Though terrorizing Russian teenage figure skating sensation Kamila Valieva and cancelling Russian Paralympians from the international stage both spit in the face of the spirit of Greece’s original Olympics, they are in full harmony with how NATO’s Mafiosi and their political commissars regard their lucrative sports’ empire. To the Mafia, excluding the world’s largest country from all sports is strictly business.

Though Valieva might yet revolutionize figure skating the way Olga Korbut, the legendary Belarusian athlete, revolutionized gymnastics, she is instead being bullied out of contention, much the way Ronaldo was shell shocked in the 1998 World Cup by the same star-spangled fascists who despise youth’s starry-eyed idealism.

Russian weight lifter (and frequent Donbass visitor) Maryana Naumova best articulated this youthful idealism in this incredible video where, whilst wearing the jacket he signed for her years earlier, she explains how much Arnold The Terminator Schwarzenegger inspired her to greatness when she was an obviously starry-eyed and star-struck teenage weight lifting wonder.

Schwarzenegger, of course, was a notorious drug cheat, as were Lance Armstrong, Ben Johnson, Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, Tyson Gay and literally hundreds of other Americans and Canadians. As was Rambo, when he squared up to the unoriginally named Ivan in Rocky 1V.

Although The Onion sarcastically wrote that Rocky’s victories in all four movies should have been overturned because Sylvester Stallone was, like Arnie, just another proven serial American drug cheat, The Onion misses the key point that the spirit of Rambo epitomizes the fiction that is American Sporting Exceptionalism.

America’s Rambo spirit has nothing to do with sport as the ancient Olympians, Olga Korbut, Kamila Valieva, Maryana Naumova, Novak Djokovic, Max Schmeling, Teófilo Stevenson, Muhammad Ali, Peter Norman or those hundreds of anonymous heroes who put in tens of thousands of hours training Russia’s Paralympians understand it.

It is, unfortunately, how Qatar’s leaders and those Bojos they have cajoled to host the 2022 World Cup in the middle of a desert in the middle of Europe’s football season, understand it. Boris Johnson, who likes to flatten Japanese schoolchildren to relive his cringe-worthy Eton days, believes that Ukraine should get a bye into the World Cup at the expense of Wales and Scotland, where Johnson’s Tory Party are thoroughly loathed. Johnson’s vision of sport has nothing to do with the dreams of Japanese, Welsh, English, Scottish or Ukrainian children and everything to do with the Tories’ personal enrichment and advancement.

There are, in essence, two camps in sport. In Big Business’ corner lurk Boris Johnson, the USA, Qatar, and an army of corrupt sporting officials, who have been bribed, bullied and cajoled into instituting a Russophobic apartheid system more complete and systematic than that which pertained against apartheid era South Africa.

In the other corner, with Kamila Valieva and Russia’s Paralympians, tower true sporting legends like Peter Norman, the third athlete pictured in the famous 1968 Olympics Black Power salute photograph, which occurred during the medal ceremony for the 200-metre event. Not only did Norman wear the badge of the Olympic Project for Human Rights in support of fellow athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith but the idea for Carlos and Smith to each wear a glove was Norman’s. Not only was Norman never selected to represent Australia again but, portending today’s Russian athletes, he was the only Australian Olympic medal winner not invited to attend the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Chelsea Mitchell, “the fastest girl in Connecticut”, is one of legions of female American athletes, who can empathise with Kamila Valieva as she is being trampled under the same profit-driven jackboot that tried to squash Valieva’s spirit. Mitchell’s issue, that she must compete against and lose sporting scholarships to dudes who declare themselves to be women, is analogous to saying Mike Tyson should have fought the winner of the Ali-Fraser 1971 fight, the fight that paused the Vietnam war, when Tyson was only 4 years old.

Though it is an obvious nonsense, Bojo, Biden and their backroom boys in the Pentagon would be delighted with such a mismatch if it brought in the shekels, because blood, booty and self-adulation are their game. Their legacy is not that of the Greek Olympics but that of crudest Rome, of Gladiator where athletes exist only to boost Big Business’ bottom line and the egos of frauds like Bojo.

This is not about sport at all and it is not exclusively about Russia which will remain a sporting powerhouse forever. As this is, as always, about money, pure and simple, if Russia has to be sacrificed so be it, no biggie. And if wrestling and Naumova’s weight-lifting also have to make way for Hollywood’s more lucrative pseudo sports, then hasta la vista baby.

Expelling Russia from weight lifting and wrestling will do much more than give Russia’s Naumovas a bloodied nose. As those two sports trace their lineage right back to the original Olympics, they should have pride of place in today’s games. But, even though the USA excels in both, so too does Russia and, more importantly, so also do almost every single country from Bulgaria in the West to Korea in the East. Despite weight-lifting and wrestling being the pre-eminent sports in most Central Asian countries, Wall St’s agents, by secret ballot of course, want them banished with more photogenic games like Norwegian women playing sports in thongs and brassieres too small to do what they are designed to do replacing them for click bait, prime time ads and profits.

Valieva, Mitchell and today’s other sporting greats best fix up their spare bedrooms as plenty of redundant athletes are coming their way. Horse-racing, not athletics or figure-skating, now sets the surreal pace, where Rambo and Rocky once led. Virtual horses and virtual jockeys running in pretend races are making real horses and real jockeys redundant as Paddy Power, William Hill and similar companies have beguiled their customers into embracing Big Tech’s lifeless rabbit hole.

Roy Keane, himself a high profile victim of NATO’s sporting Mafia, gave perhaps the best advice when he addressed children in the North East of Ireland. When asked how to excel at sports, Keane told them to climb trees, as all children should, to enjoy all sports, as all children should, but also to first throw their X boxes and other electronic toys into the rubbish bin, as all children also should. Therein lies to key to sports’ future; a return to basics by Russia, Central Asians, Africans and other well-adjusted folk, and fruitless years wasted bribing Norwegian women and their American transsexual fellows into throwing beach balls at one another, whilst wearing skimpy thongs, betting on pretend horses, sporting Ukrainian flags and congratulating obese British Prime Ministers for pulverizing starry-eyed Japanese children.

Most people know the colorful leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) as something of a court jester who for year has got away with saying the things nobody else would dare. At the same time, however, he has a lesser known track record for predicting events, and his latest one should give the United States tremendous pause.

Born in Almaty, then the capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan, on April 25, 1946, Zhirinovsky moved to Moscow in 1964 where he went on to receive several degrees, including in law and philosophy. In 1991, he was leading founder of the LDPR, which was at the time the first accredited opposition party in the Soviet Union. Several months later, Zhirinovsky became a household name in the world of politics as he placed third in the presidential elections, having attracted over 6 million votes.

Although many pages could be written about the LDPR leader’s notorious tirades that have become legendary (suffice it to say that his unfiltered opinions managed to get him declared persona non grata even in Kazakhstan, his homeland, after proposing alterations to the Russia-Kazakh border), the purpose here is to consider his predictions, some of which are startling in their accuracy.

Aside from predicting in 2004 that America’s next president will be a “black man and a Muslim” — not too far off the mark considering that Barack Obama’s middle name is ‘Hussein’ — and that an ‘Islamic State’ will soon rise up in the Middle East, Zhirinovsky also predicted a “revolution” for Ukraine back in 2012.

“Wherever there is a revolution, that means the leaders are idiots who don’t understand anything,” he remarked with his trademark blunt-force candor. “Ukraine too will have a revolution.”

Even earlier, back in 1998, Zhirinovsky clearly foresaw the unavoidable problems that would come to haunt Russia and Ukraine, manipulated as the latter was by the Western hemisphere. This was more of an ‘educated hunch,’ but noteworthy nonetheless.

“Because there is no [secession] treaty between Russia and Ukraine, Kiev will never be accepted into NATO or the EU, until that time that they solve territorial questions,” he said in a speech in the Duma, before adding that “everything that is happening in the Ukraine today, is done by Western powers. They’re doing everything to prevent it from remaining in our alliance.”

It’s no secret that an army of Western agencies, notably the U.S. Aid for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), practically wrote Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy for years. These two fronts for ‘democratic renewal’ invested millions of dollars into local NGOs to carry out the prescribed ‘political activities,’ like making sure Kiev was never tempted into building better relations with Russia. And this isn’t taking into account the $5 billion that Victoria Nuland admitted Washington had spent in Ukraine up until the moment of the political coup; such an amount of money never comes without serious chains attached. This hefty Western influence was responsible for the violent overthrow of the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, as well as the civil strife between Western and Eastern Ukraine that has led to the dramatic events we are witnessing today.

But Zhirinovsky was just warming up.

In perhaps his most impressive impersonation of Nostradamus to date, the excitable statesman predicted in a speech last year the events that would eventually come to pass in February of this year.

“I would have liked for 2022 to be a peaceful year,” he pronounced. “But I prefer the truth – I’ve spoke the truth for 75 years.”

