Many Birds, One Stone
Opinion: New Normal Series
Many birds, one stone
The fog is lifting and the landscape is suddenly in sharp relief. The globalists are showing their true colors and, if they get their way, incredible as it seems, NATO could be at war with Russia within weeks. This might be madness to you and me, but it makes perfect sense to them. Firstly, a little context.
Build Back Better agenda
As I have previously noted, there is every possibility that Putin has been suckered into a conflict that perfectly suits the western elite's agenda. What if the withdrawal from Afghanistan, calamitous though it appeared, was not solely the result of epic incompetence? What if it was, instead, intended to signal weakness; to demonstrate that Biden was ineffectual and that the US was an ex-superpower, not a current one? I believe that the inevitable emboldening of America's enemies was the desired end state. After all, the Build Back Better plan necessarily includes an end to America's hegemony:
“The US won't be the world's only superpower. A handful of countries will dominate.”(1)
This demotion is what they are trying to effect domestically – why would they be attempting the opposite on the global stage? In any event, whether you believe that the self sabotage is deliberate or not (and I would suggest that the fact that nobody at the Pentagon lost their job over the Afghanistan debacle is a fair indicator of where the truth lies), Iran, North Korea and China have taken the bait. Iran has accelerated its nuclear programme,(2) Little Rocket Man resumed his practice of test firing missiles into the Sea of Japan (3) and the Chinese have grown considerably bolder with their incursions into Taiwanese airspace.
Despite all that, it is Russia that the US (and, by extension, NATO) deems public enemy number one. Not just in the here and now – they've done their utmost to provoke Putin and his predecessors for the past thirty years. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, there was no reason for the rump of the former empire to continue to be identified as the great Satan, but old habits clearly die hard and NATO still needed a raison d'être. Plus, of course, demonizing the Russian bear served to disguise the extent to which the elites were in bed with the real enemy, China.
Believing that the American political elite would deliberately mislead their own public as to the true nature of the threat that faces them might once have seemed contrary. Believing that the same elite no longer has the best interests of America (as a nation state) at heart may still seem counter-intuitive, but that is because most people are stuck with an outmoded perception; they remember when the US was solely out for itself, but spent its time trying to convince the rest of us that its actions were morally righteous, instead. In retrospect, these were innocent days defined by a predictable hypocrisy. But now, things have been turned upside down. Now, there are entities that wield more power than America and whose needs are globalist in nature.
Sometimes, the aims of these cabals will mirror the best interests of the Anglosphere or individual western states, but mostly they won't; that's the point of globalization – it necessarily involves the destruction of the nation state. If we wish to understand the actions of our leaders, we are obliged to reframe our terms of reference. At present, the dominant view in dissident circles is that the Progressives who are in power in nearly all Western democracies are idiots, who labor with a pitiful grasp of human nature and geopolitics and are cursed with ideas that will never work.
Getting everyone to buy an electric vehicle (currently retailing at upwards of $60,000) within the next decade is clearly a pipe dream. Biden is so incompetent that his blundering around could inadvertently provoke a war with Russia. These examples (and plenty more like them) fuel the conservative narrative. While stupid is for life, at least it can be voted out of office. But Biden (or, more accurately, whoever is running him) is not stupid. In the first instance, the intention isn't that we go electric – it's that we go without. In the second instance, there's no blundering involved. Instead, Biden is picking his path carefully.
The leaders of our democracies are clearly not looking out for us and haven't been doing so for longer than we might imagine. The Brits among you may have experienced your very own Damascene conversion to this view on the road to Brexit. Perhaps the Global Financial Crisis was your singular eye opener. Maybe it was the Iraq war. For those of a mature persuasion, it might have been Black Wednesday or Maastricht. Americans might reference the introduction of the Patriot Act or any one of the Forever Wars.
My point is that, whichever event it was that red-pilled you, it had been usually been years in the making; by way of example, the key provisions of the Patriot Act were first proposed in Reagan's era and the seeds of Brexit go back to the lies and obfuscations that were deemed necessary so that the public might be persuaded to vote to join. Political elites have been having us over for decades. This time around though, it has an end of times feel to it.
