Empires often follow the course of a Greek tragedy, bringing about precisely the fate that they sought to avoid. That certainly is the case with the American Empire as it dismantles itself in not-so-slow motion.
For more than a generation, many prominent U.S. diplomats have warned about what they thought would represent the ultimate external threat: an alliance of Russia and China dominating Eurasia. Ironically, America’s economic sanctions and military confrontation have driven these two countries together, and are driving other countries into their emerging Eurasian orbit.
Well, that is exactly what is happening presently. In case you didn’t know, President Xi of China, Prime Minister Modi of India, and a host of others have refused to get off the Putin train as it’s rolling its way through Ukraine. Worse, they’ve actually told Resident Biden to go pound sand.
Even worst was when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman cozied up to the Chinese and told them “of course we’ll take yuan for our oil.” As the Arabs like to say, “the caravan comes and the dogs bark. The caravan goes on and the dogs keep on barking.”
To paraphrase Churchill, this was “not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning” as far as the petrodollar is concerned.
Because you see, what makes America the world’s largest economy is the petrodollar. For those who don’t know, the petrodollar was put in place by Richard Nixon back in the early 70s, when he flew to Saudi Arabia and asked King Faisal to accept dollars for Saudi oil. Not only that, but he strongly encouraged him to encourage the rest of OPEC to sell their oil for dollars.
Between American military might and Saudi mega-wealth, they all came on board, and soon enough every country decided to transact international trade in dollars.
The dollar –or more accurately–the petrodollar became the world’s reserve currency. If Italy, say, wanted to buy ball bearings from Sweden, they had to go to international banks and buy dollars with lira. The dollar became the essential “middleman” of currencies and the standard by which all other currencies were based. This caused a demand for dollars (USD) on the international market, causing it to strengthen. It made the Federal Reserve’s printing of fiat money tolerable and funded our annual deficits.
However, such a financial scheme can work only as long as the various countries accede to it. It’s kind of like standing up to a bully. Once you do that, he’s no longer a bully. But that takes a special type of cojones, doesn’t it? If a country refuses to take the USD, terrible things happen to it. Just ask Saddam Hussein and Muammar Khaddafi. Neither man is alive today and their respective countries were bombed to smithereens. Their crime? Both men wanted gold for their oil.
So, where does this leave us? Only here: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed a massive (but hidden) fault line in the world. One which exposes a sobering and unsettling fact –that the Western illusion of “democracy” has been shattered once and for all, and with it, the end of the liberal world economic system.
Unexpectedly for Uncle Sam, the vast majority of the world’s population (and countries) decided that they would stand with Russia. There are significant cultural reasons why this is so. I won’t go into them except to say that in their eyes, “democracy” now means the exaltation of perverts and criminals.
There are also sound financial reasons for not following the West’s lead and putting sanctions on Russia and that has to do with the helter-skelter of rejiggering of the “rules-based” financial system that was supposed to undergird it. That has now been exposed as a fraud.
I realize that the picture I’m painting is with a broad brush but when the bullets start flying, people tend to get all binary (and I don’t mean about their sexuality). It’s either “you’re with us or you’re against us.” With Putin, the rest of the world knows that Russia is “with them.” There are no “gay pride” parades in Russia. There are in Kiev. The Patriarch of Moscow makes sure that the Duma doesn’t get any harebrained ideas about flying the rainbow flag from the Tower of Ivan the Great. The newly-minted fake “metropolitan” of Kiev is down with all the alphabet people nonsense.
In other words, the real global community knows that the “international community” is a mirage, one which sustains all sorts of chicanery so long as it suits the West.
They also saw how when push came to shove, when the West wanted to take out Bashar al-Assad of Syria several years ago, Putin stepped in and said “nyet.” He stared down the West and Assad is still president of Syria to this day. That sent shock-waves throughout the Atlanticist community. It also woke up the rest of the Global South which now knows that there’s a new sheriff in town.
I’m sorry to be so simplistic but nobody in Africa, Asia, South America, or Eastern Europe wants to see homosexuals dressed up as Baphomet reading fairy tales to pre-schoolers. Nobody. If that makes me a bigot, then it makes 95 percent of the rest of the world “bigots” as well.
As for the financial underpinnings of the “rules-based” Western system, everybody was shocked to find out that their foreign-held gold reserves can be confiscated at will. This last thing is a civilizational game-changer. Just when you thought that your holdings were held in trust in a bank, you find it is a mirage. As we saw with the Freedom Convoy in Canada, millions of people all over the world woke up to the bizarre reality that not only could their bank accounts be frozen but insurance policies could be canceled as well.
Talk about moving the goalposts in the middle of the game.
Many countries are now looking at quietly withdrawing their gold reserves from the City of London or the New York Fed. It’s the global equivalent of a bank run; something that happens when people lose trust. Now, that’ll buy a country some time but only until it takes NATO to come up with an excuse to bomb them. And so, to beguile some country, we concentrate on our “soft power,” with the hope that our “hard power” will never see the light of day. That will work for a while.
