British-Run Spy Tech Powers Ukraine Proxy War, Putting Civilians at Risk

Kit Klarenberg

Leaked files reveal the Anomaly 6 spy firm is providing intelligence to the British military through a cut-out involved in the Kerch Bridge bombing and other acts of dangerous sabotage in the Ukraine conflict.

On December 6th, The Grayzone revealed how British military and intelligence agencies were deploying technology created by shadowy private intelligence firm Anomaly 6 to illegally spy on citizens across the globe.

The company’s technology effectively transforms every individual on Earth into a potential target for surveillance and/or asset recruitment by monitoring the movements of their smartphone. Anomaly 6 embeds tracking software in popular applications, then slices through layers of theoretically anonymous data to uncover a wealth of sensitive information about a device’s owner.

Anomaly 6’s services are provided to Britain’s soldiers and spies through Prevail Partners, a private military company which The Grayzone has exposed as Whitehall’s arm’s-length cutout for prosecuting its proxy war in Ukraine. The firm has constructed a secret partisan terror army on Kiev’s behalf, and helped plan the Kerch Bridge bombing by Ukraine’s services.

Now, the Grayzone can reveal that Prevail is exploiting Anomaly 6 to provide “decision-enabling intelligence to the UK’s defence and security architecture.”

Files anonymously leaked to this outlet reveal that Britain’s Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) has used Anomaly 6’s technology to monitor and track the movements of Russian military and intelligence personnel in real-time, on both a group and individual basis. Through aggressive harvesting of data, the technology has enabled the planning of military offensives and artillery attacks, assassinations, asset recruitment, and other measures.

The leaked files raise serious questions about whether Anomaly 6’s technology has been used throughout the Ukraine conflict in an array of targeted operations against specific individuals and infrastructure. If it has, Britain bears ultimate responsibility for the outcome of these disturbing actions, which in some cases amount to crimes against humanity.

As The Grayzone has already demonstrated, Anomaly 6 markets its technology as impeccably precise, while it hoovers up massive amounts of private data and targeting innocent individuals, falsely painting them as national security risks. The firm’s ham-handed approach raises the obvious risk of Russian and Ukrainian citizens being misidentified by Britain’s military intelligence apparatus, with dangerous if not deadly consequences.

British military intelligence tracks Russians ‘in realtime’

By the time Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Anomaly 6 was already providing its surveillance services to the British Home Office through Prevail. Over the course of several months, the firm racked up a multi-million dollar tab.

Anomaly 6 sold its technology to Britain as an innovative means for tracking movements of newly-arrived refugees to the country. Without the migrants’ knowledge or consent, they were steered through “passive data collection gates” as soon as they registered at immigration centres. Their phones were then tagged for monitoring in the hope they could lead authorities to criminal gangs and human traffickers.

This connivance is likely to have been completely illegal under data protection laws, and the European Convention on Human Rights.

As soon as Moscow launched its military operation, the British government deepened its involvement with Anomaly 6. London’s Defence Intelligence Agency instigated what it called “Project MATTERHORN”, a six week trial in which Prevail provided Anomaly 6-sourced “location-based commercial telemetry data” in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

Six weeks later, Prevail wrote to the DIA outlining the costs of three and six-month-long extension packages. The Agency apparently took them up on the second offer; two days after receiving Anomaly 6’s pitch, the company provided a detailed proposal and contract to Prevail.

For $708,750 over the half-year period, Anomaly 6 was contracted to provide “a data feed of country specific data containing harvested first party commercial telemetry data and delivered to client directed cloud-based infrastructure.” Should the DIA require it, “additional countries, regions or queries” could be added at any point during the contract.

It’s not hard to see why Anomaly 6’s services were considered so valuable by the DIA. Files reviewed by The Grayzone include case studies showing how the company’s technology was used both before and after the Russian invasion “to gain a realtime/near realtime understanding of the disposition” of Russian “troops, equipment, and lethal materials.”

For example, Anomaly 6 tracked Moscow’s pre-invasion military buildup, starting in April 2021. By harvesting smartphone data signals generated at a Russian Military training area south of Voronezh, the company identified over 100 devices that had been used at the facility, and was able to determine a clear “pattern of life,” including home addresses (or “bed down locations”), areas and sites frequently visited and workplaces for each user.

This information, Anomaly 6 suggested, could be used for “observing troop movements into a potential conflict zone,” and much more: “combining this data with other open source and classified data sets further enables and empowers the client to permit successful mission outcomes.”

Anomaly 6’s spyware has also been deployed to “corroborate” reports of “Russian trained Syrians” in the conflict, cross-referencing data to find smartphones active in Syria in 2021 that were supposedly detected in Ukraine in March 2022. Some were tracked to the Voronezh training facility, which the company speculated “could be a staging post to integrate Syrians into Russian forces on the Kharkiv axis.”

“This is mostly individual devices, but it is highly likely that these are indicative of larger groups. Additional Syrians at these locations are highly likely,” Anomaly 6 surmised.

However, the firm did not consider the possibility that it had in fact tracked the devices of Russian military advisors posted in Damascus before heading to Ukraine. Even mainstream Western think tanks have dismissed the proposition that Syrian fighters have been active in the Ukrainian theatre. It was only in the final months of this year that Russia formally deployed such forces.

Anomaly 6 fumbles targets’ identities, putting innocents at grave risk

In other cases, Anomaly 6 claims to have achieved highly precise target identification capability. For example, the company tracked the device of a lone “Chechen militia fighter,” and pinpointed “a hardware device associated with the GRU Aerospace and Geo-intelligence Centre.”

“Prior to the Russian invasion the device visited a GRU location in Rostov-on-Don, the Kremlin in Moscow, and an unidentified location in Unecha,” an Anomaly 6 presentation asserted. “The device was then active in Donetsk, Ukraine having crossed the border at an unknown time and date.”

This individual appeared keenly aware of the risk of being tracked through their cellphone. Anomaly 6 found it difficult to adequately identify their “pattern of life,” which are said to potentially signify “some tradecraft or communications security awareness.” Nonetheless, what data could be harvested highlighted one location in Donetsk they had visited “more than any other,” leading the company to speculate it was “linked to Russian GRU or Advanced Force activity.”

Anomaly 6 had more luck in tracking another individual whose device pointed to a “pattern of life” consistent with someone “conducting invasion related activity.” Their movements indicated they lived and worked in Moscow, which made their travel to Ukraine “interesting compared to regular force movements” in the eyes of the firm’s analysts. Anomaly 6 identified an area of Donetsk they had visited that was “possibly used for Command and Control, liaison, and governance,” speculating the device in question was “diplomatic or intelligence related.”

Though this level of detail seems impressive, Anomaly 6 could well have misidentified at least some of its targets, and even the locations they apparently visited. A leaked Anomaly 6 case study exposed by The Grayzone purports to document the company’s identification of the smartphone of a US-based nuclear physics expert who conducted “multiple trips to North Korea” between March and August of 2019.

Anomaly 6 outlined how it unearthed the academic’s name, address, marital status, employer, and photos of their children, along with the schools and universities they attended, by linking their smartphone to sites they visited across the US. The company believed the academic’s supposed trips to Pyongyang made them either a major counterintelligence hazard, or an intelligence asset ripe for recruitment.

When The Grayzone contacted the academic, however, they fervently denied they or their smartphone had ever been to North Korea. They may well have been sincere – smartphone geolocation data can be highly imprecise. If so, the academic and their family were placed in the crosshairs of Anomaly 6’s clients on the basis of a badly bungled analysis. In an active war zone, an error like this is likely to cost innocent lives.

