Does anyone know what the hell Joe Biden is doing in Ukraine? Americans must feel like a high school substitute teacher. America turns its back for five minutes after having won the Cold War, and Joe Biden has restarted it in the back row. No address to the nation, no white papers, just “Putin attacked Ukraine and it is an existential threat we must respond to.” Didn’t we used to vote on this kind of thing?

Engagement is a given. But what is the end point for Joe, the moment we announce we won? In Ukraine, no one knows. By starting this intervention with the promise not to send NATO into actual combat, Biden sent a clear signal to Putin — if you are willing with your overwhelming military advantage over Ukraine to spend the blood and treasure, you win. Putin’s goal is the creation of some sort of buffer state between him and NATO, so Putin can win whether Kiev physically stands or tumbles. A “win” for the US side requires Putin to retreat in shame. Breaking things is always easier than getting someone to admit they were wrong.

Biden has two weapons to deploy: guns and sanctions. Can either create a win?

While Ukraine has antitank weapons and rifles, Putin has hypersonic missiles and lots of tanks. If a win for him includes a scenario where Kiev is reduced to looking like Detroit, how will any of the weapons the US sends matter? Infantry-based proxy ground warfare can delay a mechanized army but not defeat it, forestall a Ukrainian defeat but not prevent it, when its only goal is greater destruction. Notice when Zelensky showcases photos of kids with guns and old women making Molotovs and then the Russians target “civilians” an apartment complex at a time?

Those are poor odds in a war of attrition. Ukraine boasts it destroyed 509 Russian tanks, almost all using shoulder fired missiles. Maybe; one of the techniques of modern propaganda is to throw out some outrageous number, challenge people to disprove it, and then shout “you can’t disprove it so I’m right.” So no proof. But history suggests 509 man-on-tank kills is ridiculous. During Gulf War 1.0, one of the largest tank battles of modern times at 73 Easting saw Coalition forces destroy only 160 Iraqi tanks, and that was using the M-1 tank with its sophisticated aiming tech and night vision. Even at the famed Battle of the Bulge only 700 tanks from both sides were destroyed.

There are similar reasons to be skeptical of Ukrainian claims of 15,000 dead Russians in three weeks. That would be double the number killed on Iwo Jima in five weeks of fighting, or at Gettysburg on both sides in the whole battle. It is about four times the total US losses in Iraq over 17 years. Ukraine also claims to have killed five Russian generals, five more general officers that have been killed in all the wars the United States have fought since WW II. Same for the claims Russia is running out of food, gas, and tires. Same for the social media war; how many divisions does Facebook control?

The theory of sanctions is that they will place such as squeeze on Russian oligarchs Putin will be forced to withdraw from Ukraine. Putin, otherwise portrayed as a dictator who answers to no one, will supposedly listen to these men complain someone seized their yacht and cause Putin to reverse a foreign policy that he otherwise believes benefits Russia in the long run. The US has been piling sanctions on these same oligarchs for decades, with a new, tougher, round each time Putin made his moves against Georgia, Grozny, and Crimea. None of those sanctions compelled a withdrawal and none have stopped Putin from making his subsequent move against Ukraine. Effective, no, but points for creativity: there’s a plan to strip Putin’s “Eva Braun” (you can’t make this up) of her old Olympic medals in hopes she’ll withhold nooky Lysistrata-like until Putin, sorry, withdraws.

Another problem with sanctions is they are nowhere near strong enough to actually hurt. Goofy yacht warfare aside, Biden’s ban on Russian petroproducts accounts for only some one percent of Russia’s output. NATO allies are not able to participate fully without crippling their own economies. But loopholes amid half-measures are only part of the problem. Having grown used to slapping sanctions casually against lesser countries like Cuba and North Korea, Biden has limited understanding of their effects against a globally-connected economy. Such sanctions have the potential to cause grave fallout because unlike say Cuba, Russia can fight back.

Though the goal of sanctions is to punish very specific Russians, known by name, in a position to influence Putin, concern on world markets drove up prices of crude oil, natural gas, wheat, copper, nickel, aluminum, fertilizers, and gold. A grain and metals shortage now looms, even in early days of this spillover effect. While the cost to oligarchs is unknown, the affect on economies the US should be courting, not hurting, is clear. Central Asia’s economies are now caught up in the sanctions shock. These former Soviet states are strongly connected to the Russian economy through trade and outward labor migration. They will be as likely to blame the US as Russia for their problems, converting potential US allies into adversaries. We have also yet to see what counter-moves Russia will make toward the West, to include nationalization of Western capital. Russian fertilizer export restrictions are putting pressure on global food production. Russia could also restrict exports of nickel, palladium, and industrial sapphires, the building blocks for batteries, catalytic converters, and microchips. Unlike supposedly targeted sanctions, these would spank global markets broadly.

Biden is in the process of discovering sanctions are a blunt instrument. It will be a diplomatic challenge he is not likely up to to keep economic fallout from spilling over into political dissention across a Europe already not sure where it stands on “tough” sanctions.

Bad as all that sounds, some of the worst blowback from Biden’s Ukraine policy is happening with China. During the only Cold War years Biden remembers, China was mostly a sideshow and certainly not vying to be the world’s largest economy. Without seemingly understanding the world is no longer bipolar, the West versus the Soviet bloc, Joe Biden actually may do even more harm than he understands right now.

Russia is a big country that has committed only a small portion of its military to Ukraine. It absolutely does not need Chinese help to prosecute the war, as Biden claims. Biden is unnecessarily antagonizing China, who should be more or less neutral in this but instead now is being positioned by Biden as an enemy of the United States and an ally of Russia. China buys oil from Russia but that does not translate into some sort of across-the-board support for Russian foreign policy a la 1975. Biden, by threatening China with sanctions of its own, by likening Ukraine to Taiwan, and by essentially demanding of Beijing that they are with us or against us threatens to turn China just the wrong way. Economic spillover from Russia is one thing; disturbing one of the world’s largest trading relationships is another.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, China’s basic approach of not endorsing Moscow’s aggression but resisting Western efforts to punish Russia has garnered global support. The South African president blames the war on NATO. Brazil’s president refused to condemn Russia. India and Vietnam, essential partners for any China strategy, are closer to China than the US in their approach to the war. Biden seems oblivious to the opportunities this gap creates for China.

In my own years as a diplomat I heard often from smaller countries’ representatives about the “America Tax,” the idea America’s foreign policy dalliances end up costing everyone something. Whether it is a small military contribution to the Iraq War effort, or a disruption in shipping, nobody gets away free when America is on a crusade. This cost is built in to those smaller nations’ foreign policy. But when the Big Dog starts in on sanctions which will impact globally against a target like Russia, the calculus changes from a knowing sigh (“The Americans are at it again…”) to real fear. Many nations the US needs as part of its alliances don’t trust its ability to manage economic consequences to protect them, even if America is even aware of those consequences. US moves against Russia’s central bank become a weapon they fear could one day be directed against them as America seeks to weaponize the global economic system. Russia can weather a nasty storm; a smaller economy cannot. Chinese propaganda about the need for alternative economic arrangements that limit Western power are significantly more influential now than a month ago.

So in the end were left with the question of what fundamental US interest is being served by Biden‘s intervention in Ukraine at what cost. There’s always the sort of silliness that fuels Washington, things like “send a message” or “stand up for what’s right,” ambiguous goals that tend to get people killed without accomplishing anything — strategic hubris. Biden has fallen deep into the Cold War trap, and cannot accept there is little that can be done, and back away from the Ukraine to spare further bloodshed. Every world problem is not America’s to resolve and every world problem cannot be resolved by America.

wemeantwell.com

“The era of liberal globalization is over. Before our eyes, a new world economic order is being formed”

Wow! How rapidly the wheel of fortune turns. It seems like only yesterday that a French Finance minister was touting the imminent the collapse of the Russian economy, and President Biden celebrated the Rouble being “reduced to rubble” – the collective West having seized foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of Russia; threatened to seize any Russian gold it could lay its hands on; as well as imposing unprecedented sanctions on Russian individuals, companies and institutions. Total fin-war!

Well, it didn’t work out that way. It scared the bejesus out of Central Bankers around the world that their reserves might be up for seizing too if they strayed from ‘the line’. Nonetheless, Team Biden’s hubristic decision to try again to collapse of the Russian economy (first ‘go’ was 2014) may yet come to be viewed as a major geo-political inflection point.

Its’ salience in geo-political terms may even ultimately equate to Nixon’s closing of the U.S. ‘gold window’ in 1971 – albeit, this time, with events pointing completely in the converse direction.