To some degree, this is what is driving the hysteria American elites feel about the war in Ukraine. They are sure that robbing the Russians of the latest filth from Disney and Netflix will bring the Russians into the streets. After all, how can they live without the latest superhero movie? What will the Russians ever do without YouPorn? How can they be free knowing that they have been canceled by the world community?
When Prince bin Salman told the Chinese that they’d take yuan, and Modi told the Russians that oil transactions would be consummated with a rupee/ruble exchange, and when Turkey (whose lira is rapidly devaluing) told the world that they would not close the Bosporus Straights to Russian shipping, then you know that things are changing.
And not for the better, at least as far as the accepted international order is concerned.
So, what will happen with the dollar? Only that it will become worthless, sooner or later. There’s no way to avoid this. Thanks to Biden’s hair-brained economic policies, we’ve been experiencing the highest inflation since the 70s. It’s officially being pegged at 7.9 percent. And that was before the Russians invaded Ukraine. Now that the rest of the world has signaled that they’d be open to using other currencies, we can expect that that number will rise significantly.
In the meantime, we are saddled with the spectacle of the American president truckling before China and Saudi Arabia on the one hand and threatening India and Pakistan on the other. Not a pretty sight if you ask me. It’s gotten so bad that even reliable Trump-hating liberals like Bill Maher and Trevor Noah are starting to look back wistfully at all of Trump’s mean tweets. You can almost hear them say, “Come back! All is forgiven!”
Many have predicted that what we can expect is something along the lines of Weimar Germany when the Deutschmark was losing value on a daily, then an hourly, basis. I don’t think that’s what’s in store for us. After all, we are still the world’s hyperpower. That means we can keep on printing more fiat currency. And given the fact that we still have the world’s largest military, we can try to force countries from not abandoning the USD. Otherwise, our elites won’t be able to pacify the American populace with Fentanyl and Chinese-made trinkets.
As for an American Hitler arising from the ashes of Wiemaresque hyperinflation, I’d say that’s not on the horizon either, mainly because the United States is so decentralized as a country. Thanks to our obeisance to the cult of St George Floyd, we’ve fractured culturally, as well. Even if the inflation that awaits us is, say, a Carteresque 12 percent, that may be enough to fracture us politically, as well.
As Jim Jatras said in a recent interview, what do you think is going to happen when the trucks stop delivering food to the grocery stores in Detroit or Baltimore?
I’ll tell you what: it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Don’t be surprised if we invade Saudi Arabia if that’s what it takes to stop them from accepting yuan for payment. We’ll find a reason. Right now, though, we’ve got our hands full trying to keep the Central Europeans in line. Even as we speak, some of these nations are making side-bets with Putin.
But even if the Wiemar chaos is not in our immediate future, by continuing the current fiat money system, all we’ll be doing is kicking the can down the road. So all that reverse-Beatlemania we’re seeing regarding the awfulness of Vladimir Putin, our good old American moralism is going to bite the dust. It’s a matter of when not if. I hate to be so cynical but it’s going to be awfully hard to be pro-Ukrainian when the price of gas goes up another buck or two. When the average Joe Blow has to make a decision as to whether to fill up his car or buy groceries, it’s game over. California in case you didn’t know, has run out of U-hauls.
At that point, we can look to our media to start talking about the atrocities of the Azov Battalion, the thuggishness (and cocaine habits) of Zelensky, and showing a renewed interest in the Hunter Biden laptop story. I imagine Paul Pelosi and John Kerry’s stepson will be thrown under the bus, as well.
We went hammer-and-tong after Russia. We threw the equivalent of every financial thermonuclear bomb we had at them. Russia is the most heavily sanctioned country on earth, and they’re still standing. They’re gobbling up more Ukrainian territory, as well. It’s not pretty and it may turn out to be a pyrrhic victory for Putin but at the end of the day –barring some massive false-flag “chemical attack” on Poland–it’s going to be the Russians who are going to dictate terms to Zelensky’s puppet-masters.
This is how we’re going to find out what “soft power” actually means. It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the “hard power” to back it up. It’s like that old schoolyard taunt: “You and what army?” Right now, the Ukrainian army is surrounded in the East (close to Russia’s supply lines) and is slowly being starved. Ukraine has no Air Force or Navy as we speak. Zelensky’s hand looks awfully weak. It’s going to be hard for Zelensky (or whoever replaces him) to negotiate without an army.
Sure, Russia has become a pariah state to the “international community.” The trouble is, that community doesn’t include the rest of the world. But if Sen Mitt Romney wants to reactivate the Nauvoo Legion and ride to the rescue of Zelensky, he’s more than welcome to take Paul Pelosi, Hunter Biden, and the rest of America’s princelings along with him. You know, for “democracy.”
I have a hard time imagining that the rest of America –and the West–will be as anxious.
In the meantime, Russia will continue to look to the East and the Global South. And when the ruble is stabilized, many of the Western countries will start buying their commodities from Russia just as they did in the past.
The caravan will continue rolling along. The current Ukromania will be replaced with some other cause for us to prove our moral superiority. Maybe bestiality. Or pedophilia. Who knows?
