Tag: blowback

West’s neoliberal ‘age of abundance’ is over, as war and sanctions boomerang home

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Aug 27, 2022 — France’s President Emmanuel Macron, a former banker, warned “we are living the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance.” Western wars and sanctions are boomeranging back at home. The neoliberal phase of capitalism is collapsing.

Neoliberalism has lost the key pillars it was built on: cheap energy and raw materials from Russia, cheap labor and consumer goods from China, an unsustainable bubble of household debt, low to zero interest rates, and Washington’s ability to organize regime-change operations in any country where a government tried a socialistic or state-led economic model.

West’s neoliberal ‘age of abundance’ is over, as war and sanctions boomerang home via Multipolarista

Lavrov is on Blinken’s list of people to call

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Lavrov is on Blinken’s list of people to call

Blinken also added a second topic he’d like to discuss with Lavrov —implementation of the recent “grain deal”. Washington played no role in negotiating the deal and is presumably hoping to make a lateral entry into the matrix now. Blinken claimed he is “seeing and hearing around the world a desperate need for food, a desperate need for prices to decrease. And if we can help through our direct diplomacy encourage the Russians to make good on the commitments they’ve made, that will help people around the world, and I’m determined to do it.”

Interestingly, in a veiled reference to the US, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavuсoglu stated Wednesday on broadcaster Tv100 that there were countries who “wanted to block” the grain deal between Russia and Turkey, who want the Ukraine conflict “to prolong”, as they think the longer Moscow’s special military operation continues, “the weaker Russia will be.”

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Indeed, the war has spun out of US algorithm. As Hungarian PM Orban pointed out last week, anti-Russian sanctions “have not shaken Moscow,” but Europe has already lost four governments and is in an economic and political crisis.

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The spectre of the collapse of EU economies is rattling the Biden Administration. A CNN report yesterday was titled US officials say ‘biggest fear’ has come true as Russia cuts gas supplies to Europe. It said the Biden administration “is working furiously behind the scenes to keep European allies united” as the blowback from the sanctions against Russia hits them and the “impact on Europe could boomerang back onto the US, spiking natural gas and electricity prices.”

The report quoted an unnamed US official saying Russia’s retaliation for western sanctions has put the West in “unchartered territory.” Suffice to say, Blinken’s call underscores the desperate urgency in Washington to open a line of communication to Moscow at the political level.

Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say

As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.

Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.

At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine. The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, but commandos from these allies either remained or have gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said.

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But the agency’s [CIA] expertise in training is in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations*, former intelligence officials say. What Ukrainians need right now is classic military training in how to use rocket artillery, like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and other sophisticated weaponry, said Douglas H. Wise, a former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and retired senior C.I.A. officer.

H/T: Western Officials Admit Ukraine Is Crawling With CIA Personnel

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Biden officials worry their Russia sanctions were so powerful they also brought economic suffering to the US, report says

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Corporate ‘Self-Sanctioning’ of Russia Has US Fearing Economic Blowback

But some Biden administration officials are now privately expressing concern that rather than dissuading the Kremlin as intended, the penalties are instead exacerbating inflation, worsening food insecurity and punishing ordinary Russians [they don’t care about the people, the true purpose of sanctions is to encourage people to overthrow their leader] more than Putin or his allies.

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When the invasion [special military operation] began, the Biden administration believed that if penalties exempted food and energy [what exemptions?!], the impact on inflation at home would be minimal. Since then, energy and food have become key drivers of the highest US inflation rates in 40 years, a huge political liability for President Joe Biden and the Democratic party heading into November’s mid-term elections [they only care about winning the midterms].

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There’s no sign that administration officials feel their sanctions policy was a mistake or that they want to dial back the pressure. If anything, officials have said a key US goal is to ensure Russia can’t do to other nations what it has done in Ukraine [then tell Puppet Zelensky to negotiate instead of flooding Ukraine with weapons!!].

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The Biden administration rejects [denies] any suggestion that sanctions are part of the problem, emphasizing that the US isn’t penalizing humanitarian goods or food, and putting [shifting] the blame on Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine, including by targeting shipping on the Black Sea [which is blocked with mines].

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About 1,000 companies have so far announced that they are curtailing operations in Russia, according to data collected by the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. That underscores one reason sanctions are so popular with policy makers: They essentially outsource US policy to the private sector [intentional and/or just being lazy?!], which makes it less surgical, less calibrated and less responsive to policy changes, said Smith, the former OFAC adviser.

This becomes important as all sides seek an end to the war [no, they don’t]. The lifting of sanctions can be dangled as an incentive to help bring about a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. But right now it’s hard even to offer that as a potential benefit of entering into negotiations because much of the pullout by American businesses has been self-inflicted [they screwed themselves]. Companies could face public blowback if they are seen as rushing back into the Russian market.

Headline stolen from:

Biden officials worry their Russia sanctions were so powerful they also brought economic suffering to the US, report says

A New Generation of US-trained Extremists Is Fighting Russia. Are We Prepared for the Blowback?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

A boomerang. By TJ Coles, Global Research, 6/8/22

US agencies have directly and indirectly trained and empowered Nazis and ultra-nationalists at home and abroad to fight Russians in Ukraine. This program follows the blueprint established by Western intelligence agencies in Afghanistan and Syria.

TJ Coles: A New Generation of US-trained Extremists Is Fighting Russia. Are We Prepared for the Blowback?

[4.24.2022] US sanctions against Russia are illegal and only make things worse

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

4.24.2022 – Perpetually new sanctions against Russia, actively imposed by the United States and its European allies, are formally unilateral measures that have neither a legal basis nor UN approval, writes the Global Times.

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Notably, Washington is imposing severe sanctions on those economic sectors where US firms are Russia’s main competitors – ignoring industries where US dependence on Russian supplies is evident, such as titanium, which Americans use to make their aircraft and need rocket engines. According to Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Mikhail Popov, the United States has also allowed its companies to import chemical fertilizers from Russia while imposing a ban on other states, writes the Global Times.

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In addition, the US itself has felt the negative impact of the sanctions more than expected, the article said. Gita Gopinath, first deputy executive director of the International Monetary Fund, has already warned that financial restrictions on Russia threaten to gradually weaken US dollar hegemony and lead to even greater fragmentation of the international monetary system. And according to Andrew Milligan, a former UK Treasury official, the sanctions could also cause US corporate profits to fall, the Global Times reports.

US sanctions against Russia are illegal and only make things worse

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UN Security Council Sanctions (<—No UN sanctions on Russia)