Britain stiffens US resolve at all levels

On August 20th, Ukraine’s CIA-trained Security Service (SBU) assassinated Daria Dugina, the daughter of nationalist Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, deploying a car bomb to kill her as she travelled through a Moscow suburb. The targeted killing was intended as a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been falsely portrayed in Western media as an avid student of Dugin, despite having never met him.

Given what is known about the operation to assassinate Aleksandr and Daria Dugin, the nature of Anomaly 6’s spyware, and Prevail’s relationship with the SBU, the question of whether the firm’s technology was used to track the pair is ineluctable.

Whether it also informed the SBU’s Odessa branch when to trigger the truck bombing of Kerch Bridge must be considered as well. The attempt to assassinate Russian State Space Corporation leaders Dmitry Rogozin and Artyom Melnikov while they dined at a Donetsk restaurant appears to have relied on tracking technology much like the kind spun out by Anomaly 6.

Then there are the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion’s death squads which hunt frantically for “collaborators” in formerly Russian-occupied territory. Have they too been granted use of Anomaly 6’s spyware?

These are only a few of the countless scenarios in which Anomaly 6’s technology could have executed. And it is not only London’s DIA that can exploit the company’s wares, courtesy of Prevail. So too can Britain’s Permanent Joint Headquarters, assorted elite military spying units, special forces such as the SAS and SBS, the GCHQ, MI5, and MI6.

Prevail’s involvement in the Kerch Bridge bombing plot amply demonstrates the company’s utter lack of compunction about civilian casualties and clear interest in terrorist acts. It originally proposed going further than what actually transpired, blowing up a ship packed with ammonium nitrate beneath the structure. The company approvingly cited the carnage caused by the 2020 Beirut Blast, which killed hundreds, injured thousands, and inflicted billions in damage, as an example to emulate.

As such, it seems inconceivable the British special forces veterans running Prevail would be anything other than enthusiastic about guiding Kiev’s most violent undertakings, or shy from carrying out such acts themselves.

Washington’s sharing of intelligence with Ukraine is well known, and has proven pivotal to the execution of an array of successful operations and counter-offensive actions. However, the White House claims to observe rigid limits on what it discloses and when, in order to prevent a wider war with Moscow. This has included a ban against providing precision targeting intelligence for senior Russian officials by name.

No such reservations or restrictions appear to exist in London’s case. In fact, the position of much of the British government, intelligence services, and Army appears to be that the proxy war must be escalated as much and as often as possible. Within London’s military-intelligence circles, any exercise of prudence by the Biden administration is seen as a reflection of cowardice.

On December 16th, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak demanded an audit of the progress of the war in Ukraine to date. The disclosure piqued intense fears within Whitehall that the new premier could emulate and thus exacerbate the “caution” of the Biden administration. A nameless source revealed to the BBC at the time London had “stiffened the US resolve at all levels,” via “pressure.”

“We don’t want Rishi to reinforce Biden’s caution. We want him to [keep] pushing in the way Boris did,” they explained.

Senior British military-intelligence veteran Chris Donnelly echoed this perspective in a chilling email sent to Brigadier Julian Buczacki of the British Army’s elite 1st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Brigade just hours after the Kerch Bridge assault. Donnelly was a driving force behind that attack, directing his underlings to draw up blueprints for it. He is also the mastermind of Prevail’s secret Ukrainian terror army.

Invited to serve as an “expert” high-level advisor in “escalation” to London’s Chief of Defence Staff, Donnelly condemned Biden’s supposedly careful approach to the conflict as “so unwise as to beggar belief,” and “the opposite word to ‘deterrence’.”

With the political leadership in London under unrelenting pressure to accept Donnelly’s radical view of the conflict, it appears almost certain the UK will seek new and more brazen means of provoking Russia into escalating. The forces gathered around Prevail are determined to throw caution to the wind, even if it means tempting a nuclear winter.

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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/12/06/private-spying-firm-targets-global-population-with-illegal-spyware/embed/#?secret=Se1ieIYnja#?secret=XuJexwJwoL

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From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium

Declan Hayes

Theology should be kept as simple as Steinbeck’s East of Eden classic, which gets a bunch of Chinese chaps to reinterpret the Cain and Abel fable.

The recent passing of 95 year old Pope Benedict XVI should give not only the Latin Catholic Church but churches worldwide cause for reflection and reform. Pope Benedict, a draftee into and a deserter from Hitler’s Wehrmacht, represented all that was best in European Catholicism, a faith that owes its survival to the armies of Spain’s Philip II, who successfully withstood Ottoman threats to the east and Lutheran hordes to the north during the Wars of the Reformation, which only ended with the Treaty of Westphalia, a treaty whose modalities should be the template for the world’s Christian Churches to use if they hope to survive much longer.

Although Pope Benedict had been far and away the Catholic Church’s pre-eminent theologian from the reign of the Polish Pope John Paul II onwards, he had a number of blind spots the Church is now paying for in spades. Though he had little if any time for the theological baloney of Catholicism’ theological clowns, his biggest failing was, perhaps, the Euro-centricism that had been central to his life ever since he and his family had tried to resist Hitler’s 1930s’ rise to power. His approach lacked the common touch.

Not so the screeds of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and a gaggle of other hucksters, who wrote books denouncing all religions, Judaism excepted in Harris’ case, and who enjoyed immense success in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and NATO’s criminal destruction of Iraq. Although Harris, Dawkins and their fellow hucksters wrote or said nothing Thomas Paine did not opine about two centuries earlier, these charlatans had the power of the sound bite and the blessings of NATO’s anti-Christs behind them.

All wars, you see, were the fault of religion and not of the war criminals of the Pentagon and NATO, of chaps like Pope Benedict’s Chaldean followers in Iraq, who were set upon by NATO’s proxies with a savagery you wouldn’t find in hell. The Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Yezidis, the Shi’a, and especially the Mandaeans, those Iraqis who believe, not without their good reasons, that John the Baptist is the Messiah. In their place, NATO lumbered Iraq with the Anglican cultist Rev Andrew White, who should be regarded as and treated as a Class A war criminal.

I accompanied the heroes of the Syrian Arab Army on Easter Sunday 2014 when they liberated the Aramaic speaking Christian city of Maaloola, where hundreds of Shi’a, Sunni, Druze and Alawi fighters had only recently perished in wresting this jewel of Christendom back from NATO’s proxies, which had looted it of all its valuables and destroyed whatever icons and statues they could not haul away to auction in Sotheby’s.

Some months later, I stayed the night with the good nuns of the Orthodox Monastery of Saydnaya where I joined their annual procession in honor of the Virgin Mary as their Christian militia, together with their Hezbollah allies, fought off yet more waves of ISIS and other NATO proxies. I was in their churches where the mothers and widows of their latest martyrs, both Christian and Muslim, were honored. And I was terrified at their checkpoints, where some of their elderly militia, who obviously hadn’t handled weapons in more than 50 years, were more of a threat to us than they were to ISIS. Good, God-fearing men giving their sacred cause their all. God bless each and every one of those elderly heroes.

Further south, in the occupied city of Jerusalem, I was at Christendom’s holiest shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where, the theologians say, Jesus was murdered but then rose from the dead three days later. Though I hadn’t Pope Benedict with me to fill in the details or, sad to say, even Tzar Alexander III, who built the fine Russian Cathedral just a stone’s throw away, yellow pack theologians were there in abundance as representatives of each and every church explained to straight-faced me how idiotic were the faiths of the others, my own included.

Though I agreed with each and every one of them so as not to waste my time arguing with these fine people about the theological niceties differentiating the Eastern Orthodox Church from the Oriental Orthodox Church, the Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches, I was more at home in Taybeh, cracking beers with Fr Jack, the Melkite parish priest as we and his parishioners shot the breeze sitting on beer barrels under its sometimes peaceful sky. And in the parish church house of Ramallah, whose priests almost killed me with their infernal shisha pipe smoking, which is far too widespread in the Arab world.

