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imagine a world without capitalism......

ONE COULD BE TEMPTED TO BELIEVE THAT PUTIN HAS BEEN TOO SUCCESSFUL AT DEFENDING RUSSIA AGAINST THE WEST AND THE WEST RESENTS THIS, THUS ALL THE “POSTURES” OF THE WEST ARE BASED ON THIS PREMISE.

THIS WOULD BE IGNORING THE FACT THAT THE AMERICAN EMPIRE HAS BEEN PREPARING TO DESTROY RUSSIA AND TAKE OVER THE HEARTLAND THAT INCLUDES CHINA (WE HATE CHINA, DON’T WE?), SINCE 1919.

SOME PEOPLE WOULD BE INCLINED TO DISMISS THIS MACKINDER 1905 ORIGINATED GEOPOLITICAL THEORY AS A CONSPIRACY THEORY. IT’S NOT. IT IS AN ANGLO/SAXON/ZIONIST CONSPIRACY, PURE AND SIMPLE, THAT HAS BEEN TAKEN OVER BY THE AMERICAN EMPIRE, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE MARX BROTHERS, MARX AND ENGELS, DEVELOPED AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE AMERICAN CAPITALIST SYSTEM OF “DOING BUSINESS” THAT LED TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN 1917.

 

Capitalism will never deliver material well-being for all. We need a new system.

By  , 
TRUTHOUT
November 20, 2022

 

Capitalism has been around for such a long time that it is hard for people even to imagine a world without it. Yet, it is far from an immutable physical law. In fact, capitalism is now “materially outmoded and ideologically defunct,” argues British author Steve Paxton in his forthcoming book, How Capitalism Ends (Zero Books, 2022). “The capitalist era has provided the material abundance required for a free human society, but capitalism cannot deliver the freedom its productive capacity makes possible.” In the interview that follows, Paxton shares his thoughts on the contours, contradictions and twilight of capitalism with Truthout.

Paxton is also the author of Unlearning Marx — Why the Soviet Failure Was a Triumph for Marx (Zero Books, 2021). In addition to having an academic career at Oxford, Steve Paxton has worked on building sites and in betting shops, been a PHP programmer and a T-shirt designer, been employed, self-employed and unemployed, blue-collar, white-collar and no-collar. He currently works as a tri-vision engineer in the summer, installing and maintaining sight-screens at cricket grounds, and as a database designer in the winter.

C.J. Polychroniou: Capitalism emerged in western Europe sometime during the long 15th century and has gone since through several distinct stages. Its success lies with the fact that it reorganized production and raised productive capacity at an unprecedented rate. However, there are good reasons to believe that “this system is by now intolerable,” as Pope Francis said in a speech some years ago. Indeed, in your own forthcoming book, How Capitalism Ends, you argue that capitalism has reached its limits. Let’s start, first, with explaining, from your own perspective, the historical resilience of capitalism, given that the system has experienced a myriad of failures in the past but continues to survive down to the day.

First of all, maybe we shouldn’t get too carried away with the idea that capitalism is super-resilient. Although the earliest developments of capitalism date back to before 1500, it was the end of the 17th century before the bourgeoisie came to dominate political power in England and more than another century before the French bourgeois interest was able to match that achievement. The process of enclosure — a fundamental aspect of the development of capitalism in Britain — continued into the second half of the 19th century, so we could argue that the transition to capitalism lasted longer than capitalism proper has so far existed. But, yes, capitalism has survived many crises — largely of its own making — and one of the reasons for that is its unique ability to foster rapid technological development and therefore to massively increase productive capacity. While there has always been a terrible human cost to capitalist development, there was also a rationale — increased productive capacity raised living standards and life expectancy for huge swathes of the world’s population. Complaints against capitalism’s injustices have long been met with references to its efficiency — the pie may not be evenly divided, but it relentlessly increases in size. Add to this the fact that a sizeable chunk of the toil and misery involved in capitalist production has been exported to the global south and all this means that until the last few decades, most people in capitalist economies enjoyed a better material life than their parents, which feels to many people like progress. The problem is that the progress is always one dimensional — the nature of capitalism is that it is always about growth, about producing more and better stuff. Even capitalists agree that the system is built on greed and self-interest. Capitalists don’t set out to meet our needs, but to increase their own wealth, but — so the story goes — under capitalism the easiest way to get rich is by meeting our needs better than any competitors can. This idea goes right back to Adam Smith and for some time it was true that a byproduct of capitalist self-interest was an improvement in living standards for many — not for all, by any means, but for enough to blunt the opposition to the capitalist system. We have reached the point though where more stuff isn’t going to solve the problems we now face. The connection between what makes money for capitalists and what advances civilization has come unstuck. Perhaps we should set out with the aim of catering for people’s real needs, regardless of their ability to pay for their subsistence, rather than trying to cater for the ambitions of entrepreneurs to buy more yachts and hoping that the starving might be fed as a by-product of that process.