But when the history of this sorry spectacle is finally written, when honest people will want to know why the pax Americana failed and who took the world’s financial system down, we can point to the globalists for our answer.
It didn’t have to happen. But then again, Europe didn’t have to go to war in 1914.
An assessment: warning harsh language from two former Marines.
https://rumble.com/vxsi28-ukraine-cannot-defeat-russia.html
P.S. Several of the sources which provided economic information for this essay come from Zoltan Poznar, an economist with Credit Suisse. You can find them here at https://www.unz.com/pescobar/all-that-glitters-is-not-necessarily-russian-gold/
From Glenn Greenwald and Pedro Gonzalez:
“Investigative journalists, Glenn Greenwald (on Substack), and Chronicles magazine assistant editor Pedro Gonzalez (March 7), have documented the incredibly large number of such instances, of horribly tragic attacks seemingly aimed at civilians, supposedly by the Russian army, only on closer inspection to have been committed by Ukrainian irregulars—who thereupon can utilize the unquestioning bias and favorability of the Western media to present their version widely:
…while the Western media shows images of the video game War Thunder (here), frames from the movie Star Wars (here), explosions in China (here), videos of military parades (here), footage from Afghanistan (here), from the Rome metro (here) or images of mobile crematoria (here), passing them off as real and recent scenes of Russian “war crimes,” the reality of the war in Ukraine is ignored because it has already been decided to employ the conflict as a weapon of mass distraction that legitimizes new restrictions of freedoms in Western nations, according to the plans of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset and the United Nations’ Agenda 2030.”
Could you provide a link?
I just did a text search, found it’s reproduced all over. Here’s the original article: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/03/no_author/fox-news-ukraine-and-the-onset-of-the-new-world-order/
Here you go:
https://www.unz.com/pescobar/all-that-glitters-is-not-necessarily-russian-gold/
Hey, blimbax, I’m not on Twitter, but if you check out Gonzalez, you’ll find a plethora of real life examples. I took these from one of his threads:
https://twitter.com/Jo521969/status/1504788104263221249?fbclid=IwAR33AYnOx61gN04Ac2wzGLwhwtoP5xpZA4LzmAewYF_ywbshIA3jtq_qATw
https://twitter.com/starfall_val/status/1505810325954007041?fbclid=IwAR167BwjuHBQIRpxPomPZtd_DnQjHWms2IgRTwmxadhOoLaYsTfPVMGR9DE
https://twitter.com/starfall_val/status/1505810325954007041?fbclid=IwAR167BwjuHBQIRpxPomPZtd_DnQjHWms2IgRTwmxadhOoLaYsTfPVMGR9DE
https://twitter.com/starfall_val/status/1505810325954007041?fbclid=IwAR167BwjuHBQIRpxPomPZtd_DnQjHWms2IgRTwmxadhOoLaYsTfPVMGR9DE
https://rumble.com/vxvr2p-witnesses-ukraine-forces-preventing-civilians-leaving-mariupol-through-huma.html?fbclid=IwAR1HuHJKR9GLXhnT3P6zInOKPVxJ8kiYLShaH9ZGp_BxWBBY1Cg5RrpAPdA
Also Eva Karene Bartlett, and independent journalist who interviewed Asaad, is there, as I understand it.
https://www.facebook.com/EvaBoBeeva
Thanks for the informative links.
As for Gonzalez, is this the same as the Pedro Gonzales who wrote the following:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-mariupol-theater-bombing/
The very same.
Here is Alexander Dugin’s take on it:
A. Dugin: “Putin’s fighting the Great Reset –
Now the fate of the coming world order is being decided”
https://www-pronews-gr.translate.goog/kosmos/diethnis-politiki/a-ntougkin-o-v-poutin-polema-to-great-reset-tora-apofasizetai-i-moira-tis-eperxomenis-pagkosmias-taksis/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en
“Globalizers sought to gain control of society’s consciousness”
A new intervention on the war in Ukraine was made by the philosopher Alexander Dugin, Professor of Sociology of International Relations at Moscow State University, who emphasizes once again that this is not a war against Ukraine, but a war against world order.
A. Dugin’s new text was published on March 14 and refers to the end of history that never happened, responds to Fukuyama and emphasizes the Russian war on the liberal forces. It should be noted that a few days ago the philosopher had made another intervention on the situation in Ukraine and had then referred to a “war on globalization . ”
“The world order, the West has been betting on Ukraine as Anti-Russia, and to that end it has given the green light to Ukrainian Nazism and extreme Russophobia . Every means was good to fight against Orthodox culture and the multipolar world. “Putin did not swallow it and went into battle, not with Ukraine, but with globalization, with global oligarchy, with the Great Restoration, with liberalism, with the end of history .
In fact, he emphasizes that, “the special military operation is directed not only against Ukrainian Russophobic Nazism, but even more against liberalism and globalization . “After all, it was the Western liberals who made Ukrainian Nazism strong, supported it, armed it and put it in Russia – as the new pole of a multipolar world.”
