Month: March 2022

Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClear Science,

Ukraine is a highly devout country – about 87% of its 41 million citizens practice Christianity. So it’s notable that, to many Ukrainians, Mary Magdalene now has a new moniker: St. Javelin.

The viral meme (shown above) recasting the “Apostle of the apostles” is in reverence to a device that knows no religion: the FGM-148 Javelin portable fire-and-forget anti-tank missile. Since the start of Putin’s dastardly invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian freedom fighters have extensively utilized the American-made weapon system – co-produced by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon – to rain destruction down upon the Russian military’s armored vehicles. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry estimates that 102 tanks and 536 armored vehicles had been destroyed as of February 26th. The Javelin likely factored heavily into that rousing combat success.

“This weapon allows a single soldier to target and destroy even the most heavily armored main battle tank with an almost guaranteed kill rate, at great range and with minimal risk,” Army Capt. Vincent Delany wrote of the Javelin for West Point’s Modern War Institute.

So how does this ‘holy’ piece of military machinery work? Laypersons might be envisioning a bazooka-like operation, but anti-tank weapons have evolved considerably since that quintessential rocket launcher was deployed in World War II. With the Javelin, a soldier using the portable, reusable Command Launch Unit (CLU) looks through an infrared sight to locate a target up to an incredible 2.5 miles away. When the user spots a target, he operates a cursor to set a square around it, almost like cropping an image. This is then sent to the onboard guidance computer on the missile itself, which has a sophisticated algorithmic tracking system coupled with an infrared imaging device. When the missile locks on to the target, the operator can launch the self-guided weapon and quickly relocate or reload to fire another missile at a different target.

The Javelin originally debuted in 1996, bearing a couple remarkable innovations. For one, it offers a “soft launch.” David Qi Zhang of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute explained what that means in his Master of Engineering thesis on the Javelin.

“The first motor… produces enough thrust to launch the missile out of the tube and a safe distance away, but is completely burned before the nozzle left the tube, leaving no exhaust to hit the operator. The flight motor then ignites to propel the [missile] along its attack path,” he wrote.

A second innovation of the Javelin is that it strikes from above. The missile rises high into the air, up to 490 feet, then blasts down on its target from a steep angle, striking the top of an armored vehicle or tank, where the armor is typically weakest.

Russian tanks are not helpless against the Javelin. Most are equipped with explosive reactive armor. When struck by a penetrating weapon like a missile, the armor detonates, blasting a metal plate outwards to damage the missile’s penetrator and prevent it from piercing the tank’s main armor. The Javelin overcomes this by having tandem warheads, one to deal with the reactive armor plate, and the second to impact the tank’s armor itself. Modern Russian tanks are also equipped with a radar system called Arena, which detects incoming missiles and automatically fires a wide burst of projectiles to destroy or redirect them. But here, again, the Javelin reigns supreme, Delany says.

“The Javelin can defeat Arena while in top-attack mode, due to the missile descending from too steep an angle for the system to engage properly,” he wrote.

Ukraine had been shipped roughly 77 launchers and 740 missiles before Putin invaded. Many, many more of each are now on the way courtesy of the U.S. and European allies. May the Ukrainians put them to good use. Slava Ukraini!

The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell informed a news conference on Monday that the EU’s satellite center in Madrid, Spain will be used to provide intelligence to inform the Ukrainian government of Russian troop movements. 

This as President Zelensky had earlier called next 24 hours “crucial” for Ukraine. Borrell told the press conference, “The European Union has asked its satellite center in Madrid to provide intelligence to Ukraine about Russian troop movements and EU countries are determined to further increase their bilateral military support to Kiyv,” according to a summary of his words in Reuters. 

On drastic EU-wide punitive economic, trade, and airspace closure measures currently being enacted by Europe, Borrell said: “But we have to be ready to pay the price, or we will have to pay a much higher price in the future.” He added: “Relations with Russia will no longer be determined by trade.”

Russia has continued signaling dramatic threats as its central bank as well as ability to be on the SWIFT international payment systems is being targeted by the US and Europe, with the latest being another heightened nuclear posture:

Russia’s defense ministry says its strategic missile forces and Northern and Pacific fleets have been placed on enhanced combat duty in line with an order from Putin, according to a report by the Interfax news agency.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin that “shifts on duty at the command posts of the Strategic Missile Forces, the Northern and Pacific Fleets, and the Long-Range Aviation Command began to carry out combat duty with reinforced personnel”, Interfax quoted the ministry as saying.

Given that Borrell has in essence declared the Madrid satellite intelligence post to become a Ukraine-focused command center of sorts, this could mark the first significant step toward a more organized military response from Europe to the Ukraine crisis – or at least the start of sustained military support on the ground. It comes after the EU pledged that members states are sending fighter jets to Ukraine.

At the same time the UK has said it would “support” British citizens traveling to Ukraine in order to join Ukrainian forces in the fight against the Russians.  

A truly remarkable statement from a U.K. Foreign Minister supporting any volunteers from the U.K. who wants to go and fight for Ukraine. https://t.co/XDygbl1Hfa

— Alex Nice (@AlexNicest) February 27, 2022

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Sunday in response to a question from the BBC on the issue of Britons joining the war: “Absolutely, if people want to support that struggle I would support them in doing that,” she said. “That is something people can make their own decisions about. The people of Ukraine are fighting for freedom and democracy, not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe,” Truss said.

