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FILE PHOTO: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin are seen during a meeting with Germany’s foreign minister in Moscow, Russia, March 23, 2016. (Credit: Kremlin)

The Kremlin’s top diplomat has warned that Western involvement in Ukraine is nearing “the point of no return,” accusing the United States and the NATO bloc of attempting to transform the country into a “Russophobic military stronghold.” Meanwhile, Moscow’s UN envoy declared that all of Russia’s “red lines” have already been crossed.

Addressing lawmakers at Russia’s State Duma on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov outlined the causes of the current conflict in Ukraine and the deterioration of US-Russia relations, saying Washington has a “maniacal desire to revive the neo-colonial unipolar world order.”

“An integral part of this policy is the long-term containment of Russia, including through the expansion of NATO towards our borders, as well as the transformation of fraternal Ukraine into a Russophobic military stronghold,” he said. “In recent years, this line of Washington and its European satellites has reached the point of no return.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Washington and several other Western states gave assurances to Moscow that the NATO alliance would not expand beyond Germany. However, in the years since, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have each allowed new members to join the alliance, all of them inching closer to Russia’s borders.

Starting in 2008, NATO has repeatedly declared its intention to someday allow Ukraine to become a member, again reiterating that pledge at a recent alliance summit. The move would cross the “brightest of all red lines” for Moscow, as was previously noted by then-State Department official and current CIA Director William Burns, who penned a 2008 memo warning of the geopolitical perils of extending membership to Kiev.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Crisis Report — 13

February 14, 2023

The Crisis Report — 13

Russia, Ukraine, China, Taiwan, the US , and the Fossil Fuel Elites — Understanding the Global War that’s happening right now and what it means for the Anthroposphere.

This image is a metaphor for our world. In this image the “ocean” around the island is the Earth’s Oceans. The world’s temperature is set by this ocean. If it cools, the world cools. If it warms, the world warms.

This is a reasonable way to understand the real Earth’s Climate System.

80% of the solar energy the earth captures happens along the equator.

90% of that energy goes into the world’s oceans.

Global Warming is Ocean Warming.

The ocean in the image encircles the island and touches every part of it.

Every part of the island’s middle ring is touched by, and influenced by, the encircling ocean. Every part is affected if the ocean cools or warms.

Every part of the Biosphere is affected by changes in the Earth’s Temperature. EVERY PART. EVERYWHERE.

The Arctic has warmed over 4C. In 2021 NO PLACE on Earth was cooler than it had been between 1950–1980.

The list of things “going wrong” in the biosphere is endless. Because the Biosphere we live in, is completely connected to the “Climate” we have caused to rapidly get hotter.

Our Anthroposphere is in CRISIS.

The castle in the middle represents the “Anthroposphere”. The constructed world we have built over the last 10,000 years.

EVERYTHING happening in the WORLD, in the Anthroposphere, is connected to GLOBAL WARMING and the CLIMATE CHANGE it brings.

WE ARE IN CRISIS AND IT’S ABOUT TO GET A LOT HOTTER.

The green circle is where we are right now February 2023, the blue circles represent various forecasts of how warm the rest of this year is likely to be. The “zero line” in this chart is the 1981–2010 average of global temperatures.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

French Historian: World War III Has Already Begun

February 14, 2023

French Historian: World War III Has Already Begun

“We are now in an endless war.”

JOEL SAGET via Getty Images

A French historian who accurately predicted the fall of the Soviet Union over a decade in advance says that World War III has already begun as a result of the conflict in Ukraine.

The comments were made by Emmanuel Todd, one of France’s leading intellectuals, during an interview with the Le Figaro newspaper.

“It is evident that the conflict, initially a limited territorial war, has evolved into a global economic confrontation between the whole West on one side, and Russia, backed by China, on the other. It has become a world war,” Todd said.

Todd added that “the resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the U.S. imperial system toward the abyss” and that Biden must “hurry” to rescue a “fragile” America.