Dugin speaks of the devilish plan of the globalizers to undermine Russia in the most painful region, to put the same Eastern Slavs (that is, essentially the same Russians) among them and even to split the Russian Orthodox Church that united them within the same culture.
“To this end, the Ukrainians had to be placed in the matrix of globalization. Globalizers sought to gain control of society’s consciousness with the help of information propaganda, social media, and a giant enterprise to direct the soul and consciousness. Many millions of Ukrainians have fallen victim to it in recent decades and in a more drastic way since Maidan in 2014 and the open rise of Ukrainian artificial Nazism. The Ukrainians are convinced that they are part of the Western (world) world and that “the Russians are not brothers, but fierce enemies,” he emphasizes.
Dugin states that the Russian President is waging a decisive struggle, “Not against Ukraine, but for Ukraine. Fukuyama is absolutely right in this case. What is happening in Ukraine today is “Putin’s war on the liberal order.” It is a war with Fukuyama himself, with Soros and Swab (s.s. the inspirer of the Davos Economic Forum), with the “end of history” and with globalization, with real and virtual hegemony, with Great Restoration “.
At this point, in his analysis, Dugin argues that the current dramatic events in Ukraine represent the main dilemma of humanity, which you identify as follows:
“Now the fate of the coming world order is being decided. The world will become truly multipolar, that is, democratic and multi-centered, where different cultures will have the right to freely choose their own destiny (and hopefully that is exactly what will happen – in the event of our impending victory), or (God forbid) it will sink. in the abyss of globalization. This time, however, liberalism will no longer be opposed to Nazism and racism, but will be inextricably linked to it (as is the case in Ukraine). Modern liberalism, ready to exploit and ignore Nazism when it serves its own interests, is the real evil – an absolute evil. “She is with him with whom the current war is being waged.”
The answer to Fukuyama
He then deconstructs 9 of Fukuyama’s points about Ukraine by referring to false assumptions and referring to the West as complete misinformation and hostile propaganda and fake news.
Analytically
1. Fukuyama: 1. Russia is heading for a clear defeat in Ukraine. The Russian plan was incompetent, based on a false assumption that the Ukrainians were in favor of Russia and that their army would collapse immediately after an invasion. The Russian soldiers apparently brought uniforms for the parade of their victory in Kyiv and not extra ammunition and ammunition (food, etc.). Putin at this point has committed most of his army to this operation – there are no vast reserves of forces he can call in to add to the battle. Russian troops are stuck outside various Ukrainian cities where they face huge supply problems and constant Ukrainian attacks.
Dugin: The first sentence is the most important. “Russia is heading for a clear defeat in Ukraine.” Everything else is based on the fact that this proposition represents the “absolute truth” and can not be disputed. If we were dealing with real analyzes, it would start with a dilemma: if the Russians win, then…, if the Russians lose, then… But there is no such thing here. “The Russians will lose because the Russians can not but lose, which means that the Russians have already lost. “And no other options should be considered, as it would be Russian propaganda.” What is this? This is the obvious liberal Nazism. Pure ideological globalization of propaganda, placing the reader immediately from the beginning in a virtual world where “history is already over”.
Then everything becomes predictable in the context of the orchestrated illusion.
2. Fukuyama: The collapse of their position could be sudden and catastrophic, instead of happening slowly through a war of attrition. The army on the field will reach a point where it can neither be fed nor withdrawn and morale will evaporate. This is true at least in the north. The Russians are doing better in the south, but these positions would be difficult to maintain if the North collapsed.
Dugin: No proof, purely pious desire. “The Russians must be lost because they are lost.” And we hear this from the mouth of the exemplary loser Fukuyama, whose predictions have been proven to be false. The whole thing is based on the assumption that Moscow was preparing for an operation that would last two or three days, followed by a victorious meeting with the flowers of the liberated population. As if the Russians were so stupid that they did not notice the thirty years of Russophobic propaganda, the Western leadership in the neo-Nazi formations and an army of European scale, heavily armed (from the West itself) and trained (in Soviet times, and the training was serious then ), which went on its behalf to start a war in Donbass and then in the Crimea. If it was not completed in a fortnight, it was a “failure”. Another illusion.
3. Fukuyama: There is no diplomatic solution to the war before that happens. There is no conceivable compromise that would be acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine given the losses they have suffered at this point.
Dugin: This means that the West continues to believe in its own fictitious propaganda and will not compromise with Russia and resort to reality checks. If the West waits until Russia is defeated to start negotiations, they will never start.
4. Fukuyama: The United Nations Security Council has once again proved to be useless. The only useful thing was the vote of the General Assembly, which helps to identify the bad or unfavorable factors of the world.
Dugin: In this dissertation, Fukuyama refers to the need to dismantle the UN and create in its place the Society of Republics, that is, the structures of states fully subordinated to Washington, willing to live under the illusion of the “end of history.” This work was formulated by another liberal Nazi Russophile McCain and has been started by Joe Biden. Everything is going according to the “Great Restoration” plan.