Like all systems, capitalism also creates a compelling story about how it’s not really a system at all, but just the way that the world inevitably has to be and that’s a difficult narrative for opponents to challenge. The conversation we urgently need to have — the conversation I hope this book is a contribution to — is about what a post-capitalist world might look like and how we’re to move from here to there…

You argue in your book that “scarcity is no longer our enemy” and that inequality is the main problem. Are you saying that capitalism has solved the problem of scarcity? Moreover, aren’t capitalism and inequality linked?

The capitalist era has provided the material abundance required for a free human society, but capitalism cannot deliver the freedom its productive capacity makes possible.

Has capitalism solved the problem of scarcity? Largely, yes, in that the major problems we face in the twenty-first century are not caused by insufficient productive capacity, but by the absence of mechanisms in place to distribute the fruits of that capacity more reasonably. Currently 26 billionaires have the same wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people on the planet — and almost all of those 3.8 billion live in poverty — with limited access to food, clean water, basic medicines, shelter, security and education. Globally we produce enough material goods for everyone on the planet. That may seem an odd statement, given that 9 million people die of hunger and related causes every year, but then we throw away 1.3 billion tons of food annually and 28 percent of the world’s agricultural area is used to produce food that is lost or wasted.

In the 21st century, the problem of human poverty is one of distribution, not scarcity. The capitalist era has provided the material abundance required for a free human society, but capitalism cannot deliver the freedom its productive capacity makes possible. It’s time to move on to an economic structure that can deliver that freedom.

The link between capitalism and inequality is complex. Inequality was a feature of pre-capitalist society too, so it’s not unique to capitalism, but in terms of material wealth, clearly capitalism has delivered previously unimaginable levels of inequality. On the other hand, capitalist ideology does require the recognition of some kinds of equality — the political and legal inequality of the feudal era was something that held back capitalist development and the ideologues of the emerging bourgeoisie demanded an end to that. Although the equality demanded by capitalist philosophy is strictly limited to equality before the law and (eventually) equality of political participation, and although really existing capitalism has often failed to deliver even on these limited ideals, it’s important to note that the ideology of the capitalist era does insist on equality of something — that there are some rights that accrue to individuals merely on the basis that they are humans, rather than because of a particular social status, or inherited title. The point here is that the equalizing instinct — i.e., the tendency toward egalitarianism — is not an anti-capitalist ideological ambition. The difference between capitalist ideology and socialist ideology is not that one favors equality and the other doesn’t, but what kind and extent of equality each requires. So, as long as egalitarianism itself is perceived as an anti-capitalist position, defenders of capitalism will continue to trot out caricatures of the egalitarian spirit as utopian fantasy doomed to end in absurd excess.

Once we recognize that capitalism itself requires (ideologically speaking) some form of equality, then the conversation changes from a discussion of the virtues or otherwise of the process of equalization and has to address what it is that is being equalized, how far we should go, and what competing values might need to be considered. Supporters of capitalism cannot argue that the pursuit of egalitarian aims is in itself unjust or unnecessary since, ideologically speaking, capitalism itself relies on equality of something. Instead, they must explain why the egalitarian impulse is desirable and justified to the extent that it suits them, but undesirable and unjustified in cases where it might suit others. What does equality before the law have, which equality of opportunity, or equality of wealth or income do not have?