According to the historian, U.S. control of the world financial system is at risk because the Russian economy’s resistance to sanctions is pushing “the American imperial system” toward the precipice,” with Russia still able to rely on China for monetary backing.

Todd says America “cannot withdraw from the conflict, they cannot let go,” because it has no exit strategy and the stakes are too high.

“This is why we are now in an endless war, in a confrontation whose outcome must be the collapse of one or the other,” said the intellectual.

Todd is a widely respected figure, having accurately predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union 14 years before it happened.

As we highlighted last month, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church cautioned that any attempt to “destroy Russia” by “madmen” trying to impose their values will lead to “the end of the world.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

As West, Debt & Stocks Implode, East Gold & Oil Will Explode

January 29, 2023

AS WEST, DEBT & STOCKS IMPLODE, EAST GOLD & OIL WILL EXPLODE

“The risk of over-tightening by the European Central Bank is nothing less than catastrophic” says Prof Kenneth Rogoff .

At Davos he also said: “Italy is extremely vulnerable. But this could pop anywhere. Global debt has gone up massively since the pandemic: public debt, corporate debt, everything.”

Rogoff believes that it is a miracle that the world averted a financial crisis in 2022, but the odds of a major accident are shortening as the delayed effects of past tightening feed through.

As Rogoff said: “We were very fortunate that we didn’t have a global systemic event in 2022, and we can count our blessings for that, but rates are still going higher and the risk keeps rising.”

But lurking in the murkiness is also the global financial assets/liabilities which is almost $500 trillion including the shadow banking system at 46% of the total. The shadow banking sector includes pension funds, hedge funds and other financial institutions which are largely unregulated.

Shadow banking is not subject to the normal mark-to-market rules. Thus no one knows what the real position or losses are. This means that central banks are in the dark when it comes to evaluation of the real risks of the system.

Clearly, I am not the only one harping on about the catastrophic global debt/liability situation.

And no one knows the extent of total global derivatives. But if they have grown in line with debt and also with the shadow banking system, they could easily be in excess of $3 quadrillion.

Cultures don’t die overnight, but the US has been in decline since at least the Vietnam war in the 1960s. Interestingly, the US has not had a real Budget surplus since the early 1930s with a handful of years of exception.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The West Must Never Again Go Totalitarian

January 29, 2023

The West Must Never Again Go Totalitarian

The West can never again go totalitarian.

We saw it happen generations ago. We fought two of humanity’s most destructive wars and faced the horror of industrial-scale extermination. Never again, said the world’s peoples in the late 1940s, and they began the difficult task of uncovering all that had been done, all that had gone wrong.

The mass graves, the German and Soviet labor camps, the Japanese massacres in the Far East, America’s internment camps, the secret police and the mutilations, the ever-present threat of violence hanging over every member of society. We saw the personality cults around Hitler or Stalin for what they were, the blatant ideologies for what they had resulted in.

When the Berlin Wall fell in November of 1989, and with it the remains of the Evil Empire that had put it there, we discovered more horror. The archives of East Germany and the Kremlin showed that informants were everywhere happily giving up information – real or invented – on their fellow humans. We found more bodies. We learned that under enough fear and pressure, human life wasn’t worth anything. When push came to violent shove, bonds of family and community meant nothing.

The error of this terrifying history is to think that this was a problem of “the other,” someone far away who is nothing like us. Asks Thorsteinn Siglaugsson in a recent article: ”How do you find your inner Nazi? And how do you get him under control? Most people would have participated in the atrocities of their time, had they been put in that position – or at least sat by and allowed them to happen.”

In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn’s oft used and highly relevant phrase says that the line between good and evil passes “right through every human heart.”…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

In 2022, the world as we knew it ended. Decades of conflict lie ahead

January 8, 2023

In 2022, the world as we knew it ended. Decades of conflict lie ahead

The ‘end of history’ has concluded and the world has returned to conflicts between ‘great powers’. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn nuclear By Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club Programme Director & one of Russia’s leading foreign policy experts.© Getty Images / erhui1979

In 1989, the ‘short 20th century’ concluded with the ‘end of history’ – the victory of the Western capitalist world over the Soviet socialist project. At that time, there was not a single country, or community, left in the world which offered a realistic alternative to the US-led view of the organization of the economy, society, and the political system.

