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Posts Tagged ‘The West’

A Political Price is Being Paid for Being in the West

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2024

by Ted Snider

But key among Germany’s economic challenges is the hammering Germany’s energy intensive industrial sector has taken by the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. German industry has struggled to adjust to the higher price of energy caused by U.S.-led sanctions on Russian oil and by the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline. Being the largest economic supporter of Ukraine has further strained the economy.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/a-political-price-is-being-paid-for-being-in-the-west/

depositphotos 285880598 s

The concept of “the West” is a complex and difficult one. At times it excludes countries in the geographical west, like Cuba and Venezuela and sometimes Brazil. At times it includes countries not in the geographical west, like Japan and Australia. As Richard Sakwa has explained, the West can refer to a 500 year old civilizational West or to a cultural or historical West of which Russia considers itself to be a core member.

The twin ticket admission into the political West is membership in the U.S.-led, post-Cold War security community built around NATO and in a cultural community allegedly built around free trade, freedom and democracy. The political West, by definition, excludes Russia and, now, China.

But recently, there seems to be a political price being paid by governments in the political West. It is being exacted at the polls by their citizens.

On November 6, the government of Germany, Europe’s most populous country and its largest economy, collapsed when Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister, the leader of one of his two coalition partners, dissolving the coalition government. The government will limp along until a confidence vote is held in parliament in January. If Scholz’s Social Democrat Party does not survive the confidence vote, that would trigger early elections in March.

The catalyst of the collapse is disagreement by the coalition partners over a weakening economy and budgetary struggles. There are multiple reasons for Germany’s economic decline, including competition from China in the automotive industry. But key among Germany’s economic challenges is the hammering Germany’s energy intensive industrial sector has taken by the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. German industry has struggled to adjust to the higher price of energy caused by U.S.-led sanctions on Russian oil and by the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline. Being the largest economic supporter of Ukraine has further strained the economy.

All three members of Scholz’s already unpopular coalition have been losing support. Scholz’ Social Democrats are polling only around 16% and the combined support of their coalition hovers around 30%, while the opposition Christian Democrats by themselves have 32.5% support. Two fringe parties, the far right populist Alternative für Deutschland and the populist leftwing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance are both gaining support in part because they oppose further support for Ukraine.

Though not the only cause of the price the German government is paying at the polls, the war in Ukraine, and their policies on it, are contributing to the cost. Molly O’Neal, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has pointed out that opponents of governments’ stances on Ukraine have fared well, not only in Germany, but in France and elsewhere in Europe.

Several members of the political West have been punished in elections recently, including Italy, Austria, Finland, Portugal, Slovakia, Australia and Japan. While many members in good standing among the political West have fallen, governments outside of the political West, including all the original members of BRICS, who have taken alternative policy approaches to the war in Ukraine have fared better. Some have done worse than they traditionally have, and though not all meet the West’s criterion for democracy, Russia, China, India, and South Africa have all re-elected their governments. Brazil returned Lula da Silva to power, a man strongly supportive of BRICS and, along with China, has played a leading role, unlike the political West, in advocating for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine.

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The West Only Has Pretend Heroes Like Spider-Man And SpongeBob

Posted by M. C. on October 29, 2024

Caitlin Johnstone

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-west-only-has-pretend-heroes

As the US-backed atrocities in the middle east get uglier and uglier, I keep thinking about something that was said by an Iranian cleric named Shahab Moradi after the US assassinated Iran’s immensely popular general Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

Moradi complained that Iran can’t even really retaliate for the assassination because the US doesn’t have any real heroes of its own like Soleimani, saying, “Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob?”

I’ve never seen a more incisive and withering critique of western culture, and I probably never will. It’s such an accurate statement and paints such a clear picture of what this civilization is really like that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could possibly top it.

There are no real heroes with popular support in the western empire, because everything that’s truly heroic gets stomped down here, and everything that gets amplified to popularity is either vapid distraction or directly facilitates the interests of the evil empire.

Our own generals are busy butchering civilians for oil and geostrategic control.

Our military personnel are imperial stormtroopers.

Our police are the security guards of capitalism.

Our most prominent journalists are all propagandists.

Our most prominent celebrities are famous because of their ability to pretend to be fictional characters doing fake things in Hollywood movies.

Our most prominent artists are famous because of their ability to churn out formulaic pop songs about empty-headed bullshit.

Our most widely recognized symbols are corporate logos.

Our most highly regarded professionals are those who can sell westerners the most future landfill manufactured by wage slaves in the global south.