And Latin priest Manuel Musallam, Fr Jack’s cousin, who was parish priest of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, an unspeakable war crime for which its Israeli perpetrators have never been held to account. But then, as charlatans like Harris and Dawkins explain to us, these good people, these good Palestinian, Iraqi and Syrian Christians have been ethnically cleansed in their millions to make way for a Greater Israel by pretending the only quarrel Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East its secular theologians proclaim, has is with a bunch of mad Muslims the crayon cartoons of Harris and Dawkins obsessively denounced.

Will Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East is not only an example of British scholarship at its finest and a testament of what NATO has destroyed throughout those lands the Apostles traversed but it is a terrible indictment at our ongoing general indifference to all these most deplorable of war crimes not only there but closer to home as well.

For, if we wheel back to the Holy Mountain, to Greece’s Mount Athos, the picture is just as bleak and not only for the Christians of Turkey, whom Dalrymple met. Read this earlier, very disturbing piece by Stephen Karganovic, entitled An Under the Radar Religious Pogrom in Vibrantly Democratic Ukraine and think that NATO wants us to cheer on these crimes of elderly Russian-speaking priests and their congregation being man-handled by the scum of the earth.

Karganovic’s piece is particularly apposite as he is a Serb and Serbs are no strangers to being at the business end of such barbarism, not only in the lifetime of Pope Benedict but right now, this very day of our Lord Jesus Christ, when Kosovo’s NATO-imposed ethnic Albanian junta are blocking Patriarch Porfirije Serbian Orthodox Church performing his pastoral duties and the Serbs of Kosovo, the Serbs’ own Jerusalem, enjoying the solace Patriarch Porfirije beings them.

You don’t have to be a theologian like Pope Benedict to oppose NATO’s persecution of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Armenian Orthodox, the Syrian Orthodox Church and Fr Jack’s Greek Catholic Church. You just have to be human and, if given the chance, be prepared to do something about it, just as the great defenders of Saydnaya are giving it their all.

Perhaps Russian President Putin or Foreign Minister Lavrov might step up to the plate on this and form, if not a Fourth Rome, at least a second Mount Athos, where the major representatives of those faiths could thrash out their differences and decide to hang together, rather than to be like the Chaldeans and Assyrians and be hung separately by NATO and its agents.

Either way, all of these churches should realize the nature of the overbearing threat they collectively face and should agree not to be the authors of their own last demise. Here at 12.04 in this video, for example, is Irish Zionist Rory Miller in Israel explaining to his fellow Zionists why Irish Jewry must conspire with Methodists and Hindus to undo the Orthodox threat in Ireland, where Orthodox Christians are almost as rare as white blackbirds.

And here is Pope Francis’ Jesuit Order conspiring with the World Economic Order through its Georgetown University flagship to micro-manage the world’s religions on behalf of those same anti Christs.

But Pope Benedict would agree that God did not put Serbian, Ukrainian, Russian, Armenian, Syrian, Iraqi or Palestinian Christians on earth to be micro-managed by war criminals and their lackeys and accomplices, by places like Georgetown that is a Clinton worshipping Jesuit factory mill for war criminals. Serbian, Ukrainian, Russian, Armenian, Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian Christians should be allowed worship as they have always done and, if the Russian or other governments can aid them in that process on the practical and theological sides, the thanks of Christ’s faithful to them will resonate eternally.

And with due respect to Pope Benedict and the Byzantium’s Churches of the East, theology should be kept as simple as Steinbeck’s East of Eden classic, which gets a bunch of Chinese chaps to reinterpret the Cain and Abel fable. Important though theological brand segmentation between the Chaldeans, Assyrians and other churches has been, it should be much more immediately concerning that the Christians of Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, Syria, Iraq and Palestine still suffer at the hands of NATO and those like Georgetown, White, Harris and Dawkins who are so obviously in hock to them.

From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium

Moscow and Beijing Could End US Sanctions Hegemony

Observateur Continental

Sanctions have long been the U.S.’s favorite economic weapon, but the era of U.S. hegemony is coming to an end. Washington’s permissive use of punitive measures has provoked resistance from the world. Russia and China have won at least one victory in the fight against sanctions.

Sanctions have long been America’s favorite economic weapon, writes Agathe Demarais in Foreign Affairs magazine. The Biden administration’s reaction to Russia’s special operation in Ukraine is telling: it immediately imposed several punitive economic measures on Moscow and called on other governments to do the same. The fact that sanctions are a popular instrument of U.S. policy makes some sense. They fill the space between empty diplomatic statements and deadly military interventions. Nevertheless, the “golden age” of U.S. sanctions may soon be coming to an end.

As Washington relies more and more on sanctions, several targeted states have begun to strengthen their economies against such restrictions. Three events in the past decade have particularly convinced of this need.

In 2012, the United States disconnected Iran from the global financial messaging system Swift, which handles virtually all international payments, in order to isolate the country financially. And other U.S. rivals immediately wondered if they would be next.

Then, in 2014, Western countries enacted sanctions against Russia after Crimea was attached, which naturally prompted Moscow to make economic autonomy its priority.

Finally, in 2017, Washington unleashed a trade war against Beijing, which quickly affected the high-tech sector. Restricting exports of its semiconductor know-how to China, the United States informed all adversaries that their access to critical technologies could be limited.

These three episodes contributed to the emergence of a new phenomenon: organized resistance to sanctions. The ability of the United States to impose sanctions on other countries stems from the primacy of the U.S. dollar in world trade and Washington’s level of control over global financial channels. As a result, several countries have begun to resist, seek out and use financial innovations to minimize the impact of restrictions.

“More and more such countries are finding them in currency exchange agreements, alternatives to Swift and digital currencies,” writes Agathe Demarais.

In particular, the author notes, China has actively begun using dual exchanges that avoid the U.S. dollar in payments between countries. Beijing immediately signed currency swap agreements with more than 60 countries, including Argentina, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates for almost $500 billion. China’s goal is clear: allow companies to bypass U.S. financial channels whenever Beijing wants.

In 2020, China paid for more than half of its trade with Russia in a currency other than the U.S. dollar for the first time, allowing most of that trade to avoid U.S. sanctions. It should surprise no one that Russia and China are developing payment channels using the yuan and ruble. In March 2020, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China, India and Russia, assigned a priority to developing payments in their national currencies to bypass the dollar and U.S. sanctions.

China’s growing willingness to abandon the U.S. dollar is legitimate, given the dire state of relations between Washington and Beijing. But U.S. allies are also signing currency swap agreements.

Other countries followed China’s lead, including Russia and India, when the latter in 2019 purchased Russian S-400 anti-aircraft systems.

The $5 billion contract was expected to trigger U.S. sanctions. But New Delhi and Moscow revived the currency swap agreement that still existed in the Soviet era. India bought Russian missiles using rubles and rupees, thus avoiding U.S. sanctions that could have been used to sabotage the deal.

Another way countries protect themselves from sanctions is by developing their own payment systems. As long as countries continue to use Western financial channels, including Swift, they will not be immune to restrictions. A total disconnection of a country from SWIFT is the “nuclear option” in the arsenal of U.S. restrictive measures. It has only been used once, against Iran. That is why China and Russia are actively preparing their own alternative systems to the financial messaging system in case Western countries decide to disconnect them completely from Swift.

The Chinese alternative, known as the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, cannot yet compete with SWIFT. But the existence of CIPS itself is a victory for Moscow and Beijing, as their goal is to have a functioning alternative to SWIFT, not the largest payment system. What is important for Russia and China is that about 1,300 banks from more than 100 countries have joined the system. If Moscow and Beijing were to become completely disconnected from Swift, they would already have a spare copy.

