Morocco has reportedly broken its neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war by becoming the first African country to provide military assistance to Ukraine.
Though Morocco has not officially confirmed the transaction, they have reportedly agreed to provide 90 T-72 tanks as well as spare parts to Ukraine in a $97 million dollar contract being paid for by the US and the Netherlands.
The transfer of the tanks was reportedly requested by the US. African media opted for the stronger description that Morocco “has apparently succumbed to pressures from the United States,” explaining that “The United States has secretly convince Morocco to deliver modernized T-72B tanks, and spare parts to Kiev.” Le Journal L’Afriquesays “In the greatest secrecy, [the US] managed to convince Rabat to deliver spare parts for T-72 armored vehicles to Kyiv.”
The US considers Morocco a major strategic ally and has reportedly “exerted pressure on Morocco to adopt a clear position on the conflict and to take a side.” In April, Morocco accepted a US invitation to attend a 43 nation high-level military summit on how more support can be given to Ukraine.
The US and Europe are having an increasingly difficult time coming up with weapons and ammunition to supply Ukraine. General Valery Zaluzhny, the head of the Ukrainian armed forces, recently toldThe Economist that the British Chief of Defense told him that Europe “will have nothing to live on if you fire that many shells.” So, they have looked elsewhere.
It is hard not to see Morocco’s hypocrisy. They are arming Ukraine to defend the principle that one nation cannot invade another and annex territory: precisely what Morocco has done.
Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.
So now at the start of a new year, the world faces a precarious predicament in Europe orchestrated by officials in Washington. They and their deluded European collaborators have a helluva nerve placing the entire world at risk to indulge their egos. Diplomacy is out the window. Ideologues are in the saddle.
The Russo-Ukraine war, starting date either 2014 or 2022, is the culmination of NATO’s eastward march which began in the 1990s. The conflict did not spring from out of the blue, which is the impression you might get from the mainstream media.
But why, one wonders, did NATO enlarge east in the first place? This policy decision was predicated on somebody’s dubious assumption that Russia remained an enduring enemy of the U.S. and Europe, even after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
If you bought that premise, then Russia still needed to be contained and checkmated by military power. In any case, certain Neocon characters in Washington were eager to prolong the Cold War no matter what. This time around they could lord it over Russia in a unipolar world created by the crack-up of the Soviet Union.
Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.
The unchallenged assumption—or was it just a pretense?!—that Russia remained an enemy of “the West” is without factual foundation. It was little more than a Neocon-Neoliberal wet dream to justify the prerogatives of American geostrategic primacy.
The U.S. and NATO won the Cold War, or at any rate were left standing, when communism imploded on the streets of Moscow and in the eastern bloc. No mystery. Russians and Eastern Europeans wanted a better life like everybody else. Karl Marx and the USSR were not up to the task.
The Soviet Union had vanished, almost overnight. The Warsaw Pact disbanded soon thereafter. Moscow was now anti-communist. Russia was reverting to its pre-Bolshevik, pro-Orthodox Christian status, a European state within the eastern outskirts of Europe. This renaissance scenario was what Vladimir Putin had in mind going forward when Yeltsin passed the baton to him in 1999.
Not surprisingly, Putin wanted to recoup Russia’s great power standing, reform and expand its wrecked economy, and cooperate with Europe in every way possible. He needed western Europe to resuscitate Russia. And Europe needed Russia’s raw materials, especially petroleum and natural gas. It looked to be exactly what it was: a win-win relationship based upon mutual self-interest.
But then Putin, like Yeltsin before him, could not help but observe NATO’s puzzling march east—which finally ended at Russia’s doorsteps. Why? What did Washington expect Moscow to conclude from this odd development? How would it react? Was it a deliberate provocation?
Remember that Washington had promised, after the unification of Germany in the early 1990s, that NATO—a military alliance controlled from Washington—would not move eastward one inch. But that promise was repeatedly broken, even in the face of strong protests and red-line warnings from Moscow.