5. Fukuyama: The Biden government’s decisions not to declare a no-fly zone or to help transport Polish MiGs were both good. have held their head in a very emotional period. It is much better for the Ukrainians to defeat the Russians alone, depriving Moscow of the excuse that NATO has attacked them, as well as avoiding all the obvious possibilities of escalation. Especially the Polish MiGs would not add much to the Ukrainian capabilities. Much more important is the continuous provision of Javelins, Stingers, TB2, medical supplies, communication equipment and information sharing. I assume that the Ukrainian forces are already controlled by NATO intelligence services operating outside Ukraine.
Dugin: On the first point, however, we can agree with Fukuyama. Biden is not ready for a nuclear duel, which would immediately follow the announcement of the no-fly zone and other immediate steps towards NATO intervention in the conflict. The phrase “the Ukrainians defeat the Russians alone” sounds cynical and harsh, but the author does not understand what he is saying: the West first put the Ukrainians against the Russians and then allowed them to stand alone with us, effectively avoiding it. aid. Ukrainians win virtually, in a world where history is over. And in Fukuyama’s mind, they should be happy about that. It is only a matter of time before the Russians are defeated. The reality is very different, but who cares…
6. Fukuyama: The cost to Ukraine is of course huge. But most of the damage is done by missiles and artillery, for which neither MiGs nor a no-fly zone can do much. The only thing that will stop the massacre is the defeat of the Russian army on the ground.
Dugin: When Fukuyama says the word “huge”, it is clear from his indifferent expression that he does not know what he is talking about.
7. Fukuyama: Putin will not survive the defeat of his army. He has support because he is considered a strong man. What does he have to offer when he shows impotence and is deprived of his coercive power?
Dugin: Another dissertation is based entirely on the first condition. The defeat of the Russians is inevitable, which means that Putin is over. And if the Russians win, Putin is just the beginning. This is important now, not for the delusional Fukuyama, but for us.
8. Fukuyama: The invasion has already done enormous damage to populists around the world, who before the attack uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin. This includes Matteo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán and of course Donald Trump. The politics of war have revealed their openly authoritarian tendencies.
Dugin: Little reality check: not all populists are so directly influenced by Russia. Matteo Salvini, under the influence of liberal Nazis and Atlanteans in his environment, changed his friendly attitude towards Russia. Nor should the pro-Russian sympathies of the others be excessive. But here too there is an interesting point. Even if one accepts Fukuyama’s position that the populists are Putin-oriented, they only lose if “the Russians are defeated.” And in the case of victory? After all, this is Putin’s “war for the liberal class,” and if he wins it, all populists will win along with Moscow. And then the end of the world oligarchy and the elites of the “Great Restoration” is irreversible.
9. Fukuyama: A Russian defeat will enable a “new birth of freedom” and take us out of our shirt about the declining state of world democracy. The spirit of 1989 will continue, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians.
Dugin: Here is a great conclusion. Fukuyama already knows about the “defeat of Russia”, as he knew about the “end of history”. And then globalization will be saved. And if not? Then there will be no more globalization. And then welcome back to the real world, to the world of nations and cultures, cultures and religions, to the world of reality and freedom from a totalitarian liberal concentration camp.
Ah, this is just the slow death of neoliberalism. It is as inevitable as the death of communism. You had two false ideologies vying for world domination during the Cold War. Neither were organic, traditional religious cultures but rather artificial constructions that aspired to world domination. That was western liberalism and communism. Communism fell first. Western liberalism is in the process of self-destruction.
The key point to understand is that western civilization as it has existed throughout the centuries is not inherently liberal, no more so than the eastern civilizations. Up until the so-called Enlightenment, western civilization was fairly traditional in its morality, authoritarian in its politics and mercantile in its economics. The homocentric revolution superseded the theocentric norm and gave us all the -isms from which we have since suffered.
Communism was one Tower of Babel, liberalism is hopefully the last. It will fall and, hopefully, hereafter we will have a multipolar world with civilizational centers in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Brazil, India, etc. with varying takes on traditional morality being the new norms in their respective spheres of influence. And hopefully the dream of a NWO and American global hegemony will die and take its place in the dust bin of history.
Amen!
Very well said as usual Misha
What’s going on with geopolitics right now is like watching your baby boomer parents trying to both keep the family together and always have their way and just assuming they can use their financial leverage and clever words forever. But eventually the kids grow up anyway.
The Russian invasion has shown that the Moscow Patriarchate is completely utilitarian in it’s approach to ethics. This is not traditional conservatism, but rather its the Russian Church trying to avoid conflict with the Russian State. It’s really grasping at straws when Patriarch Kirill says that Russia’s “military operation” in Ukraine is about “de-nazifying” Ukraine and ending “Gay Pride parades.” I mean, how about de-Sovietizing Russia and ending abortion?
Good points, but I believe the situation between Russia and the globalists has come to a point where it HAS to be addressed, and right away.
Joseph, Russia (and perhaps Hungary and Poland) is the only European country trying to reduce abortion. Both in the secular sphere through legislation and the spiritual (through the Church).
When even Republicans in America look like they might –just might–put some teeth in an anti-abortion measure, there is holy hell to pay.
