" Michael Hudson: A roadmap to escape the west’s stranglehold" by Pepe Escobar

 Michael Hudson: A roadmap to escape the west’s stranglehold

The geoeconomic pathway away from the neoliberal order is fraught with peril, but the rewards in establishing an alternative system are as promising as they are urgent

By Pepe Escobar

October 06 2022

Photo Credit: The Cradle

It is impossible to track the geoeconomic turbulence inherent to the “birth pangs” of the multipolar world without the insights of Professor Michael Hudson at the University of Missouri, and author of the already seminal The Destiny of Civilization.

In his latest essay, Professor Hudson digs deeper into Germany’s suicidal economic/financial policies; their effect on the already falling euro – and hints at some possibilities for fast integrating Eurasia and the Global South as a whole to try to break the Hegemon’s stranglehold.

That led to a series of email exchanges, especially about the future role of the yuan, where Hudson remarked:

“The Chinese whom I’ve talked to for years and years did not expect the dollar to weaken. They’re not crying about its rise, but they are concerned about flight capital from China as I think after the Party Congress [starting on October 16] there will be a crackdown on the Shanghai free-market advocacy. Pressure for the coming changes has been long building up. The spirit of reform to rein in ‘free markets’ was spreading among students over a decade ago, and they have been rising in the Party hierarchy.”

On the key issue of Russia accepting payment for energy in rubles, Hudson touched upon a point rarely examined outside of Russia: “They don’t really want to be paid just in rubles. That’s the one thing Russia doesn’t need, because it can just print them. It only needs rubles to balance its international payments to stabilize the exchange rate – not to push it up.”

Which brings us to settlements in yuan: “Taking payment in yuan is like taking payment in gold – an international asset that every country desires as a non-fiat currency that has a value if one sells it (unlike the dollar now, which may simply be confiscated, or ultimately left abandoned). What Russia really needs are critical industrial inputs like computer chips. It could ask China to import these with the yuan Russia provides.”

Keynes is back

Following our email exchanges, Professor Hudson gracefully agreed to answer in detail a few questions about the extremely complex geoeconomic processes in play across Eurasia. Here we go.

The Cradle: The BRICS are studying the adoption of a common currency – including all of them and, we expect, the expanded BRICS+ as well. How could that be practically implemented? Hard to see the Brazilian Central Bank harmonizing with the Russians and the People’s Bank of China. Would that involve only investment – via the BRICS development bank? Would that be based on commodities + gold? How does the yuan fit in? Is the BRICS approach based on the current Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) discussions with the Chinese, led by Sergey Glazyev? Did the Samarkand summit advance, practically, the interconnection of BRICS and the SCO?

Hudson: “Any idea of a common currency has to start with a currency-swap arrangement among existing member countries. Most trade will be in their own currencies. But to settle the inevitable imbalances (balance-of-payments surpluses and deficits), an artificial currency will be created by a new Central Bank.

This may look superficially like the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) created by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), largely to fund the US deficit on military account and the rising debt service owed by Global South debtors to US lenders. But the arrangement will be much more like the ‘bancor’ proposed by John Maynard Keynes in 1944. Deficit countries could draw a specified quota of bancors, whose valuation would be set by a common selection of prices and exchange rates. The bancors (and their own currency) would be used to pay countries in surplus.

But unlike the IMF’s SDR system, the aim of this new alternative Central Bank will not be simply to subsidize economic polarization and indebtedness. Keynes proposed a principle that if a country (he was thinking of the United States at the time) ran chronic surpluses, that would be a sign of its protectionism or refusal to support a mutually resilient economy, and its claims would begin to be extinguished, along with the bancor debts of countries whose economies prevented their ability to balance their international payments and support their currency.

Today’s proposed arrangements would indeed support lending among the member banks, but not for the purpose of supporting capital flight (the main use of IMF loans, when “left-wing” governments seem likely to be elected), and the IMF and its associated alternative to the World Bank would not impose austerity plans and anti-labor policies on debtors. The economic doctrine would promote self-sufficiency in food and basic essentials, and would promote tangible agricultural and industrial capital formation, not financialization.

It is likely that gold also would be an element of international monetary reserves by these countries, simply because gold is a commodity that hundreds of years of world practice already have agreed on as acceptable and politically neutral. But gold would be a means of settling payments balances, not defining domestic currency. These balances would of course extend to trade and investment with western countries that are not part of this bank. Gold would be an acceptable means of settling western debt balances to the new Eurasian-centered bank. That would prove a vehicle for payments that western countries could not simply repudiate – as long as the gold was kept in the hands of the new bank members, no longer in New York or London as has been the dangerous practice since 1945.

In a meeting to create such a bank, China would be in a similar dominant position to that which the United States enjoyed in 1944 at Bretton Woods. But its operating philosophy would be quite different. The aim would be to develop the economies of bank members, with long-term planning or trade patterns that seem most appropriate for their economies to avoid the kind of dependency relationships and privatization takeovers that have characterized IMF and World Bank policy.

These development objectives would involve land reform, industrial and financial restructuring, and tax reform, as well as domestic banking and credit reforms. Discussions at the SCO meetings seem to have prepared the ground for establishing a general harmony of interests in creating reforms along these lines.”