However, as one report underscored: “Truss’s comment has taken many by surprise, as it seems to be a direct violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870, which criminalizes British citizens who serve in the armed forces of another country.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com,

There will be alternatives to Russian natural gas supply in the five-year horizon, World Bank President David Malpass told CBS in an interview aired on Sunday.

“Markets look forward so they can look at the five-year time horizon and realize that there’s a lot of energy available if it’s mobilized, there are alternatives to the Russian dominance of the gas market, for example,” Malpass said on the on ‘Face the Nation’ program.

“And so whether those changes are made will be important,” the World Bank’s head said.

In the short term, replacing Russian gas is nearly impossible, say analysts and one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporters, Qatar.

Yet, with the Russian invasion, and even before that, the high dependence of Europe on Russian pipeline gas was a source of concern in Europe, and countries were looking to buy more liquefied natural gas (LNG) to secure this winter’s supply in light of decade-low gas volumes in storage and Russian pipeline deliveries not going above the contractual obligations.

“Right in the short run, there is upward pressure, including on LNG liquefied natural gas that the U.S. ships to Europe and Europe will need a lot more, but it’s available,” the World Bank’s Malpass told CBS.

Just before Putin launched an attack on Ukraine last week, Qatar said it could divert only 10-15 percent of its LNG cargo contracts to other destinations right now. Replacing Russian gas deliveries to Europe in the short term is “almost impossible,” Qatari Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi said two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“Most of the LNG are tied to long-term contracts and destinations that are very clear. So, to replace that sum of volume that quickly is almost impossible,” the minister noted.

While the European Union and the United States are trying to avoid hitting Europe’s energy supply and raising American gasoline prices even higher with sanctions, Germany, for example, made a major U-turn in its energy policy on Sunday. Germany will support the construction of two LNG import terminals and is not leaving any energy source – not even coal or nuclear – off the table as it will now look to cut energy dependence on one supplier.  

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

To retain our deterrence abroad, we must tighten our belts at home, pump oil and gas, start to balance our budget, junk wokeism as a nihilist indulgence, and recalibrate our military…

One of the oddest commentaries about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the boilerplate reaction that “borders can’t change in modern Europe” or “this does not happen in the 21st century.” 

But why in the world should the 21st century be exempt from the pathologies of the past 20 centuries? Are we smarter than the Romans? More innovative than Florentines? Do we have more savvy leaders than Lincoln or Churchill? Are they more mellifluous than Demosthenes? Does anyone now remember that some 130,000 were slaughtered just 30 years ago in the former Yugoslavia, as NATO planes bombed Belgrade and nuclear America and Russia almost squared off? 

Has globalization, the “rules-based order,” the Davos reset elite, the “international community” so improved the very way humans think that they have rendered obsolete the now ossified ancient idea of deterrence? Will the Kardashians and Beyoncé tweet our pathway to global peace? 

How about transnational NGOs? NATO? WHO? The UN? Are all their recent records of service proof of our more exalted modern morality? Will some new engineered Wuhan virus alter human nature, end its innate ancient pathologies, and so eliminate war as we knew it? Are we not the League of Nations because Putin is now chair of the Security Council? 

In truth, anything can happen to anyone, anywhere,  at any time—and has and will until the end of time. 

So let us walk down the crowded road to Kiev. 

The Russian Agenda

Putin feels that Russia was once a great player (defined mostly as “feared”) in world affairs. But now it—i.e., he— is not. He thinks if he can grab back some of the old Soviet Union’s now lost 100 million people and 30 percent of its territory, then his Russia would again become a superpower—especially given the natural wealth of his former Soviet republics. 

He knows that the longer some of these republics are Westernized and become acculturated to the passions of popular culture, the more difficult it will be to coerce them into becoming Russian subordinates. So Putin feels a sense of urgency that in the past was not always his conniving trademark—but now perhaps accentuated by his age or health. UN Security Council Chair Putin’s pique at his supposed wounds is endless given his incessant citations of NATO bombing on kindred Serbia, the 2004 orange revolution, or the 2008 Ukrainian coup. 

He feels we are decadent, soft, pampered—to the point of not replying to his provocations. So, he presses. In his Stalinesque mind, we purportedly do not deserve the power and influence we supposedly inherited at his expense, while his Russia, he boasts, is tough, religious, and deserves far more from the modern age than its current diminished status. Like Stalin, he has developed a visceral dislike of sermonizing Western elites, none of whom he thinks can box, judo kick, fish, shoot, or ride bare-chested at his level. 

So, to the degree Putin believes in a cost-to-benefit analysis that any envisioned invasion will prove profitable, he will invade anywhere he feels the odds favor his agenda. And when he does not—if America or NATO offers a deterrent, if oil is plentiful and cheap, and if Western leaders are sober and strong rather than loud and weak—he will not so gamble. It’s really that simple. Feed Putin a hand, and he will gobble a torso. 

Will Ukraine Survive? 

In theory, Ukraine should not last, given the numerical odds against it. Mysteriously it almost seems unprepared for a massive invasion. Its roads are apparently not blocked and mined. Putin has been massing troops since November, so why did not NATO flood the country with weapons in late 2021 to ensure endless supplies of anti-tank and anti-plane missiles? 

Still, the Russians may, we hope, have a hard time of it in Ukraine—if for no other reason than the country is larger than Iraq in both size and population. It has lots of supply conduits across the borders with four NATO countries that can finally begin pouring in weaponry. An invader that cannot stop resupply from third-party neighbors can rarely subdue its target. 

So if in a week Putin cannot shock and awe the elite or decapitate the government, he will have a hard time subduing the population. Time is not on his side. Sanctions are worthless in the short term but eventually they can bite. 

