Category: WESTERN MEDDLING & HYPOCRISY

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

by Pepe Escobar for PressTV, cross posted with the author’s permission

E. Todd: unexpectedly lucid for an age of manufactured confusion.

The self-appointed Davos “elites” are afraid. So afraid. At this week’s World Economic Forum meetings, mastermind Klaus Schwab – displaying his trademark Bond villain act – carped over and over again about a categorical imperative: we need “Cooperation in a Fragmented World”.

While his diagnosis of “the most critical fragmentation” the world is now mired in is predictably somber, Herr Schwab maintains that “the spirit of Davos is positive” and in the end we may all live happily in a “green sustainable economy.”

What Davos has been good at this week is showering public opinion with new mantras. There’s “The New System” which, considering the abject failure of the much-ballyhooed Great Reset, now looks like a matter of hastily updating the current – rattled – operating system.

Davos needs new hardware, new programming skills, even a new virus. Yet for the moment, all that’s available is a “polycrisis”: or, in Davos speak, a “cluster of related global risks with compounding effects.”

In plain English: a perfect storm.

Insufferable bores from that Divide and Rule island in northern Europe have just found out that “geopolitics”, alas, never really entered the tawdry “end of history” tunnel: much to their amazement it’s now centered – again – across the Heartland, as it’s been for most of recorded history.

They complain about “threatening” geopolitics, which is code for Russia-China, with Iran attached.

But the icing on the Alpine cake is arrogance/stupidity actually giving away the game: the City of London and its vassals are livid because the “world Davos made” is fast collapsing.

Davos did not “make” any world apart from its own simulacrum.

Davos never got anything right, because these “elites” were always busy eulogizing the Empire of Chaos and its lethal “adventures” across the Global South.

Davos not only failed to foresee all recent, major economic crises but most of all the current “perfect storm”, linked to the neoliberalism-spawned deindustrialization of the Collective West.

And, of course, Davos is clueless about the real Reset taking place towards multipolarity.

Self-described opinion leaders are busy “re-discovering” that Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain was set in Davos – “against the backdrop of a deadly disease and an impeding world war” – nearly a century ago.

Well, nowadays the “disease” – fully bioweaponized – is not exactly deadly per se. And the “impending World War” is in fact being actively encouraged by a cabal of US Straussian neo-cons and neoliberal-cons: an unelected, unaccountable, bipartisan Deep State not even subject to ideology. Centennary war criminal Henry Kissinger still does not get it.

A Davos panel on de-globalization was rife on non-sequiturs, but at least a dose of reality was provided by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.

As for China’s vice-premier Liu He, with his vast knowledge of finance, science and technology, at least he was very helpful to lay down Beijing’s five top guidelines for the foreseeable future – beyond the customary imperial Sinophobia.

Russian resistance, American precipice

Emmanuel Todd was not at Davos. But it was the French anthropologist, historian, demographer and geopolitical analyst who ended up ruffling all the appropriate feathers across the collective West these past few days with a fascinating anthropological object: a reality-based interview.

Todd spoke to Le Figaro – the newspaper of choice of the French establishment and haute bourgeoisie. The interview was published last Friday on page 22, sandwiched between proverbial Russophobic screeds and with an extremely brief mention on the bottom of the front page. So people really had to work hard to find it.

Todd joked that he has the – absurd – reputation of a “rebel destroy” in France, while in Japan he’s respected, featured in mainstream media, and his books are published with great success, including the latest (over 100,000 copies sold): “The Third World War Has Already Started”.

Significantly, this Japanese best seller does not exist in French, considering the whole Paris-based publishing industry toes the EU/NATO line on Ukraine.

The fact that Todd gets several things right is a minor miracle in the current, abysmally myopic European intellectual landscape (there are other analysts especially in Italy and Germany, but they carry much less weight than Todd).

So here’s Todd’s concise Greatest Hits.

– A new World War is on: By “switching from a limited territorial war to a global economic clash, between the collective West on one side and Russia linked to China on the other side, this became a World War”.

