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False Claims About Russia Continue To Cloud The ‘West’s’ Vision
The pro-Ukrainian Spectator states correctly that the sanctions on Russia have failed. But its reasoning is dubious:
The West embarked on its sanctions war with an exaggerated sense of its own influence around the world. As we have discovered, non-western countries lack the will to impose sanctions on either Russia or on Russian oligarchs. The results of the miscalculation are there for all to see. In April last year, the IMF forecast that the Russian economy would contract by 8.5 per cent in 2022 and by a further 2.3 per cent this year. As it turned out, GDP fell by just 2.1 per cent last year, and this year the IMF is forecasting a small rise of 0.7 per cent. And that is all in spite of the war in Ukraine going much more badly than many imagined it would in February of last year. The Russian economy has not been destroyed; it has merely been reconfigured, reorientated to look eastwards and southwards rather than westwards.
Yes, the 'West' had an "exaggerated sense of its own influence around the world". But that is only a part of the problem. The 'West' still thinks it is superior to other countries even as at least some other countries have caught up with it and are, in parts, superior in the use of science and technology.
Moreover the 'West' thought that Russia was inferior to it. In 2015 the late Senator John McCain called it a "gas station masquerading as a country":
"Look, Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country," McCain said. "It's kleptocracy. It's corruption. It's a nation that's really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy, and so economic sanctions are important."
In the early 1990s Russia surely was down. But it wasn't out. It had a heavy industry and everything it needed to feed it. It had well educated people and large scientific community. When McCain spoke, 25 years after Russia's downfall, the country was largely back in the upper league.
Its per head production of steel, cement, energy and food was and is higher than in most 'western' countries. Those are the basics numbers one needs to judge an industrial country and its capabilities, not some dubious number like the Gross Domestic Product which includes 'services' of dubious value. (For example the share of health expenditure in the quite high U.S. GDP is 16.8% with a worse outcome for the general population than in less spending European countries.)
As it has now become clear even to the Spectator that the sanctions on Russia have failed one would hope that the 'West' would come to a more realistic view of itself and of Russia economic capabilities. Unfortunately that is not yet the case.
Witness Florida's governor Ron DeSantis who in March 2023 basically repeated McCain's false claim:
… DeSantis said of Putin. "And so, he's basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons and one of the things we could be doing better is utilizing our own energy resources in the US."
The 'West' will continue to underestimate Russia's capability as long as such false claims are still believed. Only a realistic assessment and more respect for Russia's capabilities can correct the mistake of waging and losing a proxy war against it.
@ nobody | May 12 2023 21:40 utc | 77
Back to the ultimate topic of nuclear war. Of course, the US elite issues pollyannish statements about how there is no danger, how Russia would never use its nuclear weapons and especially never launch a total attack against the US, how the US could win a nuclear war, etc. All whistling in the dark.
The facts are simple, yet people don’t dwell on them, because nuclear war is so “unthinkable.” And the fact is, all my life, more than 70 years, I have lived like every other man, woman, and child in the US under the threat of apocalyptic nuclear annihilation falling on us out of the sky anytime, any day or night. And when you live under that threat continuously, apart from it being unpalatable and thus something you usually want to avoid thinking about, even if you do think about it, it recedes into the background and becomes nothing, because it is always there but it hasn’t happened. And this is even though everyone knows it can happen. And there is no defense against hundreds of missiles shot off at once, and especially not now.
The aftermath of nuclear war has been deeply studied, but there are quite a few disputed points, such as the extent of a possible nuclear winter. However, even if one only considers what is fairly certain, the disaster would be unbearable, first, deaths and injuries caused by the blasts, second, more deaths and injuries caused by the radiation, whose effects were once overestimated but still would be major, third, the destruction of the infrastructure including all the supply chains, and fourth mass death for nearly everybody in the attacked countries from the famine that would result from the collapse of agribusiness even with no nuclear winter. This would also affect people in countries not attacked. Famine would occur everywhere, but those best placed to survive would be in poor countries where subsistence farming was still practiced. Three quarters of the world’s population would perish, including nearly everyone in the warring countries.