Eurasia or bust

The Cradle: In the medium term, is it feasible to expect German industrialists, contemplating the coming wasteland, and their own demise, to revolt en masse against the NATO-imposed trade/financial sanctions against Russia, and force Berlin to open Nord Stream 2? Gazprom guarantees the pipeline is recoverable. Don’t need to join the SCO to make that happen…

Hudson: “It is unlikely that German industrialists will act to prevent their country’s de-industrialization, given the US/NATO stranglehold on Eurozone politics and the past 75 years of political meddling by US officials. German company heads are more likely to try and survive with as much personal and corporate wealth intact as they can in the wake of Germany being turned into a Baltic-state-type economic wreckage.

There already has been talk of shifting production – and management – to the United States, which will block Germany from obtaining energy, metals and other essential materials from any supplier not controlled by US interests and their allies.

The great question is whether German companies would emigrate to the new Eurasian economies whose industrial growth and prosperity seem likely to far overshadow that of the United States.

Of course the Nord Stream pipelines are recoverable. That is precisely why US political pressure from Secretary of State Blinken has been so insistent that Germany, Italy and other European countries double down on isolating their economies from trade and investment with Russia, Iran, China and other countries whose growth the US is trying to disrupt.”

How to escape “There Is No Alternative”

The Cradle: Are we reaching the point when the key players of the Global South – over 100 nations – finally get their act together and decide to go for broke and stop the US from keeping the artificial neoliberal global economy in a state of perpetual coma? This means the only possible option, as you have outlined, is to set up a parallel global currency bypassing the US dollar – while the usual suspects float the notion of a Bretton Woods III at best. Is the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) financial casino omnipotent enough to smash any possible competition? Do you envisage any other practical mechanisms apart from what is being discussed by BRICS/ EAEU/ SCO? 

Hudson: “A year or two ago it seemed that the task of designing a full-fledged alternative world currency, monetary, credit and trading system was so complex that the details hardly could be thought through. But US sanctions have proved to be the needed catalyst to make such discussions pragmatically urgent.

The confiscation of Venezuela’s gold reserves in London and its US investments, the confiscation of $300 billion of Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves held in the United States and Europe, and its threat to do the same to China and other countries resisting US foreign policy has made de-dollarization urgent. I have explained the logic in many points, from my Valdai Club article (with Radhika Desai) to my recent book on The Destiny of Civilization, the lecture series that I prepared for Hong Kong and the Global University for Sustainability.

Holding securities denominated in dollars, and even holding gold or investments in the United States and Europe, is no longer a safe option. It is clear that the world is breaking into two quite different types of economies, and that US diplomats and their European satellites are willing to tear up the existing economic order in hopes that creating a disruptive crisis will enable themselves to come out on top.

It also is clear that subjugation to the IMF and its austerity plans are economic suicide, and that following World Bank and its neoliberal doctrine of international dependency is self-destructive. The result has been to create an unpayable overhead of debts denominated in US dollars. These debts cannot be paid without borrowing credit from the IMF and accepting terms of economic surrender to US privatizers and speculators.

The only alternative to imposing economic austerity on themselves is to withdraw from the dollar trap in which US-sponsored “free market” economics (markets free from government protection, and free from government ability to recover the environmental damage from US oil companies, mining companies and the associated industrial and food dependency) is to make a clean break.

The break will be difficult, and US diplomacy will do everything it can to disrupt the creation of a more resilient economic order. But US policy has created a global state of dependency in which literally There is no alternative but to break away.”

Germanexit?

The Cradle: What is your analysis on Gazprom confirming Line B of the Nord Stream 2 was not touched by Pipeline Terror? This means Nord Stream 2 is practically ready to go – with a capacity to pump 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas a year, which happens to be half of the total capacity of – damaged – Nord Stream. So Germany is not doomed. This opens a whole new chapter; a solution will depend on a serious political decision by the German government.   

Hudson: “Here’s the kicker: Russia certainly won’t bear the cost again, only to have the pipeline blown up. It will be up to Germany. I bet the current regime says “No.” That should make for an interesting rise of the alternative parties.

The ultimate problem is that the only way Germany can restore trade with Russia is to withdraw from NATO, realizing that it is the major victim of NATO’s war. This could only succeed by spreading to Italy, and also to Greece (for not protecting it against Turkey, ever since Cyprus). That looks like a long fight.

Maybe it’s easier just for German industry to pack up and move to Russia to help modernize its industrial production, especially BASF for chemistry, Siemens for engineering, etc.. If German companies relocate to the US to get gas, this will be perceived as a US raid on German industry, capturing its lead for the US. Even so, this won’t succeed, given America’s post-industrialized economy.

So German industry can only move eastward if it creates its own political party as a nationalistic anti-NATO party. The EU constitution would require Germany to withdraw from the EU, which puts NATO interests first at the federal level. The next scenario is to discuss Germany’s entry into the SCO. Let’s take bets as to how long that will take.”