Western regimes have instituted climate change policies that have led directly to our current, parlous situation. For many years they have demonized the fossil fuel industry, whilst massively subsidizing 'renewables' with taxpayer funds. They have explicitly stated that they will outlaw petrol and diesel vehicles and achieve carbon neutrality, whatever that currently means. They have tied the oil industry up in red tape and, somewhat unsurprisingly, investment in infrastructure has tapered off as a result.
Then, of course, they locked us down and made a bad situation worse. Crisis has piled upon crisis and the cost of living has risen inexorably. But, make no mistake; we are still in the foothills. We won't be approaching the steeper slopes until the autumn. Our leaders don't care, either, because our impoverishment is an integral part of the plan. But they don't want us to know this, so somebody else needs to take the blame. Enter Putin, stage left – the western elites' favorite bogeymen.
NATO & Ukraine
I don't think Putin is a nice man. Generally speaking, you don't chose a career in the KGB if you're a nice man, nor do you bomb Russian apartment buildings in order to get yourself elected.(4) It's also true to say that an unfeasibly large number of his opponents end up shot, poisoned, or decorating the pavement outside a tall building. Despite his many and varied flaws, not uniformly shared by Western leaders, but not necessarily entirely foreign to them either, there is one thing that he cares about that they don't – his country. This is both a strength and an exploitable weakness.
Baiting the Russian bear will eventually elicit a response, although it has taken far longer than it might have done. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, NATO assured Russia that they wouldn't expand eastwards presumably because, in truth, there was no need with the Cold War over. Instead, 14 new countries have joined since 1999, including three ex Soviet republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and three ex Warsaw Pact allies (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland). NATO troops are now stationed in countries bordering Russia. Nonetheless, Russia didn't react militarily to any of these setbacks.
However, in 2008, the alliance welcomed the membership aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine, two more countries that border Russia. This was not well received in Moscow. Neither was the news that Georgian troops were taking part in a US led military exercise near Tbilisi. There are parallels here with Ukraine; there were two breakaway republics in the east and there was also an unacknowledged referendum in South Ossetia which was overwhelmingly in favor of leaving Georgia. A five day war, the prototypical special military operation, resulted in what is effectively a buffer zone between the two countries. More importantly, Putin's pressure point had been revealed. He has an issue with countries bordering Russia joining NATO, especially when they have substantial Russian speaking peoples who have voted to 'break away'.
NATO involvement in this war has little (if anything) to do with the sovereignty of Ukraine. The US doesn't care one jot about democracy and the rights of nations if doing so conflicts with what they want. Any suggestion that, prior to the war, the Minsk Protocols would be implemented via discussions between Zelensky and the Russians (these accords gave limited autonomy to the Donbas republics) was vetoed by the actual neo Nazis who riddle the Ukrainian military. Zelensky was told that he would find himself swinging from a lamppost if he even tried. Given America's all pervasive influence in Ukraine, their failure to rein in the Azov Battalion and their ilk speaks volumes. Zelensky quickly learned his lesson and abandoned any talk of rapprochement; if, of course, he ever intended to honor the promises he made during his election campaign and which at least 71% of the population approved of.
Ramping it up
Since the conflict began, the pressure from the West has intensified – at no point has a compromise been mooted. There have been any number of acts of aggression. The Poles were up for giving Ukraine its own fighter jets and much else besides; there are reports that there are Polish troops fighting under Ukrainian command. The Lithuanians proposed that a non NATO 'peaceful' armada of warships might sail to the Back Sea and release the allegedly embargoed Ukrainian wheat for export, while definitely not firing on Russian naval vessels. The US, UK and EU member countries have openly supplied materiel. In reality, these actions dictate that the West is already at war with Russia. The process of normalizing this state of affairs via a policy of 'slip of the tongue' is already well underway.(5)
Sanctions (and the seizure of any asset that might just possibly belong to someone whose name ends in ich) have served to exacerbate an already existing disaster in the making for the West – which was the idea - and have done little or nothing to Putin. The Russian ruble is at its strongest for at least seven years,(6) Russia is selling its oil, rare metals and other resources to new markets in China and India among others.(7) Western Europe and the US, on the other hand, find themselves with spiraling inflation and a shortage of gas and oil; outcomes that were entirely predictable.