“This will not be a peaceful year. It will be a year in which Russia once again becomes a great power,” he railed in his typical combative style that many people have come to excuse with a shrug of the shoulders. “The alternative is that they shut us up and begin to exterminate Russians – in the Donbass first, and then in Western Russia. So in this regard, let’s support this new direction in Russia’s foreign policy.”

However, not only did the firebrand predict that 2022 would “not be a peaceful year,” he predicted almost down to the day and time when the start of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine would occur: “You’ll see at 4 a.m. on February 22,” he said, missing the real date of Russia’s start of its special operation by a mere 48 hours.

Considering such a track record with his predictions, whether they are the result of ‘educated guesses,’ great intuition or long evenings at the soothsayers, it’s hard to say, but Zhirinovsky’s last prophesy has probably perked up some ears in the Washington Beltway.

On January 19, 2022, Zhirinovsky delivered one of his typical tirades, this one about the future demise of none other than the most powerful nation on the planet. Speaking about the United States, the Russian politician noted that Donald Trump “no longer says ‘Make America Great Again.”

“Now he says ‘We will save America.’ That’s right, Trump, but unfortunately you won’t be able to save it. There won’t be elections in 2024, because there will be no America. He can continue playing golf.”

Considering the trajectory of the United States of the last decade, which has seen the country become politically divided over ‘irreconcilable differences,’ while nearly ungovernable amid an open border combined with rampant crime and poverty, it will be interesting to see how this prediction pans out. There seem to be forces at the work in the United States, not least of all far-left radicals who pledge allegiance to ‘Cultural Marxist’ teachings, that have absolutely no desire to see the country succeed. These considerations, taken together with Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s uncanny ability to ‘foresee the political future’, as it were, seem to indicate bad times ahead for the U.S. Only time will tell.

While no historical analogies are ever perfect, there are some noteworthy similarities between the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Vladimir Putin, although not for the reasons some pundits are suggesting.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

 – Mark Twain

Bismarck, the 19th century German statesman from a landowning Junker family, may never have appeared shirtless astride a horse, or photographed saving a television crew from a Siberian tiger, but there is more to the story between he and Vladimir Putin than first meets the eye.

Much like the Russian leader from a later epoch, Bismarck, the fervent anti-liberal who held sway over Prussia from 1871 to 1890, found it a matter of existential importance to bring his own people, the Germans, together in common ‘statehood.’ But whereas Bismarck’s empire-building initiatives led to a string of successful wars against Denmark, Austria and France, Putin’s nation-building efforts were necessarily focused on long-simmering internal problems, which had the potential, if not defused, to bring post-communist Russia to its knees.

A comparison between Bismarck and Putin was made last month by the columnist George F. Will. Unsurprisingly, however, Will, writing in the pages of The Washington Post, used his analogy to support the perennial ‘Russia the Aggressor’ narrative, suggesting that Putin would move to conquer other countries after ‘demilitarizing’ and ‘denazifying’ Ukraine.

“The Baltic nations — Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, all NATO nations — should worry,” he warned.

Such a groundless and reckless claim, aside from stoking Russophobia, flies in the face of everything that Putin has stood for during the duration of his presidency. Moreover, it ignores the fact that the Russian leader has already fought his ‘wars,’ so to speak.

While Bismarck was initially compelled to fight against foreign adversaries, Putin’s priority, in addition to taming the oligarchs who had practically taken over the Kremlin in the 1990s, was to end the war in Chechnya, which had its start in 1994 under his predecessor Boris Yeltsin. Just around the time this conflict in the North Caucasus was coming to an end, in 2008, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili made the reckless decision to launch a military offensive on the breakaway state of South Ossetia. The unprovoked attack, which occurred while Putin was serving as prime minister, resulted in the death of several Russian peacekeepers and culminated in a brief war between Russia and Georgia that ended swiftly on the side of the former. This conflict was followed seven years later with Moscow’s intervention in Syria, which began in September 2015 with an official request from Damascus to help defeat the terrorist fforces of Islamic State. Up until the launching of Moscow’s special operation in Ukraine, those wholly defensive campaigns had been the extent of Russia’s so-called ‘aggression.’

What Will fails to understand in the course of his comparison is that Bismarck, who expressed his personal revulsion to war on many occasions, was no ‘neocon’ as it were. The shrewd chancellor, after putting his enemies in check, was the driving force behind an age of peace on the European continent that lasted for two decades. In that respect, a comparison could be made between ‘the Putin Doctrine’, as it were, and the realpolitik of Bismarck.

Here is a quote by the historian Eric Hobsbawm as he describes Bismarck: “He remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for almost twenty years … [and] devoted himself exclusively, and successfully, to maintaining peace between the powers.”

Sound familiar? Any reader who has not been thoroughly brainwashed by the mainstream media and its kneejerk anti-Russia stance will quickly see that that description also aptly applies to Putin and his judicious approach to foreign affairs over the duration of his tenure. The prediction here is that (unbiased) future historians will be writing much the same words about the Russian leader, whose defensive actions in Ukraine, for example, will be viewed as absolutely warranted in face of the existential threats they countered. But I digress.

The WaPo columnist also conflates the ‘mindset’ of modern, democratic Russia with that of the sprawling Soviet Union and its 15 republics. Since the collapse of the communist empire in 1991, and certainly long before then, the Russian people have had no appetite for ‘empire-building’ adventures, unless, perhaps, it is employed as a boardroom strategy for some business expansion. Russia is a full-blown ‘capitalist democracy,’ abundant in natural resources, human talent and lebensraum (‘living space’), and as such has absolutely no need – regardless what the pundits would have everyone believe – for wars of expansion.

With regards to Crimea, which voted in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, Will was noticeably agitated that Moscow deferred to the late U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and his self-styled concept of “self-determination” as a universal right and “an imperative principle of action” to justify its actions. Clearly, such highfalutin ideals are only acceptable when the ‘exceptional’ Americans are behind them.

“It must delight Putin to employ an American saint’s piety in an act of anti-American realpolitik,” Will seethed. “Much of Putin’s geopolitics consists of doing whatever opposes U.S. policy.”

Considering that Western policy to date has been blood-stained since around the turn of the millennia, “doing whatever opposes U.S. policy” may not be the worst choice of strategy.

Clearly, the non-stop efforts by the Western media to paint Putin as the epitome of evil do not flush with reality. Unlike the United States and NATO, which have initiated scores of unprovoked attacks on a number of hapless countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, Putin has never felt the need to travel abroad in search of “monsters to slay.” Rather, they came knocking on Russia’s door instead, one after another. Indeed, listening to the jeremiads emanating from Western officials these days, they actually seem incredulous that Russia has military bases in such close proximity to the territories of NATO states, some of which, like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Norway, now actually share a border with Russia.

In the face of this aggressive posturing on the part of the U.S. and NATO, it would be no exaggeration to say that Putin has been the real peacemaker since coming to power. For those who would argue at this point that the 30-member military bloc is merely a “defensive” organization, imagine the hysteria that would erupt should Moscow ever decide to militarize America’s borders in the Caribbean and South America. In fact, there is no need to imagine anything; we already saw that hysteria during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when the world teetered on the brink of war for endless days between the nuclear powers.

For many years, Russia, China and the rest of the world have been captive spectators, watching as the United States and its allies run roughshod around the planet, regime changing here, breaking things there. And now that Russia has finally punched back after years of issuing unmistakable warnings that fell on deaf ears, the Western hemisphere would have everyone believe that Moscow is behaving as the aggressor. The memory of the public may be short, but it’s not that short. The majority of awakened people (as opposed to ‘woke’) may despise military conflict and the horrors that it brings, but without a Russian intervention in Ukraine at this critical juncture in history the consequences down the road would be far more severe.

Not only has Vladimir Putin offset an array of external threats to his country, whose defensive capabilities were at risk of becoming redundant – anti-missile systems, for example, and bioweapon labs smack on Russia’s border would have achieved that – but he spared Europe and the world from the specter of a U.S.-provoked catastrophe, and one that might have been nuclear-tipped.

By Yeghia TASHJIAN

The war in Ukraine has become the latest test for Turkey’s regional ambitions in confronting those of Russia, in what has clearly become a “cooperative rivalry.” This is where both sides, despite their opposite views on various regional conflicts ranging from Libya to Syria to the South Caucasus, have worked to manage these conflicts without directly challenging one another.

The current crisis has raised Turkey’s concerns of being in the firing line of Russia’s hegemonic ambitions. It is important to note that Turkey and Russia are not allies, but bitter ‘frenemies.’ Despite having robust commercial, energy, diplomatic and military ties, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned back in 2016 that NATO has to act and increase its presence in the Black Sea.