And the Phanar is not equally “utilitarian”?
Good Lord! What they’ve done with the canons makes opportunists blush with envy.
I’ve been listening to The Duran & Dr. Steve Turley quite a bit as of late, and they (The Duran) do seem to paint a bleak picture for the U.S economically in the near-term especially as the world moves further away from the petrodollar.
As for Dr. Steve, I do like his assessment of a multi-polar world and I have to say even though I have been all over the world and I love America I am not upset about seeing globohomo fall. We essentially just export degeneracy now and I’ve seen it first hand. However, I am optimistic about what will come out of the ashes of this for us (or at least I’m trying to be optimistic).
As someone who used to be in medical sales, with a few immediate family members who are in healthcare I can safely say that in my experience in situations where there is only one hospital in a town/city the quality of care/medical attention is very much sub-par. In larger cities with multiple hospitals the quality is general much better. Why the long medical analogy…healthy competition produces better quality. America was so used to being the only player on the block that things have slid drastically. In a new multi-polar world where we have stiff competition, we are going to have to recalibrate ourselves. I think this is a good thing. The BIG if is the current muppet/NPC in the Oval Office, and if we can actually pull off the Midterms. I was just in Denver visiting friends and Biden is so widely unpopular that I saw “F Joe Biden” “I did this” and other anti-Biden tropes in DENVER of all places…hardly a bastion of conservativism.
If something doesn’t happen soon then the official Balkanization of America will become a reality where as now its just a de facto reality. I can see a situation where states band together economically and bypass D.C. Take the Keystone Pipeline for example. Every state that it passes through is Red, they might have an economic agreement to allow the pipeline to open. $6-$10/gallon in the U.S is not going to last long if it can be helped and it is thankfully political suicide for the Democrats.
Petros: “The BIG if is the current muppet/NPC
in the [NOT the] Oval Office…”
Shakespeare: ““All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. …
… Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
Way back in the early 1970ies, I had a biology teacher who kept asking us, “Do you know how long great empires last?” And we would shake our heads and say no. And he would say,” about 250 years.” And then he would ask , “How old is the United States?”
CONSTANTINOPLE’S ARCHONS TO DISCUSS ROC’S ROLE IN INVASION AS WAR CONTINUES ON”
As the fratricidal war sadly continues in Ukraine, a Constantinople organization in America has announced a discussion focused on the Russian Church’s role in the conflict.
On April 4, the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle, the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in America, an organization dedicated to the person of Patriarch Bartholomew and the Patriarchate, will host a conversation with Sergei Chapnin and George Demacopoulos, entitled, “Understanding the Role of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine,” at Archangel Michael Greek Orthodox Church in Port Washington, New York.
The evening will also include a “pastoral reflection” by Archbishop Elpidophoros of Constantinople’s Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the Archons report.
The Archons is the organization that awarded “Metropolitan” Epiphany Dumenko, the primate of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” the Athenagoras Human Rights Award in 2019 for being “a staunch defender of the religious freedom of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.”
The upcoming evening isn’t the Archons first attempt to address the Church situation in Ukraine. In August last year, the Archons site ran an article featuring a number of serious falsehoods about the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Most notably, the article accused the Ukrainian Church of never condemning “Russia’s occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukrainian regions.”
When OrthoChristian helped bring it to the Archons’ attention that, in fact, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry had personally appealed to both Patriarch Kirill and President Putin in 2014, condemning the annexation of Crimea, and that the Ukrainian Church had repeatedly and consistently defended Ukrainian territorial integrity, the Archons’ posted a clarifying statement on their Facebook page, but left the article, with all its errors, on their website.
As the Archons state in their new announcement, Chapnin is “a former Moscow Patriarchate insider.” He edited the Moscow Patriarchate’s official journal from 2009 to 2015, in addition to a number of positions held before that. He was eventually dismissed from his position in the Church due to his increasingly liberal and ecumenical views.
Since then, he has made a name for himself as a critic of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Last month, Chapnin published an article on Public Orthodoxy, a publication of Fordham University’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center which was co-founded by the aforementioned George Demacopolous (also the Archons’ historian), entitled, “Patriarch Kirill and Vladimir Putin’s Two Wars.”
While following a number of UOC hierarchs in critiquing the Patriarch’s response to the war in Ukraine, Chapnin makes intentionally incendiary statements, such as: “Eight years of smoldering war in the Donbass, where thousands of soldiers and civilians have died on both sides, many of whom were members of the Church of which he is the Primate, mean nothing to the Patriarch.”
In Chapnin’s estimation, the Patriarch’s call for prayers for peace is equivalent to a “magical incantation.”
Demacopoulos, who will interview Chapnin, is known as one of Constantinople’s main representatives in America. In January 2019, he moderated the Archons’ Town Hall meeting aimed at justifying Constantinople’s schism in America.
Last month, he declared that “Christian moral teaching isn’t black and white,” in response to Abp. Elpidophoros’ ambiguous statement at the pro-life March for Life in Washington, D.C.
His Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham is no stranger to controversy either. In January 2018, it was awarded a grant to study “LGBTQ rights alongside Eastern Orthodox identity,” and in September 2019, it hosted a mixed-media Orthodox exhibition that many felt desecrated holy icons of the Theotokos with the Christ Child.
On Sunday, Demacopoulos published a graph to show that the war in Ukraine has brought many more readers to his Public Orthodoxy website.
All smoke and mirrors. The EPC/GOA needs to divert attention away from their declining church attendance, and questions about missing funds—millions of dollars!
Here’s a glaring example: https://www.helleniscope.com/2022/03/21/more-delays-for-saint-nicholas-at-ground-zero-no-holy-week-services/
So naturally, with what’s going on in Ukraine, why not seize the day? In other words, shine the spotlight on someone else—the Russian Orthodox Church!
As Jed Clampett would always say, “Pitiful. Just pitiful.”
You just can’t make this crap up:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/03/23/youre-a-guy-go-to-war-fleeing-ukrainian-trans-woman-turned-back-at-border/
Life follows art…
An insight from Yiannis Dimarakis:
“Putin and his bright central banker, Elvira Nabiullina, in preparation of the invasion in Ukraine, have formed a strong cash reserve. They amassed more than USD 640bn (!) in Foreign Exchange Reserves. Smart, right? Yes, but they did not anticipate the demolition of the Ruble to such a degree. So, Putin and Nabiullina know that, despite its formidable size, their safety pillow will be short lived if the current situation is prolonged. As the Ruble hits rock bottom, the risk of a Russian default becomes very real. If Russia defaults, who stands to lose most? You guessed it: Its mainly Germany, Europe’s financial powerhouse, along with Italy, another European pillar. German and Italian banks are the ones most exposed to Russian debt. Will they be able to withstand a Russian default? Doubtful. If this happens, only a gifted fortune teller can predict what will follow. Will the EU or the individual countries step in to rescue the banks? Guess who will eventually pay for that. Will the Euro withstand the pressure, or will the big European economies opt to save themselves first, regressing to national currencies?” (Emphasis added.)
Putin is now saying Russia will only accept rubles for gas – at least for unfriendly countries.
That’s a big deal, if you don’t know.
They’re backed by gold.
Galinushka,
The reason America can run trillions of dollars in debt, printing money with impunity, is the petrodollar. Putin just created the petroruble. It has the potential to displace the dollar as the reserve currency. Saudi Arabia would not do it because they had an agreement with the US that they would only take dollars for oil in exchange for American security for the House of Saud. Lately they are flirting with the yuan. Likely they will flirt with the ruble.
This is much bigger than the war.
Putin did not only create the “petroruble” but the “agroruble” as well.
So how does the West walk this one back? Maybe this way: I wouldn’t be surprised if the West suddenly comes to their senses and unfreezes all the foreign-controlled Russian assets, handing it back to them in order to “make nice.”
Especially all the Russian gold.
George, the West “making nice”? Now, wouldn’t that be great!
George,
Again, I don’t think they got much, if any, gold. I think the Russians have the gold (amounting to something more than half of their reserves) in Moscow and Petersburg. From what I am told it is paper reserves that have been seized. However, even of these paper reserves, American banks are so far open to making Russia’s debt service payments out of these funds, though they are technically frozen. JPMorgan did this earlier this month.
I don’t think America can do anything to stop this other than blow up the world. Nations might take power, land, resources, etc. pursuant to necessity during crises. But they seldom give them back. Also, no one in the West (or Russia, for that matter) is in the mood to make nice at this point, and probably for quite some time. Perhaps some of the Europeans know that they have stepped in it, but they all have egos and may have to be voted out in order for sanity to arise.
Once the arrangement of petrorubles/agrorubles/LG rubles gets off the ground, it will snowball just like petrodollars did. Except with petrorubles, there is no middleman and there is no limit on production. We profited profoundly from an understanding with the Saudis and so foreign policy was always a factor. With the RF, both the seller of the oil and the printer of the currency are the same gov’t – Russia. Also, Russia has all the buyers for these commodities that it needs regardless of what the Europeans do since they can always turn to the Chinese and Indian markets. It can run production wide open, raking in rubles from the West and yuan from the Rest and just watch the pile get ever higher and the ruble approaching the hardness of diamond.
Moreover, it has other options to secure its position. It could demand gold, for instance, though that would be deeply destabilizing to Europe, et al. In times of trouble in paradise with its Chinese and Indian friends, it could ask them to pay in rubles as well.
I had wondered who was going to be the junior partner and senior partner in the Russian/Chinese alliance. Many in the West speculated that Russia would be the junior. That discounts two things: 1) all of the above regarding the ruble, and 2) the fact that Russia’s nuclear arsenal and army, in general, are superior to that of China.
In the short term, arms are decisive. In the long term, economics are decisive, usually. With arms, you can seize resources in the short term. But with wealth, you can always acquire weapons in the longer term. China is an economic powerhouse with some significant issues, but still formidable. And so one would think that China would have the upper hand, at least long term. What Putin just did calls that advantage into question.
