patrick.net

zzyzzx says

True, but it also means that oil prices in the West don't go even higher while depriving Russia with a lot of the profits.

Russia is doing just fine. That's the problem ppl can't wrap their heads around.

The sanctions hurt NATO countries other than Canada and the US more than anyone else.

UkraineIsTotallyFucked says

zzyzzx says

True, but it also means that oil prices in the West don't go even higher while depriving Russia with a lot of the profits.

Russia is doing just fine. That's the problem ppl can't wrap their heads around.

The sanctions hurt NATO countries other than Canada and the US more than anyone else.

Aaaannnnndddd whaddya know!

https://patrick.net/post/1343769/2022-02-24-greeted-like-liberators-ukraine?start=3610#comment-2045851

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/radio-free-america-wednesday-april

Speaking of things heating up, the BBC ran an article yesterday that surprised no one except the entire Biden Administration. It bore the unfortunate headline, “Russia to grow faster than all advanced economies, says IMF.” The sub-headline added, “An influential global body has forecast Russia's economy will grow faster this year than all of the world's advanced economies, including the US.”

The headline should have read, “Joe Biden loses World War III.”

That wasn’t all yesterday. Bloomberg ran a similar story, this one headlined, “Russian Crude Shipments Surge to the Highest in Almost a Year.” It is now undeniable that the Biden Administration’s highly-publicized sanctions war against Russia has catastrophically failed. The U.S.’s faltering economy was well described yesterday in a Barrons article headlined, “Inflation Could Stick Around Much Longer. What to Do About It.”

A financial analyst quoted for the Barron’s story explained, “The backdrop of continued geopolitical stress is contributing to more persistent inflation and more caution.”

Who caused all this geopolitical stress? It did not exist four years ago.

As a core plank of its neocon foreign policy, Team Biden deliberately provoked Russia into invading Ukraine, and then set out to leverage the Proxy War to remove Putin, destroy Russia’s economy, and eradicate Russia as a potentially competitive superpower. Even if you somehow disbelieve NATO provoked Russia, the rest is undeniable. Without Congressional authorization, Biden undertook a Fifth Generation world war against Russia, a war via proxy, a war via economics, a war via propaganda and destabilization, and a war via thinly-disguised infrastructure sabotage, like blowing up Russia’s Nordstream pipeline.

It sort of snuck up on us, but it is evident Biden’s gamble failed. Sure, the clock is still running, the players are still going through the motions, but the crowd can see it’s over. There are six minutes left in the fourth quarter and the home team is down by three touchdowns. Might as well head for the parking lot.

From the current state of the world, it looks more and more like Biden’s disastrous defeat has been carefully scripted from Day One by the meritocratic Russian team, which outplayed our cross-dressing, diverse, inclusive neocon nitwits. Let us count the ways:

Biden has lost the economic war (see above). Instead of harming Russia’s economy, sanctions have only improved it, boomeranging on the U.S., which is paying an incalculable price.

Most informed commenters think the Proxy War in Ukraine is now just a matter of time before a politically-catastrophic surrender becomes necessary. Options for NATO to directly intervene in Ukraine evaporated when Iran launched its drone swarm against Israel, because the U.S. is now pinned. We can no longer commit to a major effort to save Ukraine, because we must now keep our military free for deployment to the Middle East in case a broader war breaks out. The rest of NATO must enter Ukraine without the United States. They won’t.

Russia has quietly forged alliances with all the U.S.’s most mortal enemies, and has armed them with paradigm-busting, air-defense-defeating hypersonic technology. Specifically, the Russia-Iran-China-North Korea axis now shares the ability to sink U.S. aircraft carriers, which is how the United States projects force around the world. By arming Iran and North Korea, the Russians have created other problems of regional instability for which the U.S. must now plan and must feebly attempt to contain, further distracting from our faltering Proxy War in Ukraine.

Russia’s lead in hypersonic weapons technology removes the option of nuclear war from the table, even if Biden’s deranged neocons ever thought it was an option.