– The Kremlin, says Todd, made a mistake, calculating that a decomposed Ukraine society would collapse right away. Of course he does not get into detail on how Ukraine had been weaponized to the hilt by the NATO military alliance.

– Todd is spot on when he stresses how Germany and France had become minor partners at NATO and were not aware of what was being plotted in Ukraine militarily: “They did not know that the Americans, British and Poles could allow Ukraine to fight an extended war. NATO’s fundamental axis now is Washington-London-Warsaw-Kiev.”

– Todd’s major giveaway is a killer: “The resistance of Russia’s economy is leading the imperial American system to the precipice. Nobody had foreseen that the Russian economy would hold facing NATO’s ‘economic power’”.

– Consequently, “monetary and financial American controls over the world may collapse, and with them the possibility for the US of financing for nothing their enormous trade deficit”.

– And that’s why “we are in an endless war, in a clash where the conclusion is the collapse of one or the other.”

– On China, Todd might sound like a more pugnacious version of Liu He at Davos: “That’s the fundamental dilemma of the American economy: it cannot face Chinese competition without importing qualified Chinese workforce.”

– As for the Russian economy, “it does accept market rules, but with an important role for the state, and it keeps the flexibility of forming engineers that allow adaptations, industrial and military.”

– And that brings us, once again, to globalization, in a manner that Davos roundtables were incapable of understanding: “We have delocalized so much of our industrial activity that we don’t know whether our war production may be sustained”.

– On a more erudite interpretation of that “clash of civilizations” fallacy, Todd goes for soft power and comes up with a startling conclusion: “On 75 percent of the planet, the organization of parenthood was patrilineal, and that’s why we may identify a strong understanding of the Russian position. For the collective non-West, Russia affirms a reassuring moral conservatism.”

– So what Moscow has been able to pull off is to “reposition itself as the archetype of a big power, not only “anti-colonialist” but also patrilineal and conservative in terms of traditional mores.”

Based on all of the above, Todd smashes the myth sold by EU/NATO “elites” – Davos included – that Russia is “isolated”, stressing how votes in the UN and the overall sentiment across the Global South characterizes the war, “described by mainstream media as a conflict over political values, in fact, on a deeper level, as a conflict of anthropological values.”

Between light and darkness

Could it be that Russia – alongside the real Quad, as I defined them (with China, India and Iran) – are prevailing in the anthropological stakes?

The real Quad has all it takes to blossom into a new cross-cultural focus of hope in a “fragmented world”.

This unity in diversity is certainly more appealing, and uplifting, than the Forever War axis.

Will the world learn from it? Or, to quote Hegel – “what we learn from history is that nobody learns from history” – are we hopelessly doomed?

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

Steven Sahiounie, Chief editor of MidEast Discourse

China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and possibly other nations are quickly becoming a de facto power hub to push the US out of Syria. It is expected that a peace between Damascus and Ankara will make matters easier in that regard. As usual, Russian diplomacy paved the road, after years of patient negotiations with a notoriously unreliable Erdogan, but now, at last, getting Turkey and Syria to discuss the road to peace in Moscow offers the highest probability of a positive outcome for Syria and the region.

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

Andrei Martyanov
REMINISCENCE OF THE FUTURE BLOG

The T-90 Pro Proryv-3: Interestingly, its turret and hull, including from the side projections, are tightly covered in a special protective “stealth cape”, making it almost invisible to the most advanced enemy surveillance devices. The Nakidka camouflage system reduces the infrared, thermal, and radar band signatures. At its core, it’s a camouflage made of an undisclosed radio-absorbing and IR-dampening material, intended to make large vehicles such as tanks easy to conceal on the battlefield, even from radars and thermal imagers.

About the T-90M, Again.

TASS reports about the combat use of T-90Ms Proryv in SMO, and quotes tank commanders about the machine (in Russian), They love it. Here are some opinions on several months-long combat use.