Source: The Cradle

"American Roulette" by Batiushka for The Saker blog

 

American Roulette

36373 ViewsSeptember 28, 2022 75 Comments

By Batiushka for The Saker blog

Introduction: America’s Death-Wish

‘Russian roulette’ is a most peculiar expression. At least for any Russian. For the simple reason that he has never heard of it. In fact, it does not exist in Russian, neither the expression, nor the reality. It is something we learn about with astonishment when we learn English. The expression is an American invention and only an American with a death-wish could have thought up such a thing, in 1937, in fact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_roulette). And so it is that only an American with a death-wish could have thought up the present situation. He has poked the bear so much and so often for over thirty years that the bear has had a lot of time to plan exactly what he would do. Now he is doing it. Why are you surprised? You loaded the gun and pointed it at your own head, now expect the bullet to come out.

Where We Came From

The Special Military Operation (SMO) in the Ukraine could have been over as early as April 2022, or at latest in August when most of the old Soviet weapons of the Kiev regime forces, augmented by supplies from ex-Warsaw Pact countries, had been destroyed. However, ignoring the Ukrainian people, since they are mere cannon fodder, the West intervened and escalated the conflict into a full-scale war by supplying its weaponry, technology and manpower at the bidding of the Westernised Ukrainian oligarchate. (Just as in February 1917, when the West created the ‘Russian Revolution’ at the bidding of the Westernised Russian oligarchate, also ignoring the people). Thus, the Ukraine has become merely the battleground for the real War, that between Russia and the USA.

The Russian response to Western escalation and aggression is partial mobilisation. The limited SMO will need more manpower to defeat the doomed NATO-supplied Nazis, whose numbers have been much increased by the arrival of NATO troops in Ukrainian uniform as well as by mercenaries. President Putin was accused by the Western ruling class through their State-controlled media mouthpieces of threatening them with nuclear attack. This was not the case. He had simply answered Truss, who had threatened Russia with nuclear attack, replying that any such aggression would be met by Russia with the same.

President Putin now awaits the winter in order to give the peoples of Western Europe opportunities to reflect and then force their spineless leaders to reject American tyranny. Since 2014 President Putin has become determined to remove the American threat to his Western borders and so to Western and Central Europe once and for all. Only then will the North-Western peninsula of the Eurasian continent at last become free. In order to do this, he has built up relationships with China, India and others in Asia, as well as with many countries in Africa and Latin America. Thus, in recent months he has rapidly gathered influence all over Eurasia.

Where We Are Now

As the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991, so the European Union between 2022 and 2024. Now is not the time for top-down Unions –in the last two generations since 1989 they have been collapsing in favour of international co-operation between sovereign nations, as is needed by the grassroots. Demonstrations have taken place in the Czech Lands, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, all calling on Kiev to start negotiating with Russia, and on the EU Commissars to stop behaving like vassals of the US feudal magnates. Germany is very nervous, it risks its industry shutting down. And German winters can be very cold. Now the two undersea Nordstream pipelines for Russian gas to Germany, have exploded. Of course, it is sabotage.

The USA has successfully cut off German industry, and much of Europe, from the Russian gas that could have powered it up again, had the EU wanted to be free of dependence on the US. The Hungarian government also wants Kiev to negotiate – it has Hungarian citizens across the border in Zakarpattia. And there are those in Romania who think the same about the province of Romanian Chernivtsi across the border, though those who think that are not allowed to be part of the present US-puppet government. Poland also wants its territory back, perhaps all five provinces of the far western Ukraine: Volyn, Rivne, Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk. Meanwhile, Italy is about to get a new, anti-Brussels nationalist government, much to the dislike of the unelected EU elite.

The euro has already collapsed against the dollar. Now it is the turn of the pound sterling. The pound sterling has lost 20% of its value against the dollar since MissTrust came to power. The UK, stabbed in the back by the US for its anti-EU policy on Northern Ireland, has an economy which is not emerging from covid, but submerging after covid. The UK Establishment media trumpet that the UK State Health Service’s waiting lists are now down to only (sic) two years for most people (if you don’t die before that). Over 10% of UK citizens, 7 million people, are now waiting for treatment. Some are in great pain. In any other country in the world, there would be a revolution if waiting lists for health treatment were longer than two months. Some UK citizens are even going to the Ukraine to get proper health treatment.

The UK’s infrastructure, utilities, roads, railways, education and healthcare, has in many places reached what used to be called ‘Third World’ levels. The UK currency crisis has come about because of the UK government’s need to borrow huge amounts of money – this was MissTrust’s ‘bold plan’. After all, the UK Establishment follows to the letter US orders and has had to refuse Russia’s riches and subsidise the bankrupt Ukraine. The UK level of debt is now approaching that of the USA and catching up with that of Italy, whom it used to mock as a ‘basket case’. As they say: ‘What goes round, comes round’.

Where We Are Going

How will all this end? From the start I have believed that this will all end with the Russian victory. This means:

1. Another Ukraine

There will always be an East Slav-speaking country between south-eastern Poland and south-western Russia, whatever it will be called. However, in the future it will be a country within its natural borders, occupied only by those who voluntarily identify with the government and culture in their capital of Kiev. Moreover, deNazified, it will present no military, biological or nuclear threat to its neighbours and will be independent of geopoliticians in Washington and Brussels.