“How does this war end? When Russia breaks, and they take Putin out. Anything short of that, the war’s gonna continue,” Graham said on the Fox News program America Reports on Wednesday.
Graham said the US is “in it to win it, and the only way you’re gonna win it is to break the Russian military and have somebody in Russia take Putin out to give the Russian people a new lease on life.”
The hawkish senator made similar comments back in March when he asked if there was a “Brutus” in Russia who could kill Putin. In his comments on Wednesday, Graham also said the Biden administration should send Ukraine the advanced and long-range weapons that Kyiv has been asking for.
The western Ruling Classes do not understand – that is to say, they do not want to understand – the ‘straws in the wind’, that are blowing in another direction – for example, the recent Samarkand SCO summit. Put simply: The Leviathan current has run its course; that’s it. History is moving in a different direction, and western leaders pretend not to notice.
The Ukraine war ‘bubble’ is deflating as the U.S. and Europe reach the bottom of the arms ‘inventory barrel’.
Historic shifts in world politics happen very slowly. That was not the case however, when the U.S. first stepped onto the world stage. It happened quite suddenly in 1898 – with the invasion of Cuba: Old Europe watched with palpable anxiety …The Manchester Guardian, at the time, reported that nearly every American had come to embrace this new expansionist zeitgeist. The few critics were “simply laughed at for their pains”. The Frankfurter Zeitung warned against “the disastrous consequences of their exuberance” but realized that Americans would not listen.
In 1845, an unsigned article already had given birth to the slogan ‘Manifest Destiny’ – a claim that America had a destiny to expand, and to occupy others’ lands. Sheldon Richman, in America’s Counter-Revolution, wrote that this latter vision clearly had ‘Empire on its Mind’.
This ‘Destiny’ ethos marked the turning point away from the former decentralization dynamic, and the start of the American impulse towards an imperial totalising outreach which succeeded it. (Not all, of course, were on board – the early U.S. conservative ethos was Burkean: i.e., suspicious of foreign entanglements).
Today, the picture could not be more different. Doubts and misgivings are everywhere; the drive and confidence of ‘Empire’ has faded. The U.S. apes more the exhausted Austro-Hungarian Empire of the pre-WW1 era – dragging an array of allied nations into a conflict that – at that time – turned into WW1. Now, it is western Europe that has been dragged into another European war – by default – owing to their alliance/ allegiance with Washington.
Then, as today, all states disastrously underestimated the length and severity of the conflict – and misread the nature and significance of events.
Today’s war (against Russia) is framed in the West in a childish-moral trope (which nonetheless seems to work for an anaesthetised public) – that of WWII: Every rival is another Hitler, any reflective comment, another Neville Chamberlain example of appeasement. A tyrant lusts for European land and domination, and the only question is whether the good and just can muster the resolve to defeat this evil ambition.
This simplistic meme plainly is intended to obfuscate from their electorates the significance of the underlying dynamics at work: Not only is a major political cycle in transition, but this is occurring precisely at a moment when the western hyper-financialised ‘business-model’ is cracking. Put simply: the narrative obfuscation (“we are winning”) hides risks (both political and economic) whose gravity, western leaders seem unable (or unwilling) to grasp.
The U.S. – like pre-war Austria–Hungary – is slowly falling apart. That cannot any more be fudged. Washington is haemorrhaging control over events and making strategic mistakes. A certain class in the western ruling élite however, seems stuck in a reading of history. An interpretation that sees war as restoring the health of the state: that any conflict – any us vs them, whether real or abstract (such as war on poverty, drugs, the virus, etc.) – feeds centralisation and strengthens the totalising Leviathan. Indeed, even conceptualised as an internal ‘us versus the enemy within’ war, this too is seen as consolidating the Leviathan.
This is the lesson that the élite claims it has learned from the modern state. In one sense however, this politics has become its own bubble of abstract narratives: a centralising, totalising bubble. One however, that is beginning to burst.
In addition, hot water should not be heated to more than 60 degrees, and portable electric heaters, saunas, and heated swimming pools are prohibited.