Our most well-known government leaders are those who’ve sold their souls to oligarchs and imperialists and can lie to the public most convincingly.

The only westerners doing truly heroic things here get thrown in prison, or murdered, or pushed into obscurity, because the only truly heroic thing anyone can do in today’s world is to take a stand against the western empire.

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The West – Indubitably – Has Lost Russia, and is Losing Eurasia Too

Posted by M. C. on July 3, 2024

Is not President Putin’s purpose in visiting North Korea and Vietnam now clear in the context of the Eurasian security architecture project?

Today, the U.S. and EU Security ‘Élite’ have been so ‘successful’ with their equally exaggerated anti-Russian propaganda that they too, are trapped by it. Even if they wanted to (which they don’t), a replacement security architecture may simply prove ‘unnegotiable’ for years to come.

By Alastair Crooke
Strategic Culture

There perhaps was a momentary shrugging-off of slumber in Washington this week as they read the account of Sergei Lavrov’s démarche to the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow: Russia was telling the U.S. – “We are no longer at peace”!

Not just ‘no longer at peace’, Russia was holding the U.S. responsible for the ‘cluster strike’ on a Crimean beach on last Sunday’s Pentecost holiday, killing several (including children) and injuring many more. The U.S. thereby “became party” to the proxy war in Ukraine (it was an American-supplied ATACM; programmed by American specialists; and drawing on U.S. data), Russia’s statement read; “Retaliatory measures will certainly follow”.

Evidently, somewhere an amber light flashed hues of pink and red. The Pentagon grasped that something had happened – ‘No going around it; This could escalate badly’. The U.S. Defence Secretary (after a pause since March 2023) reached for the phone to call his Russian counterpart: ‘The U.S. regretted civilian deaths; the Ukrainians had full targeting discretion’.

The Russian public however, is plain furious.

The diplomatic argot of ‘there now being a state of betweenness; not war and not peace’ is but the ‘half of it’.

The West has ‘lost’ Russia much more profoundly than is understood.

President Putin – in his statement to the Foreign Ministry Board in wake of the G7 sword-rattling – detailed just how we had arrived at this pivotal juncture (of inevitable escalation). Putin indicated that the gravity of the situation demanded a ‘last chance’ offer to the West, one that Putin emphatically said was to be “No temporary ceasefire for Kiev to prepare a new offensive; nor a freezing the conflict – but rather, needed to be about the war’s final completion”.

It has been widely understood that the only credible way to end the Ukraine war would be a ‘peace’ agreement emerging through negotiation between Russia and the U.S.

This however is rooted in a familiar U.S.-centric vision – ‘Waiting on Washington …’.

Lavrov archly commented (in paraphrase) that if anyone imagines we are ‘waiting for Godot’, and ‘will run for it’, they are mistaken.

Moscow has something much more radical in mind – something that will shock the West.

Moscow (and China) are not simply waiting upon the whims of the West, but plan to invert completely the security architecture paradigm: To create an ‘Alt’ architecture for the ‘vast space’ of Eurasia, no less.

It is intended to exit the existing bloc zero-sum confrontation. A new confrontation is not envisaged; however the new architecture nevertheless is intended to force ‘external actors’ to curtail their hegemony across the continent.

In his Foreign Ministry address, Putin explicitly looked ahead to the collapse of the Euro-Atlantic security system and to a new architecture emerging: “The world will never be the same again”, he said.

What did he mean?

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s principal Foreign Policy adviser (at the Primakov Readings Forum), clarified Putin’s ‘sparse’ allusion:

Ushakov reportedly said that Russia increasingly has come to the view there is not going to be any long-term re-shaping of the security system in Europe. And without any major re-shaping, there will be no ‘final completion’ (Putin’s words) to the conflict in Ukraine.

Ushakov explained that this unified and indivisible security system in Eurasia must replace the Euro-Atlantic and Euro-centric models that are now receding into oblivion.

“This speech [of Putin at the Russian Foreign Ministry], I would say, sets the vector of further activities of our country at the international stage, including the building of a single and indivisible security system in Eurasia,” Ushakov said.

The dangers of excessive propaganda were apparent in an earlier episode where a major state found itself trapped by its own demonisation of its adversaries: South Africa’s security architecture for Angola and South-West Africa (now Namibia) too had fallen apart by 1980 – (I was there at the time). The South African Defence Forces still retained a residue of immense destructive capacity to the north of South Africa, but the use of that force was not yielding any political solution or amelioration. Rather, it was taking South Africa to oblivion (just as Ushakov described the Euro-Atlantic model today). Pretoria wanted change; It was ready (in principle) to do a deal with SWAPO, but the attempt to implement a ceasefire fell apart in early 1981.