2. Another Russia

As a result of the War against NATO, Russia will be freed of the froth of Westernised sycophants formed in the 1990s, the liberal chattering classes, called in Russian ‘the creative class’. The 5% who are enserfed to the West and its overpriced consumer baubles are only repeating the treason of the Westernised ruling class and traitors from before 1917 who also wasted their fortunes on overpriced Western consumer baubles. Those who will continue to behave like chimpanzees with regard to their Western lords and masters should go and live in the West, if they have not already fled Russian justice for Finland, Georgia or elsewhere. Russia at war against NATO (= the US) is a land that needs patriots, not traitors.

3. Another Europe

At the present time Central and Western Europe risk ‘Donbassisation’ as a result of US demands for absolute obedience to their anti-Russian tyranny, known as ‘sanctions’. This means that NATO-ised Central and Western Europe will become deindustrialised, impoverished, cold, hungry and also left defenceless, as their arms will have been destroyed in the Ukraine. However, it is only at that low point that they will begin to understand that their future is not across the Atlantic, but next door, with Eastern Europe and Eurasia, the gateway to Asian growth and prosperity.

4. Another World

Seven billion of the eight billion people of the world, 87.5% of the planet, await the day of freedom from Western imperialism, exploitation and nuclear threats, aspiring to humanity, truth, justice and prosperity. Their only hope is the coming Russian victory over the US. Once that is here, much will fall back into its natural place. Asia with China and India, Africa, Latin America and all the Western peoples (basically, Western and Central Europe, North America and Oceania), so long oppressed by the gloomy darkness of the feudal Western elite, will be able to follow in Russian footsteps and walk, at first dazzled, into the bright daylight of freedom.

Conclusion

In 1939, quite infamously, Winston Churchill expressed his extraordinary ethnocentric ignorance by calling Russia ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’. Like many ignorant people, he was of course talking about himself. When you cannot be bothered to understand someone else’s viewpoint, just call it ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’. You will then have successfully defined yourself as a blinkered and selfish narcissist. The only thing is, when you depend on that someone else for vital gas, oil, fertiliser, wheat, paper, titanium etc, maybe you really should after all make an effort to understand their viewpoint. Otherwise, they will definitely consider your death-wish, the totally suicidal behaviour of your American Roulette as, ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’.

28 September 2022

Source: The Saker

"When It Comes to Conducting a War, the Kremlin Has Proven Its Incompetence" by Paul Craig Roberts

 

When It Comes to Conducting a War, the Kremlin Has Proven Its Incompetence

October 7, 2022 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

When It Comes to Conducting a War, the Kremlin Has Proven Its Incompetence

Paul Craig Roberts

To be clear, I respect Putin as a person.  He is humane.  He cares about life and civilization. He is a good person.  In fact, he is proving to be too good of a person to be dealing with the venal and corrupt West, and he has no idea how to conduct a war.

Putin thinks, or thought, that Russia and the West shared common values.  This shows how little Putin understands the West. The West is Washington, and the rest of the West are not independent countries but Washington’s puppets. None of Washington’s puppets represent their own citizens and neither does Washington. Washington’s values are measured only in dominance and money.

Washington is concerned only with its political, military, and financial hegemony over everyone else, including its own people who are waking up in each successive day in an ever tightening police state where the US Constitution is erased bit by bit, day by day.

The FBI has become a Gestapo for the Democrat Party.  The Western media is a propaganda ministry for Washington. Truth that is inconsistent with the ruling official narratives is suppressed.  The government and its presstitutes feed the people lies and tell them it is truth.

Putin gives speeches in which he shows that he understands this, but his actions do not reflect his understanding in his speeches.  The distance between Putin’s words and his action is almost infinite.

The Kremlin had to be totally out of touch with reality when the Kremlin thought that its “limited military operation” in Donbass would be allowed by Washington to be limited.  How anyone in the Kremlin could possibly have been this naive, this gullible, this uninformed is beyond my imagination.

How is it possible that the Kremlin could possibly have thought that after Washington went to the trouble to force Russian military intervention in Donbass, Washington didn’t intend to use it to greatly widen the war.  Here we witness the total failure of Russian intelligence and the total failure of Russian understanding of the enemy with which Russia is at war.  Indeed, it is not even clear that Russia understands that she is at war with the West.  Here and there a Russian says so, but Russia’s actions belie any such understanding.  The Kremlin is still trying to bail out Europe by supplying energy so Europe can continue its war against Russia.  How does one understand this?

It has to be a first in History when a country at war supplies its enemies with the fuel with which to conduct war against itself.  The Kremlin is begging Europe to please let us sell you energy so your war industries don’t have to close down.  Could the Kremlin do anything else to make the Russian government look like the most confused government on earth?  https://www.rt.com/business/564148-novak-nord-stream-supplies-europe/ 

Let’s put the origin of the ongoing and widening war in Ukraine in its factual context. In 2014 the American neoconservatives who dominate the American government overthrew the government in Ukraine while the Russian government, totally ignoring happenings in its backyard, was focused on trying to win Western acceptance as an Olympics host in Sochi.  In other words, the Kremlin thought the Olympics was more important than Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s insouciance made Washington’s takeover of Ukraine a cake walk.  Suddenly, the Kremlin was faced with Ukrainian neo-Nazis prohibiting the use of the Russian language and terrorizing and killing ethnic Russians who comprise the population of Donbass and Crimea, historical parts of Russia that Soviet authorities moved from the Russian province of the Soviet Union to the Soviet Ukraine province.