His tripartite semi-circular attack on Ukraine is uncannily similar to Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland from East Prussia, Germany, and the dismembered Czechoslovakia. But even Hitler who was helped later by the invasion of the Soviet Union from the east, lost 50,000 dead and wounded from a poorly equipped Polish army. 

Fossil Fuels 

Gas and oil, and thus who tried to curtail both, explain a lot of the current mess. The nihilist Biden decision voluntarily to cancel new pipelines, federal leases, ANWAR, and leverage loss of bank financing for fracking, and to give up well over 2 million barrels of daily production will be seen not just as an economic disaster. It was a strategic catastrophe. 

When Europe, or indeed the West, is dependent on Russian goodwill to drive and keep warm, it can never be free. Ending American energy independence is not just an AOC obsession. Russian hackers in January targeted our Colonial pipeline, shutting down in a day over 1 million barrels of transported oil. The more we discount the strategic consequences of having or lacking oil, the more our enemies fixate on it. 

A couple of questions for Joe Biden: Before he took office, was the United States begging Russia to sell it more oil? After he took office, why was it? 

Why did Biden blow-up energy dependence? Could not tomorrow Biden reverse course, greenlight the Keystone pipeline, reverse his mindless opposition to the EastMed pipeline that would help allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel to help other allies in southern Europe, and throw open new federal leasing to supply exports of liquid natural gas to Europe? 

What is moral, and what amoral: alienating Bernie Sanders and the squad or keeping our allies and ourselves safe from foreign attack? What is so ethical about following the green advice of billionaires like global jet-setter John Kerry at the expense of the middling classes who cannot afford to drive their cars or warm their living rooms?

A Deterrent Military? 

Factor in the Afghanistan humiliation, the walk away from $80 billion in arms and equipment, a $1 billion Kabul embassy, a multimillion-dollar refit of Bagram Airbase, the woke politicization of the Pentagon, the McCarthyite hunt inside the ranks for white rage/supremacy, the inane rantings of retired admirals and generals, the revolving door of four-stars to defense contractor boards—and in just three years, the military lost a half-century of American public support. 

All this and more have eroded the global fear of the U.S. military. We have all but destroyed American trust in our own armed forces (only 45 percent of the Americans poll great confidence in the military). The woke threat is in addition to spiraling pensions and social justice overhead that make the defense budget lean on actual defense readiness. Enemies did not erode our military’s once feared deterrence, our own top military and civilian leadership did. Time is short, enemies numerous. Can we find any brave soul who will restore the military? 

American Goliath? 

America may be woke. It may feel it has transcended dirty fossil fuels and can thrive on wind, solar, and batteries. It may assume it is morally superior, and like 19th-century pith-helmeted British foreign officers, can sermonize to the world, from pride flags and George Floyd murals in Kabul to no need for security in Benghazi. 

But we also are mired in $30 trillion in debt. We print $2 trillion a year in mockery of inflation. Our major cities are crime-ridden and the streets medieval with the homeless and sidewalk sewers. Race relations are the worst in memory. 

We have no southern border. Nearly 50 million residents were not born in our country—and this challenge at a time when we have given up on assimilation and integration. The woke virus has warped racial and ethnic relations and is destroying the idea of meritocracy. We are in the hold of a Jacobin madness, in a top-down elite race to perdition. To praise America’s past is a thought crime. The ignorant, who have no idea of the date when the Civil War began, nonetheless lecture to the nodding that 1619 not 1776 was America’s real foundational date.

In short, the America of even 1990 no longer exists. To retain our deterrence abroad, we must tighten our belts at home, pump oil and gas, start to balance our budget, junk wokeism as a nihilist indulgence, and recalibrate our military. 

NATO 

NATO is now a mere construct. It was birthed and exists to do three things in Europe: keep America in, Germany down, and Russia out. Now Germany is up. America is out. And Russia is in. 

The vast majority of the alliance’s members followed Germany’s anti-American prompt to renege on promises to spend a mere 2 percent of their budgets on military readiness. How strange that only thousands of deaths in Ukraine can soon persuade the arrogant German leadership that their own performance-art pacifism kills. 

NATO’s richest and second largest member, Germany, polls a desire to become closer to Russia than to the United States. Does that mean they favor Putin’s invasion rather than NATO’s resistance? Sixty percent of Germans poll no desire to honor NATO’s Article Five clause of mutual assistance, and thus would not wish to aid a fellow member in extremis. 

Germany, on its way to green Lalaland, ignored all warnings about conducting a $1-billion-dollar per-day natural gas purchase from Putin. Think of the following absurdities: Germans no longer like Americans all that much. But they do expect them to subsidize their defense and to protect them from Russians, with whom in turn they are cementing lucrative energy deals. The latter will eventually make them dependent on Putin for 50 percent of their energy needs. 

So what is NATO? In truth, 25 or so of the 30 nation members are defenseless. They rely on the United States to protect them from enemies in their own backyard. Only the NATO nuclear monopolies of Britain and France offer a deterrent umbrella over both NATO and the EU—on the quiet assurance that a far bigger nuclear American umbrella covers all of them. 

We should simply ask those who will meet their promised military commitments to stay, and the others to go quietly in peace and follow the Swiss model. Why are there any U.S. combat troops in Germany? Are they there to protect the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russian attack? To reward Germany for spending less than two percent on defense? 