Does the traditional axis of left-right politics still make sense in today’s capitalist era?

I think we need to completely review our idea of the left-right axis and introduce some historical perspective. The left now is clearly engaged in either mitigating the excesses of capitalism or replacing it altogether, but the entire concept of left and right in politics dates from the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution — a time when the left were the advocates of capitalism — pursuing revolutionary change to overturn feudal privilege. We can reconcile the pro-capitalist origins of the concept of the political left with its current anti-capitalist incarnation if we see it as a program advocating the progressive ideas of the enlightenment, adapting to historical circumstances and advancing from tradition to modernity — from superstition and fear to rationality and understanding. Favoring capitalism was a left-wing position in the 18th century, whereas working toward its extinction is left-wing now. From this perspective — and bearing in mind the earlier point about capitalist ideology’s insistence upon (limited) equality — the difference between the liberal left and the socialist left is that the liberal approach is essentially calling out capitalism for failing to live up to its ideological commitments, whereas the socialist left recognizes that even if those commitments were met, we would still be a long way from where we need to be; and to get to where we need to be we need to do more than just fix capitalism’s hypocrisy, we need to move beyond capitalism altogether.

We need policies which undermine and break down the economic power which is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority.

If history is a guide, capitalism will eventually give rise to a new socio-economic system, although, as you point out in your book, it is hard for most people to imagine the end of capitalism. How can capitalism be transformed? Can it be done at the national level given that this system is now global, and the rules of globalization are designed to serve the rich?

To some extent, the transformation has to happen — at least the early stages of it – at the national level, as that is what we have. The nation-state is the demographic political unit of capitalism. There’s no reason that has to remain the case though. As we’ve seen under capitalism, international cooperation can take many forms — from the UN and NATO to the EU and COP. Of course, these are capitalist organizations working for the benefit of capitalist governments and the interests that maintain them, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t see cooperation among governments pressing for transformative change — the hard part is to establish those governments in the first place.

What would transformative change look like? The most important thing is that changes must push us in the direction of a revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism. (The term “revolution” should be taken to refer to a degree and type of historical change, not to the means by which it is achieved, or the timescale involved. Dismantling capitalism is the revolutionary act — not machine-gunning the Spanish Embassy or storming the Winter Palace).

Policies which mitigate the excesses of capitalism are, of course, welcome — but they’re not the point. We need policies which undermine and break down the economic power which is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority. While I argue in the book that it’s not going to be possible (or, in fact, desirable in our current situation) to overthrow capitalism overnight, I also maintain that there are policies which socialist governments could adopt which would begin to transform the nature of ownership from the private property paradigm of the capitalist era into a common ownership model for a socialist future.

The key is to break the definitional feature of capitalism, which is that most of us — having no ownership of any means of production — must sell our labor power on unfavorable terms. The standard Marxist approach to that task has been to demand the seizure of the means of production in order to put an end to that exploitation.

I’ve approached the problem from the opposite direction and proposed a way in which we can take the exploitation out of the employment relationship in order to undermine the power that comes with ownership of the means of production. While the idea of a job guarantee scheme is not new, its proponents almost always present it as the state becoming the “employer of last resort.” What we really need is for the state — in combination with other public bodies and worker cooperatives — to provide a job guarantee while also being the employers of best practice.

If the public and cooperative sectors provide the option of a guaranteed job with a fair wage and excellent working conditions, then the private sector is going to need to up its game to attract workers, particularly at the less well rewarded end of the labor market. Exploitation under capitalism is possible because the worker has no option but to accept unfavorable terms — providing an alternative undermines the basis of exploitation. 

There are parallels here to the way the National Health Service (NHS) was created in the U.K. in the 1940s. Hospitals were not seized from the private sector… the state simply provided a better option for health care than the private sector could offer. It’s time now for the public sector to provide better — significantly better — employment options than are currently available from the private sector. The private sector would then need to match the wages and conditions offered by such a program in order to attract employees. 