Он усовершенствован - экипаж надежно защищен, командир танка, то есть я, сижу уже внутри, мне необязательно вылезать на улицу, перезаряжать [пулемет] "Корд" и вести стрельбу - я все это делаю изнутри. Усовершенствованы приборы наблюдения, у меня есть панорама, я могу смотреть на 360 градусов и не надо крутить головой, я все могу на компьютере увидеть. Также могу общаться с соседними танками, не выходя на связь, просто пишу им координаты, подъезжаем туда и мы вместе работаем. У нас Т-90 подорвался на противотанковой мине, гусеницу не повредило, оторвало лишь каток и он своим ходом выбыл из зоны боевых действий, весь экипаж цел", - рассказал командир еще одного танка Т-90М "Прорыв" Руслан.

Translation: It has been improved - the crew is reliably protected, the tank commander, that is, I am already sitting inside, I don’t have to get out into the street, reload the Kord [machine gun] and fire - I do all this from the inside. Surveillance devices have been improved, I have a panorama, I can look at 360 degrees and do not need to turn my head, I can see everything on the computer. I can also communicate with neighboring tanks without getting in touch, I just write the coordinates to them, we drive up there and we work together. Our T-90 was blown up by an anti-tank mine, the track was not damaged, only the roller was torn off and it left the combat zone under its own power, the entire crew was intact," said the commander of another T-90M "Proryv" tank Ruslan.

The T-90 Proryv has been deployed to Ukraine.

I highlighted what is crucial. This is netcentricity and this is the thing that in terms of firepower creates a synergy effect because it increases many fold the effect of tactical surprise and flexibility. All this underscores the futility of the West's attempts to "supply" 404 with whatever obsolete armor it tries to send there. Such as this risible British attempt:

Britain will announce the donation of ten Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, The Guardian reported on Friday, citing Ukrainian sources. In doing so, the UK would become the first NATO member to send Western-designed tanks to Kiev, as pressure mounts on Germany to follow suit. A formal announcement is expected on Monday, the newspaper’s sources said. These same sources said that while ten Challengers will likely have no impact on the tide of battle, they hope the decision will push Germany into allowing its European allies to export their stocks of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, which Berlin has thus far not authorized.

Considering the military incompetence of the Western political and military top brass, it all comes down to, and you guessed it already, PR and the desire to show that "something is being done". I expand on the issue of West's miscalculations in my latest:

Plus, a good friend of mine, Colonel Trukhan (thanks, Larch), a former operations officer from the Central Apparatus of Russian MoD gave a good interview to (initially) Ukraina.Ru, precisely on the issues concerning a real war, not BS created by all kinds of media-personalities both in the West and Russia who wouldn't be able to command a platoon, let alone brigade or division. Here is a quote:

- Делайте что хотите. Хотите наслаждаться победой – наслаждайтесь. Хотите комментировать не восторженно – комментируйте. Кто кому доктор, каждый сам на свое кладбище выползет. Нужно понимать, что ВС РФ работают планомерно и целенаправленно. А публика может реагировать как хочет. Там мощные укрепрайоны, которые строились восемь лет. Почему мы дали их построить? А кто бы им их не дал построить? Мы не одни на этом земном шаре. Мы строили свои вооруженные силы, Украина строила свои вооруженные силы. У кого их получилось лучше построить? Посмотрим.

В 2014 году на тех украинских операционных направлениях мы почти ничего не имели. Это я вам достоверно говорю. Об этом никто сейчас не помнит, но при Сердюкове даже 20-ую армию сократили, был переход к бригадным системам. И когда начался этот замес, когда наш "северный ветер" остановил этот начинавшийся геноцид, мы начали строить свои вооруженные силы абсолютно правильно. Мы их начали строить со стратегической ядерной триады. Путин "мультики" показал – продажи памперсов возросли. И сейчас эти "мультики" получили материальное оформление.

Translation:- Do what you want. If you want to enjoy victory, enjoy. If you want to comment not enthusiastically - comment. Who is a doctor to whom, everyone will crawl out to his own cemetery. You need to understand that the RF Armed Forces are working systematically and purposefully. The public can react however they want. There are powerful fortified areas that were built for eight years. Why did we let them build? And who wouldn't let them build them? We are not alone on this globe. We built our armed forces, Ukraine built its armed forces. Who was the best at building them? We will see. In 2014, we had almost nothing in those Ukrainian operational areas. This I tell you for sure. Nobody remembers this now, but under Serdyukov even the 20th army was reduced, there was a transition to brigade systems. And when this batch began, when our "northern wind" stopped this genocide that was beginning, we began to build our armed forces absolutely correctly. We started building them from the strategic nuclear triad. Putin "cartoons" showed - sales of diapers have increased. And now these "cartoons" have received material design.