The consequences to Nixon’s abandonment of gold were nuclear. The petrodollar based trading system that was birthed from it allowed America to ‘nuke’ the world with sanctions and secondary sanctions – giving the U.S. its unipolar financial hegemony (after U.S. militarism alone, as the global order’s main support pillar, became discredited in the wake of the 2006 Gulf War).

Now, barely a month on, we see articles in the financial press that it is the Western financial system and world reserve currency that is in open decline, and not Russia’s economic system.

So what is going on?

The post-1971 system quickly evolved from being underpinned by a commodity – crude oil – to a fiat currency which is a “promise” to repay a debt obligation, and nothing more. A hard asset-backed currency is a guarantee that repayment will occur. By contrast, a one dollar of reserve capital is backed by nothing tangible – just the “full faith and credit” of the issuing entity.

What happened is that the fiat system began its demise when the Russo-phobic Washington ‘hawks’ stupidly picked a fight with the one country – Russia – that has the commodities needed to run the world, and to trigger the shift to a different monetary system – to a system that is anchored in something other than fiat money.

Well, the first ‘strike’ on the system – the sequellae to western financial war on Russia – simply was mayhem in commodity markets as prices soared astronomically. Russia is a global commodity super supplier, and it was being ring-fenced by sanctions.

Then early in March, Zoltan Pozsar, who formerly worked at the NY Fed, and was formerly an advisor at the U.S. Treasury and currently a strategist at Credit Suisse, published a research report in which he made the case that the world is heading to a monetary system in which currencies are backed by commodities, as opposed to being backed solely by a sovereign issuer’s “full faith and credit.”

As one of Wall Street’s most respected voices, Pozsar argued that this present monetary system worked so long as commodity prices oscillated predictably within a narrow band – i.e. not under extreme stress (precisely because commodities are collateral for other debt instruments). However, when the entire commodity complex is under stress – as it is now – the berserk commodity prices drive a wider ‘no-confidence’ vote in the system. And that is what we are witnessing now.

In short, the financial war on Russia gave the West an unmistakable lesson from Moscow that the hardest currencies are not USD or EUR, but rather oil, gas, wheat, and gold. Yes, energy, food and strategic resources are currencies.

Then arrived the second strike on the system: On 28 March, Russia announced that it was putting a floor under the price of gold. Its Central Bank would buy gold at a fixed price of 5,000 roubles per gramme – until at least 30 June (the 2^nd quarter end).

A price of RUB 100: 1 dollar imputes a gold price of $1550 per ounce, and a RUB/USD rate of around 75, but today a rouble exchanges at approximately RUB 84:1 dollar – (i.e. more roubles than just 75 are required to buy one dollar). Tom Luongo has noted however, that with the Central Bank buying gold at a fixed rate, this commitment gives an arbitrage incentive to Russians to hold savings in roubles, because the rouble is being ‘fixed’ at an undervalued rate relative to an over-valued open gold price (at approximately $1,936 per ounce, at time of writing).

In short, Russia’s Central Bank commitment sets in motion a dynamic to bring the Rouble back into balance with the current dollar price of gold on the open market. And ‘hey presto’, contrary to the European-U.S. effort to crash the exchange value of the rouble and cause a crisis, the rouble is already back at its pre-war level – and it is the dollar which has crashed (vs. the rouble).

But note this: Should the value of the rouble rise further vs the dollar, (say from 100 to 96:1) – as a result of Russia’s commodity trade strength – then the imputed price of gold becomes $1610 per oz. Or, in other words the value of gold rises.

But there is another wrinkle to this: Europeans are loudly protesting that Putin has insisted that ‘unfriendly states’ pay for their gas imports in Roubles (rather than dollars or euros) from 31 March, but Putin added the rider that the Europeans alternatively could pay in gold. (And other states have a further option to pay in Bitcoin.)

And here is the point: If fewer than 75 roubles equate to one dollar, buyers are getting oil at a discount when paying in gold. Maybe the big European energy majors will not be interested, but Asian traders will be keen to arbitrage and profit from the implied price differentials. And that, in itself, is likely to force the physical gold markets into a supply shortage situation, which again will feed through into further increasing the price of physical gold.

One less evident component therefore to European cries of pain (‘We won’t pay in roubles’), is that Central Bankers try to keep gold trading in a tight pattern (through manipulating the paper gold market as so not to rock the foundation of the global financial system).

But what the Russian Central Bank has just done is to wrest the gold ‘price-maker’ role away from the West, and its price manipulation. Between them, Russia and China can therefore effectively control the gold and oil price. Luongo concludes: ‘They are about to change the denominator in the global foreign exchange markets from the USD to gold/oil (commodity currency)’.

“Putin let the world down easy with this announcement. He could have walked right in and said 8000 roubles to the gram or $2575/oz and that would have broken the markets Friday going into the weekend, by selling his oil and gas at a steep discount” – thus forcing a rise in the gold price.

Neat, hey?

Ok, ok: bring on the chorus with usual tropes: Oh no; not another ‘de-dollarisation narrative! TINA – “There is no alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency”.

Fine. We all know that all gold at current valuation is far too small in total value to underpin a fully gold-backed trading currency or global trade. And, by the way, this is not about ending the dollar as an instrument of trade. No, it is about signalling a new direction of travel.

Pozsar’s argument is more subtle: A crisis is unfolding. A crisis of commodities. Commodities are collateral, and collateral is money, and this crisis is about the rising allure of ‘commodity-linked currency’ over fiat money. In periods of banking crises, banks are reluctant to play the inside game because they don’t trust fiat currency as a real collateral. They then refuse to lend money to their banking peers. Every time this occurs, the Central Banks have to print more money to “lubricate” the system enough so that it functions. This in turn, further devalues the fiat money, on which the system is predicated.

But if currency issued by Governments and printed by Central Banks is backed by hard assets, this problem is avoided. In this system, the counter-party to trade or financing transactions would have the option of demanding payment in the hard asset or assets backing the currency – most likely gold or possibly a pre-agreed upon commodity asset. Recall, fiat currency is nothing more than an unsecured debt instrument of the issuing entity – one which we have seen can be ‘cancelled’ at whim by the issuer – the U.S. Treasury.

This makes the ‘pay in roubles’ scheme more understandable too: Any workable “pay in roubles” scheme will have gas buyers going to Russian banks to sell dollars or euros or sterling to the bank, to have it buy roubles to tender to Gazprom. This will have the effect both of increasing the value of the rouble as a means of trade but may mitigate exposure to further financial sanctions by making Russian institutions the locus for payment operations.

As for the ‘direction of travel’? “After the current history of confiscation of dollar reserves”, Sergei Glazyev – supervising Eurasian Economic Commission’s planning for the monetary future – has said  bluntly: “I don’t think any country will want to use another country’s currency as a reserve currency. So, we need some new tool”. “We (the EEC) are currently working on a such a tool, which can first become a weighted average component of these national currencies”, he said. “Well, to this we must add, from my point of view, exchange-traded commodities: not only gold, but also oil, metal, grain, and water: A sort of commodity bundle – with a payment system based on modern digital blockchain technologies”.

“In other words, the era of liberal globalization is over. Before our eyes, a new world economic order is being formed — an integral one, in which some states and private banks lose their private monopoly on the issue of money”.

The United States reportedly boosted its import of Russian oil last month, according to official figures from the Energy Information Administration. The extra imported volume accounted for a 43 percent increase.

This is in spite of an executive order by U.S. President Joe Biden on March 8 to ban all energy and hydrocarbon commodities from Russia. That draconian measure was declared in response to Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine that was launched on February 24.

Admittedly, the United States does not rely heavily on Russia for its crude oil supply. Russia is not in the top five suppliers to the U.S., according to the EIA. Nevertheless, the apparent ramping up of U.S. purchase of Russian oil strikes a bizarre chord.

It comes as Washington is demanding European allies to cut energy trade with Russia. And it’s not just the Europeans that are being ordered to do so. India and other Asian countries are also harangued by the Americans to likewise reduce imports of Russian gas, oil and petroleum products.

Given today’s date, one could be forgiven for thinking this is some kind of April Fools joke. It’s not. But it is a laughable illustration of how reckless and ridiculous American hubris has become.

Washington wants its so-called allies to commit economic suicide by cutting off vital energy trade with Russia all in a bid to satisfy its de facto Cold War agenda of trying to isolate Moscow and draw all countries under U.S. hegemony. The same geopolitical agenda applies to China, although that has taken somewhat of a backseat given the immediate tensions with Russia.