Why Ukraine?
Why has the West pursued its policy of supporting the Ukrainians in the first place? How was it that Zelensky and his countrymen suddenly became our bosom buddies? They aren't in NATO. They're not in the EU. To my knowledge, Ukraine has never previously been the recipient of Western camaraderie, certainly not as a matter of public policy – although we now know that NATO (read the US) have been inveigling themselves into the country for a decade or more. Yet tens of billions have been sent their way (in fact, $65 billion and counting)(8) and some of that money is paying the government salaries of what is, in effect, a failed state. In addition, the West is playing chicken with a major nuclear power. For what?
Early on, it clearly afforded them an opportunity to blame Putin for shortages that they themselves caused, hoping that the public wouldn't notice that prices were rising rapidly months before the Russians entered Ukraine. Expressing their support for Zelensky also allowed them to levy large sanctions, the effects of which (on the West) are indistinguishable from their oft stated climate change goals. This is why, even when it is patently obvious that steps that would ameliorate our energy and food crises could and should be taken, they still won't be. Witness the dear departed Boris' attempt to shore up his popularity by asking the G7 leaders to re-purpose land currently used for bio-fuels into growing food instead. Germany was on board, the US and Canada not.(9) The very fact that Johnson had to go cap in hand to a supranational organisation to beg permission to grow food in his own country is, itself, an indication of how much of our sovereignty has already been surrendered.
Why they won't do anything to make it better and what they'll do instead
What we have is a long term commitment to green policies that should have been fought at the outset – not on the grounds that these plans disadvantaged one sector of industry or the other, as the Dutch farmers are now contending (nor even that the policies do not reflect a proportionate assessment of risk and reward), but because climate change is a scam.
The political opposition failed that test and we, the people, didn't keep them honest. Polls have consistently found that the majority of people don't believe in human induced climate change, albeit it is yet one more issue that polarizes societies politically, with a majority of the left leaning types demonstrating their habitual lack of critical thinking, while the right of center folk, unburdened by ideology, still hold to the quaint idea that proof is required – which has not been, and will not be, forthcoming, as the facts don't fit.(10)
The climate change mantra was the first (and most enduring) manifestation of a narrative that must not be questioned, because to do so would reveal that the whole phenomenon is merely a means to an end; elite control over the masses. In allowing them to pass laws and enact regulations that were always destined to lead us into our current morass, we delayed a fight that we might then have won to a time when doing so will be immeasurably harder.
What Boris was proposing was an end to the practice of insisting that part of a litre of gasoline is made up of bio-fuels – usually 10-15%. Given that this would require a very costly restructure of oil refineries – at a time when they never been less loved by Western regimes – most oil companies have opted for the alternative, which is effectively yet one more government surcharge. This makes its way into the price of fuel. Those that accepted the challenge use the bio-fuel produced by the very fields that Johnson was attempting to get re-designated.(11) So, a double whammy – price hikes on both fuel and food, neither of which will be countered because it fits the green agenda.
In the UK, with impeccable timing, the abolition of the energy price cap is well under way, raising an average energy bill by over 50% in April.(12) Incredibly, the cap will be raised another £800 in October, for a year on year increase of well over 100%.(13) And what is the government doing about it? Very little. Why? Because making energy super expensive and/or inaccessible fits with their energy policy and we'll all just have to accept it. Neither the US nor the EU countries have taken any effective action to ameliorate the cost of living crisis, nor will they.
Sometimes, they even say the quiet part out loud:
“When it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that God willing when it’s over we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.”(14)
That was Biden in Japan, presumably without the aid of a teleprompter. His chief of staff was even more on point when he told the Americans that they must endure the high gas prices in order to preserve the 'liberal world order' with a defense of Ukraine.(15)
And so, the administration blocked a proposal to open up a million acres of land in Alaska for oil and gas drilling,(16) then blocked the expansion of an oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands.(17) They've declared war on fossil fuels and nothing must stand in the way; it's an ideological battle that must be won. In Canada, as in the Netherlands, the administration has embarked on a plan to reduce ammonia emissions by crucifying the country's agricultural economy.