Over the past two decades, Russia has consolidated its presence in the Black Sea region by directly controlling Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, and annexing Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014. The Black Sea Fleet is responsible for bringing supplies to Russian forces in Syria, mostly based in the port of Tartus and Khmeimim airbase, as well as for patrolling the eastern Mediterranean. Russia’s 2015 Maritime Doctrine clearly prioritizes the Black Sea as a pillar of its power projection.

Turkey’s waning power in the Black Sea

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea tipped the balance of military power in the Black Sea in favor of Moscow. Not only has Russia significantly increased its Exclusive Economic Zone and its Black Sea coastline, it has also cancelled existing agreements with Ukraine, which limited the latter’s Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol.

Additionally, Russia has stationed new military ships and submarines and installed a dense network of advanced weapons systems across the Crimean peninsula. From Ankara’s perspective, Turkey feels surrounded by Russian military presence from the north (Crimea), east (Armenia), and south (Syria).

In response, Erdogan initiated the construction of the Istanbul Canal to put additional pressure on Russia using the 1936 Montreux Convention whereby Turkey can close the Black Sea Straits to all warships in times of war.

Indeed, following NATO’s intensified pressure, Ankara has started exercising its right under Article 19 of the Convention, and has warned all coastal and non-coastal states that it will not allow warships through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The convention also limits the period of stay for warships belonging to non-Black Sea states in the Black Sea.

However, this action also exposed Turkey’s limitations by raising the questions: How will Turkey react if Russian naval warships seek passage through the Straits? Will Turkey prevent them? The answer is clear.

As a Black Sea state, Russia has the privileged right to transit the Turkish Straits to return its warships to their bases. The treaty states that during armed conflict, belligerent warships “shall not” pass through the Straits unless the ships belong to a state that borders the Black Sea and are returning to their home ports.

Once Turkey determined that Russia was “at war,” it had no choice under the treaty but to stop Russian warships from passing through the Straits. The only exception for passage is for Russian warships from other areas returning to their bases in the Black Sea.

For example, a Russian fleet registered in the Black Sea but currently located in the Mediterranean Sea is allowed to pass through the Turkish Straits and return to its base. The condition also applies to Russian fleets currently in the Black Sea that belong to a base in the Mediterranean or Baltic Sea. Russia is free to take them out of the Black Sea. This option provides Russia with enough space to maneuver its naval power and downplay Article 19 of the Montreux Convention.

Turkey is aware that blocking access of Russian warships through its Straits will be viewed in Moscow as a “declaration of war.” This is the last thing Erdogan wants, knowing full well that the economic and political consequences will be harsher than those Turkey tasted after it downed the Russian jet over Syria in 2015.

Turkey’s balancing act between Russia and Ukraine

While Turkey will not directly provoke Russia, it has increased its military cooperation with Ukraine. This includes the supply of Bayraktar TB2 drones to the Kiev government. The Russians, for their part, have shown their preparedness for Turkish drones. Despite the fact that the Bayraktar TB2 drones are still operating and useful to the Ukrainian side, the Russian Ministry of Defense almost daily announces that its forces are downing many drones, including TB2.

This military relationship has also involved Ukraine supplying Turkey with military engines intended to boost Turkey’s growing arms industry; in particular, the Bayraktar’s successor drone and T292 heavy attack helicopters that are currently under production.

For Russia, this poses a threat, as in the future it may shift the military balance of power towards Turkey and Ukraine in the Black Sea. It is for this reason that Russian forces destroyed most of the Ukrainian heavy military infrastructure (including its naval and air force) and arms industry.

As such, Erdogan will aim to continue cooperation with Russia in the region; but he is equally likely to step up engagement with NATO to improve his global standing and reduce international criticism of his domestic conduct. Erdogan knows that standing against Russia and directly confronting Moscow is very risky as – excluding the ongoing war in Ukraine – he would start a war on three fronts in the region: in Libya, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh.

In order to extract itself from the ongoing difficulty of placating both sides, in recent days Turkey has engaged in proactive diplomacy and mediation between Kiev and Moscow. Ankara announced that the two adversaries have made progress on their negotiations to halt the war and are “close to an agreement.” However, Ukraine’s president responded by saying that any consequential agreement with Russia would be put to a referendum. This signaled that there is no agreement in sight and Ankara’s mediating efforts are fruitless.

Turkey will not gamble with Ukraine against Russia

Dr Maxim Suchkov, a Moscow-based expert in the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) expresses concern that Turkey may view the crisis as an opportunity to re-establish itself in the Black Sea and strengthen its relations with the west. Ankara enjoys good ties with both Moscow and Kiev and seeks to balance itself, supplying arms to Ukraine, on the one hand, but also refraining from sanctioning Russia.

Suchkov argues that Turkey may indeed be useful to the Russian endgame here, but “Moscow should also be careful since President Erdogan is known for his penchant to fish in muddy waters.” Hence, even if the outcome of the conflict does not favor Erdogan’s interests, Turkey may try to wrest something out of this crisis.

For this reason, President Erdogan cannot antagonize Russia and risk full-scale war as, domestically, the implications of this battle will be heavy on the Turkish government. Already, on 22 February, six Turkish opposition parties, not including the Kurdish HDP, called on a unified platform for the revival of the parliamentary system in the country with the aim of establishing an alliance to topple Erdogan in the coming parliamentary and presidential elections in June 2023.

According to recent public surveys, the opposition coalition is polling ahead, and indeed may oust Erdogan, given the financial chaos Turkey is experiencing. The current crisis will worsen the economic and political situation of Turkey.

One sector that is especially vulnerable is tourism, as between four to seven million Russian tourists and around two million Ukrainian tourists visit Turkey each year. Moreover, western sanctions on Russia will make money transactions difficult between both countries.

Crucially, Turkey imports almost 50 percent of its gas from Russia, and with the increase in global gas prices, Turks find themselves in a difficult quandary. For these reasons, Ankara is unlikely to undertake any risky gambles and will continue to strike a balanced posture in the crisis.

Turkey still has an important role to play

Turkey has general elections scheduled for June 2023, hence any change in the leadership in Turkey would affect the current track of Russian-Turkish relations. In a post-Erdogan Turkey, Ankara is likely to move closer to the western camp due to the pro-western (pro-US) leanings of the Turkish military, entrepreneurs, technocrats, diplomats, and civil servants – regardless of their liberal or nationalistic personal views.

This could form a long-term challenge for Russia-Turkey relations, given the successful “cooperative rivalry” both sides managed to arrange in Libya, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh. It is worth mentioning that on 2 March, Meral Akşener, leader of the Turkish opposition İYİ Party, raised the alarm on whether there were any guarantees that Turkey’s eastern provinces would be safe from a similar kind of Russian aggression. She also called Russia a “security threat” for Turkey. This is another indication that the Turkish opposition is not on the same wavelength as Erdogan’s multi-vector foreign policy.

Moscow has never viewed Ankara as an equal partner, but as a junior partner that could help configure a regional order which benefits Russian interests and decreases western influence. However, if Russia becomes stuck in a Ukrainian quagmire, it may need Ankara to arrange a temporary settlement.

Will the Syrian and Nagorno-Karabakh scenario be repeated – in which both sides sidelined western influence and Russia accepted a Turkish role in the region? If Ukraine is divided into two zones, would Russia accept a Turkish ‘peacekeeping force’ in the western part of Ukraine? Would the Americans give Turkey the green light to enter such a game? What would Ankara gain in return? Is such a military adventure within Turkey’s capabilities?

According to Dr Mitat Çelikpala, Professor of International Relations and the Dean of Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences at Kadir Has University, such a scenario is beyond Turkey’s financial and military capacities – and Turkey cannot act unilaterally. Hence, for now, Turkey must continue its role of mediation between both sides to avoid any spillover effect near its borders.

thecradle.co

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the US is pouring weapons into a foreign nation to defend freedom and democracy.

* * *

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe serious military conflicts consist of Good Guys fighting Bad Guys like a children’s cartoon show.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe a war is being fought between an evil monster who is the same as Hitler and a virtuous sexy comedian of surpassing bravery and wisdom.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the same western media institutions who’ve lied about every war are now telling the truth about this one.

3/2/2022- President Zelensky #UkraineUnderAttaсk #Zelensky #Zelenskyy #PresidentZelensky #russianinvasion https://t.co/qW8LL36nRq pic.twitter.com/klwqPp9PjH

— Clay Bennett (@BennettCartoons) March 2, 2022

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe we’re seeing an unprecedented wave of censorship because the European Union, Silicon Valley megacorporations, and TV service providers want to protect everyone from “disinformation”.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe a government the US doesn’t like is behaving aggressively for no other reason than because its leader is evil and hates freedom.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe Ukraine is just a scrappy little underdog acting completely independently of the dictates of the largest power structure on this planet.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the globe-spanning power structure centralized around the United States is merely a passive witness to this war and not a key player in creating its emergence.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the US empire is ever the innocent little flower it pretends to be.