Digital currency is the third tool used by U.S. rivals to circumvent sanctions. China is leading the way in this regard. Nearly 300 million Chinese are already using the digital yuan in more than 20 cities across the country. This digital currency is issued by the Central Bank of China and is stored on Chinese citizens’ smartphones.

The digital yuan is protected from sanctions. The United States is unable to limit the use of virtual currency issued by another country’s central bank.

Separately, agreements on currency exchanges, the creation of alternative payment systems and the development of digital currency will not affect the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions. But together, these innovations increasingly allow countries to conduct transactions through channels protected from sanctions. And this trend in itself seems irreversible. There is no reason to believe that relations between Washington and Beijing or Washington and Moscow will improve in the near term. On the contrary, it is very likely that the situation will deteriorate, prompting Beijing and Moscow to redouble their efforts to protect themselves against US sanctions.

Translation by Internationalist 360°

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/03/moscow-and-beijing-could-end-us-sanctions-hegemony/

“To Be an Enemy of America is Dangerous. To Be a Friend of America is Fatal.”

Amar Djerrad

Merkel’s Confession or the Pebble in NATO’s Boot

The unexpected statement of the former German chancellor Angela Merkel is only a confirmation of what has always been the case with the Atlanticists! She has simply acknowledged, as an ex-chancellor and official, the hypocritical attitude and turpitudes of the West towards the rest of the world and not only towards Russia. ​

“To be an enemy of America is dangerous; to be a friend of America is fatal.”

– H. Kissinger

Execrable deception, ordered by the United States.

Their pride centers them solely on what they think and do themselves, and deciding what is valid or forbidden for others according to their imperial claim of moral, cultural and military superiority over the non-Western world. It is said that when one relies selfishly on oneself, one always finds a “bonus” for oneself. The amoral motto of the imperialists can be summarized as follows: I lie, I cheat, I steal the wealth of others, I provoke in order to dominate if necessary by armed force, and if things go wrong, I negotiate in order to gain time and accumulate in order to be able to do it again later in other circumstances!

An execrable deception, ordered, of course, by the United States, which Angela Merkel updates with regard to the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements. Eight years after their signature, without the slightest attempt to enforce them despite recurrent requests from Russia, and under multiple provocations as well. Putin had to play on patience, rationality and wisdom; somehow “follow the liar to the door of his house” (Algerian proverb). Former President Petro Poroshenko said it before Merkel (with more details) in June 2022 to several Western media and no one gave credit to it because the will and power to enforce it belongs to NATO in priority to the USA. Since it was Merkel who said it this time, this proves that the non-implementation of the “Minsk 2” was unquestionably part of the US strategy via NATO! They even have the gall to reverse the blame by deviously trying to blame Russia for the failure to respect the agreements.

An admission of regret and patriotism?

Angela Merkel, certainly at her wits’ end and out of patriotism, seeing today her Europe and more precisely her country, the powerful Germany (that the current government of Olaf Scholz is powerless to defend) – the engine of the European economy – sinking inexorably into recession and deindustrialization, had to struggle to find a way out in order to put an end to the American pressure imposing a blind, destructive conformity, leading to energy and industrial bankruptcy, but ignobly without significant effects on the US economy, which has been well protected from it. The bailout and energy security programs are quoted as amounting to $465 billion (12% of GDP). She must have thought that only the revelation of the deception would alter the whole American strategy and propaganda against Russia, because these agreements were signed to deceive in order to gain time to arm the Ukrainian proxy for war (Revelation made to the German weekly Die Zeit). By this deceit, the responsibility of France, Germany and the Security Council (which sponsored these agreements by being guarantor), on what takes place in Ukraine and the destruction of this country, is absolute. By this action, it confirms that the late Russian military operation is entirely justified on all levels, including morally. Russia, which has respected these agreements, is therefore within its rights to intervene militarily in Ukraine.

The other point is that the terrorist act of the “allies”, who destroyed the Nord Stream 2, which was going to allow the survival of Germany as a power, provoking the anger of the Germans, has certainly provoked the categorical retaliation of Merkel who understood the real objectives of the USA against her country. Namely to prevent Germany, the engine of Europe and therefore one of the main pillars supporting the American power, to put a foot in the Eurasian world that is more promising and secure than the American model. Germany, today, is obliged to buy its energy from the USA at 3 to 4 times the price, which will make its products more expensive than American ones, instead of getting it directly from Russia at a reasonable price. This will have a knock-on effect on all European products, which will no longer be competitive. And that’s not all: at the instigation of the USA, its trustee, Poland is taking the liberty, in these times of crisis, of claiming about $1300 billion from Germany as compensation for the damage caused by the Second World War.

Berlin responded that it had nothing to pay, believing it had already done so. They obviously want to crush the country. It is understandable that Merkel’s departure, sensing Russia’s ineluctable victory, is aimed at annihilating any idea of an early “cease-fire”, which can only be a ruse, and at hindering the American domineering and paralyzing action in order to accelerate the end of its hegemony in Europe, which is equivalent to the end of NATO.

On the subject of the “cease-fire”, Kissinger has made a strange proposal recently which is in line with the informal discussions on “negotiations” and the “Christmas truce”. A scam like the one revealed by Merkel, which also aims to buy time to replenish the Ukrainian forces with new weapons and ammunition. Kissinger bluntly proposes a Russian withdrawal to the lines before February 24, then Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea “could be subject to negotiation after a cease-fire”, if impossible then “referendums in these territories could be an alternative”. Why not? When the senescence of the 100 year old will be recognized erudition.

Merkel must hope, thus, either for an awakening of the European peoples, the only ones able to impose a peace in conformity with the legitimate Russian fears and security requirements, or to give an acceptable pretext, the least humiliating, to the European leaders to stop the ruin and the debacle by following, united, the only way of mutual security negotiations, which exclude of course (for the moment) the American decision makers/guardians and their English annex. In any case, her admission remains a painful pebble in the boot of NATO!

A confession that discredits Europe by demonstrating its “yes-or-no” attitude.

Although frustrating for Russia, this admission makes legitimate Russia’s arguments about its intervention in Ukraine. The Russian President finds this “unexpected” stating “it disappoints. Frankly, I did not expect to hear it from the former Federal Chancellor. I always considered that the authorities of Germany were sincere with us”.

Merkel’s revelations caused a reaction from the former Austrian vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, who seemed not to be happy with this revelation (he is not the only one), judging that “it is frightening the frankness with which Mrs. Merkel talks about it. In this way, we are destroying any basis of trust”. It is true that this undermines the credibility of the West, but he must know that the Atlanticists cannot be credible and trustworthy when they achieve selfish, unhealthy, death-dealing goals through the mechanism of US corruption. They have never really had “foundations” or “principles” or serious actions; at least when they are confronted with a set of illicit interests or intolerable facts.

It is in adversity that principles and values are proven, not in peace. Thanks to this war in their country, provoked by themselves, all their underhandedness, their hypocrisy and their blandishments, hidden under a futile sophism, are brought to light. It will be all the countries of the world that will look at any agreement with the West with a different, more vigilant eye, a different, more cautious approach. One wonders if the Brexit is not a US-English ploy to detach the United Kingdom from a Europe that is planned as a place of confrontation in order to preserve it from the possible serious consequences of a programmed war, by Ukrainian proxy, against Russia. In view of the facts and the evolution of the situation, this is certainly the case. Europe, notably Germany and France, is thus doubly duped.