I am on record, remember? US and NATO cannot do strategy, they never could after WW II. It is a cold hard fact of life. Sure, they love to use the term "strategy" but very few in the military-political top in the US have a grasp of what it is. So, what can I say--I already get flack for my pointing out that John Mearsheimer has no clue about strategy, Russia, and balance of power--he doesn't have a toolset, as wouldn't any political "scientist", to grasp it. His early 1970s background from USMA at West Point and a few years in the USAF are radically not enough, especially lacking serious military engineering background, for understanding modern operations. Bernhard makes today a note of it, when speaking about Emmanuel Todd:

He however has some criticism for Mearsheimer: "Mearsheimer, like a good American, overestimates his country. He considers that, if for the Russians the war in Ukraine is existential, for the Americans it is basically only one 'game' of power among others. After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, what's one more debacle? The basic axiom of American geopolitics is: 'We can do whatever we want because we are sheltered, far away, between two oceans, nothing will ever happen to us'. Nothing would be existential for America. Insufficient analysis which today leads Biden to proceed mindlessly. America is fragile. The resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system towards the precipice. No one had expected that the Russian economy would hold up against the 'economic power' of NATO. I believe that the Russians themselves did not anticipate it.

Remarkably, highlighted in yellow shows a complete ignorance of Todd himself of strategic planning and how Russia approaches war and economy. But then again, he is an anthropologist, what do you expect. He, certainly, didn't read this blog in 2014--early 2015 when I had to pass a diagnosis on the fate of the combined West, but what do I know, I am not an anthropologist. So, here is your primer for Saturday.

Note: The Western media continues to make a lot of noise about the US and its NATO allies sending more (and supposedly more formidable) weapons to Ukraine, but this is not so. Consider for example this German entry, the Marder IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle).

Look at this carefully. Does it look like it can outgun Russian armour, drones, or basic artillery in the field?

P.S. About VSU plans for "offensive" to reach Mariupol--Good God, only NYT and WSJ would buy this BS. Yes, with 50 Bradleys and 20 NATO tanks.

My, My, My...

...Western press-whores are up in arms this morning. They reacted to this (in Russian) news from Ria about UVZ (legendary Ural Vagon Zavod) delivering yet another batch of T-90M Proryv tanks to the Russian Army and they immediately went out on the BS spree by speculating:

Russia’s T-90M Proryv: Will Putin Send His New Tank to Fight in Ukraine?

This clickbait BS was spread by the 1945.com portal which specializes in a palliative therapy for some America's military exceptionalists and basement military porn masturbators from the Top Gun: Maverick community, who have been shown how adults fight real wars, and now they experience a serious butt-hurt. As most from US media, those people have a serious case of amnesia, because, in accordance to these very same US media, glorious VSU already captured this very T-90M last year:

Don’t Tell Putin: Ukraine Captured Russia’s Elite T-90M Tank

This kinda negates the question of if Putin will send these tanks to 404, doesn't it, because evidently, they are already there. But then again, these are Western "military analysis" resources and they need money too, so, they sell BS, and it sells. But, in the end, why such attention to this tank.

Well, T-90M IS a deep modification of a venerable, still good, though, T-90A and it even looks differently, carrying even some elements of a dynamic armor Afghanit which is also used by T-14 Armata.

Or from the above:

As you can see--it is a classic Russian tank, low profile, sleek and lighter than any modern Western counterpart. Whilst all kinds of military porn fanboys discuss this tank's newest multipurpose sight and other things of this nature, apart from purely physical improvements, it is the Combat Management System "Kalina" which is most important in it.