Russia’s biggest state-controlled bank is to be hit with sanctions within days as ministers ratchet up Britain’s economic response to the bloodshed in Ukraine https://t.co/tMJ8noEXVM

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) February 26, 2022

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe that governments who’d have every incentive to lie to the public about what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine are simply choosing not to do so.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the politicians who’ve demonstrated ice cold indifference to their own citizens dying of poverty and disease care passionately about the plight of the Ukrainian people.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the most powerful and murderous government in the world is orchestrating the economic collapse of a nation it has long targeted for destruction in order to defend Ukrainians.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the “anti-war” position is to support pouring weapons into a foreign country and cold war brinkmanship that could lead to World War 3 while shouting down anyone who advocates de-escalation, diplomacy and detente.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe anything which doesn’t align with what the TV tells you about this war is “Russian propaganda”.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe anyone who disputes the TV narrative about this war is defending Putin or thinks he is awesome.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and accuse people who disagree with you of working for a foreign government.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and find it strange and outlandish when someone criticizes the most powerful empire that has ever existed for its role in starting a war.

It’s quite sad that grown adults genuinely believe the Ukraine crisis is about the west’s noble and valiant struggle to defend Ukraine’s freedom, democracy and sovereignty against the delusional megalomania of Vladimir Putin. This just sounds like a comic book plot

— Josh || 김은총 (@JoshC0301) March 16, 2022

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and not understand that starvation sanctions are acts of war deliberately designed to hurt civilians.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and be fine with only knowing one side of the story.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and still not know that extremely powerful people have a vested interest in manipulating your understanding of what’s going on in the world and are doing so constantly with varying degrees of success.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and view a narrative being pushed in perfect unison by all the most powerful government and media institutions in the western world with anything other than white hot skepticism.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and still believe your government is on the side of truth, justice and righteousness.

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It’s not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 without reflecting on the possibility that things are not as they seem.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

History will register that the birth of the baby twins – Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics – only a few hours before 2/22/22, was simultaneous to the birth of the real, 21^st century multipolar world.

As my columns have stressed for a few years now, Vladimir Putin has been carefully nurturing his inner Sun Tzu. And now it’s all in the open: “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

The thunderbolt was months in the process of being meticulously polished. To paraphrase Lenin, who “created Ukraine” (copyright Putin), we did live many decades in only these past few days. It all started with the detailed demands of security guarantees sent to the Americans, which Moscow knew would be rejected. Then there was the Russia-China joint statement at the start of the Winter Olympics – which codifies not only the strategic partnership but also the key tenets of the multipolar world.

The culmination was a stunning, nearly one hour-long address to the nation by Putin shortly after the Russian Security Council live session deliberating on the request for independence by the DPR and the LPR (here is a condensed version.)

A few hours later, at an emergency UN Security Council meeting, Russian Permanent Representative Vasily Nebenzya precisely outlined why the recognition of the baby twins does not bury the Minsk agreements.

The baby twins actually declared their independence in May 2014. In 2015 they signed the Minsk agreements as one of the interested parties. Theoretically they could even be back within Ukraine if Kiev would ever decide to respect the agreements, which will never happen because the U.S. has vetoed it since 2015. Moreover, the people of Donbass do not want to be subjected to a regime harboring neo-Nazis.

As Nebenzya outlined, “I would like to remind you that at the time of the conclusion of the Minsk agreements, the LPR and DPR had already declared independence. The fact that Russia today recognized it does not change the composition of the parties to the Minsk agreements, since Russia is not one (…) Another thing is that the Minsk agreements have long been openly sabotaged by Ukraine under the auspices of our Western colleagues. Now we see that many colleagues want to sign that the Minsk agreements are dead. But this is not the case (…) We are still open to diplomacy, but we do not intend to allow a new bloody massacre in the Donbass.”

And here’s the clincher, directly addressing imperial support for the killing of ethnic Russians in Donbass: “The main task of our decision [on recognizing independence] was to preserve and protect these lives. This is more important than all your threats.”

There you go: Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a concept invented by the Americans to launch wars, used by Russia for preventing one.

That certified nullity, German chancellor Scholz, deriding Putin’s characterization of a genocide in Donbass as “laughable”, was a decisive factor in the birth of the baby wins. Putin, in his address to the nation, especially took time to detail the Odessa massacre: “We cannot but shudder when we remember about the situation in Odessa, when people were burned alive (…) And those criminals who did this, they are not punished (…) But we know their names, and we will do everything to punish them (…) and to bring them to justice.”

What about China?

Geopolitically, in Eurasian terms, two huge questions stand out: the role of the CSTO and the response from China.

If we look at the Article 19, Chapter VI of the CSTO charter, we learn that, “any state sharing the goals and principles of the Organization and being ready to undertake the obligations containing in this Charter and other international treaties and resolutions effective within the framework of the Organization may become a member of the Organization.”

That would open the door for the baby twins, as soon as they have finalized all the bureaucratic endeavors pertaining to new, independent nations, to request CSTO membership. Incidentally, CSTO secretary-general Pashinian has already gone to Moscow to discuss it.

China is a way more complex proposition. One of the key tenets of Beijing’s foreign policy is the fight against separatism – embedded in the foundation of the SCO. So Beijing cannot possibly recognize the baby twins, or what would amount to Novorossiya – yes, Putin did pronounce the magic word – before Kiev itself does or, a serious possibility, completely disintegrates.

The Foreign Ministry so far has been extremely cautious. Wang Yi has reiterated “China’s long-standing position that the legitimate security concerns of all countries must be respected, and the purposes & principles of the UN Charter must be upheld.”

Further on down the road, presumably after some serious exchanges between Wang Yi and Lavrov, China can always find myriad ways to unofficially help the baby twins – including advancing BRI-related connectivity and sustainable development projects.

As for Kiev disintegration, that’s directly linked to Moscow demanding the immediate stop of the mini-blitzkrieg against Donbass, otherwise they will bear full responsibility. Yes, regime stalwarts will be hunted and punished – complete with a possible War Crimes Tribunal. No wonder all sorts of oligarchic/political rats, big and small, are scurrying away, to Lviv, Poland and the UK.

The Munich effect

The intervention of all 12 members at the Security Council session, combined with Putin’s address to the nation was the stuff of gripping geopolitical drama. Putin’s body language and the look in his eyes testified to the immense gravity of the moment – and it all came to the forefront when he embarked in a concise history lesson spanning a century.

Barely containing his anger at the countless ways Russia has been vilified by the West, and taking no prisoners when referring to communism, what mostly stood out was the clear-cut rendition of the insurmountable antagonism between the Anglo-American islands and the civilizational Heartland – or the clash between maritime powers and land powers. That Eurasia classic was the bulk of his exposition: the recognition of the baby twins took less than three minutes.

The Munich Security Conference, this past weekend, had made it all so explicit. Munich, as terrifying as it was in terms of a congregation of headless chickens posing as eagles, at least confirmed everything is in the open.

The enemy is Russia. NATO infinite expansion – to outer space – is against Russia. And then we had a parade of add-on threats: no disarmament in Eastern Europe, cutting off the Russian economy from the EU, end of Nord Stream 2, Ukraine in NATO, world order built on “universal liberal values”.

Munich spelled out No Compromise Whatsoever – which was exactly what Putin, Lavrov, Patrushev and co. expected, the warmongering rhetoric burying any meaningful discussion of migration, inflation, cyber wars, the European energy crisis and, of course, the only thing that matters for the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex, as defined by Ray McGovern): let’s milk this Eurotrash lot for untold billions in new contracts, let’s isolate Russia, let’s destroy Nord Stream 2 to sell them our ultra expensive LNG, let’s keep them on a leash – forever.

So actually it’s not even war against Russia: the $30 trillion-indebted Empire with a woke military attached simply could not afford it. Not to mention the certified freak out in case they receive a phone call from Mr. Khinzal and Mr. Zircon : cue to the spectacular Russian display of “military and technical” superiority, hypersonic and otherwise – staged, irony of ironies, in synch with the circus in Munich.

What we have here is so lame: just a lowlife offer-you-can’t-refuse racket to be inflicted on the EU.

The Indivisible Security dance

The rabid Munich “No Compromise” show; the imperially-ordered Ukro crypto-blitzkrieg against Donbass; and the role of the U.S. Lack of Intelligence Community – an Andrei Martyanov-coined howler – altogether sealed the deal for the Security Council deliberations and Putin’s decision.

Considering the ideological stupidity of the current Brussels gang – Stoltenberg, von der Leyen, Borrell –, incapable of understanding even basic economics, the fact remains that the EU without Russian energy is doomed. Martyanov stresses the algorithm: Russia can afford the break up with Europe. Europe cannot. The U.S. just wants to collect. And we’re not even talking about the dire, incoming ramifications of the systemic crisis across NATOstan.