China 

For five years Americans were obsessed not just with Putin, but the left-wing myth that Russians were under all our beds—the tattooed, gap-toothed cruddy villains of Hollywood movies, the supposed Satanic colluders of the Steele dossier, the nefarious bankers who stealthily communicated at night with the White House. So we voluntarily gave up the old Russian triangulation card when we once played dictatorial China off against dictatorial Russia. The Kissingerian principle dictated that neither of the two should ever become closer to one another than either is to us. We gave all that up and instead hung on every word for two years of Bob Mueller, James Comey, and the lunatics at CNN. 

Meanwhile, China birthed, and hid the origins of, a virus that destroyed the U.S. economy and undermined our entire culture. Thousands of Chinese are here mostly to aid in expropriating U.S. technical expertise. Add in the Uighurs and the now vanquished Tibet, and China outdoes even Putin in its human rights atrocities. If Ukraine falls, Taiwan will be the third nation that the West “lost” during the Biden Administration. 

Leftwing Mania 

On cue, an embarrassed Left now offers some surreal takes on why Putin went into Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014 and again into all of Ukraine in 2022—while mysteriously bookending the four invasion-free Trump years. We are told that hiatus was because Putin got all he wanted from Trump and rewarded him by not invading any of his neighbors. 

Really? 

Were Vladimir Putin and his advisors more or less delighted that their poodle Trump thankfully flooded the world with price-crashing oil? They were thankful Trump at least had killed Russian mercenaries in Syria? 

Putin himself was content that the United States got out of his own advantageous missile deal? Was he thrilled that Trump sold once taboo U.S. offensive weapons to Ukraine? Did the Kremlin grow ecstatic when Trump upped the U.S. defense budget?  And was Russia especially thankful that Trump jawboned NATO into spending another $100 billion on defense? Did Putin clap when Trump killed Soleimani and Baghdadi, and bombed ISIS out of existence? 

We are left being lectured to now by the ubiquitous retired Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, the political operative remonstrating America on its anemic response to saving his native Ukraine. All this from one of the key operatives of impeaching the one president who, unlike his progressive presidential predecessor, along with the Biden Burisma consortia, really did arm Ukraine and send it offensive weapons embargoed by the Left. 

The useful Vindman may have been offered to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. But he never grasped that any country naïve enough to believe the Left’s empty promises about autonomy and freedom reified by mere liberal fiat will be sorely left all alone by its utopian patrons—once a nearby powerful thug invades. 

Biden 

Now we hear that midterm Biden has played the crisis wonderfully. The surreal progressive take on this crisis is that Winston Biden has corn-popped the “killer” Putin, metaphorically taken “the bully” behind the proverbial gym and given him a whomping, slammed his head on the global lunch counter, and in Biden’s deterrent fashion, called him a chump, one of the dregs, a junkie, fat, and a lying dog-faced pony soldier—and capped it all off with “You ain’t white!” 

Joe threatened the toughest sanctions in history that on Wednesday would deter an invasion and by Saturday were never meant to at all. But Biden promises someday a “conversation” to decide whether at some time he still will issue the toughest sanctions in history. Until then, he invites Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy safe passage out of Kyiv—the quickest way to destroy the dogged Ukrainian resistance. 

Left unsaid are the years of rapacious Biden family profiteering in Ukraine, a decade of leftist passive-aggressive love and hate of Russia, from obsequious reset to greedy Uranium One to pathetic “tell Vladimir . . .” to unhinged vetoing of sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. 

What a crowded road to Kyiv.

Depleting food stocks added to the trauma of Ukrainians stranded in the war-torn country as Russia’s invasion stretches to a fourth day. People are looting supermarkets as their food and water supplies run out, and ATMs have no cash. In the attempt to deter mass lootings, mayors in two Ukrainian towns advised local law enforcement officers to shoot looters “on the spot,” according to RT News.

“I am warning everyone: the police, the National Guard, the territorial defense units – they all received orders not to detain, they can just shoot on the spot. There will be no looting in the city,“ Zhytomyr’s Mayor Sergey Sukhomlyn told citizens of the city in a short Facebook video on Sunday. 

Looting incidents have spiked across Ukraine since Russia began its invasion on Feb. 24. People are growing hungry as their food supplies run out and have no other option than raid supermarkets. The head of the Okhtyrka territorial community Pavel Kuzmenko issued a similar warning. 

“Looting results in shooting on the spot,” Kuzmenko said in a Facebook video. He also warned that store owners who price gouge would also be considered looters. 

Numerous videos surfaced on Twitter in the last 24 hours of what appears to be mass lootings at supermarkets. 

Citizens looting supermarket in Ukraine, Kyiv. pic.twitter.com/u2ILtuNdam

— YUVAL LESHEM MBA |CEO⁝R&D⁝CO.FOUNDER⁝HR DIRECTOR| (@YuvalLeshem) February 28, 2022

Looting in supermarket in Ukraine 😰 pic.twitter.com/ugLFS50ud1

— Gabriel Hébert-Mild™ ⓥ (@Gab_H_R) February 27, 2022

🇺🇦 Looting now flourishes on the territory of Ukraine pic.twitter.com/Zcyq2dVQBn

— Tintov Deveranov (@Pinxaor) February 28, 2022

There have yet to be reports of any looters shot though one video surfaced on TikTok then reposted on Twitter shows a man duct-taped to a light pole for the world to see. 