The U.S. may not have large dependence on Russian oil and gas, but many other countries do. Russia is among the largest global suppliers of gas, oil and petroleum products. Washington’s attitude is one of demanding others to cut their noses off to spite their face, or put another way, to shoot themselves in the foot. Meanwhile, the American rulers think they can insulate themselves from harm. Although this week, in a sign of how futile this all is, Biden ordered the biggest release of U.S. strategic oil reserves in order to dial down crazy American pump prices.

It is astounding the level of arrogance among American politicians. If so-called allies conform to Washington’s dictates, it would result in immediate devastation of their economies. In the not-so-long run, too, the American economy will also be ruinously impacted from global supply chains.

The global energy crisis and general economic inflation (or poverty in plainer language) has become the central political problem across the world. The Covid-19 pandemic is part of the precipitating cause to accelerate the demise of U.S.-led global capitalism. The tensions between the West and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine have further amplified the problem. The war in Ukraine could have been avoided if the United States and its NATO allies had engaged respectfully with Moscow to resolve its oft-repeated security concerns. But the Western powers repudiated Russia’s proposals and appeals for genuine diplomacy.

There are tentative signs that several rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia – the latest round hosted by Turkey this week – might be making progress. The Ukrainian side has reportedly accepted Russia’s demands for neutrality from NATO and recognition of Moscow’s historic claim to Crimea as well as the independence of the Russian-speaking Donbass republics. That outcome is similar to what Russia had been demanding in the months before the tensions boiled over into war. The unnecessary suffering is a tragedy that could have been averted if the U.S. and NATO had any reasonable attitude.

It remains to be seen, however, if Washington will cast a veto over the talks making progress since it is supporting the Kiev regime with weapons and financial loans. One suspects peace is not what the United States wants ultimately. It wants, indeed needs, permanent conflict and tensions because that in essence is the way it maintains U.S. global hegemony.

To everyone else though, it should be clear that a political settlement in Ukraine and more generally between the West and Russia is urgently required for peace and long-term security.

It is counterproductive that Washington and its European allies are insisting on harsher sanctions against Russia instead of addressing the root causes of NATO expansionism and U.S.-led transatlantic dominance. This is only leading to a downward spiral in the global economy on a historic scale that will impact every nation, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, to price shocks.

American hubris and European servility seem to know no bounds. The Western nations froze Russia’s foreign assets amounting to $300 billion. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin has decreed that all future gas purchases must be made in rubles instead of dollars or euros. Failure to meet Russia’s demands will result in gas exports being cut off. The reciprocal move by Moscow is justified. If the Western powers feel entitled to unilaterally change the terms of trade then why shouldn’t Russia?

It is incredible that some European governments seem willing to toe the American line even when that line is leading them over the abyss. The economic repercussions of this masochistic policy are unleashing social mayhem as citizens in Europe and the U.S. bear the brunt of excruciating living costs. The Biden administration and his Democratic Party are facing an electoral backlash in the forthcoming mid-term elections this autumn.

But the sense is that the political repercussions are much bigger than election backlash. The U.S. policy of confrontation with Russia and China and others is re-creating a Cold War global order that is completely untenable and is rapidly breaking down. European lackey governments are going along with this self-defeating ideology out of cowardice or failure of understanding. Even though the upshot is the ruination of their economies and societies.

The United States through its pursuit of hegemony is cratering the foundations of its own power. European allies following this insanity are causing their own demise from economic devastation. The political elites in the West are fomenting social chaos in their own nations.

Russia’s move to price its gas and other commodities in rubles is a tangible step away from the era of reserve currencies of the dollar and euro. China, India and other nations are beginning to embrace a world without Western financial diktat. A new global multipolar order is emerging in which Western powers are no longer tolerated as privileged.

The contradictions that stem from American and European arrogance have finally hit breaking point. Their attitude of, “Do as we say, not as we do”, is the damnedest April Fool joke today.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

As Ukraine enters the second month of standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s so-called “special military operations,” Kiev’s Western friends continue to escalate their anti-Russian rhetoric, but with little impact. It is anyone’s guess how long Ukraine will be able to sustain itself in this manner.

So far, other than their fitful, late and limited military supplies, Ukraine’s Western friends have shown indulgences only in their repeated standing ovations to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s online speeches followed by one more bout of escalating frenzy about economic sanctions.

What explains the inability of the US and its Western allies to stand up to Putin’s military adventures one after another starting from Moldova, to Georgia, and Crimea to now? What does it mean to US global leadership, to its equations with its newfound friends like India and to its standing up to China in the Indo-Pacific region?

The reality is that the West has stood firm only in its refusal to give in to Zelensky’s requests to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, supply him with more potent defense equipment, or immediately stop purchasing of Russian oil and gas, let alone granting Ukraine membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or even the European Union, to which he has formally applied.

Doing any such thing, they say, would entail directly engaging Putin and facing prospects of a nuclear confrontation and World War III.

The reality is that even on its main weapon of economic sanctions, the West remains a divided house, with the European Union pushing complete cessation of Russian energy imports to the end of the year, hoping that the Ukraine crisis will be over by that time.

Indeed, in the first four weeks of the crisis, Europe paid US$18.7 billion for Russian gas and oil, thereby continuing as the world’s second-largest importer of Russia energy.

In fact, other than China as the largest buyer of Russia oil, the next five largest buyers – the Netherlands, Denmark, South Korea, Poland and Italy – are all close US allies. More than 40% of German gas is imported from Russia.

Upping the ante on India

It is against this backdrop that India’s decision this week to buy 3 million barrels of Russian oil seems to have tipped the balance for the US and its allies to attempt to tame India’s “divergent” behavior.

This has triggered a flurry of visits, starting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, plus online conversations between the prime ministers of Australia and the United Kingdom and India’s prime minister, among others.

Having barely managed to ban its own oil imports from Russia and get its European allies to agree gradually to reduce and ban Russian imports by end of this year, the US feels threatened by the possibility of India becoming another large-scale buyer of Russian gas and oil.

After all, India is the world’s second-largest oil importer, and its oil imports account for more than 85% of its total oil consumption. Especially in the face of rising oil prices and its pandemic-hit economy, India is bound to be attracted by deep discounts on Russian oil, gas and other commodities.

Indeed, in the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, India’s repeated abstentions from UN resolutions had led the US to initiate private conversations to convey to New Delhi how its “stance of neutrality” placed it “in Russia’s camp,” which it saw as “the aggressor in this conflict.”

But Moscow has had similar expectations of India standing by its side. Staying non-aligned and steering clear from military alliances has been the central axis of India’s foreign policy, and New Delhi understands the costs of taking sides.

But India standing its ground against Western prodding has made European and North American governments increasingly impatient.

On Monday, for instance, US President Joe Biden publicly called out India’s stand as “somewhat shaky,” while State Department spokesman Ned Price went a step further, alluding to America’s inability to fathom India’s argument of its time-tested defense ties with Moscow when “the times have changed. They have changed in terms of our willingness and ability to be a strong defense and security partner of India.”

She also described the Ukraine crisis as a “major infection point in the autocratic-democratic struggle” and how the US and its European allies could help India overcome its dependence on Russian defense supplies.

Western experts repeatedly allude to the annualized value of India-US trade being $150 billion compared with $8 billion between India and Russia. But that again does not seem enough. Successive US leaders have repeatedly made it clear that they would like to replace Russia as India’s main defense supplier.

India’s proactive neutrality

Without doubt, the Ukraine crisis has impacted India in multiple ways beyond this increasing cost of Western displeasure. Indeed, neither Moscow nor Washington had anticipated India standing firm on its stance of proactive neutrality as shown by its abstentions from all UN resolutions on Ukraine, including this Wednesday’s resolution by Russia.

New Delhi’s expressed first priority was safely bring home home more than 22,500 Indian citizens, which it has done, along with 147 foreign nationals of 18 other countries. The next step for India is to explore a possible role in bringing an early cessation of the violence in Ukraine by urging talks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken with Putin three times and to Zelensky twice and suggested that “a direct conversation between President Putin and President Zelensky may greatly assist in ongoing peace efforts.”

Showcasing its proactive neutrality, India has also already provided 90 metric tons of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.

India has of course refrained from publicly condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine. This is attributed to India’s long-standing defense and strategic ties with Moscow.

Addressing the upper house of India’s Parliament on Thursday, Jaishankar explained what drives this proactive neutral posture of India.