These Russian areas of Ukraine all voted by massive majorities to be reunited with their home country, but the Kremlin only accepted the application from Crimea, a part of Russia since the 1700s.  The Kremlin accepted Crimea, because that is where the Russian Black Sea Naval Base is located, leased since the Soviet collapse, from Ukraine which was separated from Russia by the Soviet collapse.

By leaving the Donbass Russians hanging at the mercy of the US neoconservative coup, the Kremlin guaranteed a military conflict.  The punishment the Ukrainian neo-Nazis inflicted on the Donbass Russians resulted in the creation of two independent  republics:  Donetsk and Luhansk.  To defend themselves from being occupied by neo-Nazis, the two republics organized governments and militias. After loosing some of their territory to Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias, the Donetsk and Luhansk republics stopped the advance, but were subjected to artillery attacks for eight years on civilian housing that continue today.

Putin and Lavrov tried to pass the buck to the West and stupidly, although with the best intentions, tried to deal with the problem diplomatically, showing how little they understood the West.  Putin came up with the impractical Minsk Agreement signed by Ukraine and the two Donbass republics and guaranteed by France and Germany.

Under the Minsk Agreement Donbass was to remain within Ukraine, but would have sufficient autonomy to have their own police force so they they could not be persecuted by neo-Nazi Ukrainian police.

It became clear almost instantly that Ukraine would not comply with the agreement it signed and that France and Germany would not enforce the agreement.  Why the Kremlin thought two Washington puppet states would enforce an agreement that permitted Russia to escape a military conflict is beyond my imagination.  That Putin spent eight years trying to save an agreement that never had any prospect  shows how out of touch with reality the Kremlin is.  

With this factual background, let’s come to the present conflict today.

When it comes to International Law, Putin is the only person in the world who abides by it.  Certainly Washington doesn’t.  By abiding by international law, Putin gives Washington every advantage in the conflict.

Under international law a Russian invasion of Ukraine is an act of aggression.  So Putin was careful not to invade Ukraine, despite what you hear from the presstitutes.  The two Donbass republics, belatedly recognized by Russia eight years afterwards, requested assistance from Russia to prevent their conquest by a large Ukrainian army trained and armed by the West that was poised to invade.

Perhaps at this point the Kremlin realized its mistake of failing to accept, as the republics begged, reincorporation into Russia in 2014. In February 2022,  if the Kremlin allowed neo-Nazis to exterminate Donbass Russians, the Kremlin would loss all legitimacy with the Russian people.     

In other words, Washington successfully maneuvered the Russian government into war that served Washington’s interest.  As the West presented it, here was Russia the aggressor confirming Western propaganda.  Here was Russia subverting Europe with energy dependence. Here was Russia rebuilding the Soviet Empire. Next Russia would be recreating the Warsaw Pac  and extending it into Western Europe with Europe’s energy dependency on Russia.  No one in the West listened to the Kremlin’s explanation.

With the official narrative set, Washington began supplying Ukraine with modern weapons, intelligence, and targeting information.  When the Russian offensive paused, because Putin or the Russian military lacked the foresight to realize that an offensive required reserves, and as a result of this oversight, had no reserves, the US/UK trained Ukrainians began their own offensive, which has partially succeeded against the thinly protected Russian lines.  

The Russian retreats, while awaiting reinforcements, have been presented in Western media such as the New York Times and the UK Telegraph as Russian forces fleeing the battlefield in terror, leaving behind their equipment. 

This is not what is happening, but it is not the fact of the situation that matters but how the media explains the situation.  The narratives created by Washington and its presstitutes create their own “facts.”

Putin and the Russian military unbelievably went to war with minimal commitment of forces and no reserves.  The Russian forces simply lacked the manpower, given Putin’s limited commitment, to defend thin lines once Putin stopped the offensive and handed the initiative to Washington. This is one of the most stupid mistakes that a wartime commander can make.

What is actually happening is that the Kremlin in its totally incorrect reading of Washington had no idea that Ukraine would be supplied with endless modern weapons, intelligence, and targeting information.  Not expecting this response, the Kremlin was not prepared for real war.

Even if the Kremlin had better understanding of the situation, the Kremlin has shown no comprehension of how to fight a war.  We are now into eight months of a conflict that Russia could have settled in one week. And mighty Russia has been forced on the defensive with its lines retreating both in Kharkiv in the North and Kherson  in the South.  Wars that are perceived as being lost can lose their glory and support of the population.

To be clear, when the mobilized Russian reinforcements, which an intelligent military would have had on hand from the first of the conflict, are finally prepared for war, apparently sometime in December, the Russians will regain the lost territories, although the Ukrainians might have killed the inhabitants.  But there is still no guarantee that Putin understands that Russia is at war with the US and Europe or what do do about it if he does understand it.  The Kremlin’s spokesman says that the limited operation in Donbass will continue. If so and nothing else, the only possible conclusion is that Russia will be long suffering.  A military that is prevented from attacking the communication and military infrastructure and most of the territory of the country with which it is at war cannot prevail.  The Kremlin has been at war for eight months and has done nothing to prevent Kiev’s ability to fight a war. The Kremlin’s view that it is not at war with Ukraine and is only conducting a police action to remove Ukrainian forces from the Donbass is a self-deceiving idea that prevents the Kremlin from conducting a war.