Remix News’ Thomas Brooke reports that Swiss citizens found to be in violation of the country’s new heating rules, which prohibit warming homes above 19°C this winter, could face daily fines of up to 3,000 Swiss francs and up to three years in prison.
To note, the World Health Organization has long held that a temperature no colder than 20°C is recommended for children, the elderly, and those with existing health conditions.
Markus Spörndli, a spokesperson of the Swiss Department of Economics (DEF) explained that “infringements of the law on the supply of the country are always misdemeanors, even […] crimes, and must be prosecuted ex officio by the cantons.”
The fine to be imposed on consumers found to be violating the new energy laws will range from 30 francs up to a maximum of 3,000 francs per day, Spörndli said, confirming the amount would be dependent on the nature of the offense and the economic situation of the perpetrator.
Furthermore, willful violations of the government guidelines could see consumers jailed for up to three years in prison, something Spörndli says the government hopes to avoid.
“The draft ordinances are based primarily on the fact that the vast majority of the population respects the laws,” he added.
Economy Minister Guy Parmelin told a press conference at the Federal Council last Wednesday that Switzerland is “not a police state,” but it is understood, as reported by Swiss news outlet Blick, that there may be spot checks undertaken to ensure people are complying with the rules.
Swiss cantons now have until Sept. 22 to discuss the proposals and address how they may be enforced, with some officials concerned they may be inundated with citizen complaints from nosy neighbors.
As such, the DEF only expects fines to be dished out “if the infringement was reported and checked and could then be proven.”
However, police chiefs believe enforcement will be difficult.
“There are still a few open questions that need to be clarified,” Fredy Fässler told Blick, adding that he does not want to see the energy police going door to door: “We want to apply the ordinance with discernment.”
As we previously highlighted, numerous other European countries are introducing similar restrictions in the face of a worsening energy crisis following the shut down of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
French economist Charles Gave said many more people aren’t buying the narrative that Vladimir Putin is solely to blame for the crisis.
“For the last 15 years, our European leaders have gone into a climate craze, promoting magic mirrors and windmills as the solution. It does not work. These solutions demand the same capacity in gas power plants,” Gave said.
The Biden administration’s strident moral posturing may needlessly prolong the Ukraine war at great cost in both treasure and blood to the Ukrainian people. Calls for regime change and putting Putin on trial for war crimes are dangerously irresponsible.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a humanitarian tragedy for that country, and all reasonable people should want the increasingly bloody conflict to end as soon as possible. Policies that the Biden administration is pursuing, however, threaten to prolong the war and its suffering. The troubling question arises about whether Washington’s policies are merely inept, or whether they reflect a deliberate strategy to bleed Russian forces and inflict a geo-strategic defeat on a great power adversary – regardless of the cost to Ukraine. Indications are mounting that it’s the latter scenario.
Even the decision by the United States and other NATO members to pour weapons into Ukraine, including Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and Switchblade drones, has had the inherent effect of prolonging the armed conflict. Without those arms shipments, it is likely that the Russian invasion would have proceeded faster, perhaps much faster, and more decisively. Western leaders, though, had understandable motives for wanting to deny the invader an easy victory. From their viewpoint, not assisting Ukraine would mean seeing a case of military aggression against a sovereign state rewarded. Because the aggression occurred in Europe, the United States and its NATO allies had an even greater incentive to inflict pain on Russia for creating the biggest disruption of the continent’s peace in nearly eight decades.
Some other Western, especially U.S., actions are less understandable. Administration officials have been noticeably unenthusiastic about statements by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, expressing a willingness to renounce his country’s ambitions to join NATO and instead accept a neutral status with multilateral guarantees. A firm, written commitment that Ukraine will never become a NATO member was a long-standing Russian demand even before the war began. Zelensky’s newfound receptivity has increased the prospects for a peace accord. So, too, has Moscow’s decision to scale-back military operations near Kyiv and other areas in northern Ukraine.