Even as Moscow plays a very long, calculated game, as it stands that does not necessarily mean that Russia will be “winning” the baby twins while “losing” Europe. Russia’s strategic swing repeatedly baffles the Atlanticist combo. The U.S. lack of intelligence community was predicting a Russian “aggression” every other day – and still is. Instead they got the baby twins as the latest independent republics of the Global South.

Even before Munich, the Ukro crypto-blitzkrieg, and the recognition of the baby twins, Moscow had again warned it may respond with “military and technical measures” to ensure its own security after the U.S. and NATO blatantly ignored key points from its proposal for a long-term European security architecture, and instead “cherry-picked” issues from a package deal.

Moscow will not let the Americans run away from the by now notorious 10-page Russian response. Putin, addressing the Stavka, had already warned “we are in a situation (…) where we are forced to resolve it.” Which bring us to what John Helmer niftly qualified as Russia’s black box defense. The beauty is no one knows what’s inside the black box.

Enter, once again, the “military-technical measures” that will be “reciprocal” (Putin) to what U.S. and NATOstan are already deploying against Russia. They won’t necessarily be implemented in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, in the airspace above Donbass, even in cyberspace. It could be anywhere – from the Syrian theater to Latin America.

Surprise! That’s what strategic ambivalence, ambiguity, or – let’s get down to the rhythm – swing is all about. You don’t believe in the principle of indivisible security? Fine. Now we dictate the security rhythm. You’re not gonna stop deploying nuclear weapons outside your territory? Fine. Here’s some reciprocity. You’re not gonna accept legally binding guarantees of our security? Fine. Meet our “military-technical” measures.

Now dance, suckers.

The Dem combo remote-controlling the senile President of the United States by earpiece/teleprompter was never accused of being the brightest bulbs in the room – any room.

That explains why one of their own, Nancy Pelosi, on ABC News, gave the whole Russian “invasion” game away two – or three – days, depending on their math, before the “canceled” non-event.

First she said, “If we were not threatening the sanctions and the rest, it would guarantee that Putin would invade.” And then the clincher:

“If Russia doesn’t invade, it’s not that he never intended to. It’s just that the sanctions worked.”

Here, fully unveiled, is the whole Dem “strategy”: a dubiously effective foreign policy “victory” which will melt away months ahead of the inevitable debacle at the US midterms.

Maria Zakharova, that female Slav counterpart of Hermes, the Messenger of the Gods in Ancient Greece, got closer to the truth while framing the psyops: “February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired.”

Add to it Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, unplugged, on “information terrorism”: “We have to learn from the tricks [our Western colleagues] pull.”

Putin, once again, applied Sun Tzu to win without a battle: “win” as in attending the objectives set for this round.

But it gets dicier. The Duma, by 78%, voted to ask the President to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as “separate, sovereign and independent” states.

The final decision rests with Putin, who has already hinted what happens next. Even as he qualified “what is happening now in Donbass” as “a genocide” – taking into context the previous eight years – he pointed out how “we must do everything to solve the problems of Donbass, but first of all, based on (…) the implementation of the Minsk agreements.”

What this means is that Putin will give Kiev yet another – final? – chance to implement Minsk: the agreement – enshrined as UN law – that the Americans have been de facto sabotaging since 2015.

Russia’s Security Council won’t be fooled, characterizing how “the West is conducting a carefully planned information operation against Russia based on the concept of ‘hybrid war’.” The Security Council also reaffirms that “European countries will be responsible for very likely provocations against the DPR and LPR from Kiev.” This is Patrushev speaking, not a deer-caught-in-the-headlights Jake Sullivan.

Neo-nazis on parade

German Chancellor Scholz’s visit to Moscow was not exactly a Porsche negotiating Nurburgring. One never gets away spewing out platitudes in front of Putin. Scholz: “For our generation, war in Europe is unimaginable”. Putin: “One has already been unleashed by NATO against Belgrade.”

After weeks of non-stop American hysteria cum war fever, it might be tempting to consider that Macron and Scholz could be on the same page with Putin, demanding that Kiev sit on the same table with Donetsk and Luhansk and work on the necessary constitutional amendments to grant them autonomy. That would be the only path towards a possible solution. Yet there’s no guarantee it will be taken, because of the immovable American veto.

Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the Russian Federation Council, once again has stressed the only possible way Russia would “intervene”: in the “event of an invasion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the DPR and LPR, Russia’s response will be proportionate to the scale of aggression.”

Even Scholz, timidly, has somehow agreed that like NATO in Yugoslavia, Russia in this case would have the right to invoke Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to save millions of Russian passport holders from the oligarchic Banderastan/neo-nazi shock troops of what Andrei Martyanov memorably described as country 404.

These include the Azov Batallion – which recruits neo-nazis from all across Europe – sporting Wolfsangel arm patches straight from the SS, and is now incorporated in Ukraine’s National Guard. The vast, CIA/MI6 “revitalized” stay-behind networks. And of course the in-progress $10 billion Eric Prince (Blackwater/Academi) scheme of setting up a private mercenary army via a partnership between the Lancaster 6 company and CIA-controlled Ukraine intel.

The two crucial developments

The serial American fake news/pysops/fog of war offensive did manage to obscure the two really crucial developments of the heady past few days.

1. The de facto invasion of Russian territorial waters by a US Virginia-class sub, described as a “completely unreasonable and incomprehensible activity” by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
2. Mr. Kinzhal’s recent flight to Kaliningrad onboard a Mach 3-capable MIG-31K “Foxhound”. In case NATOstan clowns continue to entertain funny ideas, they could place a call to Mr. Khinzal. He’ll answer the call with hypersonic speed. Literally.

Before the scheduled Russian non-invasion “invasion” was canceled, Martyanov had deliciously outlined how the “strategic ambivalence of Russia is terrifying for the US now because the US doesn’t know what will follow after the false flag, granted this false flag succeeds to dupe European poodles into utter submission.”

Yes, it ain’t over till the fat transgender sings. A false flag, or flags, remain on the radar – considering the tons of weapons showered on 404; over 150,000 troops massed right in front of the line of contact, equipped with absolutely lethal 120mm Grad rockets with warheads that when exploded, release thousands of sharp metal fragments; and the thousands of mercenaries trained by Polish, Brit and Blackwater/Academi instructors.

What really happened in the Kuril islands, between Hokkaido and Kamchatka, diplomatically described by Shoigu, eventually landed on Russian media. The first explanation was that a Russian vessel might have launched warning torpedoes against the American sub.

What happened was that the Virginia-class was detected by a Russian SSK or SSN, there was a sweep, and then the Marshal Shaposhnikov frigate used a sonar to intimate the uninvited guest to beat it. That was rather polite. In any other circumstances the Virginia-class would have been sunk.

Of course this should be interpreted for what it is: one more graphic illustration that the “indispensable nation” has lost its maritime invulnerability. Certainly to Russia. And sooner rather than later, also to China.

And that is a direct consequence of the dire state of the US defense industry, Martyanov’s key area of study, and exemplified by the latest report by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA).

The full report is here. Take a look, for instance, at this table charting the emphasis on research in emerging technologies.

Key areas such as space, hypersonics and cyber are down. In parallel, there’s an “increase” in three interconnected areas: AI, fully networked C3 and microelectronics. This would suggest the same old American obsession, since Rumsfeld, with deploying in a “smart battlefield”.

The key takeaway may be the increase in biotechnology. Because that would point to a desperate Empire – already outclassed by Russia and soon neutralized by China – resorting to biowarfare. It’s no wonder the landmark February 4 Russia-China joint statement pointedly refers to the danger of US bioweapon labs.

To the dustbin, Batman!

Moscow has not deviated for a moment from its Sun Tzu approach – while detailing all demands and all red lines many times over. Washington and Brussels have been warned in no uncertain terms that if they entice their goons/mercenaries to attack Donbass, 404 will be smashed to smithereens. And that is only the easily dismissible part of the package: all NATOstan security systems will also go.

Russia is waiting – like an army of Taoist monks. After the canceled “invasion”, it can even afford to enjoy some comic relief. The “technical and military” responses are ready – and once again: it’s their strategic ambiguity that is driving the Americans crazy. They are coming to realize they must negotiate indivisibility of security and missiles in Eastern Europe because no one in the Ukrainized Empire knows what Putin, Shoigu and Gerasimov could do next.

And then, there are the headless chickens. In the aftermath of the “invasion” not showing up as scheduled, G-7 Foreign Ministers will have an “emergency” meeting later his week in Germany to scratch their collective heads on why the invasion did not show up as scheduled.

As it stands, in the calm before the next storm, let’s sit back, relax and remember February 16, 2022: the day when the latest, concerted, full spectrum fake news psyops ended up hurling NATOstan’s “credibility” to a one-way trip to the dustbin of History.

Despite the worldwide boycott movement against awarding the 1936 Olympics to Berlin, they finally took place, bigger and more brilliant than ever before. Dictator Hitler stood with them in the summit of his international recognition.