#Ukrainian soldiers duct tape a ukrainian man to a pole for looting. This is a #war crime. He will freeze to death overnight. The tiktok account that posted this has “88” in it, a number commonly used by neo-nazi’s. #Ukraine‘s military is full of them! pic.twitter.com/Z014lPOax2

— IgnorantHubris (@RussiaPrevaiIs) February 28, 2022

Something perhaps worth noting for some is the fact that as the nation crumbles amid the invasion, the looting only appears to be at supermarkets – with people truly in desperate need of bread and milk – and oddly not big-screen televisions, Louis Vuitton purses, and PlayStations…

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

“I’m concerned about Russian disinformation spreading online, so today I wrote to the CEOs of major tech companies to ask them to restrict the spread of Russian propaganda,” US Senator Mark Warner tweeted on Friday.

Since then YouTube has announced that it has suppressed videos by Russian state media channels so that they’ll be seen by fewer people in accordance with its openly acknowledged policy of algorithmically censoring unauthorized content, as well as de-monetizing all such videos on the platform. Google and Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta both banned Russian state media from running ads and monetizing on their platforms in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Twitter announced a pause on ads in both Russia and Ukraine.

“Glad to see action from tech companies to reign in Russian propaganda and disinformation after my letter to their CEOs yesterday,” Warner tweeted on Saturday. “These are important first steps, but I’ll keep pushing for more.”

For years US lawmakers have been using threats of profit-destroying consequences to pressure Silicon Valley companies into limiting online speech in a way that aligns with the interests of Washington, effectively creating a system of government censorship by proxy. It would appear that we’re seeing a new expansion of this phenomenon today.

And the imperial media are pushing for more. Articles and news segments warning of the sinister threat posed by Russian propaganda to misinform and divide western populations using the internet are being churned out at a rate that’s only likely to increase as this latest narrative management campaign gets into full gear. The Associated Press has a new article out for example titled “War via TikTok: Russia’s new tool for propaganda machine”.

Glad to see action from tech companies to reign in Russian propaganda and disinformation after my letter to their CEOs yesterday. These are important first steps, but I’ll keep pushing for more.

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) February 26, 2022

“Armies of trolls and bots stir up anti-Ukrainian sentiment. State-controlled media outlets look to divide Western audiences. Clever TikTok videos serve up Russian nationalism with a side of humor,” AP warns.

“Analysts at several different research organizations contacted by The Associated Press said they are seeing a sharp increase in online activity by groups affiliated with the Russian state,” AP writes. “That’s in keeping with Russia’s strategy of using social media and state-run outlets to galvanize domestic support while seeking to destabilize the Western alliance.”

The “different research organizations” AP ends up citing include “Cyabra, an Israeli tech company that works to detect disinformation,” as well as the state-funded NATO narrative management firm The Atlantic Council.

As tends to happen whenever a consensus begins to form that a certain category of speech must be purged from the internet, imperial spinmeisters are already working to expand the definition of “Russian propaganda” which must be purged from the internet to include independent anti-imperialist commentators like myself.

Dopey Louise Mensch wannabe NatSec LARPer calling for me to be labeled “State Affiliated Media” and de-platformed across all western social media because RT is one of the many outlets who occasionally republish my blogs for free. https://t.co/54yZtQUsFz pic.twitter.com/XKzLnwvAPs

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) February 26, 2022

Imperial narrative manager Robert Potter has a thread on Twitter currently calling for me and other anti-imperialist content creators to be labeled “State-Affiliated Media” on Twitter and ideally de-platformed across all western social media, in my case solely because RT is one of the many outlets who occasionally choose to republish some of my blog posts for free.

I am not as Potter claims “an OP Ed columnist for Russia Today.” I don’t work for RT, I don’t write for RT, I don’t submit articles to RT, and I’ve never been paid by RT or the Russian government. RT is just one of the outlets who sometimes avail themselves of my longstanding invitation for anyone who wants to to republish my work free of charge. That RT editors would find my daily rants against western imperialism agreeable is not scandalous or conspiratorial but normal and self-evident.

Yet for agents of imperial narrative control like Potter (who ironically works directly for the US State Department but thinks my posts should be labeled “State-Affiliated Media” by Twitter), even this is enough to justify complete silencing. I will not be in the slightest bit surprised to see a great deal more of these efforts as the new cold war continues to escalate.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, an empire-loyal NGO ostensibly focused primarily on fighting racism and prejudice, has published a report accusing Facebook of failing to label Russian propaganda as such 91 percent of the times it occurs. The CCDH decried Mark Zuckerberg’s “failure to stop Facebook being weaponized by the Russian state”.

This sudden narrative management thrust has also seen RT taken off the air in nations like Australia, Germany and Poland, with pressures mounting in France and the UK to follow suit.

This despite the fact that all western powers would have to do to eliminate RT completely is simply start allowing leftist and anti-imperialist voices to be heard on mainstream media platforms. It would immediately suck up RT’s entire foreign audience as people who’d previously needed to look outside the mainstream for sane perspectives gravitate toward media made with much better funding and a higher level of talent.

But of course we all know that’s never going to happen. The imperial media aren’t going to subvert RT by platforming voices who dispute the empire’s narratives no matter how badly they hate it, because the exact reason they hate RT is because it disputes the empire’s narratives. They’re not worried about Russian propaganda operations, they’re worried about someone else running interference on their own propaganda operations.

