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LONGFORM

Alarms Everywhere

August 9, 2022November 10th, 202310 min read

Good morning on the 9th of August, International Indigenous Peoples Day, when the Belgians celebrate Meyboom – or Meiboom – by planting a beech tree in Brussels, and the Russians celebrate a Day of Military Glory in remembrance of the Victory at the Battle of Gangut over Sweden. It is Singapore’s Independence Day from Malaysia this time, gained in 1965, and National Women’s Day in South Africa. 

South Africa is the place where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has chosen as the starting point of his Democracy™ Tour – including stops in famous democracies like the Congo and Rwanda – that no one really cares about, especially the people of Africa who lined up to shake Sergei Lavrov’s hands with broad smiles when European and American leaders told them not to. Sergei – We Love Rov – is on his way to the UN in New York, despite all the sanctions, like a true statesman. This tour is as inconsequential as it is symbolic with all the usual slogans the Guardian feels obliged to write – like Values and Visions of Democracy, Openness, Waxeens and Climate Policy – with the curious subtitle : We’re not trying to outdo anyone. 

This means that they have already been outdone by China’s Belt and Road Initiatives’ programs – under which Chinese-African trade has risen by 35% in 2021, you will find in the strikingly different Russian coverage of the same event – which have already resulted in real, quantifiable rewards for the people, and the rat is scrambling to try to bribe or threaten them back under the US boot because Africa mines – but somehow doesn’t own – some of the richest raw resource deposits in the World, not to mention some of the – sadly – cheapest labor.

I will continue to leave it to correspondents more capable than I to cover the events on the battlefields – like Scott Ritter, and Brian Berletic – but it is safe to say there is increasing Western Alarm over recent developments in Elenskyland, but by far the best thing I’ve read today is an article by Victoria Nikiforov for RIA Novosti, titled the US is looking for a replacement for Elensky. The khaki-shirted global icon – who has even been called the second Churchill, the drunkard who oversaw the collapse of the British Empire – is suddenly cut off from Western Media, scolded by those who loved him so much : American congressmen, journalists, even human rights defenders. Suddenly it turns out that in Ukraine everything is somehow wrong. And more and more he looks like Ngo Dinh Diem, who sixty years ago was embraced by the colonial administration of South Vietnam to become the first politician in a third world country who the Yanks elevated to the rank of “New Churchill”. Her text is brilliant and rich with sources – and even refers to a gentleman painter in Austria too – and I think you might enjoy reading it in full.  

The Clown is now seeking to ban all Russians, everywhere by the way, on the pages of Lex Luthor’s WaPo, even though nobody is reading anymore, while the Pentagon just doled out another $1 billion in military aid for his little televised regime. I have to mention the scary presence in all the press – Runet and Westnet – about a nuclear provocation around the Russian-controlled city that gave the Zaporozhets its name – a lovely car, under sources today. What they are doing is claiming that someone is shelling it, risking a catastrophic accident, but not naming who exactly is doing the shelling. I will appeal to the reader’s intelligence as to what’s going on there, and remind you that back in March when there was fighting around the same place, in a distant security office the BBC lost their minds repeatedly citing the Chernobyl disaster, and their tone is markedly different now, blaming the defenders of the plant instead. Russia has suspended US inspections of her nuclear military sites because sanctions are preventing Russian inspectors from doing the same, which I would say is fair game? The US has, after all, abandoned more nuclear non-proliferation treaties than are still in existence.

Western Alarm is not restricted to the land of the Blonde Haired, Blue Eyed race though, another headline – paywalled on Britain’s Financial Times but found elsewhere – reads : Alarm mounts in Western capitals over Türkiye’s deepening ties with Russia. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has of course met the Big Bad Vlad in Sochi last Friday and discussed state matters – framed around cooperation on trade and energy – the details of which I will return to, then invited Vlad to meet Elensky in Türkiye. Pay no attention to the panic, it is more of the same : The unnamed leaders of the crumbling European Union – exclusively, the US is not mentioned once – are trying to make the opportunist leader to pay attention to their little concerns, threatening sanctions and the pull out of western companies from Türkiye. 

A remarkably Good™ idea now that Bloomberg has shown us that Western banks that have withdrawn from Russia since February are suffering billion dollar losses, like the French Societé Generale Bank losing around €3.3 billion, as opposed to those that refused to leave like Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank which reduced its loan portfolio in Russia by 22% but still managed to grow its assets by €3 billion. 

Europe is now in a struggle with Asia over who can retain access to Russian gas this winter – writes the Wall Street Journal with the hilarious headline : Winter in Europe may be springtime for Putin – and nobody thinks we’re in a winning position. While China’s exports to Russia have gained 20% compared to last year, we are fading fast. Britons have recorded a new inflation-driven cash withdrawal record, something we used to call a run on the banks, while we – meaning the blob of Eurocrats, not the people – have been the most unreliable partners to Russia in history, so never mind the Turbine shenanigans – which have STILL not ended – the relationship is over, and the consequences are incoming. Cope harder!

While the descendants of the great Kemal Atatürk are – on paper – a NATO ally, make no mistake : They are not a European Union country, and they will not be directed by it. I have found a remarkable poll by Areda from one year ago, that shows popular sentiment in the country almost 80% of which leans towards cooperation with Russia as opposed to the US. Yes, Erdoğan is a colorful opportunist, and he is residing over an economy in the middle of a terrible inflation crisis, and he keeps his enemies even closer than his friends. But my speculation is that – after being rebuffed by Russia and Iran on Syria – he sees clearly who will win Ukraine, and is showing to the victor that his country is important and holds some key cards, like Finalnd’s and Sweden’s testes clenched in its fist, something the leader has repeatedly declared now. 

Unfortunately the Americans – I suspect – are warning them via the new violence in Nagorno Karabakh that they can still stir up trouble. The Black Sea may be less important now than the North and the Pacific – Russia’s main Navy is there – but it will be Russian by the end of this, looking across to good old Türkiye. And it has everything to gain from linking with a stable, commodity-based currency – like the one BRICS is working on – which could finally stabilize the Lira and the economy. The trade plans unveiled at Sochi are to the tune of a stunning $100 billion in energy, trade, tourism and agriculture, made exclusively in Rubles. 

Please also note that I used the new word for the country that the people prefer, but the financial times did not. I want to address China, perhaps in a separate post today or maybe tomorrow, this one has grown long enough. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading and have a lovely Tuesday morning, afternoon or evening whatever sky looks down upon you reading these lines.

Peace, Land and Bread

From Facebook Archives : 9 August 2022

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