The bigger problem was that the South African apartheid government had so succeeded with their propaganda and demonisation of SWAPO as being both ‘Marxist AND terrorist’ that their public recoiled at any deal, and it was to be another decade (and would take a geo-strategic revolution) before a settlement finally became possible.

Today, the U.S. and EU Security ‘Élite’ have been so ‘successful’ with their equally exaggerated anti-Russian propaganda that they too, are trapped by it. Even if they wanted to (which they don’t), a replacement security architecture may simply prove ‘unnegotiable’ for years to come.

See the rest here

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The West Has an Illiterate Financial Press

Posted by M. C. on May 17, 2024

As the fools ruling the US continue their destruction of the country, the dollar and living standards will die with the country. America is likely living her last years. Perhaps this is why Putin and Xi don’t bother to dispose of us.

No argument there. I remember back in the 70’s or 80’s watching national network news (likely NBC). This day the network’s lead financial correspondent said “No one really knows what will happen but experts say it may get worse before it gets better.”

Back then I was dumber than I am now and I figured out this “news” was worthless.

Paul Craig Roberts

The entire the financial press has zero understanding of basic economics. The financial “journalists” just print press releases.

The US debt has never mattered, because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. That means US debt is the reserves of the world’s central banks. If US debt rises, so does the reserves of the world banking system. All central banks were delighted to accumulate more US Treasury debt as it meant the reserves of their banking system went up.

The Federal Reserve can always redeem US Treasury debt by creating money with which to buy it. The debt is always redeemable because it is denominated in dollars.

The problem arrives when the dollar is deserted as world reserve currency. The morons who comprise the Biden regime are scaring central banks away from the dollar as their reserves because of sanctions against Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela, and others. The slow mental processes of central banks are beginning to understand that having your reserves in US Treasury dollar debt means they can be frozen, seized, denied to your use if you cross Washington.

The threat to Washington is, whereas the Fed can print dollars to redeem the debt, the Fed cannot print foreign currencies to redeem the US dollar. So, if central banks shift their reserves out of dollars into gold, as Russia and China are doing, or into other currencies, the supply of dollars in foreign exchange markets have fewer and fewer takers. Consequently the dollar loses its value relative to gold, silver, and rising currencies, and the dollar’s value falls in foreign exchange markets. As America’s manufacturing is offshored and as America relies on imports of food, US inflation rises. Historically, the Fed’s response to inflation has been unemployment.

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The Agony of the West

Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2022

By Thierry Meyssan

Voltairenet.org

So the question is: will the West play for all it’s worth? Will they take the risk of a Third World War, even though it has already been lost, just to avoid dying alone?

Sergey Lavrov used to compare the West to a wounded predator. According to him, it should not be provoked because it would be taken by madness and could break everything. It is better to accompany it to the graveyard. The West does not see it that way. Washington and London are leading a crusade against Moscow and Beijing. They roar and are ready for anything. But what can they really do?

https://www.voltairenet.org/article217555.html

This article is a follow-up to :
 1. “Russia wants to force the US to respect the UN Charter,” January 4, 2022.
 2. “Washington pursues RAND plan in Kazakhstan, then Transnistria,” January 11, 2022.
 3. “Washington refuses to hear Russia and China,” January 18, 2022.
 4. “Washington and London, deafened“, February 1, 2022.
 5. “Washington and London try to preserve their domination over Europe“, February 8, 2022.
 6. “Two interpretations of the Ukrainian affair”, 16 February 2022.
 7. “Washington sounds the alarm, while its allies withdraw”, 22 February 2022.
 8. “Russia declares war on the Straussians”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 5 March 2022.
 9. “A gang of drug addicts and neo-nazis”, 5 March 2022.
 10 “Israel stunned by Ukrainian neo-Nazis”, 8 March 2022.
 11. “Ukraine: the great manipulation“, March 22, 2022.
 12. “The New World Order being prepared under the pretext of war in Ukraine“, 29 March 2022.
 13. “The war propaganda changes its shape”, 5 April 2022.
 14. “The alliance of MI6, the CIA and the Banderites“, 12 April 2022.
 15. “The end of Western domination“, April 19, 2022.
 16. “Ukraine: the Second World War never ended“, April 26, 2022.
 17. “Washington hopes to restore its hyper-power through war in Ukraine” May 3, 2022.
 18. “Canada and the Banderites“, 10 May 2022.
 19. “New war brewing for post-defeat against Russia,” May 24, 2022.
 20. “Ukrainian secret military programs“, May 31, 2022.
 21. “Ukraine: misunderstandings, misunderstandings and misunderstandings“, 7 June 2022.
 22. “Poland and Ukraine“, June 14, 2022,
 23. “The ideology of Ukrainian banditry“, 21 June 2022.
 24. “The Scuttling of Peace in Europe,” June 28, 2022.

