Are we the baddies?

By The Truth Reporter:

 

Apologies for the title, but in this case I feel I am justified in appropriating the smug comedy of Mitchell and Webb since the precise attitude of the holier-than-thou BBC and the programming they broadcast encapsulates the paltry groupthink that passes for statecraft in the current international system.

For many weeks now we have been subjected to a grim pastiche of MSM insults of Vladmir Putin, he is apparently mad, dying, ‘out of touch with reality’ or paranoid – depending on which paper you read. For someone so enfeebled he is managing to pull off some significant achievements. Despite apparently being in disarray the Russian and Donetsk forces have cleared the Azovstal plant of the last remnants of the Azov battalion. All the BBC could bare to report was that the Ukrainian operation at Azovstal had ‘ended’ – yes it ended in defeat.

There is widespread evidence that the Ukrainian forces are being encircled and worn down on several fronts and that in the east they are close to collapse – despite the presence of foreign special forces ‘advisors’ and the glut of donated weaponry being poured into the region.

Economically the widely touted crushing of the Russian economy by western sanctions has failed to deliver the effect the west desired. Far from collapse, the Russian economy is in rude health given the fact the commitments they have made to supporting the displaced Russian speaking refugees who have fled the east of Ukraine. The Ruble continues to strengthen against the dollar, since whatever EU countries may say in regard to halting fossil fuel imports, in reality they can’t – so the imports continue via proxies and subterfuge to provide a political fig leaf. Concomitantly the funds flow –in rubles, to Russia as they have demanded. 

It is a testament to the myopia of the EU, US and UK governments that they ever thought they could destroy a resource rich and self sufficient nation with economic sanctions. Freezing Russian dollar assets only proved to the global system that the US is a petulant bully who will use their control of the dollar system to further their hegemony. This might have worked twenty or perhaps even ten years ago and leaders such as Gadaffi and Sadam Hussain paid the ultimate price for defying the mighty greenback. 

In 2022 we live in a changed reality, the dollar consensus is holed below the waterline, the rise of cryptocurrency markets has educated a significant sector of the young aspirational population worldwide how currency systems work, the difference between hard assets and fiat currencies and crucially that you cannot infinitely debase a currency via printing and expect no consequences. 

Within this milieu Putin knows he holds an ace up his sleeve, he controls vital commodity production and supply. He can cut it off to those who do not comply with his conditions. This is the huge bear trap that the western groupthinkers have fallen into, they have made the same error as many failed leaders have made throughout history – to believe their own delusional rhetoric so completely that they will march their entire nations through purgatory to prove they are correct – regardless of the consequences for the people at large.

The western media are desperate for us to believe that Putin is the new Hitler but in their actions the western governments have shown themselves to be guilty of the same insouciant cruelty that Hitler bestowed upon General Paulus at Stalingrad. Hitler promoted Paulus to Field Marshall when it became clear that the offensive was failing. German military history enshrined the principal that no German Field Marshall ever surrendered during battle and therefore tacitly Hitler had signalled that Paulus and his army must win or die. 

Make absolutely no mistake – the stakes in this proxy conflict in Ukraine are the biggest we have seen since World War 2. The dollar is an aging construct like a rotten floorboard, it may look solid but it could give way at any point. Any analyst worth their title knows this and so the western system is fighting a desperate rearguard action to consolidate every single asset they can extract from the system before it fails. Russia has smelt the rat early and is not willing to be flushed down the plughole with nations like the UK, as we grimly cling to the mast of the mighty dollar warship as it starts to disappear beneath the waves.

This realisation explains the lack of damage to the Russian economy by the sanctions, the Russians of course knew that they would be excommunicated from western systems and therefore had a variety of hedges and contingencies ready to deploy. Not only this but of course they had their fossil fuels and vast grain production to use as leverage. 

It is difficult to believe that the west did not envisage this, the belief that they could vilify and sanction Russia into submission whilst simultaneously expecting them to supply the west with vital commodities is dangerous lunacy, but once again the people who must endure the pain of this folly are not those who make the decisions, it is the population at large.