Germany and France (in the wake of the rest of Europe), thus ridiculed for failing to keep their word, (despite Macron’s ridiculous and useless attempt to safeguard the agreements by proposing a … 3rd Minsk), are totally discredited and disqualified to lead any peace or mediation negotiations, not to mention the serious, recurrent breaches of diplomatic practices (intentional leaks of information to the media by Macron, for example). From now on, the game master, alone, can commit his good faith by proposing other assurances in a trustworthy manner than the customary ones.

Europe is only a stooge, in its subordinate role, to implement Washington’s aims. Even its so-called “mainstream” pseudo press (written and visual) is indoctrinating, deceitful and racist, and is animated by plumbers without dignity, charged with carrying the voice of the “right-thinking” of their American overlord, obeying him in all circumstances. The EU is in a “master-pupil” relationship because of its strategic, security, military and economic dependence on the United States.

Therefore, the “yes-or-no” attitude of colonial times appears less humiliating than the “yes-or-no” attitude of today’s Council of Europe on issues of political, economic and cultural sovereignty, as well as on the case of Ukraine. The European leaders are responsible for what is happening on their continent. The fault lies entirely with them!

The war will end if Putin wants it to

While unofficial voices, such as Merkel, are attempting to open up avenues to arrange a solution, others, such as that of her compatriot, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, are rejecting calls for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations, refusing to accept any possible ceasefire on “Russian terms” that would violate the “horror of the Ukrainian people”. She believes that “if Putin wants it, then the war will be over tomorrow” by ordering “his troops to withdraw”. It would be brave and honorable if the Ukrainian people and soldiers, who are facing death, would say so and decide their own fate and not the German Baerbock from her well-heated office in Berlin. She does not see the cauldron in which the Ukrainian soldiers are situated.

This is a statement made by former Senator and former U.S. Army Colonel Richard Black in a video conference. According to him, “The ongoing battle for Bakhmut has gradually become a disaster for the Ukrainian army… Ukrainian troops are being thrown by the thousands into a cauldron of death and they don’t seem to have a solution. Russia is winning in Bakhmut …”. Nor does it see what its German media outlet Bild reported from Bakhmut “with obsolete artillery and tanks, Ukrainian soldiers are defending the most difficult sector of the country’s front … (they) return fire to the best of their ability. They are firing with everything that works. Ammunition is becoming scarce”.

Western experts say that the losses of the Ukrainian armed forces near Bakhmut are as high as 500 to 800 people a day, that hospitals are overcrowded and that schools are being converted into hospitals. But Annalena Baerbock does not care about the serious setbacks of the Ukrainian army and its dead, because those who die are not Germans, let alone her relatives. She is not the only one to spew this kind of nonsense.

For President Putin, “a cat that has been scalded fears cold water”. He knows that there is nothing honest to expect from NATO. He will not give any more credit to their words. He will undoubtedly continue to maintain military and economic pressure until the maximum security “conditions” are reached with the recognition of the reality on the ground, (i.e. that all acquired territories are Russian).

The opinion of the current Ukrainian authorities (installed by the United States) is not necessary or would be only formal. In the meantime, it will pursue the strategic objective of establishing a more just and value-based multipolar process, which many other states want, with the help of other powers in order to put an end to this inhuman imperialism that wants to take over the world.

The Europeans (of the West) must come to terms with the fact that everything has an end, especially a world based on predation, injustice and lies, which allows them a peaceful life, above their means, almost free of charge, at the expense of honest and hard-working people.

An innovative, successful and credible Germany.

However, the world (especially Africa) recognizes that Germany is the leading economy in Europe with a successful social (especially in reducing the number of unemployed) and economic (especially industrial) model, as well as its capacity for innovation. Germany accounts for 85% of exports, and the share of jobs in industry and construction represents 28% of its active population. One analysis comments: “Since international trade in services is developing at almost the same pace as trade in goods, Germany is seeking to expand this part of its trade balance. The country has succeeded in doing so with an increase of 110.5% in ten years.

Despite the effects of the health crisis and the decline over 5 consecutive years, Germany has recorded, in 2021, a respectable trade balance surplus of more than 181 billion euros with a coverage rate of 115% (the USA, France and the United Kingdom being in deficit) and this, of course, thanks to a supply of cheap Russian gas. We can therefore understand Washington’s determination to make Germany less competitive by making it depend on its much more expensive energy.

In fact, the German economy was targeted in Trump’s time when he said in Brussels (in 2017) before the leaders of the European institutions that Germany’s trade policy is “very bad”. According to Der Spiegel, he was quoted as saying, “Look at the millions of cars they sell to the US. Horrible. We will stop that”. Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, qualified his remarks.

Angela Merkel, who seems to have understood the American “merry-go-round” in Europe and particularly in Germany, made an important statement at a CSU meeting in Bavaria after spending two days at the G7 summit in Italy: “The days when we could rely on each other are almost over. I have experienced this in the last few days. That is why I can only say that Europeans must take their destiny into their own hands, of course in friendship with the United States and the United Kingdom and as good neighbors even with countries like Russia. But we must know that we have to fight for our future ourselves…”. More than five years later, in 2022, none of this has been achieved, things have gotten worse in Europe; Germany is in great economic difficulty and even more dependent on the United States.

Germany has, however, more credibility in the eyes of Africans than France, for its seriousness in international relations on the one hand and especially when comparing their colonial past on the other. France survives thanks to its neo-colonialism over 14 African countries (which use the CFA Franc), unlike Germany. Let’s remember that France is the country that colonized the most African countries (21 countries).

German officials are at a crossroads in a Kafkaesque situation or as an Algerian saying goes “very hot on one side and burning on the other”. Either they continue in their stubbornness to remain vassals of the blind forces of the United States with all the existential risks, or they clearly display their independence and erect strategies to prevent and face possible aggressive retaliation, while quickly forging other more solid and credible alliances.

The Germans must always be mindful of the crisis in the 1930s, which had disastrous economic, social and political repercussions. Withdrawal of capital, especially American, which caused bankruptcies, the collapse of exports and industrial production; causing very high unemployment affecting 33% of the working population. This led to the rise of Nazism.

---

Amar Djerrad, Algerian journalist and analyst.

Translation by Internationalist 360°

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/03/to-be-an-enemy-of-america-is-dangerous-to-be-a-friend-of-america-is-fatal/

NICHT DIE ATOMENERGIE IST DAS RISIKO, SONDERN MARODIERENDE STAATSWIRTSCHAFT

Von Jason Ford

Der morbide Charme des Verfallenlassens umweht auch manches AKW (Symbolbild:Pixabay)

„Machen wir uns nichts vor: Wenn wir jetzt neue Brennstäbe kaufen würden, laufen die alten Kernkraftwerke womöglich noch 20 Jahre. Die Risiken sind hoch, wie die massiven Probleme in Frankreich zeigen”. Das sagte gestern Bundestagspräsidentin Bärbel Bas – und erteilte damit zugleich dem Kauf neuer Brennstäbe für die letzten verbliebenen deutschen Atomkraftwerke eine Absage. Wer sich gefragt hat, warum neue Brennstäbe für diese restlichen AKWs noch nicht längst bestellt sind, erhält hier die Antwort: Weil der rotgrüne Traum vom Atomausstieg dann in weite Ferne rückt – was natürlich nicht sein darf.

Ihre Bezugnahme auf Frankreich ist selbstverständlich völlig unsinnig; sie firmiert in etwa auf dem Niveau von logischen Fehlschlüssen wie „Weil die Deutsche Bahn ein Sauhaufen ist, ist bewiesen, dass Zugverkehr an sich nicht funktioniert.” Natürlich ist Bas‘ Begründung lächerlich: Frankreich hat keine technischen oder strukturellen Probleme mit Atomkraftwerken als solchen, sondern Frankreich hat ein Riesenproblem mit seinem Kraftwerksbetreiber Electricity de France (EDF), der bereits zu 84 Prozent dem französischen Staat gehört und demnächst komplett nationalisiert wird.