US leaders should be expressing explicit support for such diplomacy and the compromises it has begun to reflect. Furthermore, Washington should state explicitly that it will respect the terms of any peace settlement the two belligerents might be able to reach. Thus far, however, the Biden administration’s reaction to the bilateral peace talks has been tepid at best, and it even remains uncertain whether the United States would refrain from discouraging or undermining an accord.
The reaction to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, no matter what you think about it, has exposed the West’s double standards
This sort of global grandstanding, which resembles some sort of mindless virtue-signaling campaign now so popular in liberal capitals, aside from unnecessarily inflaming an already volatile situation, assumes that Russia is totally wrong, period.
Such a reckless approach, which leaves no room for debate, no room for discussion, no room for seeing Russia’s side in this extremely complex situation, only guarantees further standoffs, if not full-blown global war, further down the road.
The West has taken an extreme stance against Russia over its invasion in Ukraine. This reaction exposes a high degree of hypocrisy considering that US-led wars abroad never received the punitive response they deserved.
If the current events in Ukraine have proven anything, it’s that the United States and its transatlantic partners are able to run roughshod across a shell-shocked planet – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, to name a few of the hotspots – with almost total impunity. Meanwhile, Russia and Vladimir Putin are being portrayed in nearly every mainstream media publication today as the second coming of Nazi Germany for their actions in Ukraine.
First, let’s be clear about something. Hypocrisy and double standards alone do not provide justification for the opening of hostilities by any country. In other words, just because NATO-bloc countries have been tearing a path of wanton destruction around the globe since 2001 without serious consequences, this does not give Russia, or any country, moral license to behave in a similar manner. There must be a convincing reason for a country to authorize the use of force, thereby committing itself to what could be considered ‘a just war’. Thus, the question: Can Russia’s actions today be considered ‘just’ or, at the very least, understandable? I will leave that answer up to the reader’s better judgment, but it would be idle not to consider some important details.
Only to the consumers of mainstream media fast food would it come as a surprise that Moscow has been warning on NATO expansion for well over a decade. In his now-famous speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Vladimir Putin poignantly asked the assembled global powerbrokers point blank, “why is it necessary to put military infrastructure on our borders during this [NATO] expansion? Can someone answer this question?” Later in the speech, he said that expanding military assets smack up to the Russian border “is not connected in any way with the democratic choices of individual states.”
Not only were the Russian leader’s concerns met with the predictable amount of disregard amid the deafening sound of crickets, NATO has gone on to bestow membership on four more countries since that day (Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia). As a thought experiment that even a dolt could conduct, imagine Washington’s reaction if Moscow were building a continuously expanding military bloc in South America, for example.
The real cause for Moscow’s alarm, however, came when the US and NATO began flooding neighboring Ukraine with a dazzling array of sophisticated weaponry amid calls for membership in the military bloc. What on earth could go wrong? In Moscow’s mind, Ukraine was beginning to pose an existential threat to Russia.
In December, Moscow, quickly nearing the end of its patience, delivered draft treaties to the US and NATO, demanding they halt any further military expansion eastwards, including by the accession of Ukraine or any other states. It included the explicit statement that NATO “shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine or other states of Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia.” Once again, Russia’s proposals were met with arrogance and indifference by Western leaders.
While people will have varying opinions as to the shocking actions that Moscow took next, nobody can say they were not warned. After all, it’s not like Russia woke up on February 24 and suddenly decided it was a wonderful day to start a military operation on the territory of Ukraine. So yes, an argument could be made that Russia had concern for its own security as a justification for its actions. Unfortunately, the same thing may be more difficult to say for the United States and its NATO minions with regards to their belligerent behavior over the course of the last two decades.
Consider the most notorious example, the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This disastrous war, which the Western media hacks have chalked up as an unfortunate ‘intelligence failure’, represents one of the most egregious acts of unprovoked aggression in recent memory. Without delving too deep into the murky details, the United States, having just suffered the attacks of 9/11, accused Saddam Hussein of Iraq of harboring weapons of mass destruction. Yet, instead of working in close cooperation with the UN weapons inspectors, who were on the ground in Iraq attempting to verify the claims, the US, together with the UK, Australia, and Poland, launched a ‘shock-and-awe’ bombing campaign against Iraq on March 19, 2003. In a flash, over a million innocent Iraqis suffered death, injury, or displacement by this flagrant violation of international law.