President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the G7 summit in Elmau, Germany.

The G7 summit in Bavaria and the Nato summit in Madrid were supposed to announce the West’s punishment of the Kremlin for its “special military operation in Ukraine”. But, if the image given was that of Western unity, the reality attests to their disconnection from reality, their loss of audience in the world and ultimately the end of their supremacy.

While the West is convinced that what is at stake is in Ukraine, the world sees it facing the “Thucydides trap” [1]. Will international relations continue to be organized around them or will they become multipolar? Will the peoples who have been subjugated until now break free and gain sovereignty? Will it be possible to think differently than in terms of global domination and to devote themselves to the development of each individual?

The West has devised a narrative of the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine that overlooks their own actions since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They have forgotten their signing of the Charter for European Security (also known as the OSCE Istanbul Declaration) and the way they violated it by making almost all the former members of the Warsaw Pact and some of the new post-Soviet states join one by one. They have forgotten the way they changed the Ukrainian government in 2004 and the coup d’état by which they put Banderist nationalists in power in Kiev in 2014. Having made a clean sweep of the past, they blame Russia for all the ills. They refuse to question their own actions and consider, at the time, they were forced into power. For them, their victories make the Law.

To preserve this imaginary narrative, they have already silenced the Russian media at home.

No matter how much they claim to be “democrats”, it is better to censor dissenting voices before lying.

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The West in Crisis: Subversion From Within – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on December 12, 2020

It is revealing that hundreds of millions of members of minority groups born into societies outside the Western domain are eager to leave their own countries and come to live among us. So much so that if we did not have barriers to hold them back, we would be overrun and that in short order. If we were such an unjust and oppressive civilization as it is claimed, this situation would surely not have arisen

Their allegations, however, are not borne out by facts. As it happens, the West was the first civilization that accorded equal rights to all those within its realms and is the only one that does so consistently. Not only does the West take special care to protect its minorities, it affords them special rights and privileges.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/12/vasko-kohlmayer/the-west-in-crisis-subversion-from-within/

By Vasko Kohlmayer

It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely “patriotic” about running down America. Anti-Americanism – a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization – became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before.

— Jonah Goldberg

I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

— Aiden Wilson Tozer

What is called Western Civilization is in an advanced state of decomposition, and another Dark Ages will soon be upon us, if, indeed, it has not already begun. With the Media, especially television, governing all our lives, as they indubitably do, it is easily imaginable that this might happen without our noticing… by accustoming us to the gradual deterioration of our values.

— Malcom Muggeridge

There is no question that by nearly any metric the West is by far the most successful civilization in history. Among its many spectacular accomplishments, the West has attained affluence and material prosperity that were previously unimaginable. Its scientific advancements and technological progress seem like the stuff of science fiction. Its military power and strength are without equal. But not only do Westerners enjoy unprecedented degree of wealth, health and security, they are also guaranteed unequalled personal liberties and political rights. In short, the West has achieved what those who lived in other civilizations could only dream of. The affluence, freedoms and safety available to Westerners are by any historical measure beyond extraordinary. One clear present-day indicator of the West’s staggering success is the countless people from all over the globe willing to take great risks and pay almost any price to come and live here.

All of this notwithstanding, there is an ominous feeling, however, that we are a civilization whose days are numbered. Despite our immense wealth, technological capabilities and military power, there is a growing sense that the West is under an attack it may not be able to withstand.

This attack has not been unleashed by some powerful external enemy. Nor could it have been since no external foe is strong enough to take on this civilization. The attack has come from within. Neither was it launched suddenly. Rather it has been a progressive operation. Low level and barely perceivable in the beginning, it has been gathering in strength over a period of decades. Its initial phase could be compared to a partisan campaign with a shot taken here and there. Emboldened by a lack of proper response on the part of those it sought to subvert, the enemy expanded its field of hostilities and achieved surprising victories. Invigorated and encouraged by the gains, the foe has recently thrown away all of its disguises and has come out into the open in full force. It has shown itself stronger than most would have imagined with the result that we are now locked in an all-out battle for survival. It is an indication of our malaise that many people are still not fully aware of this.