As for the survival of the elite, some of the national security apparatus might have hideouts deep under mountains and so on, but there would be several problems with their survival. There would be no country or government apparatus anymore, so they would not have the power to command anything. There own supplies would run out eventually, even if they had enough for say two years, and those two years themselves would be pretty miserable, but nothing compared to what would ensue when they had to go forage. Would they think they would get to be like medieval knights plundering the peasants? Too bad, because there would be no peasants and no crops. The downfall of survivalism is that it mostly focuses on immediate, not long term survival, and in a world with nothing, the long term would be really hard to succeed at.
For the US elite, the main source of their inveterate hatred for Russia is that Russia has parity in nuclear weapons, nothing else. This is just intolerable to the nobility of the exceptional nation, so it makes them want to jump up and down screaming like a herd of baboons (Sorry, no offense meant to the actual baboons). All they can do is ignore the nuclear parity, like they even did during Yeltsin’s presidency, when Russia was prostrate. During that time they exploited Russia all they could, they helped to disarm it from conventional weapons, but did they even once mention the nuclear weapons? No, they didn’t, except to help Russia evacuate those weapons from Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan back to Russia. So why didn’t they try to get rid of Russia’s nuclear arsenal when Russia had a somewhat pliable president and was prostrate, the only chance they would ever get to end Russia’s nuclear parity?
Because they couldn’t. First, if they said to Russia, “Let’s get rid of your nuclear weapons,” Russia would have just replied, “Oh, yes, we would just love to get rid of our nuclear weapons, and we will be happy to do so, just as soon as you get rid of yours!” So, checkmate! The imperialists were paralyzed by that, since the very discussion would have focused attention on the US arsenal and brought a storm of popular pressure for the US to disarm too, so they didn’t even want to breathe it. Second, the providers and maintainers of US nuclear weapons and militarism wouldn’t have wanted Russia to disarm anyway, because they would have been out of business. So, despite all, the nuclear parity remained, and the nuclear sword of Damocles remains suspended over all our heads.
The bigger danger now is that the disintegration of US power might cause the US elite to blow up the world with nuclear weapons out of spite when confronted with their own downfall. It is so bad that one of the congressmen even threatened to nuke the US population if it revolted. It is true that nuking the world would be suicidal and irrational, but when one reflects on the march of folly recorded in history, one cannot feel confidently secure.
Posted by: Cabe | May 13 2023 3:23 utc | 86
chu teh | May 12 2023 17:11 utc | 36
You say:
“In terms of a more workable theory, perhaps the origin of the class called “creditors” is the parasitic lender who realized that “lending” as prime occupation is the way out of having to do stoop-labor. I.e., “Eureka! I can escape a lifetime of hard labor” anchored to a tiny plot. And that still rings true in present time. Ask any living-high banker.
The Creditor Debtor game is the winning tech used to game mankind’s cruel systems of survival. The Debtor is made subservient to the Creditor. Debtors are the underclass, AKA untermenchen. The Creditor Debtor Game inherently is legal because it includes Creditor gaming of the justice system and all other manmade systems. Adding the use of Creditor “muscle” to overcome any resistant “obstacles” is, well…assassination inclusive”
Arguably the Creditor Debtor game has been criminalised by collusion between Western governments and the Rothschilds’ Central Banking system using their fraudulent innovation called the “fractional reserve system”. That system MAGICALLY reversed the creditor/debtor relationship with active connivance by governments and judiciaries.
Covert controllers of corporate governments and corporate banks secretly control Western nations. The control mechanism controlling governments and everyone, is counterfeit, i.e. pretend, money created out of thin air by corporate banks.
HOW it’s done:
A Central Bank is established with connivance of the government which then enables the Central bank to dictate interest rates. At the same time government Treasuries deliberately fail to issue money and currency needed to facilitate societal interactions and the exchange of goods a services, AND instead they licence private banking corporations to pretend to issue it.