Trudeau, as has become apparent, is one of the most zealous acolytes of the WEF and the most narcissistic of all Western leaders – he thought it would be appropriate to announce this policy at a time when it is becoming increasingly apparent that food shortages are already baked in, before his plans would even take effect. This, in addition to the hike in carbon tax by an additional 25% (yes, Canadian subjects have to pay that too) at a time when inflation is skyrocketing, thus driving up the price of pretty much everything.(18) The man has absolutely no shame.
Throwing good money after bad
Consider the fact that, many weeks ago, the NATO states must have known (even through their usual fog of self delusion) that the war in Ukraine was already lost. Supplying unfamiliar war materiel to a country suffering massive military attrition – which lost control of the skies within hours of hostilities breaking out – is no substitute for additional boots on the ground and it has made little difference to the outcome. However, the media has (until recently) served us a non-stop diet of propaganda, long on exaggeration and outright lies. This has contributed to an official narrative that insists that Ukraine is on the path to victory.
They are still at it now, uncritically reporting that Zelensky is amassing a million strong army to take back the Donbas.(19) This despite the fact that many unconscripted men between the ages of 18-60 are taking to their cellars to avoid being used as cannon fodder and the additional truth – which even the Ukrainians admit – that they are losing 200 dead and 800 wounded every day. Does it seem likely that the Biden administration will simply fold its tent and walk away, which act would implicitly acknowledge that have been lying to us for months while spending fist-fulls of taxpayer money on an enterprise that they knew to be hopeless?
Plus, timing is an important factor here. While there is much talk of the coming food shortages, the full ramifications are not yet fully understood and won't be until the autumn, when the rest of us get some idea of the shortfall that governments have been able to estimate for months. If it is obvious that the war is over by then, then blaming an ex-conflict for current woes may not play so well.
Then there is the continuing conundrum that are the US mid term elections in November and the administration's signal failure to address the overwhelmingly likely outcome. By any reasonable metric, the ruling Democrats will get wiped out; they will certainly lose control of one, if not both, houses of Congress which will reduce them to legislative impotence for the next two years which will, in turn, harm them at the next Presidential election in 2024. Are they the sort of people to accept the will of the people without demur? I would say not, given the lengths to which they went to cheat their way into power in the first place and the complete disregard that they have shown for the electorate for the past eighteen months.
End game
In the past fortnight or so, matters have been proceeding at pace. Firstly, Lithuania effectively blockaded Kaliningrad (a Russian enclave on the Baltic coast). The Lithuanians (members of NATO and the EU) stated that they were merely implementing the EU sanctions. Russia has told them to stand down or face consequences – how could they not?
Then, Turkey mysteriously dropped its objections to Sweden and Finland's request to join NATO – requests that neither country had seen fit to make during the entire span of the Cold War. Apparently, current times are uniquely pressing. Russia already has to seek permission from one NATO member if it wishes its fleet to access the Mediterranean. Now it will be obliged to sail past two more NATO members if it wishes to leave the Baltic. Lastly, Secretary General Stoltenberg announced that NATO was boosting its Response force to 300,000 from its current level of 40,000.(20)
None of these actions absolutely had to be taken. All of them are clear provocations, the latest iterations in a very long line. And one more talking point suddenly started gaining prominence – Ukrainian grain. The West is alleging that Russia is preventing its release onto world markets by blockading ports in the Black Sea and that it is this that is the primary cause of food inflation (currently) and food shortages (shortly). So now Putin is to blame for the food and the fuel crises. I guess blaming Trump was too much of a stretch, even for them.
This allegation is presumably going to form the bedrock of a NATO case for war with Russia; even though it isn't true. The crises are a direct result of Western policies, including sanctions. Covid didn't lock-down countries and Putin didn't hike prices and cause shortages – the cabal did. Now, they're going to say that if they don't intervene, the world will starve.
“President Putin is, no kidding, weaponizing food. Let’s just call it what it is: He’s weaponizing food. He’s got an essential blockade there in the Black Sea so that nothing can leave by sea — and that’s, of course, how Ukraine has historically gotten its grain to markets.”(21)
Olaf Schultz, German Chancellor and living proof that some remote village is missing its resident idiot, then weighed in with loaded warnings about a coming migrant crisis, because Putin was causing a famine in Africa and that the only way to avoid it would be for him to stop his attack – which he clearly isn't going to do.(22) And so, the casus belli begins to be established.