He outlined this in terms of six principles: India’s call for the cessation of violence and hostilities, a return to diplomacy and dialogue, recognition that global order is anchored on international law and respect for territorial integrality and sovereignty of all states, a call for humanitarian access to conflict situations, India providing humanitarian assistance, and finally India being in touch with the leaderships of both Russia and Ukraine as well as with all other stakeholders.

He also responded to a question from a member of Parliament on Biden’s comment on India’s stand on Ukraine as being “somewhat shaky” and maintained that India’s stand in this matter has been “steadfast and consistent” and that it knows how to respond to changing geopolitical dynamics.

The China factor

Remember, India is not the only country exploring deeply discounted Russia oil in the middle of the Ukraine crisis. As noted above, China is the largest buyer of Russia oil, followed by European and Asian allies of the US that have also continued to buy Russian gas and oil.

In fact, unlike India’s state-run oil refineries following an open process of calling for tenders, Chinese companies have been discreetly purchasing cheap Russian oil and keeping their negations confidential.

China being the real and more enduring challenge for Western nations perhaps contributes to their expectations from and overreactions to India’s neutral posture on Ukraine, one that appears nearly identical to China’s posture.

Russia waving the nuclear threat to keep the US engaged in the European theater and Russia becoming all the more dependent on China (and India), leaving the Indo-Pacific region vulnerable to China’s adventures, explains the US upping the ante on India.

Or worse, it is the imagined Russia-China-India triangular partnership synergizing in the midst of the Ukraine crisis that explains Western paranoia about India’s neutrality on Ukraine crisis.

This Western skepticism of course gets especially reinforced by how, in the midst of India-China border tensions and the Ukraine crisis, Chinese Foreign minister Wang Yi visits New Delhi and the Chinese media begin, out of blue, to criticize US “hypocrisy” on India’s “refusal to follow the US lead in condemning and sanctioning Russia.”

asiatimes.com

By Joe LAURIA

The United States is setting up China as a second target of its intense economic war against Russia in what could have cataclysmic effects on the world economy, including the West.

The U.S. could not impose the most stringent sanctions on Moscow without the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now the U.S. is trying to link China to the war.

Washington’s move to frame Beijing emerged Monday when unnamed U.S. officials told its allies that Russia had asked China for military aid in Ukraine. Reuters reported: “The message, sent in a diplomatic cable and delivered in person by intelligence officials, also said China was expected to deny those plans, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.”  China indeed denied it.

Importantly, Reuters added: “The U.S. government offered no public evidence to back its assertions of China’s willingness to provide such aid to Russia.”

On that same day Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, led a delegation to Rome to meet with Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese politburo. After the meeting, an unnamed senior U.S. official in Rome told reporters: “We have deep concerns about China’s alignment with Russia at this time, and the national security adviser was direct about those concerns and the potential implications and consequences of certain actions.”

The next day NATO Secretary-General Jen Stoltenberg remarked:

“China should join the rest of the world condemning strongly the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. So China has an obligation as a member of the U.N. Security Council to actually support and uphold international law. And the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law so we call on [China] to clearly condemn the invasion and of course not support Russia. And we are closely monitoring any signs of support from China to Russia.”

The English-language, government-owned, Chinese newspaper Global Times accused Stoltenberg of trying to accuse China of being an “accomplice” with Russia in Ukraine and dismissed NATO as a “puppet” of the United States.

After these statements it seemed clear the U.S. was trying to lay the groundwork for a truly reckless idea: to tie China to the war so it could sanction it perhaps along the lines of what the West has already laid on Russia.

Then on Thursday U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spelled it out: “We believe China in particular has a responsibility to use its influence with President Putin and to defend the international rules and principles that it professes to support. Instead, it appears that China is moving in the opposite direction by refusing to condemn this aggression, while seeking to portray itself as a neutral arbiter.” He added: “We will not hesitate to impose costs.”

In retrospect, evidence that the U.S. is trying to open a second front in its economic war first surfaced just before Russia intervened in Ukraine’s civil war, when Blinken implored China to stop Russia from invading. It was portrayed in Western media as a desperate last chance at peace from a concerned United States.

Of course China rebuffed Blinken. It seemed like a ridiculous gambit at the time. But in hindsight it may well have been the first U.S. step in constructing a case for sanctions against China. It allows Washington to say China was given every opportunity to try to stop the invasion and failed to do so and therefore was somehow complicit.

Biden Threatens Xi

President Xi during his summit with Biden on Friday. (Chinese FM)

All this was preparation for President Joe Biden’s video-call on Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which Biden warned Chinese President Xi Jinping not to help Russia’s war effort in Ukraine or there would be “consequences” to pay.

Biden “detailed the implications and consequences” if Beijing were to give “material support to Russia” in the war, the White House said in a readout. While the White House didn’t spell out what those consequences would be, it said Biden went into detail about the severe sanctions the U.S. had imposed on Russia, including on its central bank and a number of imports, including oil. In other words, he read China the riot act. Biden was in essence threatening Xi with similar sanctions if China helped Russia.

Xi, however, warned Biden that the U.S. sanctions on Russia could trigger a worldwide economic crisis, apparently implying that the crisis would be far worse if the sanctions were extended to China.  Commodities prices, especially in energy and food, have already soared.

China is the world’s second largest economy and its biggest exporter. The U.S. imported $506 billion in Chinese goods in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Department, an amount that would be extremely difficult for the US to replace. China also owns $1.05 trillion in Treasury securities, the second most after Japan. It could not be easily cut off from the Western financial system as Russia has been.

Before the summit on Friday, Global Times wrote in an editorial: “The close relationship between China and Russia has been a thorn in the US’ side, especially against the backdrop of the ongoing Ukraine crisis. With the simmering of the situation, it couldn’t be any clearer that Washington is eager to exploit the Russia-Ukraine conflict to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow.”

The U.S. recognizes that its economic war against Russia could well fail because of the close and expanding economic and financial ties between Moscow and Beijing. But it is too late for the United States.

Since the invasion, China is buying more oil and other commodities from Russia, Beijing has allowed Russia to use its Union Pay banking system, replaced Russia’s use of SWIFT with China’s Interbank System (CIPS), and China and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), which Russia is a part of, are designing a new monetary and financial system that would bypass the U.S. dollar, threatening it as the world’s reserve currency.

Can you help me fight your friend so that I can concentrate on fighting you later?

— CGTN LIU Xin ?? (@LiuXininBeijing) March 19, 2022

The Global Times added:  “It’s the US that should put out the fire it lit in Ukraine. Ridiculously, it is demanding Beijing to do this job at the cost of damaging China-Russia relations. This is unreasonable and insidious.”

Russia has committed only a fraction of its military capacity to Ukraine. Other than replacing ordnance, it’s not clear what military aid Russia would need from China.

Substitute War and Economic Catastrophe

The U.S. already has sanctions on China, as it had earlier on Russia. However, if the United States is seriously planning similar types of sanctions on Beijing that it has leveled on Moscow — against its major banks, against the central bank, removing it from SWIFT and cutting off key exports — the impact on the world economy — including on Europe and the United States — could be catastrophic.

The U.S. national security strategy for several years has been aimed at both Russia and China. Knowing it must avoid a direct military confrontation against either, given the potential consequences, the U.S. is turning to economic warfare to ultimately attempt to bring down both governments through popular uprisings. Washington wants to replace them with Western-friendly leaders who would open up their economies to Western exploitation — just like Boris Yeltsin did in the 1990s.

The United States is acting as though the whole world is the West and that this is the China of 30 years ago. In its bull-headed effort to impose its unilateral rule on the world, while its domestic social problems mount, the U.S. has not only driven Russia and China closer together than ever, but it has now brought in India, much of Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, (all of whom have refused to sanction Russia and continues to trade with it), into a new bloc with economic power that exceeds the West.

The U.S. has turned the majority of the world’s population against it. And it is now threatening to blow up the world economy. Cutting off trade and finance to Russia has already boomeranged on Western countries, driving up prices, especially at the pump. Instead of prompting a popular uprising in Russia as a result of its sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity has actually risen since the invasion.

Adding China as a target of its economic war could drive the populations of the U.S. and Europe against their own governments instead.

consortiumnews.com

By As`ad ABUKHALIL

It is premature to determine the exact shape of the world in the wake of the Russian military intervention in the Ukraine. At the risk of repeating dreaded cliches, it is clear that the world order has been irrevocably altered. The post-cold war era is over, forever.