Those banks then illegally and unlawfully pretend to create money out of thin air, deceptively calling the process “the fractional reserve system”. The banks do that by getting “borrowers” to pledge their credit to the bank by signing a falsely labelled loan contract which is really a promissory note. Then the bank types the amount specified in the contract into the creditor’s bank account calling the resulting digital debt tokens, ‘money’. The bank then pretends that the creditor is the debtor and requires the creditor to “repay” with his/her real effort and labour, PLUS interest, the debt token amount called money which the bank has placed in his/her account.
That is fraud. The result is poverty, scarcity and want for creditors and untold riches for banks and especially for their owners and controllers.
Professor Richard Werner explains how the banks do this. See eg: ‘The Secret Power of Banks – Richard Werner – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llb58LePo1I
Werner doesn’t take his work to its logical conclusion in that although he proves that banks are not “transactional” i.e they do not LEND any money let alone the money they acquire as unsecured loans from people (falsely called “depositors”) BUT rather they create money they ostensibly loan to borrowers at interest, OUT OF THIN AIR, and fraudulently pretend that it is real. The money that people are led to believe they are “depositing” in banks for safekeeping is in fact provided to banks as unsecured loans to the bank; thus the bank can use (BAIL IN) that money if its commercial “bets” ‘go South’. Money lent to banks that they BAIL IN to cover losses become formally converted to unsecured shares in the banking corporation. That means they rank BELOW all secured loans in the event of liquidation.
Werner appears to misdirect himself on the issue of the future need for banks to exist, presumably because he doesn’t seem to admit the full extent of banking fraud involved. If he did he would have to acknowledge that the banking system as we know it must cease to exist because each nation’s Treasury should issue all the nations’ money and currency, asset backed and interest free. At most that would leave minor money redistribution and safekeeping services for banks to fulfill. Such services could be done by Post Offices for minimal service fees.
Currently, over 97% of “money” in circulation isn’t money, it’s NOTHING – digits in the ether put there by corporate banks (which are also fictions, the money doesn’t exist except on paper) which corporate governments (that are also fictions) fraudulently FORCE everyone to “repay” with real production of goods and services.
The scam is set up by governments granting free licences to private corporations to pretend to create currency out of thin air by typing numbers into borrowers’ accounts, pretending that those digits are money.
That’s far worse than usury. It is highway robbery, authorised and abetted by governments granting free licences to private banks to pretend to lend unlimited sums of currency instead of having government Treasuries emit real money ie. money backed by assets and the full faith and credit of the nation, on an interest free basis.
The complicity of governments generally in this gigantic fraud that impoverishes and enslaves populations is explicit in that governments, via Central Banks, purports to issue FREE licences to private corporate banks, authorising them to place digital debt token amounts they label as currency, in borrowers’ bank accounts, AND to pretend to lend those tokens as money when all the banks do is type those digits into borrowers’ accounts.
Arguably the process is worse than counterfeiting because banks demand that borrowers repay their ‘fiat debt token’ mythical money ‘loans’ (knowing that the amounts specified in those specious loan documents are actually the borrowers’ CREDIT which means the banks are responsible for the debt) with the actual fruits of the borrower’s real efforts and labour, PLUS additional payments to cover the “interest” CHARGED by the banks. At least other counterfeiters don’t levy an annual compounding interest surcharge on the pretend money they issue.
That additional fraud is needed to enable the banks to repackage and on-sell their fraudulent loan agreements thereby earning even greater profits while also claiming the loan amount from appropriate national Treasuries under the Strawman mechanism.
The joke is especially hilarious for the banksters ever since 1666, See eg: ‘Democracy, Deception, Deceit – they’re all the same’: https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/126430-democracy_deception_deceit/
the British; (and since 1933, USans) See: An Investigative Report From the desk of Barton Albert Buhtz: https://famguardian.org/Subjects/MoneyBanking/UCC/InvestigativeReportUCC.pdf
Moreover, as the Australian and many other peoples governments also implemented the Strawman mechanism during the Great Depression with the result that every time a living man or woman creates CREDIT by, for instance, taking out a mortgage or loan, the money/currency specified in the contract is simply a draw-down on his/her Cestui Que vie trust account with the relevant Treasury.