The Soviet bloc dissolved itself. A large part of it quickly integrated into NATO and the European Union. Other major world players had begun to integrate organically into the Western-centered world system long before the end of the Cold War. China retained a high level of sovereignty in terms of its domestic order, but quickly moved into a capitalist economy, actively trading with the US, EU, and the rest of the world.

Beijing, meanwhile, shied away from promoting the socialist project abroad. India had avoided claiming global projects of its own, although it has, to this day, also maintained a high level of identity in its political system and has so far shied away from joining blocs and alliances. Other major players also remained within the rules of the ‘liberal world order’ game, avoiding attempts to challenge it.

Individual rebels, such as Iran and North Korea, did not pose much of a threat, although they raised concerns with their stubborn resistance, persistent promotion of nuclear programs, successful adaptation to sanctions, and for the most part, any potential military attack was ruled out because of its high cost. For a brief period, it seemed that the global challenge might come from radical Islamism. But it could not shake the existing order either.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Advocating World War Three Is Just Mainstream Punditry Now

October 31, 2022

Advocating World War Three Is Just Mainstream Punditry Now

Listen to a reading of this article:

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Mainstream punditry in the latter half of 2022 is rife with op-eds arguing that the US needs to vastly increase military spending because a world war is about to erupt, and they always frame it as though this would be something that happens to the US, as though its own actions would have nothing to do with it. As though it would not be the direct result of the US-centralized empire continually accelerating towards that horrific event while refusing every possible diplomatic off-ramp due to its inability to relinquish its goal of total unipolar planetary domination.

The latest example of this trend is an article titled “Could America Win a New World War? — What It Would Take to Defeat Both China and Russia” published by Foreign Affairs, a magazine that is owned and operated by the supremely influential think tank Council on Foreign Relations.

“The United States and its allies must plan for how to simultaneously win wars in Asia and Europe, as unpalatable as the prospect may seem,” writes the article’s author Thomas G Mahnken, adding that in some ways “the United States and its allies will have an advantage in any simultaneous war” in those two continents.

But Mahnken doesn’t claim a world war against Russia and China would be a walk in the park; he also argues that in order to win such a war the US will need to — you guessed it — drastically increase its military spending.

“The United States clearly needs to increase its defense manufacturing capacity and speed,” Mahnken writes. “In the short term, that involves adding shifts to existing factories. With more time, it involves expanding factories and opening new production lines. To do both, Congress will have to act now to allocate more money to increase manufacturing.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

G7 Russian Oil Price Cap, Admission of Defeat From Collective West–Part 2

September 4, 2022

G7 Russian Oil Price Cap, Admission of Defeat From Collective West–Part 2

We’re Being Trained To Worry About ‘Russian Propaganda’ While Drowning In US Propaganda

September 2, 2022

We’re Being Trained To Worry About ‘Russian Propaganda’ While Drowning In US Propaganda

Listen to a reading of this article:

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One of the weirdest, most insane things happening today is the way the entire western world is being trained to freak out about “Russian propaganda” — which barely exists in the west — while ignoring the fact that we are spending every day marinating in billions of dollars worth of US empire propaganda.

CNN has an article out titled “Darya Dugina’s death provides a glimpse into Russia’s vast disinformation machine — and the influential women fronting it” on the recently assassinated daughter of Alexander Dugin, a Russian political thinker of wildly exaggerated influence.

The article uses Dugina’s assassination to further stoke its audience’s ever-growing panic about Russian disinformation, quickly becoming a commentary on Russia’s entire propaganda network without bothering to articulate how Dugina’s death “provides a glimpse” into its workings.