The U.S. established global supremacy after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and ensured that NATO would form a security siege around Russia to keep it weak and vulnerable — and to maintain American hegemony throughout the continent. Never has America been challenged in such a direct and focused way as by Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

The old rules that the U.S. imposed — by force — will be no more. While China has been cautious in expressing support for Russia in its official pronouncements, its media have been clear in refuting U.S. propaganda claims. The reverberations of the cataclysmic event will be felt for years to come and will affect regional and international conflicts.

The impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war will also be felt in the Middle East, which has a long history of involvement in the Soviet and Russian-U.S. rivalry.

Despite U.S. pressure, no Arab states are participating in the economic war on Russia by imposing sanctions, joining most of Latin America and Africa, as well as Iran, India, Pakistan and China. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have resisted U.S. pressure to pump more oil to make up for the U.S. ban on Russian oil imports.

Most significantly, Riyadh is in talks with China to trade some of its oil in yuan, which would deal a blow to the U.S. dollar that is used in 80 percent of world oil sales. Until now, the Saudis have exclusively used the dollar.

Moscow is trying to defeat the West’s ferocious economic assault on Russia by creating a separate economic and financial system with China. Arab nations could play an important part in it, effectively turning their backs on the U.S. (In a sign of the Gulf’s coolness to Washington, The Wall Street Journal, for instance, reported that Emirati and Saudi leaders have refused to take Biden’s phone calls.)

Background to Geopolitical Shift

U.N. Security Council approving no fly zone in Libya, March 2011. (C-Span screenshot)

The shape of international relations was shaken in 2011 with the passage of U.N. Security Council resolution 1973, which was limited to setting up a no-fly zone to protect civilians in Libya supposedly in danger of a massacre at the hands of Libyan leader Moamar Qadhafi. (A British parliamentary report later found there were no such threats and was based on inaccurate intelligence and “erroneous assumptions.”)

The resolution did not permit ground forces to enter Libya. The language was clear. It said the Security Council:

“Decides to establish a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians. [and] AuthorizesMember States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory. ”

Despite these limitations, the U.S. and NATO took the resolution to mean a license for NATO to overthrow a government that the U.S. had long complained about. It didn’t matter that the Libyan dictatorial regime was cooperating with the U.S. in the years leading up to its overthrow. Then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had even met the chief of Libya’s secret police, who happened to to be the ruler’s son.

Russia, ruled at the time by President Dmitry Medvedev, abstained on the resolution, as had China. Both countries had evidently believed the mission would be restricted to the non-fly zone. Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, was reportedly furious with Medvedev over the abstention.

After it became clear NATO was violating the resolution by overthrowing Qadhafi, China and Russia, both veto holders, were determined to change the course of the Security Council to prevent the U.S. from again using it as cover for military interventions and regime change. The U.S. started to lose its undisputed global supremacy at that point.

Moscow and Beijing were both building up their military capabilities and were becoming more assertive on the international stage. Fearful of changes in the global configuration of power, the Biden administration incorporated strong language into its National Security Strategy (issued by successive administrations) to make clear U.S. rejection of any competition from Russia and China. (Biden’s strategy complained about Chinese assertiveness. (How dare any country but the U.S. be assertive in the world?) It is one thing for the U.S. to insist on global supremacy and another to guarantee it without a cost in blood and money.

Russia, in fact showed its assertiveness four years after the Libya resolution when Russia intervened to support the Syrian regime.  Putin at the General Assembly asked the U.S. to join Moscow in the fight, an offer the U.S. rejected.

Middle East Reverberations

Dubai: A safe haven for Russian billionaires? (Robert Bock/Wikimedia Commons)

In the Middle East, the effects of the new global conflict have already reverberated within U.S. client regimes, many of whom also have good relations with Russia. The United Arab Emirates is one of those U.S. clients. Washington supplies it with advanced military technology, (despite its abysmal human rights record). In return, the UAE works with the U.S., recently establishing a strong alliance with Israel. The U.S. rewarded the UAE with the sale of advanced fighter jets.

And yet the UAE abstained on a March 3 Security Council resolution condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine that was vetoed by Russia, while it voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution saying the same thing. Now the UAE, and especially Dubai, is being seen as a refuge for Russian billionaires who have been heavily sanctioned by the West.

Gulf countries like the UAE are caught between their complete loyalty to the U.S. and their increasing closeness to the Russian government, especially as they lament what they regard as American retrenchment from the Middle East. Many Gulf despots are still unhappy that the U.S. let Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Zein Abidin Bin Ali on Tunisia fall during the 2011 Arab uprisings.

Only Qatar among the Gulf countries took a strong stance in support of Ukraine, but has not joined the economic war against Russia. Qatar’s emir was recently welcomed in the Oval Office and the country was awarded the status of “major non-NATO ally.” Furthermore, the U.S. wants Qatar to fill the gap of Europe’s gas needs in the wake of sanctions on Russian gas sales (it is curious that the White House worked with Qatar on that before the first Russian soldier moved towards Ukraine.)

US Consensus Fractured

Chinese and Russian presidents meeting in Beijing, 2019. (Chinese MFA)

The U.S. will no longer achieve a consensus in the world according to its own interests. While China is neither prepared, nor willing, to challenge U.S. foreign policy head-on for now, its cooperation and treaties with U.S. foes (Iran chiefly) is an indication that China is planning to operate in a world not subject to U.S. dictates.

Chinese government statements during the crisis have been cautious, but social media in China and Chinese diplomats’ pronouncements via social media have been squarely sympathetic to the Russian stance. China has increased economic ties with Russia to soften the blow of the sanctions, including allowing Russia to use its UnionPay system to replace Western credit cards.

Russia’s ejection from the SWIFT international banking system has seen Russia rely on it own System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) and that may be linked to China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). Russia has begun making payments to China in renminbi, weakening the dollar as the world’s premier currency. The blowback effects on the West of its economic war is leading to separate economic and financial systems that is fracturing U.S. global dominance.

Gulf regimes, and other developing countries, will adjust to a new world where the power configuration is changing. It is no longer the world the U.S. shaped after the Cold War.

Russia doesn’t have America’s power or influence. But Russia is an influential regional actor; its role in Syria in support of the Syrian regime showed its ability to shore up a weak regime and to operate free of U.S. plots to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Gulf governments are already planning for a world in which the U.S. is less militarily assertive than before. Toward that end, the UAE established its strong alliance with Israel.

Impact on Arab-Israeli Conflict

Gulf regimes aren’t favored in Washington quite the same way Israel is. Israel followed the U.S., expressing support for Ukraine. It can’t afford to antagonize the Biden administration in the wake of the damage to its image during the Obama-Netanyahu era.

The Russian-Ukrainian crisis will undermine U.S. and E.U. rhetoric on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It won’t be easy to sell the so-called peace-process after the West adamantly refusing to support diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine, while the U.S. preaches strict pacifism for Arabs in the face of decades of Israeli occupation and aggression.

After the first two days of conflict, some 30 countries sent advanced missiles and arms to Ukraine and championed the right of resistance. Palestinians, on the other hand, are denied even the right to peaceful resistance. The U.S. and Europe have gone so far as to ban BDS (boycott, sanctions, and divestment in Israel) while wielding sanctions around the world. How can Palestinians ever take seriously Western insistence that their struggle against occupation should never resort to violent means?

The world we live in is changing, and the Russian intervention in Ukraine will not be confined to Ukraine, or even to Europe. The U.S. is learning that the world is slipping from its hands. It won’t tolerate it.

It will resort to force in its attempt to maintain its grip over humanity. Violent conflicts are very likely to now dominate our world.

consortiumnews.com

(Click on the image to enlarge)

 “No, there is a limit to the tyrant’s power! When the oppressed man finds no justice, When the burden grows unbearable, he appeals with fearless heart to heaven, and thence brings down his everlasting rights, which there abide, inalienably his, and indestructible as stars themselves. The primal state of nature reappears, wherein man confronts his fellow man; and if all other means shall fail his need, one last resort remains—his own good sword. The dearest of our goods we may defend, From violence. We stand before our country, We stand before our wives, before our children!

We want to be a single band of brothers, Never to part in danger or distress. We want to be free, as our fathers were, And rather die than live in slavery. We want to trust in the one highest God, And never be afraid of human power.”

“The Rütli Oath”, Friedrich Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell”

On March 1^st, Valery Gergiev was dropped by his manager and fired from his position as Chief Director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra by Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter, for not denouncing Russia over its military intervention into Ukraine. Gergiev’s former manager Marcus Felsner stated to The Guardian that the Russian conductor is “the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency,” but he was unable to “publicly end his long-expressed support for a regime that has come to commit such crimes.”