The crimes of Hitler’s government were internationally known since the beginning of 1933. They began immediately after the seizure of power in January 1933 with the arrest and murder of political opponents and their incarceration in concentration camps. This mainly affected communists, social democrats and other leftists. All parties except the NSDAP were banned. After May 1, 1933, the trade unions were smashed and expropriated.

The Nazis excluded Jews, Sinti and leftists from sports clubs. The two Jewish sports associations, Maccabi and Schild – they had about 350 member clubs in Germany in 1935 with a total of 40,000 members – were no longer allowed to use sports facilities. It was also clear that there should be no Jews on the German Olympic team.

Alternative Games in Barcelona

In 1931, two years before Hitler came to power, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had awarded the 1936 Olympics to Germany – Winter and Summer Games.

In 1933, after Hitler came to power, only two governments drew consequences: the Soviet government and the Republican government elected in Spain in 1931. For 1936, they prepared the second People’s Olympics in Barcelona with workers’ sports federations from 17 countries; the first People’s Olympics had taken place here in 1931. But when the 2,000 participants arrived in July 1936, the fascist coup of General Francisco Franco began, supported by supplies from U.S. corporations such as Texaco, General Motors and Chrysler – despite the neutrality decided by the U.S. Congress.

Sports federations from several European countries called for a boycott of the Berlin Olympics. The largest athletic association at the time, Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) in the U.S., under President Jeremiah Mahoney, also called for the boycott.

Alternative Jewish Games in New York and Tel Aviv

In May 1933, Rabbi Stephen Wise organized demonstrations in New York with the American Jewish Congress. The AAU organized a World Festival of Workers’ Athletes there. It was supported by Jewish civic leaders, including New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, New York State Governor Herbert Lehman, and the Jewish Labor Committee and the Anti-Nazi League. But the major Jewish organizations American Jewish Committee and B’nai B’rith held back on criticizing the Nazis. On August 15 and 16, 1936, the World Festival in New York drew only 400 participants.

In 1935, the second Jewish sports games, the Maccabiad, had taken place in Tel Aviv, with 1,350 participants from 27 countries. Most of the athletes, however, did not return to their home countries because of the advance of fascism in Europe – in Spain, Hungary, Austria, and Poland, for example.

Alternative Winter Spartaics in Norway

In Norway, leftist organizations put on a Winter Spartakiade in 1936, with athletes from the Soviet Union, Sweden, and Finland. But the world press, such as the New York Times, reported only from the simultaneous Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

In Austria, six of the eight Jewish athletes, including swimming champion Judith Deutsch, refused to participate in the Berlin Games: They were banned for life; Judith Deutsch emigrated to Tel Aviv as late as 1936.

But there were several Jewish U.S. stars, such as weightlifter David Mayer and Samuel Balter of the winning basketball team, and sprinters Samuel Staller and Marty Glickman, who wanted to be in Berlin. Harold Abrahams, a Jewish gold medalist in the 100 meters at the 1924 Games in Paris, lobbied for Berlin as president of the British Athletic Association along with Defense Minister Thomas Inskip.

The IOC: Nobles, Generals, Entrepreneurs

The organizers of the traditional games proved more powerful. Berlin became the venue.

The 1936 International Olympic Committee (IOC) included princes from the monarchies of Denmark, Japan, and Liechtenstein. Colonels, generals, field marshals, and grand admirals came from Germany, Italy, Poland, South Africa, Yugoslavia, and the Netherlands.

Both IOC members from the United States were entrepreneurs – Chicago construction tycoon Avery Brundage and real estate speculator William Garland. From France came Marquis de Polignac, head of the Pommery & Greno champagne cellars. From Germany came Karl Ritter von Halt, a member of the board of the Deutsche Bank, a member of the NSDAP and of the SS circle of friends Heinrich Himmler who was fond of donations. From Sweden came Sigfrid Edström, head of the electronics company ASEA.

The noblemen and their families, such as the British IOC members Clarence Napier Bruce, 3rd Baron Aberdare of Duffryn (=Lord Aberdare) and the 6th Marquess of Exeter (=Lord Burghley), were furthermore not only owners of large estates, but were also involved in companies. This was also the case with Baron Henri de Baillet-Latour, the president of the IOC; he belonged to one of the ten richest families in Belgium, which held shares in the largest bank, Société Générale, and other companies.

Decision mainly by the U.S.

The IOC and National Olympic Committees stifled the boycott movements. Quick commitments for the Games came from the fascist Axis powers of Italy and Japan, as well as from the fascist-friendly ruled states of Finland, Poland, Hungary, South Africa, Portugal, Romania, and Austria.

The 1932 Los Angeles Olympics had set new standards because of the number of participants, the records, the size of the stadium and the other modern sports facilities. The participation or non-participation of the successful sporting nation of the United States – “the world’s greatest sporting powerhouse ” – would determine the significance of the 1936 Games.

The president of the American Olympic Committee (AOC) was Avery Brundage. His company owed its rise to government contracts during World War 1. He was the largest developer and real estate investor in Chicago. He had skyscrapers, luxury apartments and hotels built, including a manufacturing plant for Ford.

President of the U.S. Olympic Committee: ardent anti-Semite

Brundage admired Hitler and showed himself to be an avowed anti-Semite: “No Jews are allowed in my club in Chicago either. ” He saw the boycott movement as a “Jewish-Communist conspiracy. ” IOC President Baillet-Latour also supported Brundage’s anti-Semitism: “Jews usually start shouting before they have a real reason to do so,” he wrote to Brundage.

At the initiative of IOC President Baillet-Latour, Brundage was elected to the IOC. His U.S. colleague on the IOC, Charles Sherill, a brigadier general in World War 1, a lawyer in New York, and U.S. ambassador to Argentina and Turkey, was enthusiastic about fascism. In the New York Times on March 4, 1933, Sherrill, like other U.S. industrialists, praised Hitler as the best German politician. Likewise, Sherill had previously hailed Mussolini as the new statesman who could restore order in Europe with his system in place of the incompetent democracy.

Hitler Bribes the Founder of the Olympic Games

To keep the founder of the Olympic Games and honorary president of the IOC, Pierre de Coubertin in line, Hitler granted him an “honorary gift” of 10,000 Reichsmarks (about $100,000 today) shortly before the opening of the Games. Hitler had already offered him a life pension in 1935 if he supported the hosting of the Games in Berlin.

Swedish IOC members also played an important role in favor of Berlin. Clarence von Rosen, royal equerry married to a wealthy U.S. industrialist’s daughter, was in-law to Herman Goering’s wife Carin. Brother Eric von Rosen founded Sweden’s fascist movement, and Clarence joined in.13 The second Swedish IOC member was Sigfrid Edström: the head of the Swedish electronics company ASEA did good business with the German Reich.

Churchill for Berlin

Two British IOC members, Lords Aberdare and Burghley, also lobbied for Berlin. Sir Noel Curtis Bennet, who was in favor of boycott, found no support.14 Winston Churchill appeased: communism is worse than Hitler!

French Champagne King for Berlin

After the German Wehrmacht occupied the demilitarized Rhineland in March 1936, French sports officials called for a boycott of the Summer Games, including Marc Bellin de Coteau, president of the International Hockey Federation (HIF), and Jules Rimet, president of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA). For France, however, IOC member and champagne king Marquis de Polignac tipped the scales. France’s ambassador in Berlin, André Francois-Poncet, a lobbyist for French heavy industry, had already enthusiastically welcomed the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Apartheid General for Berlin

Henry Nourse also had nothing against the Nazi regime, on the contrary. The IOC member from South Africa had distinguished himself as a lieutenant-colonel in the British colonial army under General Lord Kitchener during the Boer War (1899-1902): In concentration camps, Burian families and locals were starved to death, scorched earth tactics applied, and killing was indiscriminate. Nourse became the owner of South African gold and coal mines, where he was able to exploit blacks with state help – even before the formal legalization of apartheid after World War II.

None of them were swayed by the crimes of the Nazi regime, nor by the Nuremberg Race Laws passed in 1935, nor by Nazi Germany’s military support for Franco’s coup in the weeks leading up to the Games.

Mass enthusiasm and elite luxury

The Winter Games in the Alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen took place undisturbed from February 6 to 16, 1936, while the Summer Games were held in Berlin from August 1 to 16, 1936.

At first, the Nazi newspapers Der Stürmer and the Völkischer Beobachter had agitated against Negroes and Jews, who had no place at the Olympics. But at the Winter Games in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, just as in Berlin, all signs with “For Jews forbidden” were removed, the demonized “Negro music” jazz was briefly permitted, and swastika flags waved cosmopolitanly to the international audience.

Token Jews

The U.S. member of the IOC, Charles Sherill, recommended to Hitler in two personal meetings how a few token Jews on the German Olympic team might reassure the international public. The Nazis followed Sherill’s recommendation: two “half-Jews” were added to the German team as token jews: In addition to ice hockey star Rudi Ball, it was fencer Helene Mayer: outwardly she resembled the ideal image of the blond Aryan woman and lived in the USA. At the award ceremony, she gave the Hitler salute in the stadium.