Intellectual, anticommunist, and conservative commenter James Lindsay persuasively argues that DEI, which like sewer water has now seeped into every nook and crevice of our public and private institutions, is actually a long-term socio-political military strategy by our enemies, principally China, to destabilize the United States. DEI is rendering impotent our military, our government, our universities, and even our strategically-critical corporations staffed by graduates of those undermined universities (think Boeing). If James is right, and I think he is, China’s destruction-by-DEI plan is working perfectly.

The world is noticing. Yesterday, BRICS announced this on its website: “Russian Federation Council: 40 countries want to join BRICS.” Russia’s fast-growing BRICS alliance has inflicted a potentially mortal blow to American hegemony. Economists will correctly argue the dollar cannot be easily displaced. But that’s beside the point. The real threat is that Russia has given hope, a home, and a place to rally to countries long-frustrated with America’s constant post-Cold War bullying. Apparently there are a lot of frustrated countries, thanks largely to Joe Biden.

The worst thing about all this is every single one of those developments was completely predictable. Joe Biden is a human wrecking ball. His advisors are over-promoted, under-qualified DEI hires who have no idea what they are doing and are completely unprepared to compete with the Russians, who are cleaning our clock.

Biden must go. And here are seven more suggestions for what we could do to get our country safe and back on track.

We must admit we’re in a hole and stop digging.

We have to acknowledge we’ve lost, abandon the Ukraine project, and close our borders up tight. Send illegals back where they came from, or anywhere but here. Let France have them.

Support historic allies like the British (and Israel) and also stop mucking about the rest of the world. We must focus on rebuilding our own country. Rebuild our economy. Rebuild our military.

Limit the government to only a hundred classified documents a year, and require secret classifications to expire in five years.

Restore merit as the lodestar of all organized effort in America, public and private, just as it used to be. Delete victim status and grievance politics.

Restore patriotism, morality, honor, and family as central values in American life.

Enforce it by shaming and driving out of public life (lovingly and compassionately) people who advocate for bat-guano crazy ideas like the implausible notion that men can transform into women with enough surgery and medicine.

Patrick says

Speaking of things heating up, the BBC ran an article yesterday that surprised no one except the entire Biden Administration. It bore the unfortunate headline, “Russia to grow faster than all advanced economies, says IMF.” The sub-headline added, “An influential global body has forecast Russia's economy will grow faster this year than all of the world's advanced economies, including the US.”

Should I bother to dig up @socal2 comments saying that the Russian economy was collapsing?

Patrick says

Intellectual, anticommunist, and conservative commenter James Lindsay persuasively argues that DEI, which like sewer water has now seeped into every nook and crevice of our public and private institutions, is actually a long-term socio-political military strategy by our enemies, principally China, to destabilize the United States. DEI is rendering impotent our military, our government, our universities, and even our strategically-critical corporations staffed by graduates of those undermined universities (think Boeing). If James is right, and I think he is, China’s destruction-by-DEI plan is working perfectly.

Actuallly, they are doing us a favor. By speeding up the Collapse, renewal of America can thus start sooner and be faster. Cloward-Piven for MAGA.

Too bad 20,000+ sailers on the Navy will have to die. (4 carriers with 5,000 crewmembers each)

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/stiff-opposition-wednesday-april

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is working diligently to ensure that Americans can enjoy an apocalyptic wasteland of economic woe. Forbes ran the story yesterday headlined, “U.S. Is Preparing To Sanction Chinese Banks Supporting Russia, Report Says.”

More sanctions! On China. Biden’s beef with the Orient ostensibly is a complaint that China keeps selling Russia ordinary, non-military commercial goods, which Russia has cleverly adapted to using in its war effort. And Biden wants it to stop. “Just don’t,” he mumbled, or unrecognizable words to that effect.

So, try to follow me here, the geniuses in Biden’s Administration have come up with a brilliant plan. Right as China and Russia are trying to get their own international financial system off the ground, Biden is threatening to cut off China’s banks from the U.S.’s international financial system.

The predictable result will be China accelerating its BRICS program. Is Biden trying to help BRICS replace the dollar? That’s an honest question.

Anyway, can somebody explain to me why, after sanctions worked so well with Russia, we’re looking to do the same thing to China?

