U.S. ups the ante: are we indeed headed into WWIII and what can save us?

Gilbert Doctorow, 9/9/22

The UK and Commonwealth may be mourning the passing of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday. I am in mourning as well, but for a very different reason: the gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in the Ramstein air base in Germany yesterday reshuffled the deck on Western military and financial assistance to Ukraine, raising contributions to the ongoing holy crusade against Russia from still more nations and adding new, still more advanced precision strike weapons to the mix of deliveries to Kiev. It was an open summons to the Kremlin to escalate in turn, as were the test firing the same day of a new intercontinental rocket, the Minuteman III, from Vandenberg air base in California and the unannounced visit to Kiev yesterday of not only Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was featured in Western media accounts, but also other top officials of the Biden administration. The most notorious member of this delegation was surely Blinken’s deputy, Victoria Nuland, who had stage managed the February 2014 coup that put in power in Kiev the Russia-hating regime that Zelensky now heads.

Gilbert Doctorow: U.S. ups the ante: are we indeed headed into WWIII and what can save us?

Related:

A Former US Marine Corps Officer’s Analysis of the Ukraine War (archived, in case the original is removed)

H/T: Natylie’s Place: Understanding Russia

Poland: Civil Unrest As Fuel Prices Soar High After Russia Bans Key Polish Pipelines

Poland: Civil Unrest As Fuel Prices Soar High After Russia Bans Key Polish Pipelines

Poland urged EU to impose ‘punitive sanctions’ on Russian oil

Related:

Polish motorists block petrol station in protest of high fuel prices

These [fuel] prices have already caused some unrest. In the town of Bielsko-Biała on Sunday, several drivers who pretended their cars had broken down blocked a petrol station of the partially state-owned PKN Orlen fuel company, local media reported.

Massive “failure” in Orlen. The cars blocked the entrance to the petrol station

The price of the euro is falling. The dollar is falling. The zloty is getting stronger and the fuel is going up. I don’t think it is sticky. Economically, no one can explain why – says Szymon Twardak , one of the participants of the action at the Orlen station.

The drivers have blocked the petrol station again. This time, not one

Poland Suggests Expanding EU’s Seventh Tranche Of Sanctions Against Russia

RT: What is Russia’s Sanctions Survival Plan?

The launch of the military operation in Ukraine has drawn the ire of the US and its allies, who have hit Russia with unprecedented sanctions in order to destabilize the country’s economy and pressure Moscow into ending the conflict. Among the many penalties imposed on the country over the past month, its financial system, energy exports, and forex reserves have been targeted. However, hard times call for prompt response measures, and Russia has come up with a few.

RT: What is Russia’s Sanctions Survival Plan?

The Battle of Ukraine and the War It’s Part Of

The Battle of Ukraine and the War It’s Part Of

The Russian military is not the Red Army, but the forces opposing it areinclusive of a revanchist army of Hitlerian fascism. The principal actors in this conflict are, on the one side, a rising oligarchic capitalist state trying to create a multipolar world in which it and other rising, (including self-identified socialist) countries can act and grow unconstrained by the hegemon, and, on the other, an oligarchic capitalist and hegemonic imperialist state, plus Nazis. I’m not a fan of either of them, but I know whom I don’t want to win.

And so does China. And Venezuela. And Nicaragua. And Cuba.

If there’s a way out, it’s with them.

Related:

BLACK BOX DEFENCE FOR THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY – DOLLAR DEBT REPAYMENTS BLOCKED; GAS AND OIL DELIVERIES TO GERMANY STOPPED; OLIGARCH ASSETS NATIONALIZED

In general, much remains to be done to strengthen national sovereignty in the economy. American sanctions are the agony of the outgoing imperial world economic system based on the use of force. In order to minimize the dangers associated with it, it is necessary to accelerate the formation of a new – integral – world economic order which restores international law, national sovereignty, equality of countries, diversity of national economic models, principles of mutual benefit and voluntariness in international economic cooperation.”

Venezuela’s Maduro Calls for Dialogue in Ukraine Crisis, Rejects NATO ‘Mockery’ of Minsk Accords

Venezuela’s Maduro Calls for Dialogue in Ukraine Crisis, Rejects NATO ‘Mockery’ of Minsk Accords

Experts have warned that the measure could ultimately actually serve to boost the development of a system parallel to the SWIFT service that is not beholden to the US and EU.

“Both Russia and China have generated alternative mechanisms of economic resistance, such as interbank payment systems outside SWIFT. Insofar as imperialism intensifies its violence, it only ends up pushing the very hegemony of the dollar in the world and the monopolies that NATO represents off a cliff,” Rivas went on to tell Venezuelanalysis.