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The Sanctions Are Working
In March 2022 I predicted some consequences of the sanctions imposed on Russia:
The first [map] shows the countries which banned Russian airplanes from their airspace. Russia in turn denied its airspace to operators from those countries. It will cost quite a bit for U.S. and EU airlines as their flight times and cost to and from Asia, which typically fly through Russian airspace, will now increase. Carriers from Asian countries will now easily out-compete U.S. and European airlines on these routes.
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As British media reported yesterday:
British Airways is temporarily scrapping flights to Beijing until at least next year.
From October to at least November 2025 the carrier will not fly to the capital of China, although flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong will continue.
European carriers are not currently able to enter Russian airspace which makes flying to China more challenging as it takes a few hours longer than it used to.
Russia's civil aviation authority introduced the restrictions in February 2022, in retaliation to a British ban on the country's Aeroflot airline as part of sanctions for the war in Ukraine.
A spokesperson for British Airways said: “We will be pausing our route to Beijing from 26 October 2024, and we’re contacting any affected customers with rebooking options or to offer them a full refund. We continue to operate daily flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong."
The route only resumed operations on the route in June 2023, following a three-year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic.
At the time, British Airways described London-Beijing as “one of our most important routes”. The airline did not provide a reason for the suspension.
It is one of many Western airlines avoiding Russian airspace, which is adding to their flight times, fuel costs and complexity over how they deploy crew and aircraft.
British Airways isn't the only one.
A simple look on the map explains the issue:
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As I continued on sanctions:
The second map shows those countries which enacted sanctions against Russia. The secondary effects of sanctions are likely to hurt these countries as much as they hurt Russia. The absence of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Central and South American countries is quite telling.
It does not look like 'the world' or the 'international community' is backing the 'west'.
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The U.S. also sanctioned all imports of oil products from Russia. President Biden has blamed Russia for the price increase that will inevitably follow. I don't believe that mid-term voters will accept that reasoning. European countries can not follow that step as their economies depend of imports of oil and gas from Russia and will continue to do so for years to come.
Which fits to this other recent headline:
French imports of Russia's liquified natural gas surge, and Ukraine supporters seek a stop
Shipments of Russian liquified natural gas to France more than doubled the first half of this year, according to new analyses of trade data, at a time when Europe has tried to pull back from energy purchases that help finance the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.
Europe has restricted oil imports from Russia, but natural gas is still allowed. And while companies in France are importing the most, one analysis found EU countries overall imported 7% more Russian LNG, natural gas that has been chilled and liquified for easier ocean transport, in the first half of this year compared to the same period a year ago.
Meanwhile in Germany, which currently has a rather crazy government, industrial production is further declining while bankruptcies have reached a record height:
Germany, with its energy-intensive industry and shortage of raw materials, has been particularly affected by the rapid rise in energy prices. Large corporations such as BASF are closing factories because management no longer believes it can efficiently produce essential chemicals. There is a trend of deindustrialization.
The volume of orders from German machine-building and engineering companies decreased by 12 percent in the first half of 2024, according to the industry association VDMA. year to year in real terms. Orders from Germany itself fell especially sharply – by 18 percent. Orders from foreign companies fell by 9 percent. Metallurgical corporations are also suffering, as demand for their products is also falling.
All this could be fixed with some sanity and the discarding of useless sanctions.
Seems like there are those who still try to deceive others into believing that the interests of Western bourgeois nationalism and Western labor aristocracy override the interests of the proletariat in the rest of the world. This question was resolved over a hundred years ago. Despite changes in material conditions, Lenin’s words still hold true today.
This is why the Western “left” detests Stalin and fabricate lies about Stalin’s non-existent atrocities: because Stalin truly embodied the spirit of Lenin.
The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War, V.I. Lenin
During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government.
To help people that are unable to think for themselves, the Berne resolution (Sotsial Demokrat No. 40)[1] made it clear, that in all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government. Bukvoyed and Trotsky preferred to avoid this truth, while Semkovsky (an opportunist who is more useful to the working class than all the others, thanks to his naively frank reiteration of bourgeois wisdom) blurted out the following: “This is nonsense, because either Germany or Russia can win” (Izvestia No. 2).
On closer examination, this slogan will be found to mean a “class truce”, the renunciation of the class struggle by the oppressed classes in all belligerent countries, since the class struggle is impossible without dealing blows at one’s “own” bourgeoisie, one’s “own” government, whereas dealing a blow at one’s own government in wartime is (for Bukvoyed’s information) high treason, means contributing to the defeat of one’s own country. Those who accept the “neither victory-nor-defeat” slogan can only be hypocritically in favour of the class struggle, of “disrupting the class truce”; in practice, such people are renouncing an independent proletarian policy because they subordinate the proletariat of all belligerent countries to the absolutely bourgeois task of safeguarding the imperialist governments against defeat. The only policy of actual, not verbal disruption of the “class truce”, of acceptance of the class struggle, is for the proletariat to take advantage of the difficulties experienced by its government and its bourgeoisie in order to overthrow them. This, however, cannot be achieved or striven for, without desiring the defeat of one’s own government and without contributing to that defeat.
Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, V.I. Lenin
On December 7, 1889, Engels wrote to Sorge: “The most repulsive thing here [in England] is the bourgeois ‘respectability’, which has grown deep into the bones of the workers…. Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the best of the lot, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the French, one realises, what a revolution is good for, after all.”[10] In a letter, dated April 19, 1890: “But under the surface the movement [of the working class in England] is going on, is embracing ever wider sections and mostly just among the hitherto stagnant lowest [Engels’s italics] strata. The day is no longer far off when this mass will suddenly find itself, when it will dawn upon it that it itself is this colossal mass in motion.” On March 4, 1891: “The failure of the collapsed Dockers’ Union; the ‘old’ conservative trade unions, rich and therefore cowardly, remain lone on the field….” September 14, 1891: at the Newcastle Trade Union Congress the old unionists, opponents of the eight-hour day, were defeated “and the bourgeois papers recognise the defeat of the bourgeois labour party” (Engels’s italics throughout)….
That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an “aristocracy among the working class”, of a “privileged minority of the workers”, in contradistinction to the “great mass of working people”. “A small, privileged, protected minority” of the working class alone was “permanently benefited” by the privileged position of England in 1848–68, whereas “the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement”…. “With the break-down of that [England’s industrial] monopoly, the English working class will lose that privileged position…” The members of the “new” unions, the unions of the unskilled workers, “had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entirely free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old unionists’” …. “The so-called workers’ representatives” in England are people “who are forgiven their being members of the working class because they themselves would like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean of their liberalism…”
I’m quite sure the fascists would twist the words of Lenin. They’d say that Russia, Iran, and China are the real imperialists, and that it’s a good thing for NED to be sponsoring regime change operations in those evil imperialist nations. They’d also say that the Global South workers are the real labor aristocracy profiting off of the hard work of Western workers engaging in civilizing mission (read: op-eds and preaching) against the Global South.
[BAN CHECK]
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Aug 11 2024 8:24 utc | 164
Posted by: Honzo | Aug 10 2024 14:21 utc | 36
The US is creating the economic conditions to transfer European high-tech industry to the US mainland, where it is ‘safe,’ and will make EU into captive markets. Fortress America is being constructed in the New World, with increased activity to control resources in Latin America, where the US continues to have a logistical advantage over the major players in the Axis of Resistance.
Posted by: Honzo | Aug 10 2024 14:41 utc | 41
The Plan is… to use the Ukraine War to exert more control over the Europeans, the sanctions to cripple their economies so they can be looted to build Fortress American, and to reduce them to captive markets (and, in impoverishing the masses there, create a pool of motivated soldiers eager to swallow the fascist line).
The Ukraine gambit was the set up for cutting Nordstream, the withdrawal from the Iran nuke deal under Trump shaped the energy battle field, and cut European corporations off from lucrative infrastructure deals that could have staved off the absurd levels of ‘quantitative easing’ that completely enslaved their economies to the top international bankers and thus the US hegemon.
The sanctions are proving extremely effective in carrying out this plan.
<= Yes, very good explanation. Sanctions are applied against nations, but in reality they only affect the industries within those nations that are competing against those industries in the same markets. So sanctions are weapons, economic weapons, applied at the nation state level, but which are aimed at eliminating competiton coming from a foreign competitor.
Posted by: Paul Damascene | Aug 10 2024 14:42 utc | 42
wealth-extraction pump
<=I prefer wealth transfer pump (WTP)?
Sanctions do not change the global industry wide economics one bit, they just change which group of oligarchs will benefit from the change. Bankster financed wall street, City of London stuff tracks the same idea put forth by industry captains in Basil Switzerland, 1897? If you are going to own all of the profits to be had in the world in a particular industry, you need to own all of the resources (produced and natural), as well as be able to control all access of wage paid labor to the industries that are in nations that have businesses that compete against your monopoly.
Lets say you are Company A, a fair sized shoe manufacturer. in a santionor country.. You own 40% of the shoe market.and 60% of the sources of leather from which shoes are made but you desire to own 100% of the shoe market .. How can you put so many small competing shoe manufacturers out of business in one go? You don't have the means to do that. But the nation state that host your company does.
so you use some of profits to hire a congress critter; the Treasury of your country imposes a tariff on shoe imports, apples sanctions against the countries that have shoe manufacturing companies and against countries that have leather producers. All of sudden the price of leather goes high, the ability of the companies hosted by a leather sanctioned country to sell leather to shoe makers becomes limited, illegal, and very expensive. The worldwide ability of shoe makers to acquire leather becomes limited, illegal, and very expensive. soon most if not all shoe makers are broke.. Company A buys the good ones cheap, and the rest just disappear.
Sanctions are not about punishing a nation state for violation of international law or infringing human rights, but instead are about killing off unwanted competition. Sanctions are about establishing an actual monopoly in the shoe business. Everyone walks on Company A leather and everyone's shoemaker is company A.