Patrick says

The predictable result will be China accelerating its BRICS program. Is Biden trying to help BRICS replace the dollar? That’s an honest question.

Repeat after me:

BRICS IS BULLSHIT
BRICS IS BULLSHIT
BRICS IS BULLSHIT
BRICS IS BULLSHIT
BRICS IS BULLSHIT

Even SA, India and China formally declared at last year's BRICS confab in Johannesburg that they have no intention of replacing the USD.

Only Russia is really pushing the true BRICS mantra. As should be expected.

So anything you read that refers BRICS to sell you on a point is bullshit too.

Following the announcement about new US sanctions against Russia, one of Russian banks has changed its exchange rate drastically.

The bank will buy US dollars for 50 rubles/dollar and will sell them for 200 rubles per dollar.

https://sukwan.substack.com/p/friday-funnies-b7c

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/the-baddies-saturday-july-13-2024

Meanwhile, the rest of the world shocked geopolitical experts by responding to cratering U.S. leadership in entirely predictable ways. Bloomberg ran an irksome story Thursday headlined, “Modi’s Embrace of Putin Irks Biden Team Pushing Support for Kyiv.”



What irked, peeved, riled, and disgruntled Biden’s war planners was a photo destined to become one of those iconic pre-war images, like that happy sailor kissing a buxom nurse in Times Square after World War II. In this week’s photo, recently re-elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked happy and relieved while getting, not a kiss, but a full bear hug from the Russian Bear. In Moscow. Whew, Modi seemed to be thinking, I almost took a trip on the Hinden-Biden!

It looks like he doesn’t want to let go.

Now, as you know, I hate to criticize. But is “irked” a sufficiently strong sensation for Biden’s State Department to feel as one of the largest U.S. allies turns its back on us and embraces the RussoChinese axis? Are those State Department morons paying attention to current events? ...

China, historically unfriendly to Russia in the pre-Broccoli period, but now Russia’s closest ally, has 1.5 billion citizens. It sure looks like Biden’s neocon war experts have, through shrewd tactics and cunning strategeries, mostly by putting a guy in charge who calls the other NATO leaders “President Putin” by mistake, managed to create a Russia-India-China coalition accounting for nearly half the world’s population.

That’s a big army. But don’t worry. NATO’s arsenal of high-tech wonder weapons include more than just TikTok influencers. NATO generals, and I am not making this up, have announced record-shattering plans to someday build fabulously expensive hellscape swarms of AI drones that are infinitely more complicated and do less damage than cheap, dumb artillery shells, in which the Russians are swimming.

But listen. This is the main point. The AI drones will be built by transexual midgets with no fewer than three mixed minority parents. Check, check, check, check.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/sanctuarianism-wednesday-august-21

Two can play at the sanctuary state game. Late last week, President Putin issued a decree making Russia into a sanctuary country for people with traditional Christian values. You cannot make this stuff up; it could only happen in 2024.

In short, Putin’s decree waived certain Russian immigration requirements, such as demonstrating Russian language proficiency and passing a history test, for people applying for temporary residence permits. Applicants must come from countries “imposing destructive neoliberal ideological guidelines that contradict traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”

Traditional Russian spiritual and moral values are anti-LGBTQ+, orthodox Christian values.

Even more entertaining, Putin ordered the Russian government to compile a list of approved countries with “destructive neoliberal values.”

Who wants to bet the United States appears prominently at the top of that list?

In classic Putin fashion, the move was not just virtue signaling. The overheated Russian economy is thirsty for skilled workers. The category of only ‘neoliberal’ countries ensures temporary workers will come from preferred, higher-income areas. The ideological character of the test causes applicants to self-select for conservatism; liberals won’t bother applying.

I wish we could do the same thing for Florida residency.

Putin has thrown down the bearskin glove and challenged the West to vote with their feet. As for me, I plan to stay and fight to the bitter end. How about you?

Lol, the "sanctions" resulted in Russian self-reliance and a booming economy in Russia.

I have to admit that this decree is a brilliant move politically, but I'm not about to give up on America or to trust Russia yet. The Russian psychology is still mired in cynical corruption, justified by the idea that "everyone does it". And they also had death jab mandates, a different kind of corruption, far more dangerous.