The Center for Public Integrity reported that the Bush administration, in its effort to bolster public support for the impending carnage, made over 900 false statements between 2001 and 2003 about Iraq’s alleged threat to the US and its allies. Yet somehow the Western media, which has become the most rabid proliferator for military aggression bar none, failed to find any flaw in the argument for war – that is, until after the boots and blood were on the ground, of course.
It might be expected, in a more perfect world, that the US and its allies were subjected to some stiff sanctions in the wake of this protracted eight-year ‘mistake’ against innocents. In fact, there were sanctions, just not against the United States. Ironically, the only sanctions that resulted from this crazy military adventure were against France, a NATO member that had declined the invitation, together with Germany, to participate in the Iraqi bloodbath. The global hyper-power is not used to such rejection, especially from its purported friends.
American politicians, self-assured in their Godlike exceptionalism, demanded a boycott of French wine and bottled water due to the French government’s “ungrateful” opposition to war in Iraq. Other agitators for war betrayed their lack of seriousness by insisting that the popular menu item known as ‘French Fries’ be substituted with the name ‘Freedom Fries’ instead. So the lack of French Bordeaux, together with the tedious redrafting of restaurant menus, seems to have been the only real inconveniences the US and NATO suffered for indiscriminately destroying millions of lives.
Now compare this kid gloves approach to the US and its allies to the current situation involving Ukraine, where the scales of justice are clearly weighed down against Russia, and despite its not unreasonable warnings that it was feeling threatened by NATO advances. Whatever a person may think about the conflict now raging between Russia and Ukraine, it cannot be denied that the hypocrisy and double standards being leveled against Russia by its perennial detractors is as shocking as it is predictable. The difference today, however, is that bombs are going off.
Aside from the severe sanctioning of Russian individuals and the Russian economy, perhaps best summed up by the French economy minister, who said his country is committed to waging “a total economic and financial war on Russia,” there has been a deeply disturbing effort to silence news and information coming from those Russian sources that might give the Western public the option of seeing Moscow’s motivations. On Tuesday, March 1, YouTube decided to block the channels of RT and Sputnik for all European users, thereby allowing the Western world to seize another chunk of the global narrative.
Considering the way that Russia has been vilified in the ‘empire of lies’, as Vladimir Putin dubbed the land of his politically motivated persecutors, some may believe that Russia deserves the non-stop threats it is now receiving. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. This sort of global grandstanding, which resembles some sort of mindless virtue-signaling campaign now so popular in liberal capitals, aside from unnecessarily inflaming an already volatile situation, assumes that Russia is totally wrong, period.
Such a reckless approach, which leaves no room for debate, no room for discussion, no room for seeing Russia’s side in this extremely complex situation, only guarantees further standoffs, if not full-blown global war, further down the road. Unless the West is actively seeking the outbreak of World War III, it would be advisable to stop the hideous hypocrisy and double standards against Russia and patiently listen to its opinions and version of events (even ones presented by foreign media). It’s not as unbelievable as some people may wish to believe.
Recent developments in eastern Ukraine are increasingly pointing to the direction of a more direct conflict between Ukrainian and Russian forces. The two breakaway eastern regions have evacuated civilians amid OSCE reports of massively increasing mortar and other military attacks over the line of demarcation. Most, according to OSCE maps, are coming from the Kiev side into the breakaway region. Russia will, according to press reports, decide today whether to recognize the breakaway regions as independent. Fasten your seatbelts.
The US continues to insist that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could come “at any moment,” while the Russians insist they have no interest in an invasion. Is Russia about to call Biden’s bluff? Also today: Trudeau claims extraordinary powers to clear out Freedom Truck protesters. And…what happened to Covid?
MCViewPoint 