The question is, who is the biggest loser in all of this? That is, who will suffer the greatest loss culturally from the voluntary dismissal of “the greatest conductor alive”?

No decent human being longs for war. War has historically been recognized as the weapon, the tool of the tyrant. To threaten force upon a people, a civilization and risk its destruction, only to usurp a temporary and precarious throne is rightfully seen as the ambitions of a mad man.

The question is, to whose mad ambitions and designs of war are we, as a global populace, held hostage? That is, who is the tyrant? And who are the upholders of liberty, who have a right to “defend from violence” by their “own good sword”?

Many of you may be wondering what is the “Rütli Oath” and who is Friedrich Schiller?

Well, that is exactly the point. If you do not know, you have been robbed of something and it was done consciously so that you should not know, or remember such things. A citizenry that wishes to be free and would “rather die than live in slavery” and “never be afraid of human power” is certainly not acceptable storytelling for children, let alone adults, in a world where we do not have a right to choose what the future holds.

Schiller is in many ways, the forgotten Shakespeare of Germany.

Today, we can still hear the name of Goethe mentioned frequently, but rarely do we hear the name of his dear friend, collaborator and in many ways mentor, Friedrich Schiller.

The Goethe and Schiller Monument in front of the National Theater in Weimar (1857)

Goethe and Schiller were recognised in the 19^th century as the two most revered figures in German literature. Both men had lived in the city of Weimar located in central Germany and were the seminal figures of the literary movement known as Weimar Classicism.

Weimar Classicism, contrary to what Wikipedia would have you believe, was never a new humanism which emerged from the ideas of Romanticism.

In fact, it was the mythologies of the Romantic movement that launched a form of cultural warfare against the German classics. From Nietzsche, to Wagner, the “Romantic” protest movement of the Jugendbewegung [German Youth Movement], to the Romantic cultural pessimism and existentialism of the post-WWI period known as the “Lost Generation,” all of these waves of “thought” were essentially a part of the same uninterrupted tradition that ran counter to German classicism, since it was Germany who had become a leader in creating geniuses of the Classics.

All of these so-called “Romantic” movements promoted forms of “heroic nihilism” as seen with such individuals as Ernst Jünger, Oswald Spengler, Arthur Moeller van den Brück and others, who helped shape the ideological environment of the Nazis.

The attack on Weimar Classicism began with the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). Many historians in fact recognise that the Congress of Vienna, which was responsible for the inhumane carving up of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, was largely to blame for the political foment that led to WWI a century later.

The Carlsbad decrees were adopted by the German Confederation in 1819 as an offshoot to the vision for Europe as defined by the Congress of Vienna which upheld the rule of empire and monarchy. It established severe limitations on academic and press freedoms and set up a federal commission to investigate all signs of political unrest in the German states. This was in reaction to the wave of republicanism that was sweeping throughout Europe after the success of the American Revolution against Britain’s monarchy. Thus, the organizers of the Congress of Vienna saw this spirit of republicanism as a form of revolutionary sedition which had to be crushed at its cultural root at all costs.

What is Weimar Classicism?

The “Weimar Classical” period, beginning around 1772, was named after the place in which much of the leading thinkers lived at the time, such as Goethe, Schiller, Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, among others [The Humboldt educational reforms became heavily attacked under the Carlsbad decrees and many of the best teachers in Germany ended up migrating to the United States due to heavy censorship].

The Weimar Classical period was defined by a revolutionary spirit for creativity in literature and culture. It was not just about creating anew, but about building upon the richest classical traditions of the past and was very much influenced by Greek Classicism.

Goethe (1749-1832) and Schiller (1759-1805) became the leaders of the literary dimension of this movement. Goethe would be appointed the Director of the Weimar Theater (the National Theater today) in 1791, and it was during this period that Schiller’s epic dramas such as “The Wallenstein Trilogy,” “The Maid of Orleans” (about Joan of Arc), “Maria Stuart” and “Wilhelm Tell” were first performed on the stage.

Schiller, known during his time and beyond as the Poet of Freedom, wrote “Wilhelm Tell” in 1804. It is considered a masterpiece to this day and is especially loved by many in Germany and Switzerland. It is a story of how tyranny and empire were defeated by a people who upheld and defended their dignity and liberty.

The folk story is set in 14^th century Switzerland during the Habsburg rule of the Austrian Empire. According to historical records, referenced in the White Book of Sarnen, written in 1474 as a collection of medieval manuscripts, the Rütli Oath was a conspiracy to overthrow the Habsburg tyranny and is what launched the Burgenbruch rebellion. Among the names mentioned in the medieval manuscript is that of the hero, Wilhelm Tell.

This small grouping of Swiss people from just three cantons (townships) at the time, which grew to 26 cantons, went on to oppose the tyrannical rule of the Austrian Empire and form the Heveltic Confederation. The Rütli Oath was the first declaration of independence for Switzerland.

Germany during the time of Schiller’s writing “Wilhelm Tell,” was not a sovereign nation but rather was ruled between the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Prussia. After the Napoleonic era, the Congress of Vienna founded the German Confederation (as a replacement to the Holy Roman Empire), loosely made up of 39 states. The Emperor of Austria held the permanent “presidency” of this German Confederation until the Seven Weeks’ War between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire in 1866. Prussia won and took over the “inherent right” to rule the German lands.

Thus, the effects of Schiller’s controversial choice of historical setting for his epic drama “Wilhelm Tell” during his life and beyond, should not go unnoticed. Schiller had chosen to stress this period in history, very much like what Shakespeare had done, as a lesson for the people of his time, that no one should subject themselves to the folly and whim of a tyrant. In turn, Schiller defined the spirit that would be required to oppose the bondages of empire and imperial rule. It is for this reason that “Wilhelm Tell” is among the most loved dramas by Schiller.

It is no coincidence that Beethoven (1770-1827) would choose a poem by Schiller, “Ode to Joy” to culminate his own life’s work in his 9^th Symphony.

Beethoven was also for republicanism and his 9^th Symphony is clearly a call for the voice of the people to rejoice in the recognition that all men are brothers and that all humankind was destined to live in harmony and peace. Ode to Joy was originally titled “Ode to Freedom” by Schiller. Alexander Thayer in his biography of Beethoven wrote “the thought lies near that it was the early form of the poem, when it was still an ‘Ode to Freedom’ (not ‘to Joy’), which first aroused enthusiastic admiration for it in Beethoven’s mind.”

This was the spirit that had come under attack by the Carlsbad Decrees and the Romantic movement, as epitomised by Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

It is also no coincidence that Wagner was Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer. You may think this unfair to Wagner, but it is nonetheless very relevant.

Hollywood movies have long projected the idea that a deep appreciation of classical music is connected to Nazis or psychopaths, especially where the music of Johannes Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is concerned.

Besides countless movie scenes of SS officers playing classical music on their gramophones right before doing something heinous, there are also scenes like this one in Schindler’s List where Bach’s Prelude from English Suite no. 2 is played while horrific acts of violence are conducted by Nazis.

We also see this in Hannibal Lecter’s love for Bach’s Goldberg Variations along with scenes of cannibalism, seen in the original and the 2013 tv series remake. And once again in Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange where Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony is played during the “brainwashing scene” with Nazi references and symbolism, and in another scene where the protagonist is having violent visions and fantasies.

Pairing classical music with Nazis and psychopaths is no coincidence. It is part of the ongoing cultural warfare against Weimar Classicism and classicism in general as something akin to totalitarianism. Whereas in fact, it was the very opposite. Totalitarianism viewed Weimar Classicism with its revolutionary bent of liberty for the people as a mortal threat to its existence.

Hitler made it known who were among his favourites, including “Germanic” composers such as Wagner and Anton Bruckner who were both paragons of the Romantic movement. During the Nazi reign, heavy censorship and cultural controls were enforced to uphold what Hitler identified as a strong Germanic identity, heavily influenced by artists from the Romantic movement.