Nazis in Ukraine? Russian propaganda.
US-backed coup in 2014? Russian propaganda.
Donbas provocations? Russian propaganda.
US/allies armed terrorists in Syria? Russian propaganda.
Mass media is propaganda? Russian propaganda.
The government’s not your friend? Russian propaganda. https://t.co/OjtURhlht7

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) February 26, 2022

RT’s audience makes up about 0.04% of TV viewing in the UK. This isn’t about RT, it’s about the the agenda to continually expand and normalize the censorship of unauthorized speech. That’s what it was about when they were pretending it was about the need to fight Covid misinformation before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to fight domestic US extremism before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to defend election security before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to fight Russian propaganda the first time before that one cycled back around again.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Humans are storytelling creatures, so whoever can control the stories the humans are telling themselves about what’s going on in the world has a great deal of control over the humans. Our mental chatter tends to dominate such a large percentage of our existence that if it can be controlled the controller can exert a tremendous amount of influence over the way we think, act, and vote.

The powerful understand this, while the general public mostly does not. That’s all we’ve been seeing in these attempts to regulate ideas and information as human communication becomes more and more rapid and networked. An entire oligarchic empire is built on the ability to prevent us from realizing at mass scale that that empire does not serve us and inflicts great evil upon our world. The question of whether our species can awaken to its highest potential or not boils down to whether our dominators will succeed in locking down our minds, or if we will find some way to break free.

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The world of Elon Musk knows no limit to bizarre stories. Pivoting from a report last week that Musk was being probed, along with his brother Kimbal, by the SEC for potential trading violations related to dumping stock in November 2021, this morning’s story about Musk concerns late actor Gene Wilder’s former home.

Musk had owned the house for some time and, upon announcing a couple years ago that he was going to sell all of his possessions, concern started to mount about the property and whether or not it should be preserved to honor the legendary actor.

Well for those of you ‘waiting to exhale’ about this important controversy, you can now breathe a sigh of relief: Jordan Walker-Pearlman, Wilder’s nephew, is reportedly buying the house from Musk and will prevent it from being torn down or otherwise replaced. 

Apparently, Musk let the house go at discount prices, according to a report from Fox News. The report said that “Musk was willing to sell it to him for a significantly reduced price in order to ensure that house wasn’t demolished or majorly altered.”

Walker-Pearlman had heard the house was for sale after Musk’s announcement that he was selling all of his physical possessions. Musk had said at the time that he would only sell the house to someone that wouldn’t tear it down or alter its “soul”. 

Walker-Pearlman couldn’t pay the $9.5 million listing price but was able to contact Musk’s team and convince them that he wouldn’t demolish the home. Walker-Pearlman told Musk that Gene Wilder had raised him, and that he had memories of “cooking on the indoor grill, enjoying bran muffins every morning in the kitchen and teaching him to swim in the backyard pool.”

Musk then agreed to offload the property to Walker-Pearlman for just $7 million – with Musk loaning Walker-Pearlman $6.7 million to help him consummate the deal.

Fox News wrote that the contract “included an agreement known as a long-form deed of trust and assignment of rents, through which Musk loaned Walker-Pearlman $6.7 million.”

Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News Substack,

We thought he would be our bastard. Then, he became his own bastard…

The president of the Council of Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, made an extraordinary statement over the weekend. “Just days ago much of the world was focused on the unwanted prospect of regime change in Ukraine,” he tweeted. “Now the conversation has shifted to include the possibility of desired regime change in Russia.” Senior Brookings Institute fellow Benjamin Wittes was even more explicit:

Regime change: Russia.

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) February 27, 2022

For anyone expecting me to be outraged about this — I am, after all, almost daily denounced as a Putin-lover and apologist, so surely I must want the Great Leader to stay in power forever — I have to disappoint. If Vladimir Putin were captured tomorrow and fired into space, I wouldn’t bat an eye.

I would like to point out that we already tried regime change in Russia. I remember, because I was there. And, thanks to a lot of lurid history that’s being scrubbed now with furious intensity, it ended with Vladimir Putin in power. Not as an accident, or as the face of a populist revolt against Western influence — that came later — but precisely because we made a long series of intentional decisions to help put him there.

Once, Putin’s KGB past, far from being seen as a negative, was viewed with relief by the American diplomatic community, which had been exhausted by the organizational incompetence of our vodka-soaked first partner, Boris Yeltsin. Putin by contrast was “a man we can do business with,” a “liberal, humane, and decent European” of “alert, controlled poise” and “well-briefed acuity,” who was open to anything, even Russia joining NATO. “I don’t see why not,” Putin said. “I would not rule out such a possibility.”

The New York Times Magazine, noting that the KGB of the seventies that Putin joined was no longer really a murder factory but just another “thinking corporation,” even compared him once to Russia’s first true Western-looking leader:

In him, Russia has found a humane version of Peter the Great, a ruler who will open the country to the influence of a world at once gentler and more dynamic than Russia has ever been.

I’ve been bitter in commentary about Putin in recent years because I never forgot the way the West smoothed his rise, and pretends now that it didn’t. It’s infuriating also that many of us who were critical of him from the start are denounced now as Putin apologists, I think in part because we have inconvenient memories about who said what at the start of his story. The effort to wipe that history clean is reaching a fever pitch this week. Before they finish the job, it seemed worth getting it all down.

In late 1996, Vladimir Putin was at a career crossroads. His boss, Anatoly Sobchak, the first democratically elected Mayor of St. Petersburg, had just lost an election and with Putin’s help, was gearing up to flee the country to avoid corruption charges.

Should Putin, too, flee abroad, perhaps to Germany, where he’d enjoyed a posting in his KGB days? He had his own reputation issues, having been inveigled in scandal in his time as Sobchak’s adviser and Deputy Mayor. In 1992, while head of a Petersburg Committee to attract foreign investment, he’d been given over $120 million in export quotas for timber, oil, and rare earth metals by the federal government, to trade for desperately needed food. The deal was approved by Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and then-trade Minister (and future Alfa Bank heavy) Pyotr Aven. The raw materials were not bartered but pawned off to “various commercial structures,” as the newspaper Smena put it, and the city got back just two tankers of cooking oil.