To speak the truth, the Kremlin’s conduct of war is juvenile. A 10-year old kid could do a better job.  Was the Kremlin even thinking when it thought it could conduct a war while leaving the opposing government perfectly secure in its conduct of the war?  Russia has refused, to shut down the government in Kiev, thus allowing its enemy to conduct, unopposed, war against Russia.  This has to be the first time in human history that a government at war has been permitted to operate as if it were not at war. There is no Russian attempt to destroy Zelensky, to shut down Kiev, to disrupt the communication and infrastructure of Ukraine.

Any country that conducts war in such a self-defeating way convinces its opponents that it has no intention of winning the war.

This perceived lack of Russian resolution enbolders the West to push Russia harder and to violate more Russian red lines.  Violating Russian red lines means nothing to the West as Russia never does anything about violations of its red lines.  Russian protests are nothing but meaningless Russian bluster, says the West.

Unless the Kremlin intends to lay down its arms and surrender to Ukraine and the West, the extraordinary weakness and irresolution that the Kremlin has shown in its  “limited military operation” will encourage more aggression from the West and lead directly to the 3rd World War.  Zelensky is already calling for preventative nuclear strikes against Russia. https://sputniknews.com/20221006/peskov-urges-entire-world-to-take-note-of-zelenskys-call-for-preventive-nuclear-strike-on-russia-1101582414.html 

Apparently, never in Putin’s entire life did he ever learn to put his foot down.  Putin seems to think it can be done with mere words, but it cannot.  Putin’s hesitancy and toleration of provocations has undermined his credibility.

As the West has no fear of its opponent, Putin’s Goody Two Shoes behavior is bringing us Armageddon.  The longer the war goes on, the more involved the West becomes, the greater the stake powerful interest groups, such as the US military/security complex, have in the war, and the less prospect for de-escalation.

By constantly showing irresolution, acceptance of extreme provocations, and shamelessly begging for negotiations, the Kremlin has convinced Washington that Russia is incapable of fighting. From Washington’s viewpoint, Russia is nothing to be feared, only something to be moved out of way.

It is extraordinary that the government of what is probably the most powerful military force in the world has convinced  Washington that Russia is military impotent.

This is Putin’s achievement from trying to save the Donbass Russians without having to fight a real war.

Andrei Martyanov, the Saker, and Dmitry Orlov have seriously misled their pro-Russian audience.  Martyanov and Saker stressed the superiority of Russian firepower and tactical operations, which was correct, but they ignored the built-in strategic failure of the Russian “limited operation.”  Moreover, the Russian tactical advantage was reduced when the limited forces Putin had been willing to commit became too thin to protect the boundaries of the conquest, and modern weapons from the West and targeting information substantially reduced Russian firepower advantage.  

Putin, having foolishly let the war go on month after month, a war that he should have competed in one week, gave the US and UK time to train a larger Ukrainian army and equip it with modern weapons.  It should have been obvious to the Kremlin from day one that this was in the cards.  Any time a war is drawn out the advantage passes to the side that is not constrained by self-imposted constraints.  It is impossible to imagine Napoleon or the Wehrmacht fighting in such a constrained way as Russia is required to fight  in Ukraine. If Stalin had fought in the way Putin is today, there would be no Russia.

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

"Chicken Little Was an Optimist" by Sylvia Shawcross

 

Chicken Little Was an Optimist

Sylvia Shawcross

Okay, to be honest, the title of this piece came from a comment by somebody on some forum somewhere which stuck in my head because it made me laugh.

Now, the important thing here is, why in the hell did that make me laugh? Have we reached that stage now? The stage where impending doom is now bitter entertainment?

Probably. We’re all staring down a bleak future with all that is going on in the world and sometimes you have to laugh or you’ll cry. And sometimes absurdity takes over.

Given the high theatre of our leaders and the ever-evolving script we’re living in, and the number of leaders with acting experience, what other thing can we possibly think other than this is entertainment? It can’t possibly be real. In one’s wildest imagination none of this is real.

I mean, if all this were real, surely somebody would tell us? Somebody important.

Nobody has really.

They’re basically spending their time scaring us about what could be. And it is all negative. Truly. The best we are told about anything positive seems to be about owning nothing, some weird robot contraption by Elon obviously meant to replace us and smart cities. And maybe we’ll save the planet somehow.

Mostly, we all spend more time speculating on what will happen after an event rather than knowing about the actual event itself these days. The actual “knowing” of anything is farmed off to investigative bodies that take a great deal of time so that when we finally know the results we don’t care because we’re into another speculative if not spectacular event. And we’re watching it all on a screen three stops away from reality. That’s how it goes.

If it weren’t for all the suffering and pain and fear, that might even be funny.

Now, the way I figure it, if the hypocrisy of all of this doesn’t get to you, the irony definitely will. Now, I was watching the UN proceedings when New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern (WEF) gave a speech* which included a significant statement on cracking down on so-called disinformation.

I gather she is going to spearhead this global mission. (Who gets to define disinformation anyway?)