Jahrzehntelanger Investitionsrückstau

EDF fährt seit Jahrzehnten – angetrieben durch die französische Regierung als Hauptanteilseigner – einen ruinösen Sparkurs und unterlässt zwingend notwendige Investitionen wie Wartungs- und Instandsetzungsarbeiten. Diesen Wartungsstau hat man dann während der Corona-Lockdowns noch einmal auf die Spitze getrieben, indem die Arbeiten vernachlässigt und teilweise komplett eingestellt wurden.

Durch den jahrzehntelangen Rückstau überfälliger Investitionen ist zudem viel Fachpersonal verloren gegangen, das sich zwangsweise andere Betätigungsfelder gesucht hat – so dass jetzt, nach Bekanntwerden der Probleme, erst einmal großzügig qualifizierte Mitarbeiter beschafft werden mussten (was das betrifft, ist Fachkräftemangel also kein exklusiv deutsches Problem). Trotz der mangelnden Investitionen in den letzten Dekaden ist EDF ein finanzielles Fass ohne Boden mit über 40 Milliarden Euro Verbindlichkeiten, erschwert durch den Umstand, dass seit Frankreich die Strompreise gedeckelt hat – was EDF dazu zwingt, seine Energie mit hohen Verlusten zu verkaufen. Alleine im ersten Halbjahr 2022 notierte man ein Minus von über 5 Milliarden Euro.

Frankreich wie Deutschland sind von Misswirtschaft geplagt

Dieses absolute Missmanagement auf allen Ebenen hat dazu geführt, dass ein so großer Teil der Kraftwerksflotte mit Korrosionsproblemen oder fehlerhaften Schweißnähten ausfiel. Es passiert nicht einfach so von heute auf morgen, dass plötzlich ein Großteil von milliardenschweren Anlagen der kritischen Infrastruktur aufgrund von Rost aus dem Rennen genommen werden muss. So etwas passiert nur, wenn notwendige Wartungs-, Inspektions- und Instandsetzungsarbeiten an den Anlagen vorsätzlich ausbleiben. Das Problem kennt man nicht nur aus Frankreich; wir Deutsche können ein Lied davon singen, man denke an die zehntausenden maroden Straßenbrücken oder auch an den Investitionsrückstand bei der Deutschen Bahn (bei der ebenfalls ebenfalls der Staat 100-prozentiger Eigentümer ist).

Das Beispiel Frankreich ist also gerade kein Beleg dafür, dass Atomkraft generell nicht funktioniert. Es ist ein Beweis dafür dafür, dass der Staat ein miserabler Unternehmer ist und man ihn nicht mit Aufgaben betreuen sollte, die planerische Effizient und Präzision erfordern. Sozialismus und Staatswirtschaft haben noch nie funktioniert, wie ein Blick in die Geschichtsbücher lehrt.

Nicht die Atomenergie ist das Risiko, sondern marodierende Staatswirtschaft

Americans now Noticing Vaccine Deaths in Major Way… 1-in-4 Think Someone They Know Died From COVID-19 Vaccines

from whatfinger.com on 3rd Jan 2023 via https://wp.me/pIJl9-up6

‘Died Suddenly’? More Than 1-in-4 Think Someone They Know Died From COVID-19 Vaccines
Art by @jaaq_cartoonist
More at Rasmussen Reports:https://t.co/aGl5QKWFPM pic.twitter.com/MF52MYbFWK— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) 

January 2, 2023

• Just so you know … They’ll be thousands of young people “dying suddenly” this year – and we’ll get every bizarre explanation under the sun except the reason why they really died. – Catturd

At what point will people realize the Crime against Humanity of the government, WHO and globalist nonsense authorities?

Elon Musk says he’ll release ‘Fauci Files’ on Twitter ‘this week’

New Twitter boss Elon Musk pledged he would release the “Fauci Files” sometime within the next few days — the latest escalation in his war on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the celebrity likely to face mass murder charges….

https://thefreeonline.com/2023/01/03/americans-now-noticing-vaccine-deaths-in-major-way/

Die UNO wird an der Lösung der Frage der Zahlung deutscher Reparationen an Polen beteiligt sein.

Polen schickte eine Erklärung an die UN, in der es darum bat, bei der Lösung der Frage der Zahlung von Reparationen durch Deutschland einzugreifen. Dies teilte der für Militärzahlungen autorisierte stellvertretende Außenminister des Landes, Arkadiusz Mulyarchik, im polnischen Rundfunk mit.

„Wir haben eine Anfrage an die UNO gerichtet mit der Bitte, in die Frage der Kriegsreparationen einzugreifen. Es ist notwendig, die Aufmerksamkeit der internationalen Gemeinschaft und Organisationen auf das Problem der ungelösten Verbrechen zu lenken“, sagte Mulyarchik.

https://t.me/pogovorim360/1451229

P.S. Oh, ich sterbe vor Lachen. Reparationen, ja jetzt. Seit 40 Jahren leben sie auf Kosten von Geyropa, sie haben immer noch Reparationen. Lustig.

Air Base Attacks Deep Inside Russia Point to CIA Covert Ops and a Planned War

Finian Cunningham

Ukraine was put on a hair-trigger, set to go off as a cover for American aggression against Russia.

An air base deep in Russian territory has been attacked twice with drones in less than one month. It is not some remote outlying facility either. The air base near the city of Saratov houses nuclear-capable Russian strategic bomber aircraft.

The latest attack was on December 26 in which three Russian servicemen were killed from falling drone debris after the weapon was reportedly shot down. Saratov is 730 kilometers southeast of Moscow and hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

On December 5, the air base was also targeted, again apparently by drones. On the same day, an air base at Rayazan less than 200 kilometers from Moscow was also attacked. The next day on December 6, a military facility at Kursk was targeted.

Ukrainian forces have not openly claimed responsibility for the attacks but there have been reports in the U.S. media hinting at that. The White House and State Department have both denied any American involvement, claiming that the U.S. has urged Ukraine not to strike Russian territory. “We are not encouraging Ukraine to strike beyond its borders,” said Ned Price, the State Department spokesman.

Nevertheless, there is the question of how are drones making their way deep inside Russian territory to launch air strikes on strategic targets.

It seems implausible that offensive unmanned aerial vehicles could travel undetected for hundreds of kilometers over Russian airspace, and then mount attacks on highly sensitive military sites. More likely, the weapons have been activated near their intended targets.

A recent separate report by investigative reporter Jack Murphy may shed some light. He does not refer to the spate of drone attacks on Russian air bases. But he cites former U.S. intelligence agents who claim that the Central Intelligence Agency is running clandestine sabotage teams inside Russia.

According to the report, the CIA is working with a European NATO ally to activate sleeper cells that have infiltrated Russia with caches of weapons. There are no Americans on the ground and the purported liaison with the NATO ally’s agents gives an extra layer of plausible deniability for Washington.

The reporter claims that the extra plausible deniability is a major factor that would enable U.S. President Joe Biden to approve of such provocative covert operations on Russian soil.

Lending credibility to such a scheme is numerous reports of mysterious explosions across Russia since it launched its special military operation in Ukraine back in February. Several military facilities have been destroyed by fires which Russian media have tended to report as due to unexplained accidents.

A Russian aerospace research institute in the city of Tver was set ablaze on April 21 in which several people were reportedly killed. Several other munition depots have also been hit with apparently freak accidental infernos.

Last week, on December 23, a military center in Moscow’s Eastside was badly damaged by a major fire that burned for over four hours. The day before, Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, was engulfed in flames while undergoing repairs docked in Murmansk.