The enemy ranks are made up of those who harbor an aversion toward their own culture and society. Of those there are many, their numbers stoked up by decades of systematic anti-western indoctrination by the schools and the media. Charging Western civilization with oppression and racism, they claim that our socio-economic system is inherently unjust. Western style liberal democracies, they allege, discriminate and exploit racial minorities, women, homosexuals, transexuals, non-binary people, multi-gender persons, cross-genders and – apart from the select elite chosen from white males – everyone else who happens to abide in the west.

Their allegations, however, are not borne out by facts. As it happens, the West was the first civilization that accorded equal rights to all those within its realms and is the only one that does so consistently. Not only does the West take special care to protect its minorities, it affords them special rights and privileges. This applies to minorities across the spectrum and encompasses race, gender, sexual orientation and whatever other minority criterion exists or may yet be discovered by the progressive illuminati. It is revealing that hundreds of millions of members of minority groups born into societies outside the Western domain are eager to leave their own countries and come to live among us. So much so that if we did not have barriers to hold them back, we would be overrun and that in short order. If we were such an unjust and oppressive civilization as it is claimed, this situation would surely not have arisen

But facts do not seem to make much difference to these civilizational malcontents. Driven by frustration and anger that are out of kilter with reality, they do not confine themselves to mere verbal critiques but seek to translate their feelings into action. They do this by maligning and undermining the values, beliefs and institutions that have made this civilization what it is. The decades of their persistent efforts have borne fruit. Having been subjected to years of denigration and criticism, Westerners have lost confidence in the fundamental probity of their own culture. Wholesome qualities that once propelled the west to greatness – such as self-denial, deferred gratification, thrift, independence, faithfulness, devotion, etc. – are now commonly ridiculed and despised. They have been increasingly supplanted by such insalubrious tendencies as self-indulgence, pleasure seeking, victim-playing, promiscuity, vulgarity and profligacy. Because the West’s cultural and moral foundation have been undermined, the institutions they support cannot but malfunction. Schools, for instance, now routinely teach young people destructive and immoral ideas. Most importantly, they have been for years inculcating students with abhorrence for their own cultural heritage. At the same time the unceasing barrage of decadent propaganda has loosened the bonds of the nuclear family with the result that co-habitation, divorce and out of wedlock births have increased at alarming rates. Because of the general acceptance of profligacy and lack of restraint, western currencies have been steadily losing their purchasing power due to unsustainable levels of debt incurred throughout all layers of our financial system. We could go on but let us say for now that nearly all Western institutions have been – to one degree or another – impaired and marked by decline.

As a consequence of this – and because the West has lost faith in itself – we now stand as a fragile and weakened civilization. This situation has been brought about two complementary courses of action: the long-term efforts of civilizational saboteurs and the failure of the rest to protect their culture, institutions and heritage.

Emboldened by their societies’ weakness and apathy, these saboteurs feel that their final goal may be in sight. We have seen a dramatic eruption of their destructive enthusiasm in the late spring and summer of this year when they came out in force under the guise of anti-racism protests. The term saboteur does not, of course, only encompass the vandals wreaking havoc in the streets but also their enablers and protectors in the media, government, transnational organizations, academia and other institutions. In the course of this year, we watched as these players spewed a steady stream of fiery condemnations of western societies as being irredeemably racist, discriminatory and otherwise oppressive. This was naturally accompanied by calls for a radical remaking of our socio-economic model communicated through the catch phrases such as the “The Great Reset,” “The New World Order” and “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

Even as it has attained unprecedented levels of wealth, technological advancement and power, Western civilization finds itself today in an existential crisis and at a point of mortal danger. It is a great irony that the civilization that has provided its people with more affluence, comfort, security, freedom and rights than any other is in danger of being destroyed from within by malcontents that it itself nurtured.

“Know your enemy” said Sun Tzu in his Art of War. The great question, then, is this: what motivates these domestic subversives to act in this way? What is the source of the psychological impulses that make them hate and strike against their own societies which – although far from perfect – nevertheless belong to the most equitable and humane civilizational stream that has emerged from the currents of history?

This is the question we need to find the answer to if we hope to hold back and repulse the insidious forces that threaten the survival of what is left of Western civilization.

The Best of Vasko Kohlmayer Vasko Kohlmayer [send him mail] is a naturalized citizen.

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