The Federal Accounting Chamber ended up writing a letter recommending that Mr. Putin not be considered for promotions. But the little man from the northern capital was destined for a higher calling…

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Nikkei reports on Monday that Toyota Motor Corp. will suspend operations at all of its Japanese factories on Tuesday after one of its top suppliers was hit by a “suspected cyberattack.” 

Kojima Industries, which manufactures plastic parts for Toyota, has been hit by a cyberattack, an official close to Kojima Industries told Nikkei. 

“It is true that we have been hit by some kind of cyberattack. We are still confirming the damage and we are hurrying to respond, with the top priority of resuming Toyota’s production system as soon as possible,” the unnamed official said.

The decision to suspend output at 28 lines at 14 plants could affect around 10,000 vehicles or about 5% of Toyota’s monthly production in Japan per day. Toyota subsidiaries Hino Motors and Daihatsu Motor will also halt some output on Tuesday. Here’s a map of automaker plants in the country. 

As for when the cyberattack is resolved, it could be as soon as Wednesday. 

“Automakers are still determining whether they will be able to return to normal operations after Wednesday,” Nikkei said. 

The incident will derail Toyota’s efforts to return to full production following halts in January and February due to ongoing semiconductor shortages, labor woes, and other COVID-related disruptions. 

Perhaps, the Bank of Japan has found another excuse to keep interest rates pinned near zero. 

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

The war being waged by Russia in Ukraine shows no signs of coming to any type of peaceful end.

Meanwhile, it appears to me that a separate war on the U.S. dollar could be “officially” waged at any moment, by Russia and China collectively, as the situation in Ukraine grows more dire, as Russia’s options wane and its ties with China grow closer.

While the hope is still to avoid a World War III type scenario, escalating sanctions from the West are forcing an increasingly unhinged Vladimir Putin to consider his options for pushback.

For example, on Sunday, Putin put nuclear deterrence forces on high alert as a response to increasing pressure from NATO, in a move that the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said “escalates the conflict unacceptably.”

In the same breath that Putin made this announcement, he continued to push back on economic sanctions being levied against Russia:

“As you can see, not only do Western countries take unfriendly measures against our country in the economic dimension – I mean the illegal sanctions that everyone knows about very well.”

This may be because the bigger story over the weekend was the beginning of removing Russia from the SWIFT intra-bank messaging system, along with sanctions targeting Russia’s Central Bank.

SWIFT helps provide services related to the execution of financial transactions and payments between banks worldwide. Central Bank sanctions from the EU and the Fed instantly make Russia – and its currency, the ruble – pariahs elsewhere in the world.

Russia’s Central Bank reserves are generally controlled by foreign central banks. If those foreign banks decide to freeze access to such reserves, Russia only has its tangible assets (such as oil, and gold reserves) to fall back on.

The ruble is expected to collapse as a result of these sanctions.

Said one analyst on Twitter over the weekend, the Kremlin “has no good off-ramps at this point”.

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The obvious consequences of these sanctions is a run on Russia’s banks and a crippling of the Russian economy.

The Bank of Russia (Russia’s Central Bank) will now try to prevent a crisis of confidence among the citizens of the country to slow the economic bleeding.

The BBC reported that Russia’s Central Bank has claimed it “has the necessary resources and tools to maintain financial stability and ensure the operational continuity of the financial sector.”

Regardless of whether this is true (the global FX markets will be the judge), it brings up a topic that only “conspiracy theorists” have talked about for decades: the resolve of fiat currencies, and the importance of having tangible bank reserves.

During decades of peace, it’s easy to simply ignore critical questions raised about the backing of fiat currencies while the next trillion dollars casually rolls off the Fed printer and is inequitably distributed through programs like the Paycheck Protection Program. Not unlike equity markets when they’re in a mania, few critical questions are asked while loopholes like money printing are exploited until something eventually gives out.

Now, something is giving out. All those quotes about the “world order” changing as a result of Putin’s recent action? They’re worth paying attention to. They’re the definition of something “giving out”.

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When push comes to shove and things get down to brass tacks, people want to know what backs their currency, and it’s not just Russia in this case. While they’re going to be the obvious example, I think economic tensions between Russia and the West are going to stoke a far larger global discussion about the fiat system in general.

After all, heading into this massive conflict, we were already at the precipice of “The Great Reset”, right?

Now, China and Russia may speed that “reset” along much quicker – and in much more volatile fashion – than Klaus Schwab would approve of.

Sorry, Klaus.

The fact is that if Putin has his mind made up to “go the distance” in Ukraine, come hell or high water, he’s going to have to somehow address the crippling of his country’s currency and economy. Left with few “off-ramps”, my guess is that Putin will push back on economic sanctions by allying himself further with China, and even discussing with China the prospects of a monetary system outside of the current global monetary system.

While the idea will likely be written off by economic experts, it’s important to remember that, even if such an idea doesn’t succeed, it could still create chaos for global economic markets and life in the West. We’re already in the midst of a supply chain crisis here in the U.S. – now, add to that the facts that:

1. Russia has tangible reserves in the form of oil and gold. Russia is the top supplier of imported gasoline to the United States. “In 2021, Russia accounted for 21% of all U.S. gasoline imports,” Forbes writes.