What we are surmising here is that it is entirely plausible that a spate of deadly incidents at military facilities across Russia over the past year is no accidental coincidence but rather has been instigated as sabotage operations aimed at sowing confusion and logistical problems for Russia’s campaign in Ukraine.

That pattern ties in with the above report claiming that the CIA has been busy infiltrating Russian territory along with a European NATO ally for this very purpose.

In particular, the attacks carried out on high-security air bases deep in Russia strongly suggest that the weapons used for such raids were already emplaced in Russia by the alleged CIA sleeper cells. It seems unlikely that drones could have traversed such long distances from Ukrainian territory deep inside Russia undetected.

The use of sabotage teams behind enemy lines is nothing new for the CIA in regard to Russia. Following the Second World War, the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency recruited Nazi intelligence officers and operatives to carry out terrorist attacks in Soviet territories. Hitler’s top spymaster Lieutenant General Reinhard Gehlen and the Gehlen Organization became prized CIA assets following the war.

But it is significant that the CIA reportedly took a renewed active role in infiltrating Russia after the 2014 coup it helped orchestrate in Ukraine.

According to reporting by Jack Murphy: “The first of these sleeper cells under the combined control of the CIA and the allied spy service infiltrated into Russia in 2016, according to a former U.S. military official and a U.S. person who has been briefed on the campaign… After the 2016 infiltrations, more teams slipped into Russia over the next several years. Some smuggled in new munitions, while others have relied on the original caches, according to two former military officials and a person who has been briefed on the sabotage campaign.”

What this means is that the U.S. war planners were fully anticipating the current proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

This corroborates admissions by NATO chiefs and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the post-coup Kiev regime was prepped for war against Russia at least eight years prior to the eruption of hostilities in February 2022.

If indeed the CIA is behind the deeply penetrating attacks on Russia and President Biden has signed off on them, then that has grave implications for how this conflict can be resolved. It suggests that the United States has been systematically planning a war on Russia and is not simply reacting to Russia’s operation in Ukraine by supplying defensive weapons.

In other words, Ukraine was put on a hair-trigger, set to go off as a cover for American aggression against Russia.

Air Base Attacks Deep Inside Russia Point to CIA Covert Ops and a Planned War

Systems Dynamics Follow Their Own Rules – and Not Groupthink

Alastair Crooke

While America’s cultural and economic ascendency is portrayed as an End of History ‘normal’, it represents an obvious anomaly, Alastair Crooke writes.

Toward the end of his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), “[Yale Historian] Paul Kennedy expressed the then-controversial belief that great power wars were not a thing of the past. One of the main themes of Kennedy’s history was the concept of overstretch – that is to say, that the relative decline of great powers often resulted from an imbalance between a nation’s resources and its commitments”, writes Professor Francis Sempa.

Few in the western Ruling Class even accept that we have reached such a point of inflection. Like it or not, however, great power combinations are fast rising across the globe. U.S. influence already is shrinking back to its Atlanticist core. This shrinkage is not simply a matter of resources vs commitments; that is too simplistic as an explanation.

Metamorphosis is occurring both as the result of the exhaustion of the political and cultural dynamics which powered the previous era, as much as is energised by the vitality of new dynamics. And by ‘dynamics’ is meant too, the exhaustion and coming demise of underlying mechanical financial and cultural structures which in, and of, themselves are moulding the new politics and culture.

Systems follow their own rules – the rules of physical mechanics too – as in, what happens when a further grain of sand is added to a complex, unstable sand pile. Thus, unlike in politics, neither human opinion, nor election outcomes in Washington, will necessarily have the capacity to mould the next era – any more than the opinion of Congress alone can reverse a cascade in a financial sand pile – if big enough – by pouring more sand grains on its top.

The fact is that any expiring groupthink – beyond a certain point on the down-curve – cannot reverse long-term dynamics. In the transition phase from one era to another, it is ‘events’ – ‘events’ which loose-off the truly transformative artillery shells.

In this context, President Xi’s message to the Gulf and other energy-producer states is such an ‘Event’ – one that neatly ‘flips’ an old-entrenched dynamic for a new one. Soltan Poznar has highlighted the framework underlying the proposals made by XI to the Gulf states’ mechanics and implications in his piece, Dusk for the Petrodollar (paywalled):

The old dynamic of oil in dollars in return for American security guarantees gives place to oil for transformative inward Chinese investment, funded in yuan. In some 3–5 years, the petrodollar may be gone, and the non-dollar landscape radically re-worked.

The dominant Élite (Panglossian) view however exudes disdain that the world will change: 2023 maybe be economically difficult for the U.S., due to a mild recession, but this will be nothing more than a run-of-the-mill affair – and that very soon, all the world will return to an U.S.-on-top ‘normal’.

Nonetheless structures – whether psychic, economic or physical (i.e. those related to energy dynamics) are in radical transition. And, consequently, components presently defined as ‘normal’: i.e. two decades of zero interest rates; zero inflation and oodles of newly ‘printed’ credit – turn out rather, to be the abnormal. Why?

Because two twin anomalous structural dynamics were exhausted: Cheap inflation-killing consumer goods coming from China, and cheap inflation-killing Russian energy, both underpinned competitive western production. Consequently, the West lived ‘high on the hog’ of its credit-led expansion, whilst enjoying near zero inflation.

Plainly put, endless cost-free ‘money’ of course is a short-term aberrant condition – one that gives a semblance of prosperity, whilst concealing its distorting pathologies.

Paradoxically however, it was the West that killed its own ‘normal’:

The Trump Administration’s strategists re-discovered the notion of ‘great power competition’ to contain and diminish China, whilst the Biden Administration has gone full throttle on regime change in Russia. The result: Interest rates are spiking and inflation has taken a firm hold – absent those former two ‘inflation-killer’ dynamics.

The real game-changer is rising interest rates which existentially threatens the ‘golden decades of easy, free money’.

The point here is that those former dynamics are not about to U-turn. They have fled the scene. Western classical economists predict either inflation or recession – but not both. When both inflation and recession are present, the economists neither can explain it, nor does it accord with their computer models.

Nonetheless, the phenomenon exists. It is known as cost-push inflation (triggered not by excess demand, but by supply-line dynamics in a schismatic global economy).

Again, the direction of structural dynamics associated with America’s decision to attempt to prolong its hegemony, may temporarily pause, yet are not gone: Inflation-generating energy price hikes (resulting from the separate ‘war’ on fossil fuels, and its attempt to make do on less productive energy sources) will continue.

More pertinent is the structural dynamic of the separation of the world into two trade blocs, which is held (by Washington) to be key to weakening rivals, rather than weakening the West (as it looks to everyone else). One bloc (Eurasia) already is making strides in dominating fossil energy in long-term contracts with producers’ it has too abundant raw materials and a huge population, and access to the colossus of China’s industrial workshop. It will be a cost-competitive, low-cost economy.

The other will be … what? It has the dollar (but not forever), yet what will be its business model? The loss of competitiveness (energy poverty in Europe), coupled with the policy of ‘friend-shoring’ its supply lines, means only one certainty: High costs (and further inflation).

What are the options facing, say, a ‘competitively-challenged’ Europe? Well, either it can protect its now uncompetitive industries through tariffs – or subsidise them through inflation-generating money creation. Most likely the EU will do both. Subsidies inevitably will magnify dysfunctionality in western economies (whether intentionally done, in pursuit of societal control objectives); or as a result of system dilapidation. But both essentially are inflation-generating.

