Showing posts with label Donbass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donbass. Show all posts

2 March 2022

Three ways for Russia to punish the West

Due to the ongoing operation to eliminate radical anti-Russian nationalists in Ukraine, Russia is under pressure unseen since the Axis powers attacked its territory in the Second World War. The following are three decisive methods the Russian government could consider, to severely punish the NATO countries.

1. Proxy war in Ukraine

Americans have already taken the lead in making a European proxy war possible, suggesting the supply of armaments to rebels and foreign volunteers who are expected to arrive in Ukraine. They want to copy the success of foreign fighters in Afghanistan during the 1980s, believing only the Russians will suffer from this policy, but Europe could be more at risk itself. After all, this "Afghanistan" would be in Europe, and Ukraine already has a problem with armed neo-Nazis.

In fact, NATO has more reason to fear this scenario of a failed state in Ukraine than Russia.

Unlike Afghanistan, Russians are natives of this area, with large populations and families supporting Russia in parts of Ukraine. They will not be withdrawing like the Soviet Army. Returned to Russian protection, they could contribute to a strong buffer zone of sympathetic forces to help secure Russia's Ukrainian frontier. There is already the Donetsk People's Republic, DPR, and Lugansk People's Republic, LPR, able to provide Russia with mutual security against Western nationalist proxies in Ukraine. Russia could be restrictive about travel from Ukraine to Russia, but the European Union would never be so strict, having opened its doors to Ukrainian exiles and aided their travels. If Ukraine becomes a ruined failed state, filled with protracted warfare and resentment, home to many shadowy groups including local Russian proxies, Russia would be able to use Ukraine to threaten Europe, while enjoying security itself. The inevitable blockback of weapons and radical ideas into Europe from a European repeat of Afghanistan could be uncontrollable, and may result in armed insurgents seizing cities across Europe and spreading civil war and chaos. We must remember that the foreign fighters of the Afghan jihad set about trying to topple the local regimes after they returned home, for example in Algeria, being convinced of their just cause. Foreign fighters who are radicalised in Ukraine would be returning to places like Berlin and Paris.

2. Impounding ships

Russia encompasses a huge amount of land with a vast coastline, meaning potential dominance at key shipping routes, especially those icy seas along its north. It possesses a powerful navy and air forces, more than enough to interdict shipping. In retaliation for sanctions, Russia could impound all cargo ships and tankers it encounters if they belong to the countries carrying out sanctions on Russia, taking their cargo as compensation. The US already did this to Iran, and France even was bold enough to do this to Russia itself. The occasional disappearance of a tanker could produce negative economic effects and denying them passage could be just as disruptive.

With the French declaring "total economic and financial war on Russia", Russia has no reason to let any French cargo ship pass if it can intercept it. An even more aggressive option is for Russian navy vessels to actively hunt, intercept and board all vulnerable ships of the European Union and throw their cargo overboard, destroying the goods (unless they contain things that are extra valuable, such as gold!)

European countries could retaliate in a number of ways, but they would likely be too costly. Freight shipping is a notoriously cost-averse business, maintaining ageing ships often of dubious quality and crews on fairly minimal salaries, so it seems unlikely that warshups will be used for this task or assigned for protection in peacetime.

3. Turning off the gas to Europe

Russia can simply turn off the gas to Germany and instead supply its gas to China and other Asian countries. If done in combination with delaying, diverting or seizing US LNG shipments bound for Europe, this could be catastrophic to European economies, forcing them to shut down industry and even fail to keep their citizens warm.

Owing to its size and resources, Russia has proved to be invulnerable in many ways as a country, and numerous alliances have shattered when trying to take this country on.

- ClubOfInfo

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1 March 2022

Ukraine's desperate onslaught of fakes

Russia has been carrying out various crossborder military actions in Ukraine, referring to it as a "special military operation", causing rage in NATO governments that hoped for Ukraine's accession and hysteria among passive worldwide audiences.

Critical thinking has diminished, as people graze like cattle upon the news brought to them on their television screens or social media feeds and only react to what is put in front of them by someone else. Nobody takes the initiative to actually investigate things or seek out the different views, to see who is lying by falsehood or by omission.

Russia has no stated aim of occupying Ukraine, despite the obvious violations of its sovereignty. This is supported by the fact that plenty of images and videos show Russian troops leaving civilians unmolested (but not necessarily without being molested by them!) They have no interest in the Ukrainian population, other than to leave them alone.

Nevertheless, Ukraine portrayed the affair as a valiant struggle of the people for their dignity against occupation by cruel Russians.

The immense hostility towards the polite, passing Russian personnel is likely the result of the near-total control of the "narrative" by Western, pro-Ukraine media outlets hoping to portray the Russian operation as a cruel occupation, a genocide, and a defeat all at once (this combination of alleged superhuman power and yet simultaneously subhuman ineptitude is typical of the most vicious propaganda and a telltale sign of it). They cite the lack of destruction Russia is causing as proof of military ineptitude, coupled with evil. We have seen almost everyone here in the West uniting fully against Russia.

As you consider this, consider also the evidence that many Russians (including the invading troops) have Ukrainian family members mixed in the action, meaning they have absolutely no reason to want to kill the population. This turns the entire invasion and atrocity narrative on its head and reveals how ridiculous the international response led by Kiev and Washington actually is.

The Russians seem to do everything they can to warn civilians to step away, and only show an interest in destroying elements of infrastructure that hinder their mission. The Ukrainian authorities can be observed in real time refusing to take any action to minimise civilian casualties and instead letting everyone stay in the path ofairstrikes, and tell civilians with no military expertise to undertake suicidal actions against Russian forces, with gory results recorded later. As such, every indication seems to be that the Kiev government wants as many dead civilian bodies as possible in Ukraine.