This isn’t something that could happen overnight but would need to be introduced over a period of time, and preferably alongside a similar scheme to undermine the private rental sector by the provision of quality, affordable housing. Add initiatives to repair existing public provisions in education and health care to these public options for employment and housing, and we’re starting to move important areas of people’s lives significantly away from the capitalist economic structure. No one thinks it’s going to be easy, but time is running out for capitalism.

 

READ MORE:

https://truthout.org/articles/capitalism-has-ended-the-issue-of-scarcity-but-worsened-the-crisis-of-inequality/

 

THE PROBLEM ISN'T CAPITALISM PER SE. THE PROBLEM IS THE CONCENTRATION OF MONO-CAPITALISM THAT DOES EVERYTHING TO ELIMINATE COMPETING OTHER SOURCES OF CAPITALISM THAT ARE NOT AMERICAN. MOST RECENT WARS IN LIBYA, SYRIA AND IRAQ WEW DUE TO INDEPENDENT LEADERS TRYING TO BYPASS AMERICAN CAPITLISM. THE WAR IN UKRAINE, APART FROM ETHNIC TENSIONS IS ALSO PART OF THE AMERICAN CAPITALIST DOMINATION.

 

READ MORE:

https://truthout.org/articles/capitalism-has-ended-the-issue-of-scarcity-but-worsened-the-crisis-of-inequality/

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW………………..

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/45958

negotiations alla bruce willis......

 

BY Karine Bechet-Golovko

 

The United States has decided to intensify the training of Ukrainian soldiers from January, in addition to sending a battery of Patriot missiles. This responds to those who try to convince themselves of the will of the United States to lead Ukraine to negotiate... And in order to put the dots on the i's: no, the United States does not prolong the conflict, they make war. And they do it to win, not to negotiate. Their goal is simple: to eliminate Russia as a potential power, in order to ensure their total power. It's time to call a spade a spade, illusions are always very expensive in times of war. Russia does not have the means. This war is already global and one of the decisive battles is being played out in Ukraine. Battle, which can only be won militarily, which the Atlanticist Axis is seriously working on. The rest is just a delaying tactic.

Le NYT has just announced: the United States will intensify the training of the Ukrainian soldiers and from January, each month, a battalion of 500 to 800 people will be trained in advanced battlefield tactics on the American base of Grafenwoehr in Germany. This base also hosts the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine.

"The expanded training would emphasize 'combined arms' warfare - close coordination between infantry, artillery, armored vehicles and, when available, air support, so that each group is reinforced and protected by others. »

According to the NYT, since the start of Russia's response in February, the United States has trained about 3 Ukrainians, mostly in the use of American weapons. Since 100, more than 2015 Ukrainian soldiers have been trained by American instructors in a training center in western Ukraine, near Lvov.

The Atlanticist Axis countries trained about 12 Ukrainians, career soldiers or new recruits, who went to Britain for infantry training. Add to this the Ukrainian soldiers, whose training began a month after the start of the Russian offensive, in Germany and Poland.

For its part, Great Britain claims the training of more than 10 Ukrainians. The program was launched by Boris Johnson in June:

“In addition, Britain has launched a program to provide military training in Britain to 10 Ukrainian army recruits and personnel, an effort that aims to strengthen local resistance to Russian invasion. . The initiative, announced in June by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, began with more than 000 British soldiers from the 1th Security Force Assistance Brigade, which specializes in overseas training. »

If we take into account the fact that other countries such as Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway and even Sweden have joined this British initiative, the we understand that what is modestly called the “conflict in Ukraine” is a world war, which has already started. 