My point: the nation state system uses "representative democracy" to enable, for a price, economic producers to establish global monopolies. The people in charge are not capitalist, they are believers that a few "should own-the world and everything in it, at the expense of the many"
Posted by: George | Aug 10 2024 20:10 utc | 98
From The Cradle "One third of the world under US sanctions": Report. <=yep, it takes a government to impose sanctions; sanctions enable private ownership of global markets (monopolies, they call it).
Posted by: Naive | Aug 10 2024 20:21 utc | 100 responds to Posted by: Honzo | Aug 10 2024 15:02 utc | 45
with ==> OK. Now, how we do that?
<== its simple, grant the citizens of the world (the governed masses) oversight authority over the activities and plans of those who operate our governments. The great divider between those who profit and govern and those who work and pay is the private use of public government. These private parties secretly use government to accomplish what they plan to do...
Posted by: billb | Aug 10 2024 21:19 utc | 106
why not ..seize any not owner-occupied [property] and redistribute it to the masses? I can't see any way..
<= there is a simple way? It involves eliminating the authority of the people who operate the governments to keep secrets from the people such governments govern.
Humanity is the only global entity, yet the nation state system has divided 7 billion people into 256 or so nation states, and used the nations states to manipulate the captured sets of humanity for purposes that do not serve the interest of the masses. The results have been world wars, small wars, fights, skirmishing and the transfer of wealth and resources from the silenced average majority to those the system has made rich and powerful.
Posted by: Patroklos | Aug 10 2024 21:47 utc | 110
<== it was against the right of the church officials to operate and keep the affairs of the church and the meanings of its bible secret, that inspired Martin Luther? When the people can see what their leaders are doing, the leaders do what is right least the people do what is needed.
Posted by: Ed | Aug 10 2024 22:18 utc | 117 asks Karlof1 to agree with the following statement.
"humanity can never escape the pitfalls of a “Dictatorship” until the divisions of class society become a thing of the past, and that won’t happen anytime soon"
<= one aspect of a dictatorship is that the dictator is not obliged to tell those who he dictates too what it is he wants to do or plans to do, nor is he obligated to expose the things he is doing?
Posted by: Passerby | Aug 11 2024 8:20 utc | 162
the sanctions work, but not as intended. <=how do you know what was intended?
Posted by: SIr_Keef | Aug 11 2024 11:16 utc | 174
yes, the destruction of European civilization has long been a dream of Zionism, but but there are other ideologies that might also fit this bill. Citizen oversight is needed to monitor these threats.
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 10 2024 15:38 utc | 54
forces of order have returned to the "old diplomacy" while the forces of movement have abdicated their opposition.. <= suggest your analysis should include the forces that control the time events happen (the forces of timing).
The only way the situation will change is if the forces of movement can regain power within their nations and vote to leave the Liberal Dictatorship.
I think eliminating the ability of the nation state system to keep secret its affairs, intentions, corruptions, failures, and to promote its success is a better way? Regularly I have advocated for a 2nd government (I believe the nation state system is not all bad), a 2nd government, with audit powers, would oversee and govern all who rule?
In my plan the 2nd government is truly global (7 billion humans). The 2nd government would involve, empower and encourage every living human on the earth to investigate, accuse, indite, prosecute and punish anyone in privity with government any time a 2nd government auditor discovers a government associated person in violation of a human right. Every human has the right to be informed about, to understand and to agree or disagree with what how, with what, and for whom government solves it problems. We just don't need people as leaders, or in positions of power, if they expect to profit or if the operate for the benefit of a special few or if they operate in violation of human rights.
Governments should not be allowed to operate behind anyone's back. What the Russian government is doing this minute should be just as much an open book as what the British government is doing this same minute.. It is a right of every human to know what their governments are doing and what their governments are not doing, and the last person to enforce those rights are special interest or corrupted officials.
Most of the people currently operating governments expect to get rich or to become powerful as a result of their positions; these kinds of people are the wrong people to lead.
The masses have been lead to believe "leaders serve in governments at the pleasure of the masses" but in practice, the masses have no means to enforce their rights against those who operate the governments.
Posted by: a stone | Aug 10 2024 23:26 utc | 132
Nationalism is a tool used by the elite. Who drew those lines on the map? <= exactly, and for what purpose and to whose benefit were those boundaries established?
The nation state system, and every nation in it, ALA it can operate in secret. serves as a tool useful primarily to the elite.
Posted by: simon crow | Aug 11 2024 0:54 utc | 138
the rising hegemony of 'private corporate partnerships' masking as democracy. Its fascism any way you slice it. <= that rise is only possible when there exist a government willing and able to privatize its monopoly powers. The "able to" part can only happen if the masses are kept in the dark..
Posted by: Ed | Aug 10 2024 22:18 utc | 117
only a complete rupture with the existing order via a revolution by the Dictatorship of the Majority can change the trajectory of world (or national) affairs, including social and economic relations
<=Not sure revolution is necessary to change existing order... just eliminate the power of private or dark interest to secretly use governments for any reason. Once everyone [the governed masses] know or timely learn about what is happening, something will be done to fix those happenings that cause harms to the masses.
Posted by: snake | Aug 11 2024 14:19 utc | 184
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