Without the slightest hint of self-reflection or irony, this CNN article about Russian propaganda cites as its two main experts a think tanker from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and a think tanker from the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). The Atlantic Council is a NATO narrative management firm that is funded by NATO, the US government, the UK government, various other US-aligned states, the arms industry, and numerous billionaires. CEPA’s donor list looks similar to the Atlantic Council’s and includes US arms manufacturers and the US government through both the US State Department and the CIA cutout National Endowment for Democracy. Both are used to promote the information interests of the US-centralized power alliance in Europe and North America.

As we’ve discussed previously, the way news media cite corrupt warmongering think tanks to discuss foreign policy without ever mentioning their immense conflicts of interests is plainly journalistic malpractice…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is a Partial Collapse Possible? — Part 2

August 4, 2022

Is a Partial Collapse Possible? — Part 2

Image credit: Himesh Kumar Behera via Unsplash

After exploring the possible ways the West could (continue to) collapse in Part 1, let’s turn our mental gaze towards the East, and see what are the global implications of such a shift in centers of power — if there are any…

No single crisis is permanent — it is a series of them which will cease to end. It looks increasingly safe to say, that now we are already knee deep into the ‘long emergency’ — which has raised its ugly head in 2008 then, after a couple of years, went back to sleep… only to return with a vengeance. It is a fast deepening series of crisis though, one, that now threatens the West with the deepest recession in living memory and with a complete collapse of Europe’s economy — together with the West’s global hegemony.

However, it will be China who will take the brunt of the damage made to the world’s production facilities, as it was producing a myriad of goods for Europe and for the States to consume and built their products from. Even if the West would enter a decade long depression though, China would still recover after going through its own round of deepest recession in living memory. They would eventually reorganize their economy to fit the needs of the BRICS states, serving them with products instead of Europe and the US. They could do this on the back of a yet to be released common currency of the block (replacing the Dollar in international trade) and based on resources suddenly becoming relatively cheap and abundant, as the West would consume a fraction of what it used to.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is a partial collapse possible? Part 1

August 2, 2022

Is a partial collapse possible? Part 1

Can the East survive the fall (or rather the collective suicide) of the West? Can the center of global power be transferred from the falling Western Empire to its Eastern counterparts? And ultimately: will this shift contribute to or, instead, reverse the end-game of this global civilization…? These are the questions bugging me for weeks now…What follows is an internal dialog, leading to wild guesses and a lot of speculation. Enjoy.

In order to answer the question posed in the title we have to first find an answer for the following: how long will it take for the West to fall? Years? Decades? A century?

Asking such a question presumes, of course, that the West will fall. I have to say, that we must take this as a given — in fact, the West has been falling for quite a while now. Deluded in their powers and by the technologies they wield, ruling elites in these societies did not even notice that they are no longer driving towards a cliff — they have become airborne. While some of them have noticed that we have left the cliff’s edge far behind, they now think and proclaim loudly that we can fly. The inconvenient question, none of them is even willing to ponder, is how much time we have left till we touch the ground, and then how many rollovers will it take till the badly damaged chassis finally stops bouncing and the dust starts to settle on it.

Some of those, who are willing (and capable) to ponder such a question expect a sudden explosion upon touchdown — a nuclear holocaust — as their hopelessly impotent leaders finally hit the red button in their utter frustration felt over the loss of their global hegemony…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe hypnotized into war economy

August 1, 2022

Europe hypnotized into war economy

Thirty two years ago Germans enthusiastically took down the Berlin wall. Now, captured by cunning Anglo-Saxon global elites, Germans are helping other European “useful idiots” to erect a much higher and thicker wall to cut themselves off from Russia leading them into a war economy. But as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has warned… “the approach has clearly failed — sanctions have backfired — and our car now has 4 four flat tires” … Question: vehicles don´t carry more than 2 spare tires on them, do they? So, one quick and innocent way to explain such unfathomable European miscalculation is to assume the EU leadership is immersed in a deep hypnotic trance and just blindly following US-UK instructions under Stoltenberg-Johnson war-mongering policies. Per “The Telegraph” Ref #1 https://www.rt.com/news/559682-johnson-uk-nato-ukriaine Ref #2 https://www.rt.com/news/559785-orban-eu-gas-war-economy/