The newly built Olympic Stadium with 100,000 seats – modeled on the equally large stadium for the 1932 Games in Los Angeles – was the largest in Europe. It was surrounded by a huge parade ground, an Olympic village, spacious sports facilities for the various disciplines and with art exhibitions.

Richard Strauss, Evangelical Church, Leni Riefenstahl, Coca Cola …

In 1936, the Nazis invented the torch relay from ancient Greek Olympia across Europe, which has been customary since then. 3075 runners carried the torch through five countries to Berlin. The final runner was only found after three rounds of judging: Running style, physique and posture, hair and eye color as well as political attitude – everything had to be right.

The world-famous composer Richard Strauss created the Olympic anthem. Hitler’s sculptor Arno Breker contributed the sculptures of naked Aryan athletes: The Winner, The Decathlete. The Protestant Church held the opening mass for the IOC in the Berlin Cathedral. The light domes of Hitler’s favorite architect Albert Speer, developed for the NDSAP party rallies, also shone above the stadium.

Fanfares accompanied Hitler’s arrival, fights and award ceremonies. For the first time, competitions were televised. Corporations like Coca Cola appeared as sponsors. The IOC commissioned Hitler’s favorite director Leni Riefenstahl to make the official Olympic film, which was also made with the help of motorized cameras – including underwater cameras – that were new at the time.

Goebbels: “Italian Night” on Aryanized Property

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Field Marshal Hermann Göring vied for the favor of celebrities with lavish parties. Goebbels had an “Italian night” organized on his Aryanized property on Berlin’s Pfaueninsel (Isle of peacocks ).

Goering invited guests to his Prussian palace. At any one time, 1,000 guests were invited: Kings, European nobility, the diplomatic corps, the IOC, officials from the SS, NSDAP and the ministries, stars of stage and film, medal winners. Fireworks, dances with costumes from the ancient and Victorian eras were offered, fighter-bomber ace Ernst Udet showed his stunt tricks.

New York Times, Daily Express, Kölnische Zeitung

Hitler had declared that the games “strengthen the bonds of peace between nations. ” It was not only the German bourgeois media that were on Hitler’s course.

Thus the Kölnische Zeitung (It is still in the subtitle of the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, the present successor newspaper) wrote: “The greatest celebration that the new Germany is giving to all the peace-loving peoples of the world.” The Anglo-Saxon press, which shaped “world opinion,” also chimed in: “Greatest sports show in history” (New York Times), “wonderful change in the thinking of the German people” (Daily Express, London).

Avery Brundage fulfills all of Hitler’s wishes

Already at its meeting in the Hotel Adlon at the beginning of the Games on August 1, 1936, the IOC decided: the Games for 1940 would be awarded to Tokyo – regardless of Japan’s imperialist expansion in Korea, China and Taiwan. In 1939, the IOC awarded the Winter Games to Germany again. Brundage and the IOC fulfilled all of Hitler’s wishes.

Because of the excellent, also economic relations with the USA, Hitler’s Germany wanted to present itself in Washington by a considerably enlarged embassy: None other than the contractor Brundage was to get the contract for the new building in Washington.

Roosevelt dismissed Ambassador Critical of the Nazis

In 1938, after the Games, the Roosevelt administration replaced its previous ambassador to Berlin, William Dodd, who had been critical of the Nazis, with Hugh Wilson, a Hitler admirer. The latter berated U.S. media as “Jewish-controlled” for occasionally being too critical of Germany’s treatment of Jews in the meantime.

Wilson, on the other hand, praised the Hitler government for working toward a “better future.” Hitler had “brought his people out of moral and economic despair and led them to pride and prosperity. ”

Churchill reiterated his appreciation of Hitler: “One can dislike Hitler and yet admire his patriotic achievement,” Churchill wrote in 1937. The dogged anti-Communist then worried whether Hitler might adopt the wrong tactics toward “Russia” and remain unsuccessful: “Will Hitler make the same mistake as Napoleon? ”

Churchill’s fear came true. Fighting and war in the same direction continued and continues to this day.

The key to China’s security riposte to the U.S. is linked to two words that go unstated in U.S. formal policy documents, but whose silent presence nevertheless suffuses and colour-washes the text of the 2022 National Defence Authorisation Act.

The term ‘containment’ never appears, neither does the word ‘encirclement’. Yet, as Professor Michael Klare writes, the Act “provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory; and potentially to cripple its economy in any future crisis”.

What the earlier patchwork of U.S. China measures lacked, until now, has been an overarching plan for curbing China’s rise, and so ensuring America’s permanent supremacy in the Indo-Pacific region: “The authors of this year’s NDAA” however, “were remarkably focused on this deficiency, and several provisions of the bill are designed to provide just such a master plan”.

These include a series of measures intended to incorporate Taiwan into the U.S. defence system surrounding China. And a requirement for the drafting of a comprehensive “grand strategy” for containing China “on every front”.

A ‘sense of Congress’ measure in the Act provides overarching guidance on these disparate initiatives, stipulating an unbroken chain of U.S.-armed ‘sentinel states’ — stretching from Japan and South Korea in the northern Pacific to Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore in the south, and India on China’s eastern flank — meant to encircle and contain the People’s Republic. Ominously enough, Taiwan, too, is included in the projected anti-China network.

Accordingly, the measure advocates closer military coordination between the ‘two countries’, and the sale of increasingly sophisticated weapons systems to Taiwan, along with the technology to manufacture some of them.

“And here’s the new reality of the Biden years”, writes Klare: “[Taiwan] is now being converted into a de facto military ally of the United States. There could hardly be a more direct assault on China’s bottom line: that, sooner or later, the island must agree to peacefully reunite with the mainland; or face military action”.

This is not new. The China containment notion reaches back to Obama’s pivot to Asia (and back even further), but it was the during the Trump Administration that the Taiwan pretext began seriously to be ramped. Pompeo upped the ante by approving visits to Taipei by senior officials.

What is different now is that the Biden Administration has not only not reversed the Trump-Pompeo policies, but rather has embraced the Pompeo encirclement agenda, with a vengeance. This is underlined through a provision in the Act insisting that the U.S.’ 1982 agreement to reduce the quality and quantity of its arms transfers to Taiwan, is no longer valid due to China’s “increasingly coercive and aggressive behaviour” toward the island.

The point here is that ‘encirclement’ and ‘containment’ effectively have become Biden’s default foreign policy. The attempt to cement-in this meta-doctrine currently is being enacted out via Russia (as the initial step). The essential buy-in by Europe is the ‘party-piece’ to Russia’sphysical containment and encirclement.

The EU is coming under intense pressure from Washington to commit to sanctions – the financial ‘mode’ to encirclement – as EU officials negotiate what would be considered their ‘red line’. Jake Sullivan however, made the new doctrine and what he expects from Europe very clear last November, when he said: “we want the terms of the [international] system to be favourable to American interests and values: It is rather, a favourable disposition in which the U.S. and its allies can shape the international rules of the road on the sorts of issues that are fundamentally going to matter to the people of [America] …”.

Biden’s threat of unprecedented, harsh sanctions however, has brought forth a warning of a completely unexpected source – as both the U.S. Treasury and the State Department have warned Blinken that the envisaged sanctions would hurt U.S. allies (i.e. Europeans) more than they would hurt Russia, and that their imposition could even trigger a counter-productive global economic crisis that would touch both the U.S. and European consumer, via increased energy prices – thus giving a sharp kick to already record U.S. inflation rates.

In short, Europe might also face a U.S.-led insurgency war fought from its territory, spilling over and across other states; giving birth to a new breed of radical ‘jihadis’, and dilating around Europe. And to yet a new wave of sophisticated weaponry (as happened in the wake of the Afghan war) circulating amongst opposition groups, as Stinger missiles were sold on to who knows whom (and then had later to be bought back from them).

In a likely planted piece, the NY Times reports that:

For years, U.S. officials have tiptoed around the question of how much military support to provide to Ukraine, for fear of provoking Russia.

Now, in what would be a major turnaround, senior Biden administration officials are warning that the United States could throw its weight behind a Ukrainian insurgency should Putin invade Ukraine.

How the United States, which just exited two decades of war in Afghanistan, might pivot to funding and supporting an insurgency from just finishing one – is still being worked out: “Biden has not determined how the United States might arm insurgents in Ukraine; or, who would conduct the guerrilla war against Russian military occupation. Nor is it clear what Russia’s next move might be … But Biden Administration officials have begun signalling to Russia [that eventually it] would find the costs of an invasion … prohibitively expensive in terms of military losses.