Karine Bechet-Golovko

 

READ MORE:

https://en.reseauinternational.net/le-conflit-en-ukraine-est-une-nouvelle-veritable-guerre-mondiale/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

IN "THE FIFTH DEMENSION", BRUCE WILLIS "NEGOTIATES" BY KILLING EVERYONE HE DOES NOT LIKE... THIS IS THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DERANGEMENT THAT HAS ALWAYS CONSUMED THE AMERICAN EMPIRE LEADERSHIP.... HERE IN UKRAINE, THE US EMPIRE LEADERSHIP KNOWS THAT THE USA CANNOT MOVE INSIDE UKRAINE WITHOUT CREATING WW3. SO THEY BITE AROUND THE CAKE LIKE CLEVER RATS ON A COCKED TRAP. ONE FALSE MOVE AND THE TRAP ZAPS.....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.......

the cold war never thawed at the pentagon.......

 

The US is using the conflict in Ukraine to fulfil its decades-long goal of weakening Russia, envoy Anatoly Antonov told Newsweek

 

The US’ support for Ukraine is motivated by a Cold War-era desire to weaken Russia and make Europe its subordinate, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov told Newsweek on Saturday. However, he foresees a new “multipolar world”emerging.

Speaking to the American magazine a week after the Pentagon announced a fresh $275 million arms package for Ukraine, Antonov remarked that Washington “seems to need to constantly assert itself through competition with Russia.”

The Pentagon’s most recent National Defense Strategy describes Russia as “an acute threat” to US interests, and mandates that the US military equip itself to “prevail in conflict” against Moscow “if deterrence fails.”

“It looks as if the ‘ghost’ of the Soviet Union is still haunting the corridors of power in the American capital, and the Сold War has not ended at all,” Antonov told Newsweek. “Many politicians here still think and act according to the laws of that historical period. They believe that restoration of Russia’s international prestige with Vladimir Putin’s accession to power in our country has become a ‘headache’ for Washington.

“With the conflict in Ukraine, the United States is better placed to implement its ‘idee fixe’ to weaken Russia,”Antonov said. “It is much easier to consolidate society within the United States and in the Western camp as a whole around the image of a ‘foreign enemy that undermines the values of the democratic world.’”

At the same time, the US can use “Russia to justify its unprecedented military spending,” while simultaneously “ruining mutually beneficial ties between Russia and Europe, making the latter fully dependent on Washington.” 

The EU’s self-imposed energy embargo on Russia – which the US has encouraged – has already cost the bloc nearly $1 trillion, Bloomberg reported on Sunday. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the destruction of the Russia-EU Nord Stream gas pipelines as a “tremendous opportunity” for the EU to abandon Russian gas, and the US has already stepped in to sell Europe its own, higher priced, liquefied natural gas.

 

READ MORE: Fyodor Lukyanov: One year ago, Russia gave the West a last chance to prevent a full-blown conflict – what went wrong? 

“At first glance, it may appear that Americans are 'winning' everywhere,” Antonov said. “However, things are different. It is clear that we are at the beginning of a complex and long journey of building a multipolar world,” in which “the Russian Federation advocates that the interests of all participants should be taken into account in the future system of international relations.”

Russia’s proposals, he said, are finding “more and more understanding and support in various regions of the planet.”

 

READ MORE: 

https://www.rt.com/news/568462-russian-ambassador-interview-soviet/

 

SEE ALSO:

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43171

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW………………..

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/45958

the collapse of.....

by Dmytri Orlov

There is a marked difference of opinion on how to characterize the military action currently taking place in what remains of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic: is it a special Russian military operation aimed at demilitarize and denazify the old Ukraine, or an unprovoked Russian invasion leading to World War III, a nuclear exchange and the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAKI for short)? It may be a bit of all of this, or it may be none of this…

Does Russia win or Ukraine lose? On the one hand, Russia has just officially extended its sovereign territory by a hundred thousand square kilometers and a few million citizens, and it has embarked on a vast construction campaign, rehabilitating its new territories , which are a bit dilapidated after decades of Soviet and post-Soviet neglect, followed by nine years of Ukrainian bombardment. This would indicate that Russia is winning.