Being Combat Management System, "Kalina" unifies all operations of this tank, including latest ballistic computer and target acquisition and firing solution contour (laser-range finder, FLIR, on-board sensors, including detection of the "incoming", etc.), it is this feature which really matters--taken from Russian sources:

блок боевой информационно-управляющей системы тактического звена,

программно-технический комплекс тактического взаимодействия танкового/мотострелкового батальона

Translation: Block of the Combat Informational Control System of the Tactical Level and Software-Hardware Complex of Tactical Interaction of the Tank/Motor-rifle Battalion.

A-ha, that's warmer. In other words--T-90M is a fully netcentric warfare tank and each of these tanks in battalion mode can run this whole battalion's combat tasks, which is 31 tanks in tank battalion, or a truck load of APCs in a motor-rifle one. That is why so much attention to this rather routine news (Russian military factories work 24/7/365) from Western punditry, who, by the virtue of spewing BS on this news, betray own case of being sore losers, because, in accordance to their "sources", Russians are backward people who cannibalize washing machines for microchips and do not know what indoor plumbing is--yes, this is what the majority of the population of 404 thinks, and so do people from all other Western propaganda outhouses.

In conclusion. Although in Russian, do take a look at what Russia produces today, among very many other things, courtesy of this teeny-weeny corporation called Rosatom.

Extremely advanced methods in nuclear medicine. I guess many washing machines have been cannibalized, right?

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

Andrei Raevsky
THE SAKER

First, I found out that BitChute also blocks videos showing combat operations in videos made my Russians. Rumble did not, at least so far, so in the future, I will stick with Rumble to post “politically incorrect” or otherwise “offensive” videos. Still, the only viable solution here is to have a video hosting service in a sovereign country.

Next, I cannot go into details here and now, but this is something very interesting: the GrayZone reports about “Declassified intelligence files expose inconvenient truths of Bosnian war“. For the original source for this info, please see here.

At the time of the NATO war against the Serbian nation, I was working for the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, a kind of UN think tank for the Conference of Disarmament. While this institute was not part of UNPROFOR, we had access to internal UNPROFOR documents. Furthermore, at that time I also had access to classified documents from the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service. Finally, and unbeknownst to my various bosses, I also had personal friends who were Serbs and Russians with access to all sorts of interesting info. In other words, at the time I *knew* for a fact that the media was lying about this war and I can now personally confirm the following (though I cannot offer any proof):

The bombings of the Markale market in Sarajevo were false flag operations and the UNPROFOR specialists in the field saw through the propaganda and reported that up the chain of command which, of course, classified and ignored these reports.
The “Srebrenica genocide” never happened, but scores of Muslims did get killed, most while retreating through the woody hills towards Gorazde and in some cases there were executions of POW, the latter were ordered by CIA plants in the Milosevic administration. It was a carefully prepared PSYOP to give the West a reason to attack for “humanitarian reasons”, the same role MH17 fulfilled years later.
The (in)famous Racak massacre never happened. The EU monitors quickly realized that and they did report this up their own chain of command which, of course, classified and ignored these reports. Except that some of these folks were friends of mine and told me the truth 🙂 What actually happened was a gun battle between KLA terrorists and Serbian units.
Just like in the Ukraine today, the West pumped a lot of money, weapons and “volunteers” into Bosnia, in direct violation of plenty of UNSC Resolutions. The entire UN was hijacked, which was made especially easy with clowns like Eltsin or Kozyrev sitting in the Kremlin.
When NATO and the Croats attacked the UNPAs in Croation the UNPROFOR forces were ordered by their respective national commands to step aside and not interfere. The Serbs had agreed to give over their heavy weapons and be placed under the “protection” of the UN. We all know what happened after that.
NATO provided aircraft to bring in hundreds of flights al-Qaeda terrorists into Bosnia, working hand in hand with Turkey and, alas, Iran (Iran’s stance on Bosnia is, in my opinion, the worst mistake ever made by the Islamic Republic who did not have the courage to resist the hysterics in the Muslim world triggered by US PSYOPs).
EU “observers” were mostly officers of western intelligence agencies. The same goes for a lot of personnel in the so-called “humanitarian” organizations, especially MSF. And, of course, this is also true for many “journalists”. Still, while some of them *did* very honestly report what they saw, many were simply collecting intelligence and even participating in covert support for the Wahabis in Bosnia (and Chechnia, by the way).