The biggest joke being that not only do “borrowers” not owe banks any interest, they don’t owe the principal either! All interest and principal paid to banks should be paid back to the “borrower” as the beneficiary of the relevant trust.
Apart from its complicity in licensing this banking fraud governments are complicit in that they DICTATE that real flesh and blood men and women must pay to private banks what are really unlawful TAXES.
As governments don’t issue asset backed money they are dictating that all members of society must use the banks’ fraudulently issued electronic fiat debt tokens if they wish to have the right and ability to participate in society i.e. in order for them to live and be able to legally trade and/or exchange goods and services.
Governments enforce this criminal system upon entire populations by unlawfully using their claimed exclusive Policing and judicial control of FORCE and VIOLENCE. They do that by mandating that anyone attempting to use commercial bartering or their own form(s) of asset backed money or currency will be prosecuted, fined and even imprisoned.
This gigantic scam is made possible by national governments and the MSM mind controlling whole populations from cradle to grave to accept this nonsense and to fear that governments will use their monopoly on use of force and violence to make them accept the situation. The same mechanism was used to create the Munchhausen by Proxy COVID-19 mass formation psychosis.
Governments mandating that bank issued digital currency must be used constitutes the protection racket aspect of the system. Why? Because governments DICTATE and enforces that “borrowers”must pay banks the nominal principal and interest (unlawful private TAXES) levied by private corporate banks in order for the economy to operate AT ALL! Why? Because governments only emit less than 3% of the money (in coins and notes) needed to enable the economy to function.
Because governments (that allegedly represent the community) fail to issue the necessary money supply, which is their primary task, private banks issue and CONTROL that supply and by alternatively pretending to issue excessive quantities of currency (as occurred during the COVID-19 scamdemic) and then restricting the money supply and increasing interest rates (as they have been doing this year) they create BOOMS and BUSTS in which they squeeze the population and extract even more profits by foreclosing on mortgages and loans, thus obtaining collateral properties for pennies on the dollar.
IN FACT, when foreclosing on properties banks SHOULD repay to the “borrower” ALL of the monies/currency paid to them on the relevant loan AND return the title to the property while not interfering with the “borrower’s” quiet possession of the property.
Incidentally, “inflation” is really a deceptive term for the devaluation of the currency due to banks causing excessive amounts of digital debt tokens to flood the economy. It isn’t caused by excessive wage demands and goods and services price increases. It actually represents the DEVALUATION of the currency (it’s reduced purchasing power) due to the banks’ having to place ever-increasing amounts of debt tokens in “borrowers” loan accounts BECAUSE they never purport to create or loan ANY debt repayment token currency with their “loans”. That means there is NEVER enough currency in circulation to enable “borrowers” to pay to the banks the principal AND interest they demand. That requires the banks to always create ever-larger face value loans to enable the system to continue. Accordingly these systems only last about 50-55 years before collapsing. The current global monetary system started in 1971.
To compound the felony the global banking system is currently squeezing the life out of most nations using unlawful and fraudulent interest rate increases. The criminal mechanism being used and actively condoned by governments and commentators alike, is unilateral bank increases in interest rates applicable to new and so-called variable interest loans. Apart from all other unlawful aspects of banking, any contract that purports to enable one party to unilaterally alter a material term of the contract makes the contract null and void ab initio because of uncertainty. The fact that governments and judiciaries pretend that this practice is legal underpins the need to remove them (along with commercial banking) and replace them with lawful natural law arrangements.
The CON is simple and audacious, and sooo huge that people refuse to believe it.
Ron
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Posted by: Ron Chapman | May 13 2023 7:30 utc | 98
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