And I asked my connection who happens to live in New Zealand what they thought about this and they asked me “what speech”? The New Zealand mainstream media didn’t report on the full speech around the announcement of censorship being spear-headed by their own prime minister. At least at the time of this writing far as I know which is a few days later. It certainly received coverage elsewhere. This of course is in comparison to the wall-to-wall coverage of Ardern’s appearance on the catwalk for the Wearable Art competition.

Is that funny? Maybe. I don’t know. You tell me.

But never mind all that. There is just no way we mere mortals are going to figure any of this out. We are not flies on the wall of the seriously important backroom meetings of the Gods of Davos and their handlers and even if we were, they’d probably catch us and feed us to the “help.” (Yes, I know. I’m still obsessed with us all having to eat bugs. Yes, I know there’s the threat of WW3 and pipelines and famines and uprisings and greater depressions and human rights abuses. But you know… some of us focus on what we know and we know we don’t want to eat bugs.)

And as far as knowing goes, I just want to know why they’re picking on cows. Why not squirrels? I mean, anybody who is anybody with a backyard feeder knows that there may be at least three cows worth of squirrels on a feeder at any given time making the sighting of the red cardinal much less likely. And given the small fortune in seeds they’re eating it seems they would be full of fibrous fluffy flatulance don’t you think?

Nobody seems to be measuring their gaseous emissions that I know of. They’re such bloody little greedy monsters really. (Little do they know they will make good eating when the famine comes. But that’s another topic. And I couldn’t eat a squirrel really if you paid me.)

So cows belch 250 to 500 litres of gaseous emissions into the atmosphere on any given day (Ruminant cows, i.e. This would be the ones that eat grass and hay rather than field mice or ground-up crickets which they tend to gulp down rapidly rather than ruminating over).

I know this because I looked it up. And that is why this whole grand agenda that we’re living in just falls apart for those of us who are not scientists and leaders of countries. We begin reading about belching cows and the mind begins boggling and we can’t get past the first sentence.

This is because somewhere some human being went out and measured belching and flatulating cows and well… it no longer matters why they did it, but more how in the hell they did it and what their friends and families think of them now that they have done such a thing.

I mean, how does that work at dinner parties? There they are casually munching on blue-cheese nibbly-bits and someone asks them what they do for a living and they’ve spent the day measuring bovine burps and rude noises to save the planet. I guess that’s what they’d say—that they spent the day saving the planet from 2% carbon emissions. Two percent.

Now of course, with all this experience, anyone who has measured belching cows is going to save the world. Or at least explain it to us.

We didn’t realize it then but we do now. These humans are the ONLY ones with enough experience measuring gaseous emissions from tubular structures. It seems obvious they’ve likely been secretly spirited away from gaseous fields of green to the blue Baltic to measure the methane pipeline explosions. How do I know this? Because facts are now seeping out. Who else would know that the gaseous emissions from the sabotaged pipelines for just a few days is apparently equivalent to 800,000 cows emitting rude sounds for a year. Now who else would know that? Eh? Eh!

And the pipeline explosions could very well be the event that caused the entire world to go to war. Now there is a topic for cocktail parties. (I just wish they’d come up with a different analogy than windy cows. Some of us have finer sensibilities you know. Is there nothing else we can compare it to?)

Here’s an earworm in honour of our New Zealand prime minister with a nice tune for your day. You’re welcome.

>Syl Shawcross lives in Canada. She does not like the loss of freedom of speech. It is the one freedom that gives us all the freedoms. It is always better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. You know that right? Right. This is an obvious fact that leaders seem to fail to realize. If the guy down the road is a neo-nazi with dreadful tendencies most of us would be relieved he was broadcasting it for all to see and deal with rather than going underground making us all paranoid and suspicious of everybody and particularly our media. Or was that the point of all this censorship? It certainly seems to be one of the results. Hope and courage to all.

Source: OffGuardian

"You're Aggressive, but I'm Not" by Thomas Harrington

 

You’re Aggressive, but I’m Not

BY THOMAS HARRINGTON   OCTOBER 7, 2022   EDUCATION, PHILOSOPHY   7 MINUTE READ

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One of the central tenets of psychotherapy is that the person seeking help must try to deal in the most honest way possible with the realities of his or her inner life, no matter how disturbing the elements found within might at first be or seem to them.

In light of this, and the enormous uptick during the last half-century in the number of Americans that have recurred to psychological care at one time or another in their lives, present-day members of our society should be the most painfully honest in the nation’s history, marked by an ability to take on their innermost fears and demons with greatly enhanced levels of courage, equanimity and self-containment. 

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that just the opposite is going on in our culture. 

Rather than doing the often somber but also immensely rewarding work of finding out who and what terrifies them, and engaging in the disciplined process of developing a personal method for putting these external factors in a mental place where they do not greatly hinder their own search for meaning and happiness, I see—especially among the credentialed under-fifties— a marked tendency toward trying to palliate angst by wildly pointing fingers at others. 

But perhaps even more alarming than this same cohort’s constant attempts to unload their anxieties onto others, are their widespread attempts to promote the banishment of certain words, terms and symbols, and in this way, prohibit the full exploration of realities that seem to greatly frighten them.

These practices are not only immensely disruptive to the already difficult challenge of establishing and maintaining fluid social relations, but frankly ignorant from the point of view of both established linguistic theory and, as I have suggested, recognized psychotherapeutic practices. 