War criminal Bill Clinton’s statue in Pristina (Kosovo). The city also honors devious Hillary in various ways.

Why is this important today? Because we have many of the same actors operating in the Ukraine and elsewhere. A perfect example would be the EU or IAEA “observers”. Here is the deal: those “monitors” and “observers” who do an honest job of reporting what they see will have their reports tossed down the memory hole and they will be silenced because they cannot reveal state secrets or make classified info public (Snowden anybody?). As for the rest of them, I am referring to intelligence officers collecting info or, worse, aiding the terrorists, their actions are, by definition, harmful.

For these reasons I think that Russia should kick out any and all western (Zone A) “observers” and not collaborate with any AngloZionist controlled agencies such as the IAEA, the OPCW, any and all EU bodies/organizations, any western “aid” organizations, etc., etc.

Furthermore, I also think that Russia, China and Iran should create a multi-national observer battalion ready to be deployed in combat areas which involve Russian, Chinese or Iranian interests. Further down the road, these three countries could invite other countries, but only if their national leaders have true sovereignty and are not comprador administrators for their colonial masters.

We should also understand the role of the likes of Izetbegovic, Guaido, Tikhanovskaia or, for that matter, “Ze”: their function is NOT to seek the best for their people, but it is to justify an endless war.

The truth about the AngloZionist war on the Serbian nation will, eventually, trickle out. In fact, even during the war, some observers (I think of Michel Collon here, but there are others) did write very good and truthful accounts of what was taking place, they were just simply ignored by the official state propaganda (aka the “free press”). However, just as with the case of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, JFK, 9/11 and so many other false flags, that truth will come way too late to remedy anything. Folks in the West are so used to lies, that they accept them as some kind of inevitable side effect of politics. We do, indeed, live in a post-truth society, at least those of us in Zone A.

—Andrei

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder • endless wars • ingrained racism & social injustice • worker exploitation • incurable via reforms

Thierry Meyssan
VOLTAIRENET.ORG

Opeds

We are strengthening our collaboration with Thierry Meyssan's formidable and highly original Voltairenet.org. Look for articles bearing their stamp.

After long months of pulling her punches, Russia is finally letting Ukraine get a taste of what it has sown through fanaticism, nonstop lies and indecent, often brutal acts against civilians and Russian personnel.

It is a constant of History: changes are rare, but sudden. Those who bear the brunt of them are generally the last to see them coming. They perceive them only too late. Contrary to the static image that prevails in the West, international relations have been turned upside down in 2022, mainly to the detriment of the United States, the United Kingdom and France, often to the benefit of China and Russia. With their eyes riveted on Ukraine, Westerners do not perceive the redistribution of the cards.
T. Meyssan

It is rare for international relations to be shaken as they were in 2022. And it is not over. The process that has begun will not stop, even if events disrupt it and possibly interrupt it for a few years. The domination of the West, both the United States and the former colonial powers of Europe (mainly the United Kingdom, France and Spain) and Asia (Japan), is coming to an end. No one obeys a leader anymore, including the states that remain vassals of Washington. Everyone is now beginning to think for themselves. We are not yet in the multipolar world that Russia and China are trying to bring about, but we are seeing it being built.

It all started with the Russian military operation to enforce Security Council Resolution 2202 and protect the entire Ukrainian population from its "integral nationalist" government. Of course, this event is not at all what is perceived in the United States, the European Union, Australia and Japan. The West is convinced that Russia has invaded Ukraine to change its borders by force. Yet this is neither what President Vladimir Putin announced, nor what the Russian army did, nor how events unfolded.

Let’s leave aside the question of who is right and who is wrong. It all depends on whether one is aware of the civil war that has been tearing Ukraine apart since the deposition of its democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014. Westerners forgetting the 20,000 deaths of this war cannot consider that the Russians wanted to stop this massacre. As they ignore the Minsk agreements, of which Germany and France were guarantors alongside Russia, they cannot consider that Russia has put into practice the "responsibility to protect" that the United Nations proclaimed in 2005.

