US-made fighter jets.

The plan to give Ukraine the MiG-29s has support in Congress. On Monday, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NY), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin calling for the US to commit to replacing any Polish planes sent to Ukraine with US-made ones.

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Opening Salvos Thrown – What Are Putin’s Next Steps in Ukraine?

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2022

Why has Putin not shut off the gas to a Europe that is rapidly running out of it?

Because to do so would target civilian populations. If he’s not targeting civilians in Ukraine to minimize their anger at being invaded, then why would he use that weapon now against civilians in Germany who hold the key to getting overthrowing the insane politicians and oligarchs who provoked this war in the first place?

Opening Salvos Thrown – What Are Putin’s Next Steps in Ukraine?

Author: Tom Luongo

Last week I wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin rewrote the rules for the geopolitical game board. A week into his campaign to officially “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine” it’s clear to me that Putin’s ambitions lie far beyond this stated goal.

He will, however, stick to that script until that part of the campaign is complete.

Today I want to start outlining where we go next and to do that we have to describe where we are.

Looking around the reports that are the most credible (and properly bracketing for any partisanship) we are staring at a complete, effective neutralization of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) to hold any of the ethnically-dominant areas of Ukraine.

In a post for my patrons on February 25th, responding to an excellent article by Alistair MacLeod I wrote the following:

MacLeod: Both sides probably do not know how fragile the Eurozone banking system is, with both the ECB and its national central bank shareholders already having liabilities greater than their assets. In other words, rising interest rates have broken the euro system and an economic and financial catastrophe on its eastern flank will probably trigger its collapse.

I’ve been banging my shoe on this table for 3 years now.  If the US/NATO respond with some kind of guerilla war here to hang Ukraine like an albatross around Putin’s neck, as we should expect, then Europe is in big trouble financially.  

Because the financial war will keep escalating as Putin responds militarily.  Remember, he’s openly threatened the ‘decision makers’ here.  And no amount of mealy-mouthed CIA/MI6 disinformation will deter him from action anymore.  

This is always what I meant by “spooks start civil wars, militaries end them.”  There is no more War for Ukraine.  

I still believe that. This isn’t a war for Ukraine, it’s a war for the future of the entire world. Ukraine represents the hill both Davos and Russia have chosen to live or die on.

The Afghanistan Gambit

Davos has refused to let President Zelensky surrender because if he does then legally there is no more war to sanction Russia with. It’s not Putin’s War at that point, it is a settled conflict and terms negotiated.

At that point what’s left of Ukraine can be carved up into pieces. It’s way to early for that to occur, so you’ll see constant threats of peace talks, but that’s only to assuage the fears of the capital markets, which is where Davos has the most control over the situation.

The primary goal of the information war from the West is to push capital markets as far in its favor as possible, keeping things within the bounds of the ‘acceptable’ to avoid any short-term pain. Gold is still under it’s all-time high, which is just hilarious.

That said, in that same post I put up this map of a future Ukraine which I felt, conservatively, would be in effect by the end of this year. Events are moving far faster than that, however.

Chernihiv and Sumy are also in play, as is Lviv as a bargaining chip to Poland. As Fmr. Col. Douglas Macgregor pointed out on Fox News recently, everything east of the Dnieper River will become part of a new Novorussia, if not part of the Russian Federation.

Clearly this is Putin’s initial goal, the partitioning of Ukraine. He’s moved militarily, the EU and the rest of the West have responded financially. Their hope is to turn Ukraine into a quagmire, a la Afghanistan (per Hillary Clinton’s recent remarks), which they hope Russia will not be able to sustain after being choked off from the global economy.

The financial sanctions regime put in place so far are brutal but also full of holes wide enough for Putin to maneuver within and around because of the well understood facts of Russia’s dominance as a global supplier of life-sustaining commodities for the entire world.

This is an asymmetric war.

There isn’t much farther the West can go financially. They’ve seized Bank of Russia foreign assets, for pity’s sake. What other weapons do they really have in their arsenal which can threaten Russia with?

They have, in effect, executed their nuclear first strike against Russia. Once you’ve gone nuclear, where do you go next? Real nukes? Yes, that’s a possibility, sadly, given the people we’re talking about.

On the other hand, Russia has so far only committed the necessary troops to neutralize Ukraine. So, in this respect, big advantage Russia.

See the rest here

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Anna Netrebko, Russian soprano with ties to Putin, out at Metropolitan Opera – Armstrong Economics

Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2022

The West is committing financial suicide. This spills over into corporations making long-term decisions based upon the demonization of Putin, ignoring even the fact that Kamala Harris publically told Ukraine to join NATO and violated the neutrality of Ukraine agreed to in the 1991 Budapest Agreement. We are witnessing the decline and fall of the world economy as we have known it.

Welcoming the New World Order

The West is going crazy, and the decisions to throw out all ties to Russia are further escalating the risk of global war. The NY Metropolitan Opera even fired Anna Netrebko, a Russian soprano, because she has ties to Putin. Even in London, Gazprom PJSC’s energy-trading arm is being kicked out of its central London. Even Russia’s RT has been shut down by Direct TV. Then inside Russia, a host of Western companies are exiting including Apple, Mercedes-Benz, and BP.

Even Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has warned that China will now accelerate its plans to come up with alternatives to SWIFT after seeing Russia becoming isolated economically. We are looking at similar paranoia over COVID that is now sweeping through the world economy, which will cause a tremendous contraction and indeed set the stage for what our computer has been forecasting — China will become the new Financial Capital of the World post-2032.

The West is committing financial suicide. This spills over into corporations making long-term decisions based upon the demonization of Putin, ignoring even the fact that Kamala Harris publically told Ukraine to join NATO and violated the neutrality of Ukraine agreed to in the 1991 Budapest Agreement. We are witnessing the decline and fall of the world economy as we have known it. Those who have hated the dollar, always calling for its crash, will see a future where even cryptocurrencies will not survive. The false belief that somehow crypto will bypass the central banks and end fiat is such a joke. Ukraine’s power plant, the largest nuclear plant in all of Europe, has been captured and is on fire. Crypto is worthless without a power grid.

So welcome the New World Order, but it will be NOTHING as even Schwab expected.

Be seeing you

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