2. China is a major supplier of…basically everything…we use in the West on a daily basis. China was the United States’ largest supplier of goods imports in 2020, according to the USTR. China is currently our largest goods trading partner with $559.2 billion in total (two way) goods trade during 2020, the same report notes.

Trade deficits hit further records in 2021, the WSJ reported earlier this month.

In other words, we get tons of stuff – for lack of a better word – from both countries.

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This prediction shouldn’t surprise anyone that has been paying attention.

Just one year ago, the idea of Russia and China working together to de-dollarize themselves made headlines. The Washington Post reported on the steps the two countries were collectively taking in April 2021:

China and Russia have vowed to jointly “de-dollarize,” creating alternatives to the current system with a three-step plan that began a few years ago. First, both countries began to cut back the proportion of their bilateral trade invoiced in dollars, privileging settlement in their own currencies.

Second, they have sought to boost the renminbi’s role as an international currency for payments and reserves. To encourage wider adoption of its currency, China has given more than 30 countries renminbi access through bilateral swap agreements. China and Russia each scaled back their U.S. Treasury holdings, with Russia channeling cash into renminbi holdings. And China has ramped up the digital currency drive it began in 2014, with the goal of making it easier to hold renminbi.

The third and last leg of these efforts, still underway, aims to create alternative payments and messaging systems allowing countries to use home and partner currencies instead of dollars or euros to settle trade and investment deals.

Far be it for me to agree with the Washington Post, but they were spot on in early 2021 when they concluded that:

“If China and Russia devise successful alternatives to the dollar-centered financial system, and if these alternatives gain significant international traction, we would be witnessing a cataclysmic moment in great power rivalry.”

Meanwhile, we have been standing idly by, watching Russia dump U.S. treasuries while increasing its FX reserves over the last 5 years.

Russia has also been increasing its holdings of gold over the same period:

De-dollarization and a financial alliance between Russia and China was being reported in 2020, as well.

Nikkei wrote at the time:

Dedollarization has been a priority for Russia and China since 2014, when they began expanding economic cooperation following Moscow’s estrangement from the West over its annexation of Crimea. Replacing the dollar in trade settlements became a necessity to sidestep U.S. sanctions against Russia.

The idea of a Russia-China alliance to try and collapse the U.S. economic system isn’t new, either. Russia tried to push China create chaos for the U.S. in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

“Russia may have tried to conspire with China in a bid to collapse the U.S. financial system. They were hoping to sell Fannie and Freddie bonds during a time when the U.S. economy was on the ropes,” Insider wrote in 2010, citing Hank Paulson’s memoir about the crisis.

Paulson wrote in his memoir:

“The report was deeply troubling — heavy selling could create a sudden loss of confidence in the GSEs and shake the capital markets. I waited till I was back home and in a secure environment to inform the president.”

Stories like this flew under the radar, anyone who brought up the idea that this could be part of some larger plan was largely ignored, and the story didn’t make waves – at least, not in the way I think it’s going to now.

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In a podcast I did with Danielle DiMartino Booth, formerly of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, in 2020, she claimed that a “hot war” could be the only thing that could dethrone the dollar as the world reserve currency.

Now, we are in that situation.

Pieces that I have written in the past, including my prediction that China is going to back its new digital currency with gold – all of a sudden look like discussions that need to take place, post-haste. I wrote last year:

China thinks in terms of generations and centuries. They are officially playing the long game. And don’t let the lack of a hot war fool you, the gears and wheels of trying to advance their country’s interests are there, grinding away slowly behind the scenes, for those who care to peek behind the curtain.

Backing their currency with gold could be seen by Xi as the ultimate “Trump card” of sorts, especially as the U.S. has watched its currency fall into a precarious position over the last 18 months due to unprecedented quantitative easing. It’s the type of revelation that, if done correctly by China, can immediately hoist China’s economic status to the top of the global ladder and can immediately challenge other countries to follow suit.

Except those “other countries” won’t be nearly as prepared to “flip the switch” to a gold-backed currency, because we will not have even considered the idea.

Now, it could be time for China and Russia to collectively “flip the switch”.

The writing has been on the wall for a while: Russia and China “de-dollarizing”, both countries stacking their gold reserves and China quickly looking to implement a digital currency.

Over the last five years, only overtly paranoid people like me looked at these actions and concluded they were the lead up to something much bigger.

Now that Russia has put itself at war with the West, the potential reasons, all of a sudden, become much clearer.

I have long argued that our arrogant treatment of the US dollar and our reliance on being able to print it whenever we want was a fool‘s errand. Austrian economists and conservatives who made these points were written off as conspiracy theorists for making suggestions that our country should shore up its balance sheet and back its currency with something tangible.

Now, in the midst of one of the most consequential wars in decades, our people may be starting to see exactly why having your monetary policy house in order is a good idea. Because the shit, eventually, always hits the fan.

And if the dollar is challenged – even if it holds its place as the world reserve currency – they’re still going to be a lot of uncomfortable questions we’re going to have to ask ourselves about monetary policy afterwards. So far, Tucker Carlson has been the only mainstream news anchor with either the foresight, courage or both to broach the subject, as he did a couple days ago.

Despite his comments, it still doesn’t seem that most people understand that war could be waged not just on Ukraine, but on the dollar.

To me, it only seems like the logical next step. I hope I’m wrong, but it looks as though the unprecedented times we are living through may still get far more unprecedented.

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(A recent Atlantic article does a great job describing, in depth, how the above mentioned SWIFT & Central Bank-related economic sanctions work in practice, for those looking for a deeper understanding.)