Despite calls for war crimes investigations against Russia already, we have no clear understanding about the civilian death toll, and a lot of what we are shown is fake.

If you ask someone in the UK what's so bad about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they will cite one of these fakes as their reason. They cannot be blamed, as they do not know better. This is more the case now that the West is resorting to suffocating and banning Russian news networks like RT, an act that inadvertently gives Russia the right to cut all Western broadcasts in Russia in turn.

It may seem that wild media reporting, exaggerations and fakes would serve no purpose in a combat situation. However, it does. Reports clearly show that some gatherings of the population in Ukraine are quite confrontational and hostile to the Russians, even when the Russians show absolutely no interest in them or try to stay away from them, to keep them safe.

Even the vaunted videos of Ukrainian civilians cursing Russian soldiers don't seem to show the latter raising a weapon. Comparatively, there are numerous videos showing Ukrainians killing one another, shooting civilians at checkpoints, and having firefights against each other in Kiev because of rumours about Russians dressing up as civilians and Ukrainian soldiers.

Realising the hold that bloodthirsty Ukrainian and Western propaganda has over many residents of the areas they are operating in and how this is causing civilians to endanger themselves, Russian forces have done limited strikes on the infrastructure responsible for creating and broadcasting the fake information to support the Ukrainian war effort.

Bear in mind that the Russian side has no doubt created fake information as well, but the above is so clearly incriminating that it leaves no doubt that Ukraine is the worse of the two. People who profess to stand with Ukraine in the conflict would do well to consider their desperation to involve other countries in their predicament and to mislead people into traveling to Ukraine to fight for them in their interethnic conflict.

The duping of many people to believe Ukraine is a heroic and innocent nation resisting some exceptional evil that must be fought, is the result of people being passive viewers of information on conflict zones, with no access to a comprehensive breakdown of the world's conflicts and their root. All is based on omission.

- ClubOfInfo

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22 December 2015

Economies escaping America's chains

The Blog


The IMF changed its rules on lending to allow lending to countries in arrears. This made it legal for the IMF, now part of the "New Cold War", to financially prop up the US-backed regime in Ukraine as a reward for its anti-Russian hatred and extremism.


Although this change has indeed annoyed the Russians as intended, they have pointed out that the International Monetary Fund will undermine itself in the long term by doing this, with top government figures making the following points.
  • Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: IMF now faces a "timebomb" due to recklessly changing its rules to allow lending to countries with arrears, in order to prop up the Ukrainian regime
  • Russian Prime Minister Medvedev: after IMF rule-change, "there will be a lot of pleas from different borrower states to the IMF to grant them the same terms as Ukraine. How will the IMF possibly refuse them?"

Both quotes were used by Michael Hudson in a realist analysis of the US's and NATO's "New Cold War" against Russia and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), penned for Counterpunch on 18 December. Ukraine will never be able to pay off its debts, nor will the West be able to extract resources there, because they wage war against Ukraine's economic heartlands in the Donbass region, Hudson stated.

Hudson also presented the following evidence that the US-led world order is weakening, and many national economies are now able to rebel and escape the US regime's chains of debt, austerity and torture.
  • "The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) threatens to replace the IMF and World Bank"
  • China and Russia "Moving to denominate their trade and investment in their own currencies instead of dollars"
  • When US threatened cut Russia from SWIFT system, "China accelerated its creation of the alternative China International Payments System (CIPS), with its own credit card system to protect Eurasian economies"
  • "Instead of dismantling public spending, the AIIB and a broader Eurasian economic union would do what the United States itself practices, and seek self-sufficiency in basic needs such as food, technology, banking, credit creation and monetary policy."
  • China and Russia "create the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an alternative to NATO, and the AIIB as an alternative to the IMF and World Bank tandem"
  • Richard Koo: “If the IMF’s rival is heavily under China’s influence, countries receiving its support will rebuild their economies under what is effectively Chinese guidance, increasing the likelihood they will fall directly or indirectly under that country’s influence.”
  • "new basic guideline for IMF lending – is to create a new Iron Curtain splitting the world into pro-U.S. economies going neoliberal, and all other economies"
  • "President Putin patiently refrained" from demanding immediate repayment of loans from Ukraine; "He is playing the long game"
  • "The broad drive against Russia, China and their prospective Eurasian allies has deteriorated into tactics without a realistic understanding of how they [the US regime] are bringing about precisely the kind of world they are seeking to prevent – a multilateral world."
  • "Standing above the rule of law and national interests, American neocons proclaim that their nation’s destiny is to wage war to prevent foreign secular democracy from acting in ways other than submission to U.S. diplomacy."
  • "U.S. geostrategists seem to have imagined that if they exclude Russia, China and other SCO and Eurasian countries from the U.S.-based financial and trade system, these countries will find themselves in the same economic box as Cuba, Iran and other countries have been isolated by sanctions."
  • "The more [the US supports its terrorists and its neo-Nazi pawns in the Middle East and Europe respectively] the greater the catalytic pressure is growing for the [SCO] to break free of the post-1945 Bretton Woods system"

All of this evidence shows the US military and economic supremacy established at the end of the Second World War is under threat. The progress already made by Russia and China presently is more decisive than anything they achieved during the 'original' Cold War. In particular, the SCO is potentially the most powerful alliance ever conceived, uniting the whole of Eurasia in a single economic and military bloc that was never achieved by the Soviet Union and its allies.

As the United States has lost credibility with many poor countries and is perceived now as an aggressor, the appeal of Russian military support and Chinese financial support grows in developing countries.


The clubof.info Blog

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