The legendary and extremely gifted German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954), stands out during this period of heavy censorship. He not only refused to become a Nazi adherent, but the Gestapo was aware that he was providing assistance to Jews and giving much of his salary to German emigrants during his concerts outside of Germany. (1) Georg Gerullis, a director at the Ministry of Culture remarked in a letter to Goebbels, “Can you name me a Jew on whose behalf Furtwängler has not intervened?” (2)

Furtwängler was the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922-1945. In 1934, Furtwängler publicly described Hitler as an “enemy of the human race” and the political situation in Germany as a “schweinerei” (meaning literally swinishness). (3)

In 1933, Furtwängler met with Hitler to try to stop the antisemitic policy in the domain of music. Berta Geissmar, a close associate of Furtwängler, wrote “After the audience, he told me that he knew now what was behind Hitler’s narrow-minded measures. This is not only antisemitism, but the rejection of any form of artistic, philosophical thought, the rejection of any form of free culture...” (4)

So many years later, Furtwängler would be a major target for destruction by the new CIA-run cultural witch-hunt known as the Congress for Cultural Freedom (the new Congress of Vienna) founded in 1949 to launch a post-modernist assault on German classical culture.

Furtwängler wrote in his diary in 1935 that there was a complete contradiction between the racial ideology of the Nazis and the true German culture, the one of Schiller, Goethe and Beethoven. (5) He added in 1936: “living today is more than ever a question of courage”. (6)

It is this question of courage that will define what will dictate the future culture of Germany. Would Culture and Art be ultimately judged by the standards of truth, beauty and goodness? Or would such things be buried in the ground, and forgotten, as what largely happened to both Schiller’s works and his mysterious and abrupt death in 1805 which led to his body being dumped in a mass grave before a proper funeral service could be held?

[For more on this story, refer to Irene Eckerts’ beautiful paper “Schiller vs. the Congress for Cultural Freedom.”]

An Ode to the “Pearl of the Desert”: the Ancient City of Palmyra

Palmyra is an ancient city in Syria that dates as far back as the second millennium BC. It grew in wealth from the trade routes along the Silk Road. This wealth enabled the construction of monumental projects such as the Great Colonnade, the Temple of Bel and the tower tombs. Greco-Roman culture influenced the culture of Palmyra, which in turn produced distinctive architecture that combined eastern and western traditions. Palmyra is considered one of the most important historical sites in West Asia.

Syria is located within the cradle of civilization. For this reason, it is immensely rich in a diversity of cultures, religions and schools of thought. It has many ancient cities, many ancient memories.

In 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), occupied the city of Palmyra and began executions of hostages within the amphitheater. They also detonated explosives that destroyed the iconic Baalshamin Temple among other ancient architectural treasures.

As the ancient city was being destroyed over a period of two years, the west used ISIL photos to boost their news ratings as clickbait. It should also not go unmentioned, that the United States in particular, but several western countries in total, have been responsible for the backing of terrorism in West Asia.

ISIL was clear with its intention, they were not just attacking anyone who did not fit into their idea of what they thought a Muslim world should look like, attacking both Muslims and non-Muslims who did not fit into this narrow and barbarous view. They were also attacking the history of all civilization itself. For in their eyes, it was all of civilization that was at fault and would have to be wiped off the face of the Earth so that the new world could be built anew. ISIL, though very much a war against the people, was ultimately a war against whole civilizations and their ancient cultures.

During this tragedy, as with countless others, the west was largely unaffected. On March 2, 2017, the Syrian Army, along with support from the Russian military, were successful in taking back Palmyra.

Extensive damage had been done during the ISIL occupation and much of the ruins of Palmyra have been lost forever. There was also the painful memory that was now associated with the ancient city, that of death and terror, for public executions were displayed in the amphitheater for a two-year period, including that of Khaled al-Assad who was the director of antiquities and had been tortured for days for information on hidden artifacts.

It seemed like the memory of Palmyra would be stained with this tragedy for many generations. ISIL may have left, but its spirit of terror and destruction remained.

The response to this destruction was one of the most beautiful displays of courage and dignity that I have ever seen in my lifetime. And of course, many in the west have likely never heard of it or understood its strength and magnitude in face of what was occurring in West Asia.

In response to the attempt to erase all memory of civilization, the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra from St. Petersburg traveled to Palmyra’s Roman Theatre and performed for an audience of Syrian people and some western dignitaries. The date of the concert coincided with the handover for the burial of the remains of special forces officer Aleksander Prokhorenko, who died after ordering an airstrike on his own position after he was surrounded by IS fighters.

The concert “Pray for Palmyra” was conducted by none other than Valery Gergiev, and the first piece that was chosen by Maestro Gergiev was Bach’s Chaconne piece performed by Pavel Mulyukov (his performance starts at min 27:26).

For anyone who has not seen this performance, it is really a must. It speaks to both the pain and sorrow from such horrific tragedy. But, it also speaks to hope and optimism, to beauty and strength. There were no words that could respond to what happened in Palmyra, it was only through the beauty of the music from the German classic composer Bach, that was profound enough to both acknowledge the level of pain and despair as well as the immortality of the soul and the sacredness of the individual. That no matter the level of carnage and mayhem, it could never eradicate the sanctity of human life.

This beautiful message was a Russian initiative, and we should all thank Russia for reminding us of this.

Munich Fires “the Greatest Conductor Alive”

Valery Gergiev, who was the chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic from September 2015, was fired on March 1, 2022, for refusing to denounce President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. That is, Maestro Gergiev was fired for what he wouldn’t say, and not for what he said.

Alongside this, 20 year old pianist Alexander Malofeev who was scheduled to play a Vancouver concert in August was “postponed” indefinitely. Why? Because Malofeev is Russian. It is as simple as that.

Leila Getz, Vancouver Recital Society’s artistic director felt that hosting a Russian performer might impact Vancouver’s large Ukrainian Canadian community. In this case, it did not even matter if Malofeev was willing to publicly criticize Russia’s intervention.

Anna Netrebko, a famous Russian opera singer was withdrawn from her future performance at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera because she refused to denounce President Putin, although she did publicly denounce the war. In this new McCarthyite atmosphere, that was not enough. The Met General Manager Peter Gelb acknowledged that Netrebko “is one of the greatest singers in Met history…”

This purging of Russian artists in the music domain also coincides with the smearing of 15 year old Russian skater Kamilia Valieva during the 2022 Olympic Games. Valieva was vilified after the suspicious and unprofessional handling of details around possible doping, which was a carefully-timed set-up in order to manipulate the relative standings of the figure skater. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) bent their own rules and guidelines in order to baselessly ostracise and vilify Valieva.

Valeria Nollan and Alexandra G. Kostina write in their article “Has the West Lost Its Soul and Feelings for Beauty and Fairness?”:

“For the envious elites, it is precisely Valieva’s otherworldly beauty and innocence, especially when connected with Russianness, that must be destroyed.  [Finnian] Cunningham notes, ‘Such a beauty could not be tolerated for it destroyed the US media campaign to otherwise demonize Russia and instill enmity towards that nation.’ They detest the Russianness that manifests sheer joy and freedom from their control, at the same time envying the culture that could provide such fertile soil for beauty to flourish.  How, they say, can a nation of barbarians and Untermenschen grow such magnificent flowers?  Ultimately, they want to banish the “alien” country that dares to remind them of what they have lost—the feelings for beauty and innocence.  Because beauty is both an aesthetic and spiritual category in which perception of something outside the self can resurrect the human being, it also encompasses feelings for one’s homeland, its flag, and its national anthem.  Perhaps this tearing away of these sources of pride and inspiration for Russian Olympic athletes is part of the carefully curated humiliation imposed on Russia as a result of dubious charges of doping, both individual and institutional.”

Although much of the witch-hunt against Russian artists, performers of beauty and optimism, is clearly an attack on Russian culture, where now even Russian art will be subjected to censorship for the mere fact that it is Russian, with the goal of causing shame and humiliation for merely being Russian. The loss is not one sided and the greatest loser in all of this will not be the Russian people.

As seen in the historical case of Germany, any artist that is a vehicle for beauty and optimism is considered a threat to the status quo within a system of empire. For it is beauty and optimism which allows a people, a culture, to find the courage to oppose the shackles of the censors, and dare to fight for liberty. For if one recognises the sanctity that lies within all human life, the unnatural bondage and humiliation of that life becomes intolerable. Thus, when a people, a culture, would rather die to fight for this liberty from empire than live a life of drudgery, forever the servant of another; this is obviously unsustainable to the status quo and an empire will always seek to crush such a spirit.

Thus, any culture, any art that represents such an idea, is a threat to the western system of our present day.

This can be clearly seen with the attack on anything deemed “classical” by the Frankfurt School (7) and the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The removal of these Russian artists is not only being done as an attack on the Russian people and Russian culture, it is an attack on all of us, for it is robbing us all of that beauty and optimism needed to fight for true political freedom.