Yet former German Chancellor Angela Merkel [1] and former French President François Hollande [2] have both publicly stated that they signed the Minsk Agreements, not to end the civil war, but on the contrary to gain time and arm Ukraine. Both of these figures congratulate themselves on having framed Russia while accusing it of bearing sole responsibility for the current war. It is not surprising that these two former rulers pride themselves on their duplicity in front of their public opinions, however, their words heard in other parts of the world sound different. To the majority of humanity, the West is showing its true colours: it is still trying to divide the rest of the world and to trap those who want to be independent; it talks about peace, but foments wars.

It is wrong to imagine that the strongest always want to impose their will on others. This Western attitude is rarely shared by other humans. Cooperation has proven to be far more effective than exploitation and the revolutions it provokes. This is the message that the Chinese have tried to propagate by talking about "win-win" relationships. It was not about fair trade relations, but about the way the Chinese emperors governed: when an emperor issued a decree, he had to ensure that it was followed by the governors of each province, including those who were not affected by the decision. He showed them that he had not forgotten them by giving them each a present.

In ten months, the rest of the world, that is, the overwhelming majority of it, has opened its eyes. If, on October 13, 143 states followed the Western narrative and condemned the Russian "aggression" [3], they would no longer be in the majority in the UN General Assembly to vote this way today. The vote, on December 30, of a resolution asking the UN’s internal tribunal, the International Court of Justice, to declare Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories an "occupation" is proof of this. The General Assembly is no longer resigned to the Western disorder of the world.

Eleven African states, previously in the orbit of France, have called on the Russian army or a Russian private military company to ensure their security. They no longer believe in the sincerity of France and the United States. Still others are aware that Western protection against jihadis goes hand in hand with Western covert support for jihadis. They are publicly concerned about the massive transfer of weapons destined for Ukraine to jihadists in the Sahel or to Boko Haram [4], to the point that the US Department of Defense has appointed a monitoring mission to verify what happens to the weapons destined for Ukraine, as a way of burying the problem and preventing Congress from interfering in these dark schemes.

In the Middle East, Turkey, a member of NATO, is playing a subtle game between its US ally and its Russian partner. Ankara realized long ago that it would never join the European Union and, more recently, that it was no longer expected to restore its empire over the Arabs. It is therefore turning to European states (such as the Bulgarians, Hungarians and Kosovars) and Asian states (such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) with a Turkish culture (and not a Turkish language like the Chinese Uighurs). As a result, Ankara is reconciling with Damascus and preparing to leave the West for the East.

China does not understand much about Ukrainian affairs, but she knows that her vision of the organization of international relations can only be achieved if Russia triumphs. It has no desire to fight alongside Russia, but will intervene if Russia is threatened.

China’s arrival in the Gulf at the Riyadh summit has turned the tables in that part of the world. The Arab states saw that Beijing was reasonable, that it was helping them to make peace with their Persian neighbours. Yet Iran is an age-old ally of China, but China defends it without letting it get away with its excesses. They have measured the difference with the West who, on the contrary, have not stopped since 1979 to divide and oppose them.

India and Iran are working hard with Russia to build a transport corridor that will allow them to trade despite the Western economic war (presented in the West as "sanctions", although these are illegal under international law). Already Mumbai is connected to Southern Russia and soon to Moscow and St. Petersburg. This makes Russia and China complementary. Beijing is building roads in Eurasia from East to West, Moscow along the longitudes.

China, for whom this war is a catastrophe that disrupts its plans to build the Silk Roads, has never adhered to the Western narrative. It is a former victim of Russia, which in the 19th century took part in the occupation of Tianjin and Wuhan (Hankou), but it knows that the West will do everything to exploit them both. She recalls her past occupation to be aware that her fate is linked to that of Russia. She does not understand much about Ukrainian affairs, but she knows that her vision of the organization of international relations can only be achieved if Russia triumphs. It has no desire to fight alongside Russia, but will intervene if Russia is threatened.