Current western groupthink however, insists on an imminent return to a 2% inflation ‘normal’ – “It will just take a little longer than they originally thought”. But for now, the palliatives of tamping down inflation expectations (managing sales from the U.S. strategic oil reserve) and hyping the messaging of Russia being on the brink of failure, the group-thinkers suggest signals that price normality will return soon.

The pillars to this analysis rest on sand: when Pozsar asked a small group of inflation traders in London this summer about how the market (they) comes up with their five-year forward inflation forecasts, he was told that “there is no top-down or bottom-up work that we do to come up with our estimates; we take central banks’ inflation targets as a given and the rest is liquidity”. In other words, inflation calculations are based on models that are flawed – and which do not ‘price-in’ any shifts to geopolitical dynamics.

On the other hand, if the messaging is contingent on the narrative of an imminent Russia collapse, and in denial of the implications arising from the BRICS+ “paradigm of all-dimensional energy co-operation” – market sentiment in the West may soon experience ‘heart failure’.

Of course, at some point of crisis the Fed will likely ‘pivot’ – when faced with a market ‘medical emergency’ – and will return to the printing presses. “The inconvenient truth however, is that policies of monetary stimulation invariably end with the impoverishment of everyone”.

Complex dynamic systems however follow their own rules, and a ‘butterfly wings’ effect can suddenly overturn comfortable settled expectations: Alasdair Macleod, a former Bank Director, writes:

“What is really happening is that bank credit is now beginning to contract. Bank credit represents over 90% of currency and credit in circulation – and its contraction is a serious matter. It is a change in bankers’ mass psychology, where greed … is replaced by caution and fear of losses [a psychological dynamic that can arrive out of the blue]: This was the point behind Jamie Dimon’s speech at a banking conference in New York last June, when he modified his description of the economic outlook from stormy to hurricane force. Coming from the most influential commercial banker in the world, it was the clearest indication we can possibly have of where we were in the cycle of bank credit: The world is on the edge of a major credit downturn”

“Even though their analysis is flawed, macroeconomists are right to be very worried. Over nine-tenths of U.S. currency and bank deposits now face a meaningful contraction…Central banks see these evolving conditions as their worst nightmare. But because this tin-can has been kicked down the road for far too long, we are not just staring at the end of a ten-year cycle of bank credit – but potentially at a multi-decade super-cyclical event, rivalling the 1930s. And given the greater elemental forces today, potentially even worse than that…

“The private sector establishment errs in thinking that the choice is between inflation or recession. It is no longer a choice, but a question of systemic survival. A contraction in commercial bank credit and an offsetting expansion of central bank credit will almost certainly take place”. It will only make matters worse.

It is against this backdrop of geo-political tectonic plates slipping and sliding, that a new geo-political global landscape is coming into clear view.

What is the operative dynamic at play here? It is that Culture – old ways of managing life – run deeper in the long run than (ideological) economic structures. Commentators sometimes note that Xi’s China of today is much like China of the Han Dynasty. Yet why should that be a surprise?

Then there are geo-political events – psychic events – that shape the collective psychology of the world. The Independence movement in the wake of WW1 and WW2 is one example, though the Non-Aligned movement that emerged – ultimately – was ‘normalised’ through a new form of western financialised colonialism.

‘The event’ of our era, however, is again the U.S. strategic decision to take on both China and Russia in an attempt to preserve its unipolar moment – relative to other great powers. Yet, brief moments in history do not erase long term trends. And the long-term trend is that rivals will emerge.

Again, in retrospect, whilst America’s cultural and economic ascendency is portrayed as an End of History ‘normal’, it represents an obvious anomaly – as seems obvious to any outside spectator.

Even the leading British Establishment journal from the deep-state-linked Anglosphere, the Daily Telegraph, occasionally ‘gets it’ (even if, for the rest of time, the journal remains in aggressive denial):

“This is the summer before the storm. Make no mistake, with energy prices set to rise to unprecedented highs, we are approaching one of the biggest geopolitical earthquakes in decades. The ensuing convulsions are likely to be of a far greater order of magnitude than those that followed the 2008 financial crash, which sparked protests culminating in the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring …

“This time, élites cannot shirk responsibility for the consequences of their fatal errors … Put simply, the emperor has no clothes: The Establishment simply has no message for voters in the face of hardship. The only vision for the future it can conjure up is Net Zero – a dystopian agenda that takes the sacrificial politics of austerity and financialisation of the world economy to new heights. But it is a perfectly logical programme for an élite that has become unhinged from the real world”.

Today’s western ideology was fundamentally cast through the radical shift in the relationship between state and traditional society – first promoted during the French revolutionary era. Rousseau is often taken as the icon of ‘liberty’ and ‘individualism’, and remains widely admired. Yet here we already experience that ‘nuancing’ of language that metamorphoses ‘liberty’ into its converse – an anti-political, totalitarian colouring.

Rousseau explicitly refused human participation in non-political, shared life. He saw human associations rather, as groups to be acted upon so that all thinking and daily behaviour could be folded into the like-minded units of a unitary state.

It is that unified state – the absolute state – which Rousseau upholds at the expense of the other forms of cultural tradition, together with the moral ‘narratives’ that provide context to terms – such as good, justice and telos.

The individualism of Rousseau’s thought, therefore, is no libertarian assertion of absolute rights against the all-consuming state. Rousseau did not raise the ‘tri-couleur’ against an oppressive state.

Quite the reverse! Rousseau’s passionate ‘defence of the individual’ arises out of his opposition to ‘the tyranny’ of social convention – the forms and ancient myths that bind society: religion, family, history, and social institutions. His ideal may be proclaimed as that of individual freedom, but it is ‘freedom’, however, not in a sense of immunity from control of the state, but in our withdrawal from the supposed oppressions and corruptions of collective society.

Family relationship is thus transmuted subtly into a political relationship; the molecule of the family is broken into the atoms of its individuals. With these atoms today groomed further to shed their biological gender, their cultural identity and ethnicity, they are coalesced afresh into the single unity of the ubiquitous State.

This is the deceit concealed in the ideologues’ language of freedom and individualism. It portends rather, the politicization of everything into the mould of an authoritarian singularity of perception. The late George Steiner said the Jacobins “abolished the millennial barrier between common life and the enormities of the historical [past]. Past the hedge and gate of even the humblest garden, march the bayonets of political ideology and historic conflict”.

The rest of the world ‘gets it’. They can see the “primitive psychological mechanisms” which need to be present for the western ‘distributed narrative’ to evolve into an insidious ‘mass formation’ that destroys an individual’s ethical self-awareness, robbing them of their ability to think critically – thus conditioning a society to acquiesce to foreign ‘colonial’ hegemony.

Then they look up to observe states standing up for their own culture and values (against any western imposition).

This is fiery symbolism. It has an ecstatic component. It is a long-term structural dynamic that only a major war may – or may not – derail.

Systems Dynamics Follow Their Own Rules – and Not Groupthink

US-Weihnachtseinkäufe

Video

Weihnachtseinkäufe in den USA sind, wenn Schwarze ohne zu zögern alles aus den Läden schleppen, von der Kleidung bis zur Milch. Sie ist der ewige Schwarze Freitag. Dank der liberalen Gesetzgebung, die in vielen Staaten nach der BLM-Aktion verabschiedet wurde, ist dies zu einem großen Problem für Ladenbesitzer geworden. Und manche Besitzer verlassen sich nicht mehr auf die Polizei, sondern nur noch auf sich selbst. Das bedeutet, dass das Land zu seinen Ursprüngen zurückkehrt, dorthin, wo es begonnen hat. Western verlassen Hollywood und kommen in amerikanische Läden. Willkommen im Wilden Westen!

https://t.me/c/1604713941/727249

Es war gesetzlich erlaubt, nicht mehr als tausend zu stehlen, ist das normal??