“If Putin invades Ukraine with a major military force … And if it turned into a Ukrainian insurgency, Putin should realize that after fighting insurgencies ourselves for two decades, we know how to arm, train and energize them”, said James Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral, who was the supreme allied commander at NATO.

This talk in the U.S. of an insurgency mounted via Ukraine has acquired a frenetic quality. Discussion has slipped into neurosis as the U.S. mainstream melts-down at any suggestion of selling out the cause of democracy and liberal values. See here the reaction when the Tucker Carlson’s guest said, “the world is perched on the edge of an abyss. We may soon see the worst combat in Europe since WW2 – killing thousands of people and raising the likelihood of nuclear war. It didn’t have to be this way”.

It’s as if all the many failures of the Biden Administration are being channelled and vented through the narrow atonement of ‘saving Ukraine’.

Naturally, that is not the end to the U.S. project: With ‘containment’ and ‘our democracy’ so much at the forefront of Washington liberal thinking, once Russia has been Gulliverised, and China put on notice, the subsequent containment and encirclement of Iran would seem a foregone conclusion.

Especially, as the encirclement project for China is already underway. And it is not confined to the Indo-Pacific. It is playing out, even today, in the Middle East as an attempted double containment both of Iran and China. The recent drone attack on UAE (claimed by the Houthis) is not unconnected with those targeted states’ bigger struggle to break U.S. encirclement.

One key component to global commerce in upcoming years will be China’s Maritime Silk Road – a shipping route which inevitably pivots around the Horn of Africa, and its choke-point of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, off Yemen’s coast. Yemen therefore becomes a key hub for the U.S.’ ability to ‘contain’ and deny China its’ Maritime Silk Road.

In this context, the UAE plays the Mid-East strategic counterpart to ‘Taiwan’ in the Pacific, becoming the geographical anchor to the ‘sentinel’ ports and islands overlooking the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, and the Bab al-Mandab strait – all presently controlled by UAE.

The enhanced strategic significance of the UAE to Israel and the U.S. almost wholly derives from its having blatantly used the Yemen war as an opportunity to establish an oversized role for itself – through seizing the ‘guardianship’ of the strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Ibrahim Al-Amine has outlined in the pro-resistance Lebanese daily, Al-Akhbar (of which he is editor), “the [recent] American decision to force the UAE to reconsider its war “exit strategy”” in Yemen:

“The new development consisted of a major modification in the American-British decisions represented by a strategic decision to prevent the fall of Ma’rib. The Americans thus directly intervened in the battle. Anyone who looks back at the details … will realize that it is deeper and more dangerous in terms of the Israeli fingerprints … The nature of the intelligence work doesn’t resemble at all the work of the assaulting forces in the past years … In the present war situation, the battle needs men on the ground, hence the American decision to force the UAE to reconsider its war “exit strategy”…”.

Thus, the port of Aden, the Bab al-Mandab Strait and Socotra Island fall neatly into a vital component of the Cold War build-up between China and the U.S.: The Arab ally that can control this essential strait will give the U.S. leverage with which to jeopardize China’s Maritime Silk Road – hence, America’s support for the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

And hence the Houthi drone attack on UAE, signalling that the Houthis have no intention of conceding such a vital key point. The Houthis are giving the UAE a bitter choice: Strikes on its cities or yield up the strategic asset of Bab al-Mandab and its surrounds. Iran and China will be watching closely this ‘breakout’ initiative.

Recognizing that the policies spelled out in the 2022 NDAA represent a fundamental threat to China’s security and its desire for a greater international role, Congress also directed the President to come up with a ‘grand strategy’ on U.S.-China relations in the next nine months, and to prepare an inventory of the economic, diplomatic, and military capabilities the U.S. will require to blunt its rise.

Andrew Bacevich, the U.S. military historian, writes that among foreign policy mandarins in present-day Washington, “spheres of influence” have become anathema. As interpreted today, however, the very phrase smacks of appeasement: It carries for the Beltway foreign policy class, a whiff of selling-out the cause of freedom and democracy, a sin which senior U.S. officials abhor. This is all too evident in today’s heated U.S. mainstream discourse.

A decade ago, Hillary Clinton declared categorically that “The United States does not recognize spheres of influence”. More recently, Secretary Blinken affirmed that statement. “We don’t accept the principle of spheres of influence … the very concept of spheres of influence “should have been retired after World War II”.

Of course! Isn’t it obvious? You can’t barricade a country inside its own territory to enjoy the latitude at a later date to be able to suffocate its economy in any future crisis, and at the same time, accept that Russia and China can set their own red lines – red lines that are formulated precisely to counter their containment, and to counter intimidation through military encirclement.

What the NDAA does, (perhaps inadvertently), is to underline precisely how the Russian and Chinese situation are inter-leafed reflections of each other’s predicament. The ‘war’ to break containment and encirclement is already underway. 

The old dictum is truer than ever that stoking conflict in some distant land is an effective distraction from domestic political woes. But in the case of British prime-minister Boris Johnson, the ruse descends into farce.

Johnson is counting the days until his Conservative party finally gets rid of this train-wreck of a leader. Lies, incompetence and scandals ooze from Downing Street under his watch. Even Britain’s Tory press has given up on its loyalty to Johnson who is now seen as an irredeemable election liability for Conservatives.

That’s why Johnson’s “warning” to Russia this week of “severe consequences” if it invades Ukraine sounds downright comical. His attempt at showing political spine abroad is belied by the image of his reputation at home resembling a wobbly jelly.

Johnson claimed with a straight face that the British intelligence was “clear” that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine and install a puppet regime in Kiev. He went on to say that Britain was “leading” the way among NATO allies for inflicting dire economic costs on Russia. This is in spite of the ropey British story being rubbished as not having a shred of credibility.

By way of lending credibility to the latest claims, Britain’s Foreign Office has begun evacuating diplomatic staff from its embassy in Kiev. This can be seen as the British deliberately trying to escalate the tensions between NATO and Russia over Ukraine by fomenting an atmosphere of imminent conflict. Evacuating embassy staff tends to lend credibility to otherwise baseless allegations that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine.

The Americans and Australians then followed the British lead. It seems significant that Britain’s foreign and defense ministers were visiting Australia at the time of the embassy order.

For Boris Johnson to affect a portentous air of Churchillian statesman is more parody than politics. We are expected to believe that Johnson is leading the “free world” in standing up to alleged Russian aggression towards Europe.

This is while the crumpled-suited Boris is facing the sack for overseeing a never-ending nightmare of scandals on Downing Street.

Johnson’s predilections for boozy parties in No 10 during the Covid pandemic lockdowns have caught up with him like a big cream pie in the face.

This week it emerged that he had a birthday party in the prime minister’s residence last year when many Britons were grieving the death of loved ones to whom they couldn’t even say their final goodbyes because of lockdown restrictions. The public outrage over Johnson’s feckless behavior has reached a boiling point. Once upon a time, Bumbling Boris was seen as an amiable character and a vote-winner. Now his public image of a lying buffoon is viewed more clearly with disgust and contempt.

On top of that, Britons are faced with spiraling living costs and fuel bills just when the Conservative government is planning to introduce tax hikes that will hit working people the hardest.

Johnson’s political future is hanging in the balance. The usually Conservative-supporting British media outlets have turned decisively against him. The Daily Telegraph (also dubbed the “Torygraph”) predicts that Johnson will be unseated as party leader and thus prime minister “within days”.

It’s against this backdrop of dirty and desperate domestic politics that Johnson and his loyalists are grasping at the “Ukraine crisis”.

Downing Street has given the go-ahead for RAF cargo planes to deliver tonnes of lethal military aid to Ukraine.

The British have put “assault brigades” on standby to fly to Ukraine in order to help evacuate remaining diplomats in the event of a Russian invasion.

There is, however, a weird reality disconnect in the British media. They are generally reporting on the Ukraine situation with suitable credulity. Russia is portrayed as a malign actor and Britain as a noble defender of Ukraine’s sovereignty. The accusations against Moscow are reported on at face value without any skepticism.

There is hardly any questioning despite repeated, vehement denials by Russia of harboring any threat towards Ukraine. Moscow’s plausible claims of NATO-backed militarization in Ukraine and the threat to peace are barely reported on, never mind given proper analysis in the British media. Boris Johnson’s posturing as Churchill is strangely given credence by the media when it comes to him pontificating about Ukraine.

Yet the anomaly in this image-projection is that the same media have lost their tolerance for Johnson’s domestic antics. They have called him out as a charlatan and an incompetent clown who has zero moral authority.

How amusing then that this same clown on Downing Street is somehow taken seriously by the British media when it comes to him posing as an international statesman “standing up to Russian aggression”.

Down through history, there are many examples of where domestic political problems provide the impetus for military adventures overseas as a way to avoid accountability at home. This cynical maneuver is by no means unique to Britain. But in the present case, Boris Johnson attempting to start a war with Russia partly over an illicit birthday party is a descent into deplorable and gutless slapstick.