Even now, China wants its alliance with Russia to supply it with a nuclear umbrella regarding any activity against Taiwan. Russia’s nuclear arsenal dwarfs China’s. But given the petroruble, Russia’s economic clout will rise dramatically.
Looks definitely to be the Eurasian Century.
It’s a HUGE deal. A game-changer, not only culturally but also militarily. Effectively, it’s a checkmate.
I would not be surprised if EU/NATO starts looking for a way to deescalate the military situation, as well. Otherwise, they will have to threaten Russia with obliteration.
Unfortunately for EU/NATO,
Russia packs a bigger punch than they do…
From Larry Johnson, former CIA officer:
“The scale and scope of the Russian attack are remarkable. They captured territory in three weeks that is larger than the landmass of the United Kingdom. They then proceeded to carry out targeted attacks on key cities and military installations. We have not seen a single instance of a Ukrainian regiment or brigade-size unit attacking and defeating a comparable Russian unit. Instead, the Russians have split the Ukrainian Army into fragments and cut their lines of communication. The Russians are consolidating their control of Mariupol and have secured all approaches on the Black Sea. Ukraine is now cut off in the South and the North.
“I would note that the U.S. had a tougher time capturing this much territory in Iraq in 2003 while fighting against a far inferior, less capable military force. If anything, this Russian operation should scare the hell out of U.S. military and political leaders.”
George,
Yes, they simply must quit digging. But I doubt they will so long as Biden is in office. He’s cursed. They raised their hand against the Lord’s anointed (like Cyrus, not David) and put Biden in his place. Biden’s going to ride it right down to the crash site. Probably will get there a full thirty minutes before the paramedics.
It bears repeating: Every time they go after Putin, he gains ground. In the Russo-Georgian war he acquired South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In the Ukrainian civil war after the coup, he effectively acquired parts of the east (the Donbass) and Crimea.
In this little adventure, he will have acquired the entire Ukraine, or at least all of it that he wants, and fortified his positions in Belarus and Kazakhstan. Shortly before, he concluded an alliance “without limits” with China. Additionally, he will have decoupled Russia from any dependency on the West and inaugurated the petroruble either as a new reserve currency to challenge the dollar, or to replace it as the main reserve currency. Part of that may depend on the Saudis. If they start bypassing the dollar in sales to China and other countries then the petrodollar is done.
Putin will own it all if they don’t stop trying to dominate him.
Video Shows Moment China Eastern Airlines
Plane Nosedives Before Crash
https://www.newsweek.com/video-china-eastern-airlines-plane-nosedives-crash-1689946
Scroll down to the second video.
Had the pilot been vaccinated?
I wonder…
He sure wasn’t in charge of that plane. I’ve never heard of anything going down like that.
“California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell had a sexual relationship with a known Chinese spy named Fang Fang. This week Fang Fang or Christine Fang as she was known died when that China Eastern Airline nose-dived to Earth, killing all aboard. Was this a case of bad luck and being in the wrong place at the wrong time or was there something more sinister behind it?”
https://beforeitsnews.com/blogging-citizen-journalism/2022/03/the-crash-of-china-eastern-airlines-flight-5735-someone-wanted-fang-fang-dead-care-to-guess-who-2651203.html
Given her amatory skills and the selflessness with which she plied them, I hope that the CCP gives her a posthumous medal or something.
Given the fact that she bestowed her favors on some pretty hideous characters, all I could say about her is that she really, really, really loved China.
A true patriot.
This is pretty good. It’s sort of a summary of the motivations, with historical references, for the West in its current crisis with the East. It is a strange sort of parochialism that prevails in the Establishment.
What are they (the Establishment) afraid of?
https://rumble.com/vyf762-what-is-shadow-banning-let-me-show-you..html
Looks like NATO is going to use the Poles to establish a “peace-keeping force” in the Ukraine.
“I think Dreizin is onto something here. Brandon is not on board with the planned escalation, but it might not matter, because the State Department is a hotbed of neocons that are doing whatever they can to grease the skids for a scorched earth, no-holds-barred cage-match with their most-reviled rival, Vladimir Putin. It’s the State Department, the Intel agencies, the Congress and the media that are steering the ship of state now, not Biden. Perhaps, you wondered why the NY Times suddenly decided to ‘come clean’ on the Hunter Biden laptop story? You probably know that it’s not because the Times editors had a change-of-heart and wanted to inform the public or “speak truth to power”. Of course, not. The Times trotted out the laptop dossier to let Biden know that they “got him by the shorthairs” and if he doesn’t play ball, he’s toast.
Blackmail? Would the neocons really blackmail the President of the United States in order to escalate in Ukraine?
You bet, they would.
The neocons have their heart-set on a land-war war in Europe, and from the looks of things, they might just get one.”
Bottom line: Brandon is not in charge.
Eventually, we’re going to have to have a tab devoted to the Russian Army and how they are actually helping citizens of the Ukraine.
In this episode, we see a Chechen soldier evacuate a child in Mariupol:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1_piL8rZFZ0