The first country to publicly hang everyone who mandated the death jabs will get my vote for most honorable country on earth.

https://www.rt.com/news/603014-usmanov-interview-sanctions-backfired/

Western sanctions against Russia have yielded results that are the opposite of their stated goal, metals tycoon Alisher Usmanov has said.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera on Thursday, the Russian billionaire argued that the sanctions regime has so far done more harm to the European Union countries than to Russia.

“They wanted to harm the Russian economy, and here it is growing. They wanted to punish the business elite, and the Russians brought the money back home. The Russian economy is adapting to the sanctions, while neighboring markets are suffering. Europe rejects Russian energy resources and is forced to buy them at a much higher price,” he told the publication.

EU ‘part of the conflict’ in Ukraine – BorrellEU ‘part of the conflict’ in Ukraine – BorrellREAD MORE: EU ‘part of the conflict’ in Ukraine – Borrell
Russia’s economy expanded 3.6% in 2023 despite the economic sanctions imposed by the EU, the US and their allies since the start of the special operation in Ukraine in 2022. The EU’s economic powerhouse Germany went through a recession last year, while the bloc’s other large economies, France and Italy, posted growth of under 1%.

Following the sanctions and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022 that led to a dramatic drop in Russia’s gas supplies to the EU, the bloc started buying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US. According to estimates published by Russia's Energy Ministry, American LNG is 30-40% more expensive than Russian pipeline gas.

Patrick says

Russia’s economy expanded 3.6% in 2023 despite the economic sanctions imposed by the EU, the US and their allies since the start of the special operation in Ukraine in 2022.

Just like we adjusted the jobs report 800k here. All countries lie about their economics. I don't believe any of it. I go by what I see. 99.9% of Americans won't go to Russia, so they can't see it with their own eyes.

i literally don’t understand how did swamp elites got so many americans to care and hate russia out of nowhere. them 2 minutes hate rituals must have worked. monday we were thinking about work week, tuesday america transitioned into Russia hate. some like that.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/historic-wednesday-october-23-2024

If one thing has remained constant in the ever-shifting propaganda landscape of the Proxy War, beyond its kaleidoscopic narratives and chameleonic claims, it is the ever-present background refrain sung by the mockingbird media chorus that “Putin’s aggression has made Russia increasingly isolated.” I could show you at least a hundred headlines parroting that phrase, “increasingly isolated.” But if Russia gets any more isolated, Putin will be living in downtown Manhattan.

Yesterday, corporate media ran scads of quiet but unavoidable stories about what is surely one of the most, if not the most historic political meeting in our lifetimes. The New York Times’ article was originally headlined, “Putin Welcomes Xi and Other World Leaders to Russia for BRICS Summit.”

In a telling sign of how terrified the deep state blob is about this meeting, the Times stealth-edited its original headline, to smear Putin and to remove any reference to the BRICS. It now reads, “Seeking to Elude Sanctions, Putin and Xi Promise ‘A Just World Order.’” ...

Even the Times seems to recognize that the “increasingly isolated” canard is wearing thin. Consider this remarkable paragraph, wedged late in the story, rife with admissions of the failures both of Western sanctions and anti-Russia Proxy War propaganda:

"For Russia to have 22 leaders and representatives of over 30
countries coming to Kazan two and a half years into this war does
not only show that Putin is not isolated internationally and the
I.C.C. warrant is of limited utility, but also that the war in Ukraine
has become a new normal, something accepted as a feature of
international reality," said Hanna Notte of the James Martin Center
for Nonproliferation Studies in California."

... Ignoring BRICS is what got us here, morons. To be fair, they aren’t ignoring BRICS. Biden’s out-of-control neocons are deploying their entire bag of dirty tricks against the BRICS nations, including blowing up undersea pipelines, creating colorful color revolutions, and funding endless Proxy Wars. Biden’s neocons want us to ignore the BRICS, so we don’t realize that Biden is crashing the American dollar faster than that F-35 the Air Force lost over South Carolina. ...