suicidal non-supply

The supply lines that up to 2022 successfully linked Europe and Russia took decades of very hard work to develop. This now means that almost all of such over-abundant contracts necessarily have no effective substitute because (a) no other vendors have such high quality at low price plus decades of vetting and proven experience + (b) the un-replaceable short freight distance and shipping time from nearby Russia. So, by definition, both (a) + (b) mean that today no equivalent supply lines could ever be found no matter how much Europe tried simply because it would be either too soon or too far …and always too hard and too pricey. So short cuts will be taken and corners rounded-off…. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. The impact of the above cannot be overstated though as the now-broken Euro-Russian supply lines were essential for the Just-In-Time strategy that Europe and world markets still require and cannot wait years to develop and iron out. Logistics 101: proven experience and performance with excellent price plus quick delivery from nearby sources cannot be substituted fast enough, or possibly ever…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Going to Samarkan

August 1, 2022

Going to Samarkan

The meeting of the SCO Ministerial Council in Tashkent this past Friday involved some very serious business. That was the key preparatory reunion previous to the SCO summit in mid-September in fabled Samarkand, where the SCO will release a much-awaited “Declaration of Samarkand”.

What happened in Tashkent was predictably unreported across the collective West and still not digested across great swathes of the East.

So once again it’s up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to cut to the chase. The world’s foremost diplomat – amidst the tragic drama of the American-concocted Era of Non-Diplomacy, Threats and Sanctions – has singled out the two overlapping main themes propelling the SCO as one of the key organizations on the path towards Eurasia integration.

Interconnectivity and “the creation of efficient transport corridors”. The War of Economic Corridors is one of the key features of the 21^st
Drawing “the roadmap for the gradual increase in the share of national currencies in mutual settlements.”

Yet it was in the Q@A session that Lavrov for all practical purposes detailed all the major trends in the current, incandescent state of international relations. These are the key takeaways.

How comfortable are you with the US dollar?

Africa: “We agreed that we will submit to the leaders for consideration proposals on specific actions to switch to settlements in national currencies. I think that everyone will now think about it. Africa already has a similar experience: common currencies in some sub-regional structures, which, nevertheless, by and large, are pegged to Western ones. From 2023, a continental free trade zone will start functioning on the African continent. A logical step would be to reinforce it with currency agreements.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What War in Ukraine Means for Energy and Money

March 14, 2022

What War in Ukraine Means for Energy and Money

Russia Describes “Hot War” With West To Settle “Post-Soviet Space” Once & For All; Zelensky Urges Direct Putin Meeting

March 3, 2022

Russia Describes “Hot War” With West To Settle “Post-Soviet Space” Once & For All; Zelensky Urges Direct Putin Meeting

Update(1138amET): The second round of Ukraine-Russia talks are underway, with a “ceasefire” possibility on the table – however this is unlikely given what both sides communicated to Macron prior to the meeting as to their demands. On the one hand Zelensky has said he will not negotiate with “a gun to his head” – and on the other Putin has reaffirmed his military objectives of the “neutralization” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine. Macron expressed dismay after the 90-minute phone call, saying Russia’s objectives appear to be a complete takeover of the country.

“The Russian delegation was led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who said that the Russian delegation was ready to speak with the Ukrainian side for as long as it may take to reach agreements,” according to state-run TASS. While talks were underway, President Zelensky issued a statement saying that he’s willing to sit down to direct talks with Putin. He called this “the only way to stop the war,” according to AFP.

Also on Thursday the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergei Naryshkin, issued a series of bombshell statements which may reveal Moscow’s broader aims in the war concerning how Russia’s sees its ultimate security aims. Naryshkin said that “for us this is no longer a Cold War with the West but a hot war,” according to Interfax. He said in the rare statement that “Russia now has a real chance to put an end to the war that has been waged in the Post-Soviet space for the past 30 years” – as also quoted in TASS.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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