On the other hand, the United States has just promised to give the Ukrainians Patriot air defense batteries (or not, details vary…). Are these the same Patriot batteries that had such an embarrassing failure over Saudi Arabia, when they were unable to shoot down former Yemeni-fired Soviet SCUD missiles? And are these the same Patriot batteries whose operators in Poland recently did not see the approaching Ukrainian missiles (which were also venerable Soviet missiles) and learned of their existence only later, in the media? Never mind ! They cost $1 billion per launcher and $3 million per rocket, so they have to be good for Raytheon, and what's good for Raytheon is good for America, or something like that. What if they had no chance against advanced Russian weapons? Don't be negative!

As the arguments erupt, Henry Kissinger, the veteran of Western geopolitics, pokes his head out of the dinosaur egg he's been hiding in for 70 million years and declares that the Ukrainian conflict must be settled at the negotiating table . Never mind that everything he came up with was gibberish and a failure; what is important is that for him to express that opinion at this precise moment, his delicately quivering geopolitical nose hairs must have told him that the United States is not going to prevail in this conflict, no matter what. it's coming, so it's time for them to stop fighting and start talking. Clearly no one, especially not the Ukrainian regime, cared whether Ukraine itself was going to succeed or fail, it had been doomed since at least the Orange Revolution of 2004, or, rather, to be sacrificed on the altar of American hegemony by being fed to Russia.

If we ignore everything worth ignoring in Kissinger's words of infinite wisdom, all that remains is to say that the Ukrainian conflict "must be concluded" and that it must be concluded "at the table of negotiations”. But it turns out that these two nuggets of deep thinking are also very questionable. First, why would Russia rush to conclude the conflict? It established a pattern of favorable expectation and escalation dominance in all possible parameters: military, economic, political, and cultural. Second, with whom can Russia negotiate? The same people who promised that NATO would not expand an inch to the east if Russia allowed German reunification? Well, do it, and then we'll talk!

Militarily, Russia has established defensible borders in the former Ukraine and is slowly advancing towards the borders of what it now considers its own sovereign territory. It has established pipelines for men and weapons that can allow it to simultaneously sustain multiple conflicts the size of Ukraine virtually endlessly. It can inflict precise damage to Ukraine's energy supply and other infrastructure at will and without risk to itself, gradually reducing Ukraine's ability to sustain any kind of military campaign and ultimately leading to demilitarization. complete (no industry, no war potential) and denazification (all Nazis died or fled to Europe or America). Meanwhile, the West's ability and willingness to continue supplying arms to the Ukrainian army (two-thirds of which are disappearing along the way due to corruption) is dwindling. And then there are Russia's new toys: the latest generation of its strategic weapons, against which the United States has no countermeasures, are beginning to be deployed, and if Russia's nuclear no-first-strike doctrine remains in place, it is understood that it could be reviewed if the situation justifies it: " Children, be good! »

Economically, the Russian economy was hit by 2,5% in the year 2022, but most of this loss was recorded in the first two quarters, with a steady recovery thereafter. With many of its international competitors having rudely apologized for the sanctions, Russia's domestic industry, from automobiles to airspace to shipbuilding, is set to flourish. Energy exports, which are very important to fill federal coffers, have been redirected from hostile EU and G7 nations to friendly nations in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Export volumes have remained stable, but revenues have improved due to higher prices, allowing Russia to maintain a very low debt-to-GDP ratio and a healthy trade surplus, and to invest heavily in infrastructure projects without going into debt. As the planet heads into the next ice age (it's too soon to tell if it will be a mini ice age of a century or a true ice age of a hundred thousand years ), Russia stands to benefit greatly from its huge hydrocarbon reserves and healthy nuclear industry.

Politically, Russia is finally able to shake off the hangover of late Soviet weariness, the dissipation and corruption of the 1990s, and the consumerist abandonment of the 2000s, and return to its normal communitarianism, namely one for all and all for one. She is quickly rediscovering her millennial history of heroic homeland defense on the battlefield. The demons of emasculation and feminism are exorcised; the men are once again warriors and the women guardians of the family hearth. For men, there are two honorable options – victory and death, both heroic – and several dishonorable options: cowardice, betrayal… The national character of Russia is determined by the nature of Russia: the vast landscape and inhospitable, the huge and vulnerable frontier, the multitude of tribes, distinct but fractally combined – but what keeps it going is a periodic bout of warfare. Normally, a would-be world hegemon, be it Pope Urban II, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Napoleon or (don't laugh!) Joe Biden, fights Russia, sometimes as a last resort .