This reorientation of the world is very visible in government institutions. The West humiliated Russia in the Council of Europe until Moscow left. To their surprise, Russia did not stop there. One by one, it left all the agreements concluded in the Council of Europe, in all kinds of fields, from sports to culture. The West suddenly realizes that it has deprived itself of a generous and cultured partner.

It should continue in all other intergovernmental organizations, starting with the United Nations. This is an old story in Western-Russian relations that goes back to Moscow’s exclusion from the League of Nations in 1939. At that time, the Soviets, concerned about a possible Nazi attack on Leningrad (St. Petersburg), asked Finland to lease the port of Hanko, but negotiations dragged on and they invaded Finland, not to annex it, but to place their navy in Hanko. This precedent is taught today as an example of Russian imperialism, although Finnish President Urho Kekkonen himself acknowledged that the Soviet attitude was "understandable.

Let us return to the United Nations. Excluding Russia could only be possible after the General Assembly had adopted a reform of the Charter. This was possible in October, but not today. This project is accompanied by a reinterpretation of the history and nature of the UN.

It is claimed that membership in the Organization prohibits war. This is nonsense. Membership in the UN obliges one to "maintain international peace and security", but men being what they are, authorizes the use of force under certain conditions. Sometimes this authorization even becomes an obligation under the "responsibility to protect". This is exactly what Russia is doing for the people of Donbass and Novorussia. Please note that Moscow is not blind and has backed down from the right bank (northern part) of the city of Kershon. The Russian general staff withdrew behind a natural border, the Dnieper River, considering it impossible to defend the other part of the city from Western armies, even though the population of the whole city had asked by referendum to join the Russian Federation. There has never been a Russian defeat in Kershon, but this does not prevent the West from talking about its "reconquest" by the Zelensky regime.

Above all, questioning the Security Council’s directorship obscures the functioning of the UN. When the Organization was founded, it was to recognize the equality of each State in the General Assembly and to give the great powers of the time the capacity to prevent conflicts within the Security Council. The Security Council is not a place of democracy, but of consensus: no decision can be taken without the agreement of each of its five permanent members. People pretend to be surprised that they cannot condemn Russia, but are they surprised that the United States, the United Kingdom and sometimes France have not been condemned for their illegal wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya? Without the right of veto, the UN will become an absolutely ineffective assembly. Yet this idea is gaining ground in the West.

Moreover, it would be absurd to think that China, the world’s leading commercial power, would remain in a UN from which Russia, the world’s leading military power, would have been excluded. Beijing will not play the role of guarantor in an operation against its ally, since it is convinced that its death will be the prelude to its own. This is why the Russians and the Chinese are preparing other institutions which they will only manifest if the UN is denatured, if it is transformed into a monochrome assembly and thus loses its capacity to prevent conflicts.

We perceive that the only possible way out is for the West to accept that it is what it is. But, for the moment, they are not able to do so. They distort reality in the hope of maintaining their centuries of hegemony. This game is over, both because they are tired and because the rest of the world has changed.

—Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Roger Lagassé

Refs

[1] "Hatten Sie gedacht, ich komme mit Pferdeschwanz?", Tina Hildebrandt und Giovanni di Lorenzo, Die Zeit, 7. Dezember 2022.
[2] «Hollande: ‘There will only be a way out of the conflict when Russia fails on the ground’», Theo Prouvost, The Kyiv Independant, December 28, 2022.
[3] «Ukraine: UN General Assembly demands Russia reverse course on ‘attempted illegal annexation’», UN News, October 13, 2022.
[4] «Buhari : les armes utilisées en Ukraine pénètrent dans les pays du bassin du lac Tchad», Tass, Alwihda Info, 8 Décembre 2022. «Le Sahel menacé par le djihadisme: une nouvelle Syrie», Leslie Varenne, Mondafrique, 15 décembre 2022.

‘Fragmented world’ sleepwalks into World War III

DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

by Pepe Escobar for PressTV, cross posted with the author’s permission

by Pepe Escobar for PressTV, cross posted with the author’s permission

NOTE: ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

China slams US for stealing Syria’s oil

DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

Steven Sahiounie, Chief editor of MidEast Discourse

NOTE: ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读