There are advantages to a European war, for the US anyway. Firstly, it's in Europe, distant from American shores. Secondly, a declaration of war would serve to neuter whatever Republican opposition might be planned for the mid terms. Biden and his puppet masters might reason that the GOP would feel disloyal or unpatriotic if they went all-in on criticism of the regime in a time of war, when they should all be pulling in the same direction. Given that most of the Republican caucus supported the various funding bills funding the Ukrainians, this calculation may well be accurate.
A war provides a further opportunity to impoverish the American people (and, by implication, the other populations in NATO) while funneling that spending to the military industrial complex; in effect, normal service will be resumed. It may also provide a pretext to meddle with the election, either by postponing (cancelling) it due to the imposition of martial law or by mandating universal mail in voting, a sure fire method of stealing elections.
Having said that, yet another Covid lock-down would also get the job done.
And all of this could be accomplished while being lauded in the mainstream media as morally superior; the world's policeman, going to bat for the starving millions, which is utter tosh in another sense, too. The West, via such mechanisms as the G7 and the World Bank, control food production in Africa by controlling the energy investment needed to manufacture fertilizer. They will not allow Africa to develop their own natural gas in order that they might produce their own fertilizer. Once again, the climate change agenda (read depopulation agenda) trumps the need to produce food to feed people with.(23)
As it stands, the people aren't going to accept the elite agenda. A survey by the EU itself found that 58% and 59% of citizens aren't prepared to accept rising energy and food prices as a consequence of sanctions against Russia. The lower income countries, in particular, are feeling the pinch, but 87% of respondents had either suffered a reduction in the standard of living already or were expecting it to arrive in short order.(24) It is not clear whether this will make any difference to policy – nothing that regimes have done so far paid any heed to what the people think.
Some don't believe that the Americans would go this far. Certainly, some of NATO's pronouncement are simply verbiage, such as the recent assertion that there are now 300,000 alliance troops on high alert. Stoltenberg didn't even consult with the member states before he came up with that particular gem.(25) There is also the small matter of whether NATO would win a war with Russia, which seems pretty unlikely. But that wouldn't be the point. The Americans aren't looking to defeat Putin; they're looking to use him as a scapegoat.
There are many things we don't know and cannot take on trust. For instance, how much of the war materiel is actually reaching Ukraine? How much of it is instead being stockpiled for NATO? Would they have effectively thrown it all into the conflict once it became obvious that Ukraine was going to lose? How would anybody really know? What we do know is that a long running dispute in Ukraine fits the elites' agenda in a number of ways. While it can be plausibly claimed that the war is still ongoing without NATO's active involvement – and that it is this conflict that is the author of the West's woes – I suspect that we will remain semi-detached; fighting the war to the last Ukrainian suits NATO just fine.
But, when the air goes out of the balloon (which it is, rapidly, at present) there may be a need to get proactive. We should remember that the food crisis may not be intended to be a temporary blip; it'll be difficult to persuade us to eat bugs and laboratory grown meat, otherwise. Likewise with energy; it's likely to be a long term problem. In that scenario, a much longer war would be favorite. In any event, their recent comments bear a marked resemblance to previous efforts designed to normalize events before they fully land and they don't resemble people who take backward steps. I think Ukraine will be front and center for some considerable time yet.
Citations
(1) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7y4pxt
(2) https://iranprimer.usip.org/index.php/blog/2022/jun/07/iran-accelerates-nuclear-program
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings
(7) https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Russia-Sends-Record-Volumes-Of-Oil-To-India-China.html
(8) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/bidens-war-machine-sending-another-1-7-billion-ukraine/
(14)
(15) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-tells-americans-suck-it-sake-liberal-world-order
(16) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-alaska-oil-gas-lease-sale-canceled/
(18) https://thecountersignal.com/trudeau-nitrogen-policy-will-decimate-canadian-farming/
(19) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1541867973086007297.html
(23) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1541867973086007297.html
(25) https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/06/no-nato-will-not-get-ready-for-war.html