If we are to believe that the Russians are inherently villainous by nature, it can no longer be tolerated that high standards of Russian artistry be permitted to be shown to the world, for it would stand in stark and sublime contradiction to what the censors would have us believe. That perhaps, the Russians actually remember something that we here in the west have forgotten, but once knew.

When Maestro Gergiev was fired from the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra for refusing to denounce President Putin, his manager, Marcus Felsner said in a statement to The Guardian that dropping Maestro Gergiev was “the saddest day of my professional life.” He called Maestro Gergiev “the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency,” and yet this was apparently not enough. If you are not with the censors, you are against the censors, and a powerful influencer of beauty and optimism like Maestro Gergiev thus had to be banished from their lands.

Who truly looses from such a banishment?

Perhaps the German people would do well to remember the attack, that is ongoing, on their own classical culture, which was among the greatest in the world. The German people would also do well to remember that their country has never truly been sovereign; once again cut up into pieces by the Versailles Treaty, which led to the crippling of German industry and the slow starvation of the German people.

However, most importantly, the Germans would do well in remembering that it was never their choice to join NATO, but that West Germany was an occupied country by the UK, USA and France from 1945 to 1955. And that this direct occupation only ended after West Germany agreed to join NATO in 1955. It was never Germany’s choice but rather was an offer by gun point for a piece, a crumb of “liberty.”

“Independence” on a short leash.

However, the occupation never truly ended, and Germany in all of its history has never truly been free.

It is time Germany break free from its Stockholm Syndrome, for it is their own classical cultural heritage that is at risk of being entirely erased.

The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com

(1) Prieberg, Fred K. (1991). Trial of Strength: Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Third Reich. Quartet Books.
(2) Ibid.
(3) L’atelier du Maître “, article by Philippe Jacquard
(4) Geissmar, Berta (1944). The Baton and the Jackboot: Recollections of Musical Life. London and Edinburgh: Morrison and Gibb ltd.
(5) Wilhelm Furtwängler (trad. Ursula Wetzel, Jean-Jacques Rapin, préf. Pierre Brunel), Carnets 1924-1954 : suivis d’Écrits fragmentaires, Genève, éditions Georg, 1995, p. 39.
(6) Wilhelm Furtwängler (trad. Ursula Wetzel, Jean-Jacques Rapin, préf. Pierre Brunel), Carnets 1924-1954 : suivis d’Écrits fragmentaires, Genève, éditions Georg, 1995, p. 11.
(7) While many have come to realize that the rot within the western education system is tied to the growth of Critical Race Theory, few have come to realize that the school that birthed this perverse analysis of sociology and history is found in a group called the Frankfurt School that emerged out of a sick network of Marxist academics in Frankfurt Germany who envisioned curing society from the tyranny of its traditions which they concluded were the source of fascism. Using a mix of Freudian and Marxist theories applied to sociology, these nihilistic reformers shaped the entire Congress for Cultural Freedom, promoted relativism and destroyed the classical humanist foundations in education that had formerly governed western schooling relegating the study of the classics to obsolete “dead white European males”.

In the western world’s mad rush to ramp up censorship and dangerous cold war escalations against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, the Australian government has done what it always does and raised the bar of authoritarianism a click above everyone else in the room.

“The Australian Government is sanctioning 10 people of strategic interest to Russia for their role in encouraging hostility towards Ukraine and promoting pro-Kremlin propaganda to legitimise Russia’s invasion,” reads a new statement from Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne. “This includes driving and disseminating false narratives about the ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine, making erroneous allegations of genocide against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, and promoting the recognition of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic as independent.”

A report by the Australian Associated Press and the Daily Mail says that the men targeted with these new sanctions are “journalists, authors or Putin’s press officers.” This move follows earlier waves of sanctions directed at Russian government, military and financial institutions, as well as economic sanctions on the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.

Today Australia imposed new sanctions on key military figures, the Russian Armed Forces & those responsible for driving and disseminating Russian propaganda. This follows last week’s listing of key banks, to prevent finance for Putin’s unjustified war.
https://t.co/pB2E9kqGOv

— Marise Payne (@MarisePayne) March 8, 2022

Obviously a government in a purportedly “free” country sanctioning anyone for sharing any ideas anywhere on earth is outrageous, no matter how stupid or fictional they might be. Anyone on earth should be free to say that Ukraine is ruled by reptilian space wizards orchestrating a global conspiracy to steal the earth’s ivermectin if they want to without being sanctioned by the Australian government.

But the fact that the ideas cited by the Foreign Minister — de-Nazification, genocide of ethnic Russians, and independence for the DPR and LPR — are fairly common opinions that can be argued using facts and evidence makes this move a lot more disturbing.

I personally don’t find it truthful to claim that the invasion of Ukraine has anything to do with “de-Nazification” myself; that just sounds like the sort of thing you say to make a bloody invasion look noble, and Ukraine’s neo-Nazi issues would surely have been a non-issue for Putin if Kyiv was aligned with Moscow rather than Washington. But even NBC News is reporting that “Ukraine has a genuine Nazi problem” that cannot simply be ignored, and a recent report by The Grayzone details how intimately neo-Nazi militias are intertwined with the nation’s power structure. So this isn’t some preposterous conspiracy theory; it arises from known facts that people do need to talk about.

The claim of genocide in the Donbas may not be a consensus reality that has been firmly established via official channels, but neither is the claim of genocide in China’s Xinjiang province, yet we saw that assertion waved around as absolute fact by the entire western political/media class in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics. It’s just a simple fact that 14,000 people have died in the fighting against Donbas separatists since a US-backed coup toppled Ukraine’s government in 2014, and that most of those deaths have been on the side of the ethnic Russian separatists. Whether or not this technically constitutes genocide has not been established, but it’s a debate that is both valid and worthwhile.

According to UN figures, from 2018 to 2021, 81.4% of civilian casualties in the Donbas war came in rebel-held territory. 16.3% were in Ukrainian gov’t-controlled territory.

This is one key reality of the war that US media doesn’t report. Too inconvenient. https://t.co/Pjf7fg30af pic.twitter.com/KSMHwdaR6K

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 23, 2022

The most egregious citation on Payne’s list is “promoting the recognition of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic as independent.” The idea that rebel-held regions in eastern Ukraine should be recognized as independent republics is pure political opinion; the Australian government has no more legitimacy in labeling it “propaganda” than they would on people’s opinions about the morality of abortion. Yet it’s being cited as a justification for targeted sanctions.

This comes after Australian television providers SBS and Foxtel dropped RT in the frenetic push to expand censorship throughout the western world, a move Payne explicitly praised in the aforementioned statement with an acknowledgement that the Australian government is working with online platforms to censor unauthorized content.

“The Australian Government continues to work with digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google to take action to suspend the dissemination of content generated by Russian state media within Australia. SBS and Foxtel have already announced the suspension of Russia Today and NTV broadcasting,” the statement says.

This is getting so, so ugly so very, very fast. Just the other day a young Australian-Russian man was ejected from the audience of the popular television show Q+A simply for expressing his support for Putin’s war, something we’ve never seen happen in any of the controversies about the insane American military invasions that this country has gotten itself involved in over the years.

Stan Grant kicks an Australian-Russian man out of #QandA for questioning the media’s pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia coverage. pic.twitter.com/tKylsWVeCK

— Caldron Pool (@CaldronPool) March 3, 2022

Whether you agree with these opinions or not, you’d have to be blind not to see the dangers of speech getting stomped out which doesn’t align with the authorized opinions of the government and the globe-spanning empire of which it is a member state. It is not valid to simply label dissenting ideas “propaganda to legitimise Russia’s invasion” and then shut them down; in a free society we’re meant to debate ideas and explain our positions to convince others that they are correct.

An ostensibly free and democratic nation labeling basic political opinions and ideas about points of geopolitical contention “pro-Kremlin propaganda” and implementing punitive sanctions in response has implications that are uncomfortable to think about. As an Australian who frequently disagrees with Canberra about unaligned foreign governments including Moscow, I am frankly feeling a bit nervous that I might myself be designated a person “of strategic interest to Russia” and penalized in some way for “disseminating false narratives”.

Securing more and more control over the ideas and information that people share with each other is an objective of unparalleled importance of the oligarchic empire loosely centralized around the United States. It is an intrinsically valuable goal; anywhere control of speech can be expanded is strategically useful for that expansion in and of itself, independent of the excuses made to justify it. Hopefully we all collectively find a way to unplug each other from the imperial narrative matrix before they can secure total control.

caityjohnstone.medium.com