On the social level, since the Russian revolution of 1917 (and well before in Saint-Petersburg, Moscow and in several large provincial towns), Russia leans towards the West. Russia was the first country to introduce equal rights for women and minorities. During the XNUMXth century, Russia liberalized divorce and remarriage laws and eventually decriminalized homosexuality and abortion. Along the way, Russia embraced many modernist and post-modernist trends, sometimes going too far, too fast, and then recoiling in horror. And, perhaps worst of all, Russia has been infected with the most pernicious Western ideology, Marxism. Marx offered a valid critique of capitalism as it existed at the time, but beyond that, his theorizing is perhaps the most egregious example of large-scale intellectual failure that has ever existed.

Meanwhile, in the West, the trend toward individual rights has gone to extremes, not only condoning but approving and celebrating homosexuality and other types of aberrant (non-reproductive) sexual behavior, and now insisting on the chemical and surgical castration of children. A distinct but related transhumanist current seeks to erase the boundary between man and machine. The West is also moving towards the legalization of pedophilia; euthanasia is already legal in many countries and actively promoted as a solution to elderly poverty in Canada. All that remains is to legalize cannibalism and human sacrifice. What has been lost among all these individual rights is the right of communities to make these individuals listen to reason.

In a sense, legalizing cannibalism would make a difference in degree, not in kind. During World War II, the Nazis locked up Russian children in concentration camps and bled them to death to provide transfusions to wounded German soldiers. Even today, privileged geriatricians in the United States and Britain live to an obscene age thanks to secret transfusions of children's blood. And the constant and abundant flow of mortally wounded Ukrainian soldiers provides an abundant resource of donor organs to clinics in Europe and Israel. This kind of practice is an integral part of Western humanism.

As these developments have become more extreme, the demands for universal acceptance of these "Western values" have become more strident and damning – and increasingly offensive to the 85% of the world's population, inside and outside the West, who are socially conservative. In much of the world, sex before and after marriage is a crime and children born out of wedlock are still called "bastards", marriage is still "until death do us part", respect for his elders is unconditional and "death before dishonor" is the unwritten law. These are all evolved universals of human culture, and any deviation from these principles is temporary and results in biological extinction. This lesson was formalized in Romans 6:32: “ For the wages of sin is death ". But death is sometimes slow in coming and people tend to get impatient waiting for the paint of the writing on the wall to dry and take matters into their own hands.

This is where Russia plays a key role: it has thrown down the gauntlet to the collective West, essentially telling it that it can become as degenerate as it wants, but it has no right to impose his strange and twisted new rules on others. In this process, Russia has become the global champion and defender of conservative society and culture. Some other countries, especially Islamic countries, have been just as inflexible; for example, Indonesia has just criminalized adultery: do not go to Bali without your legally married opposite-sex partner, or you risk being locked up! But the Islamic approach lacks universality, as it is based on what is defined as "haram" within Islam, while Russia claims universal sovereignty and freedom from oppression. Western culture.

It is clear that this is not a dispute over Ukraine, which is only the last, and perhaps the last, pawn in a much larger game. It certainly started long before February 22, 2022, when Russia announced the start of its special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Nor did it begin on February 22, 2014, when Ukrainian President Yanukovych was forced to flee Ukraine to take refuge in Russia following a violent and illegal coup plotted and encouraged by the department of American state. By then, as Victoria Nuland boasted at the time, the United States had already spent $5 billion to politically destabilize Ukraine and turn it into an anti-Russian country. It is impossible to pinpoint the date, but the process may have begun as early as 1945, when Ukrainian Nazis, along with other Nazis, were taken and found refuge and support in the United States and Canada.