Every student of basic linguistics learns that since the publication of Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics in 1916, it has been generally agreed that the relationship between the sign (in this case of our linguistic vigilantes the word or term they seek to strike from circulation) and the signified (the reality that disturbs them) is completely arbitrary. 

Put another way, words have no organic or stable semantic relationship to the realities that people deign to have them to represent. This being the case, eliminating the sign (the element of language) cannot in any way eliminate the signified (reality), however much some might want it to be the case. Rather, that haunting reality remains exactly where it was, waiting—since language never sleeps— for newly semanticized linguistic signs to come along to give it new life in human minds and thoughts. 

Similarly, would it be possible to find a psychotherapist who would look kindly on a course of treatment centered on suppressing or repressing, rather than exploring and confronting, the things that disturb a patient? Would he or she see that as a sustainable route to improved mental health and existential resilience? 

I strongly doubt it. 

Most would say that doing so would not be very useful, and could in fact serve to greatly multiply the sense of unease generated by the patient’s original encounter with the anxiety-causing agent(s), while perhaps even casting him or her into a cycle of unhealthy compulsive behaviors. 

And yet, again, everywhere I look in the printed visual and spoken archives of our present-day culture, this is exactly what millions of—sad to say again, mostly young and youngish people— appear to be doing. 

Given what psychology and psychiatry generally tell us about the effects of suppression and repression of those feeling depressed or simply unsatisfied, is it any wonder such people’s demands for spiritual compensation appear ever more rabid and unquenchable? Or that they seem to be compulsively doubling and tripling down on their supposed “right” to suppress and cancel others?

The reasons for this mass flight from the basic tasks of psychic maturation, with its accompanying and ultimately puerile campaigns of linguistic assassination, are many. 

However, given the strong link between these practices and their promoters’ generally high levels of educational achievement, it is hard to not look toward the sociology of our educational institutions in our search for answers. 

Aggression and Repression in Academe 

A central conceit of our contemporary Western European and North American cultures, derived from the influence of the Enlightenment upon them, is that the refinement of the mind through study leads necessarily to a diminution of the well-known human tendency toward aggression. Not surprisingly, this presumption heavily conditions the self-images of people that inhabit our society’s institutions of learning. 

For many of them, aggression and/or the desire to dominate only really exists in those who have not been able, or have not wanted to embark on a process of enlightenment similar to the one they see as having defined their lives. 

It’s a nice story. But does it really make any sense? Of course it’s true that social circumstances can both incrementally moderate and exacerbate certain basic human drives. But it is hard to believe that it can largely cancel them out. More specifically, do we really believe that reading books really diminishes the well-known human tendency to seek dominion over others?

It seems doubtful. 

But this doesn’t stop people from continuing to think it is true. 

In my 30+ years in academia I almost never heard any of my colleagues speak frankly—in the way, say, people do in business, sports and so many other walks of life—of their desire for power or to achieve victory over others. And since they generally did not admit to having any inherent tendency toward such derivations of aggressiveness, I seldom ever witnessed a clear and unambiguous apology from any of those who had clearly damaged or compromised the dignity of others. 

And yet, all around me were walking wounded, people who had very much been treated as the playthings of “leaders” obsessed with power and the ability to make or break the lives of others. 

Our academic institutions may, in fact, be wracked by some of the more endemic levels of psychic repression in our culture. More than other professional venues, it seems, they select for, and are peopled by, individuals who are deeply uncomfortable with their own quite natural proclivities toward aggression and dominance and have for this reason created cultures where the subject is seldom openly broached.

By trying to pretend these proclivities are not present in their lives in the way they are in others, they effectively condemn themselves to the well-known cascading effects of denial. The more they hold themselves up as supremely civilized and above the patterns of aggression that plague the unwashed, the more relentlessly encroaching and controlling they tend to become. 

This culture of repression, in which “I” am endlessly pure and only “others” seek dominance has a great deal to do with not only generating the puerile cancel culture described above, but also fomenting the casual cruelty with which so many credentialed people and credential-granting institutions treated, and in many cases continue to treat, those to whom they were allegedly connected through bonds of trust, fellowship and mutual protection during the Covid crisis.

You see, in their own eyes, people like them simply don’t “do” cruelty in the way others do.

And therein lies the biggest untruths they tell themselves: that they’ve somehow killed the monster inside by pretending it’s not there. 

As every great religious tradition reminds us, the proclivity to do ill to others is vividly present in everyone during the entire course of our lives on earth, and that the first and most effective step towards ensuring that this inner monster does not take control of our destinies is acknowledging its enduring presence within us. It is then, and only then, that we can shape effective and enduring strategies to keep it at bay. 

But doing this, of course, requires introspection, which doesn’t always feel good, and certainly won’t increase your numbers and prestige in the Twittersphere, or your chances of being seen by the higher-ups as having the prized ability to humiliate others without breaking your smile. 

Inner peace and resilience vs. the acquisition of fleeting accolades.

Such a dilemma. No?

Thomas Harrington, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where he taught for 24 years. His research is on Iberian movements of national identity and contemporary Catalan culture. His essays are published at Words in The Pursuit of Light.

Source: Brownstone Institute