The Fruits Of Western Civilizational Self Demolition
The Fruits Of Western Civilizational Self Demolition
My thesis here is that the fact that there is really no significant public disagreement in the collective West with the war on Russia that is backfiring so spectacularly is a sign that the decline of Western civilization from within has proceeded to the point that the forces of dissolution have gained the upper hand—we are now at the point of self demolition. Yes, there are protests against the coming economic hardships, but as far as pushback against civilizational collapse there are precious few, and relatively isolated, instances … Hungary’s Orban, Meloni in Italy. The fact that, in the face of clear self harm, so few can formulate opposition to the forces that are behind it all—globalism, Neocon hegemonism, transhumanism—speaks eloquently to the the reality of civilizational decline, and the difficulty we face in reversing it.
I’ll present a few examples of where we’re headed as well as of the dishonesty of Western leaders to illustrate this process. This will be a bit jumbled, but why not? It’s all quite mind boggling.
Try this one on for size—there’s no guarantee that it will happen but, then again, there’s no guarantee that it won’t. It appears to be a serious possibility:
"Gone In 30 Minutes" - Next On Europe's Doomsday List: Collapse Of Cell Phone Networks
It's not just heating that could be missing across Europe this winter: cell phones may be the next to go. That's because if power cuts or energy rationing knocks out parts of the mobile networks across the region, mobile phones could go dark around Europe this winter according to the latest doomsday reporting from Reuters.
While everyone knows by now that Europe's chances of rationing and power shortages have exploded ever since Moscow suspended gas supplies, in France, the situation is even worse as several nuclear power plants are shutting down for maintenance. And the cherry on top: telecom industry officials told Reuters they fear a severe winter will put Europe's telecoms infrastructure to the test, forcing companies and governments to try to mitigate the impact (i.e., more bailout demands).
The problem, as four telecoms executives put it, is that currently there are not enough back-up systems in many European countries to handle widespread power cuts, raising the prospect of mobile phone outages. Realizing that in just weeks Europe could be cell phone free, countries including France, Sweden and Germany, are scarmbling to ensure communications can continue even if power cuts end up exhausting back-up batteries installed on the thousands of cellular antennas spread across their territory.
Alas, like with everything else in Europe, it's too little, too late and Europe is facing a truly historic cell phone black out because while Europe has nearly half a million telecom towers, most of them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run the mobile antennas. After that they go dark.
That would mean a lot of unhappy people, but how do you fix that? Not really easy, short of rejecting what got you in that situation in the first place. But the US just cut the most obvious source of affordable energy—the Nordstream pipelines.
Speaking of the pipelines, I have to say I get very tired of some of the people suggesting that this either wasn’t sabotage or, if so, was done by the Russians destroying their own assets and dispensing with their most obvious political—and thus economic—leverage.
Michael Hudson (of whom, more below) puts it nicely:
On Tuesday, September 27, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken shed crocodile tears and said that attacking Russian pipelines was “in no one’s interest.” But if that really were the case, no one would have attacked the gas lines. What Mr. Blinken really was saying was “Don’t ask Cui bono.” I don’t expect NATO investigators to go beyond accusing the usual suspects that U.S. officials automatically blame.
Alex Christoforou had a nice commentary on the same topic today, quoting Zhou Baidanopoulos (“Greece’s Favorit Son”). AC pointed out how unusual Zhou’s script was. On the one hand, Zhou openly admitted that this was a case of “deliberate sabotage—so, please: no more comments claiming this was due to Russian technical incompetence. However, AC points out that, after the usual boilerplate attack on Putin personally, Zhou quite notably 1) didn’t accuse Russia of the sabotage, and 2) didn’t deny US complicity. Instead, he called for an “investigation”. This runs counter to the usual Deep State script, in which almost instantaneously a POTUS will point a finger regarding chemical weapons, WMD, whatever. This script suggests that the response wasn’t well thought through, that the public response pointing to the obvious culprit—the US or some US backed group—had not been expected. The call for an investigation is very problematic, since I very much doubt that the US will sanction a truly independent investigation that would include representation from all parties involved—which would include Russia. As a result, any such investigation will be almost certainly discredited from the start—and I doubt that the public will buy into such an “investigation” because the fallout from this sabotage will be so deep and longlasting. Nobody will be forgetting it.
Economist Michael Hudson did a piece at Naked Capitalism that was later republished at Andrei Martyanov’s site. The piece is titled The Euro Without German Industry, and in it Hudson discusses what will be coming for the European economy with the deindustrialization of Germany—long considered the economic engine of Europe. The US (or “Anglo-Saxon”, as Putin says) sabotage of the pipeline has put paid to that. Much of this monetary talk is over my head, but I want to quote the introductory paragraphs, which presents the geopolitical scene in the collective West in the aftermath:
The reaction to the sabotage of three of the four Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in four places on Monday, September 26, has focused on speculations about who did it and whether NATO will make a serious attempt to discover the answer. Yet instead of panic, there has been a great sigh of diplomatic relief, even calm. Disabling these pipelines ends the uncertainty and worries on the part of US/NATO diplomats that nearly reached a crisis proportion the previous week, when large demonstrations took place in Germany calling for the sanctions to end and to commission Nord Stream 2 to resolve the energy shortage.