What else can you call this except failure? How many billions were wasted, with that lackwit Lindsay Graham chortling all the way, calling it the best money America ever spent? Spent for what? To erect an anti-Western coalition of countries bent on creating a more competitive world currency than the dollar? ...

Regardless what you think of Putin, the fact is right now the United States offers the world nothing hopeful like this. Just the opposite. The U.S. has rabbited so far down the deep state’s dirty-tricks hole that our entire foreign policy is now just a vast secretive effort to undermine things other nations are doing, rather than building anything better ourselves.

The core problem is that our current crop of DEI-infused leaders lack the intellectual capacity to build anything. They can’t run a profitable lemonade stand without first regulating their competitors out of business. In other words, the only thing they are good at is breaking stuff.

My fanciful dream is that, if Trump is elected, we might shut down for good the deep-state’s dirty tricks division, and join the BRICS. Maybe we could work with other countries instead of trying to force them to swallow drag queens. Maybe, as a significant BRICS member, we could help build a new, better, more stable, less manipulated, gold-based world currency. Maybe we could finally replace the corrupt, ineffective, cronyist United Nations with something that actually works.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/trumps-october-surprise-friday-october

Yesteday BRICS released a comprehensive plan to which its members and applicant members agreed. BRICS is not, in fact, creating any new global currency. Instead, it’s creating an alternative international payments platform, for people buying and selling things across borders, or for when nations trade with each other (to buy weapons, grain, or oil, for three examples).

Right now, everyone must use a common payment settlement system called SWIFT. SWIFT is U.S. created and effectively controlled, even though it is ostensibly privately owned and supposedly located in Belgium. The thought that SWIFT is at all independent is a great gag that everyone at the State Department always guffaws about making them cough champagne up their noses.

For many countries, SWIFT has at least two huge problems. When I say the platform is effectively U.S.-controlled, you can imagine all the implications. Users’ data is supposed to be private, but for some reason everybody thinks the U.S. constantly snoops on where all the money is going to and coming from. (One possibility for why they think that is because Edward Snowden exposed it all in 2013, but I digress again.)

The second, even bigger problem is that the U.S. acts like the spoiled kid at his birthday party, refusing to let the kids he doesn’t like ride the rented pony. In other words, the U.S. forces countries to do things they hate, like teach their kids trans techniques, by threatening to cut them off from SWIFT, or snatching their money as it travels through the collected SWIFT system.

Russia, for example, is cut off from SWIFT under U.S. sanctions. And $300 billion of its money was seized while sitting in a SWIFT clearinghouse bank. The implacable Russians are great poker players, you can’t never tell if they’re at all mad about Biden snatching their $300 billion or exploding their undersea pipelines.

But you can imagine how mad the Russians must be.

The Russians are mad enough to spend their time and money leading a world movement to replace the G-7 and its captive SWIFT system. Which would be horrible for us.

Once BRICS has its own interbanking system, they won’t need to trade in dollars anymore, not unless they need something from the U.S. or from a G-7 country. For complicated reasons, the reduced demand for dollars just from those lost transfers will drastically worsen our debt problem. And maybe more important for BRICS countries, the U.S. won’t be able threaten sanctions to force them to swallow every lunatic social experiment that comes down the liberal U.S. pike.

The BRICS pitched their interbanking system yesterday as a non-threatening “alternative” to SWIFT, rather than any kind of direct competitor. Having choices, they stressed, just improves everyone’s outcomes. But that logic is like claiming that when you parked your taco truck right next to Jose’s taco truck, it is actually better for Jose’s taco trade since diners like different choices of tacos.

Jose is not likely to agree. Jose is likely to go loco. ...

The U.S. could shut this BRICS initiative down easily and immediately. All we need to do is reform SWIFT. If the U.S. stopped using SWIFT to sanction other countries, and SWIFT opened up its system transparently, and the U.S. stopped using SWIFT for spying, then BRICS would be unnecessary.

And everyone would keep trading in dollars.

In other words, we could rescue the dollar. We only need to give up the ‘dirty tricks’ tool we use to force other countries to make their kids sit through drag queen happy hours. But Biden’s neocons won’t try that simple remedy, will they? They’ll let the dollar be destroyed before they give up their economic wonder weapon.