It can be argued that the conflict between Russia and the West goes back further than can be seen in history, with minor interruptions. There was a brief interbellum between VE Day, May 9, 1945, and Winston Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech, March 5, 1946 – less than a year! Another, longer interbellum existed after the (illegal) dissolution of the Soviet Union by Yeltsin and his henchmen in Belovezhskaya Pushcha on December 8, 1991 (President George Bush Senior was the first to be informed of this fact by a phone call from Yeltsin) and the start of the global war on terror, which began with great fanfare on September 11, 2001 with the destruction of three heavily over-insured New York skyscrapers with the help of two Boeings.

Nor is it clear how far into the future one has to look to understand how the current phase of the conflict might end. Certainly Kissinger's suggestion that the conflict can simply be negotiated is nothing but a decoy, especially after former Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel revealed that the Minsk agreements between Kyiv and Donetsk/Lugansk were merely a ploy to give kyiv time to regroup and rearm so that it would be better able to attack Donetsk and Lugansk. Why would Russia want to negotiate if the stated purpose of the negotiation is a tactic of delay – and a tactic that has failed, since the Russians have seen through this ruse and have used the past eight years to… regroup and rearm in order to better demilitarize and denazify Ukraine when the time comes.

It is clear that the delay in question should extend well beyond the time when Eastern Ukraine will again be part of Russia (well, part of it already is!) while the rest will be turned into a harmless wasteland, largely depopulated, strewn with the rotting corpses of Polish mercenaries and patrolled by Russian combat robots. Something more important is happening: America is hungry and needs to eat someone right away or its financial house of cards will collapse.

The United States is constitutionally incapable of living within its means, but with the petrodollar wealth pump no longer working and much of the rest of the world already bled dry by vampiric capitalism, what is left? there to eat in the United States? The European Union, of course! The basis of European prosperity has been the steady supply of relatively cheap energy from Russia, and by cutting it off, the United States has rendered Europe's economy non-functional and ready to be plundered at leisure. Now, should Russia want to interfere with this process? Of course not ! If the collective West wishes to eat away at its own limbs, why would that be a problem for Russia? "Never interrupt your enemy when he makes a mistake, it's bad manners", Napoleon said at the Battle of Waterloo.
If we go back far enough in time, we find that the very first Drang nach Osten was launched by Pope Urban II on November 27, 1095, paving the way for the Crusades by calling all Christians in Europe to war against the Muslims in order to reconquer the Holy Land, with the cry of “Deus vult! or "God wills it!" ". It was pretty much a bombastic way for him to say "I'm hungry!" Bring me someone to eat! Of course, in 1147 the Germans attacked the Slavs, who were far from the Holy Land but must have looked tasty at the time, and they continued to attack them for over two centuries!

The Swedes didn't give up until Peter the Great defeated them at Poltava (now Ukraine) on June 27, 1709. They've been quiet as mice for the last three centuries, but now they're making noise to join NATO (the current crusader alliance) and maybe it's time to send them back to 1709 with the help of a few rockets, ridding them of extravagances such as electricity, central heating, running water and automobile transport. As we write these lines, the Swedes still have time to make up their minds. The same goes for the Finns who, over the centuries, have been conditioned to do whatever the Swedes tell them to do, except slowly.

It's been six centuries of intermittent crusades! There are monasteries in Russia that have been looted and burned to the ground by these raging “Christians” four or five times. And then Napoleon attacked a hundred years later, and Hitler a little over a century later... and now this... But we don't need to look that far back to predict with reasonable certainty that this almost millennium of Western Crusades is coming to an end. To do this, just go back to September 11, 2001 and the launch of the global war on terror. To date, every ploy and maneuver the United States has tried in this war has failed, with Ukraine as its last bulwark. These failures are little known or understood in the West, where the mass media are adept at covering up anything that doesn't fit the winning narrative.

Next week we will review the developments of the last ten years. It's only the blink of an eye in the sweep of history, but sometimes the collapse happens quite suddenly, and we should feel privileged to witness such a momentous series of events.

Dmitry Orlov

source: Club Orlov via Jacob's ladder

 

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