That paragraph suggests the sense of crisis facing the US/NATO, the fear that public pressure in Germany would get to the point of derailing the failed sanctions war. It suggests that, while preparations were in place for the sabotage, the decision was a hurried one and the exculpatory narrative was simply not ready for prime time.
The German public was coming to understand what it will mean if their steel companies, fertilizer companies, glass companies and toilet-paper companies were shutting down. These companies were forecasting that they would have to go out of business entirely – or shift operations to the United States – if Germany did not withdraw from the trade and currency sanctions against Russia and permit Russian gas and oil imports to resume, and presumably to fall back from their astronomical eight to tenfold price increase.
Yet State Department hawk Victoria Nuland already had stated in January that “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward” if Russia responded to the accelerating Ukrainian military attacks on the Russian-speaking eastern oblasts. President Biden backed up U.S. insistence on February 7, promising that “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it. … I promise you, we will be able to do it.”
Most observers simply assumed that these statements reflected the obvious fact that German politicians were fully in the US/NATO pocket. Germany’s politicians held fast turbines refusing to authorize Nord Stream 2, and Canada soon seized the Siemens dynamos needed to send gas through Nord Stream 1. That seemed to settle matters until German industry – and a rising number of voters – finally began to calculate just what blocking Russian gas would mean for Germany’s industrial firms, and hence domestic employment.
Germany’s willingness to self-impose an economic depression was wavering – although not its politicians or the EU bureaucracy. If policymakers were to put German business interests and living standards first, NATO’s common sanctions and New Cold War front would be broken. Italy and France might follow suit. That prospect made it urgent to take the anti-Russian sanctions out of the hands of democratic politics.
Despite being an act of violence, sabotaging the pipelines has restored calm to US/NATO diplomatic relations. There is no more uncertainty about whether Europe may break away from U.S. diplomacy by restoring mutual trade and investment with Russia. The threat of Europe breaking away from the US/NATO trade and financial sanctions against Russia has been solved, seemingly for the foreseeable future. Russia has announced that the gas pressure is falling in three of the four pipelines, and the infusion of salt water will irreversibly corrode the pipes. (Tagesspiegel, September 28.)
In what kind of civilization do the rulers turn on their subjects in this way? There certainly are examples from history, but none of them suggest that this is a healthy, normal civilization. Nor that the future will be attractive for the subjects. In his concluding paragraphs Hudson returns to these general themes, and alludes to the efforts being led by Russia and the BRICS and other groupings to find an alternative. As more and more countries fall hopelessly into debt, what will happen? What will be the geopolitical consequences?
U.S. strategists must have a game plan for how to proceed from here. They will try to maintain a neoliberalized global economy for as long as they can. They will use the usual ploy for countries unable to pay their foreign debts: The IMF will lend them the money to pay – on the condition that they raise the foreign exchange to repay by privatizing what remains of their public domain, natural-resource patrimony and other assets, selling them to U.S. financial investors and their allies.
Will it work? Or will debtor countries band together and work out ways to restore the world of affordable oil and gas prices, fertilizer prices, grain and other food prices, metals and raw materials supplied by Russia, China and their allied Eurasian neighbors, without U.S. “conditionalities” such as have ended European prosperity?
An alternative to the U.S.-designed neoliberal order is the great worry for U.S. strategists. They cannot solve the problem as easily as sabotaging Nord Stream 1 and 2. Their solution probably will be the usual U.S. approach: military intervention and new color revolutions hoping to gain the same power over Global South and Eurasia that America’s diplomacy via NATO wielded over Germany and other European countries.
The fact that U.S. expectations for how anti-Russian sanctions would work out against Russia have been just the reverse of what actually has happened gives hope for the world’s future. The opposition and even contempt by U.S. diplomats toward other countries acting in their own economic interest deems it a waste of time (and indeed, to be unpatriotic) to contemplate how foreign countries might develop their own alternative to the U.S. plans. The assumption underlying this U.S. tunnel vision is that There Is No Alternative – and that if they don’t think about such a prospect, it will remain unthinkable.
But unless other countries work together to create an alternative to the IMF, World Bank, International Court, World Trade Organization and the numerous UN agencies now biased toward the U.S/NATO by U.S. diplomats and their proxies, the coming decades will see the U.S. economic strategy of financial and military dominance unfold along the lines that Washington has planned. The question is whether these countries can develop an alternative new economic order to protect themselves from a fate like that which Europe this year has imposed upon itself for the next decade.
Now, too many US “conservatives” who count themselves as “patriots” or “believers in American Exceptionalism” will be inclined to think that the extension of US world hegemon status is a good thing. To those I respond: Look around at at the fruits of our Ruling Class. That extended hegemony will be extended at home, as well, and the price will be the same—the loss of our freedoms, the imposition of an aggressively anti-human Wokeness. It’s a package deal, people. Don’t count on a GOP win in the midterms or in 2024 to reverse the end game that the Uniparty has in mind. It ain’t that easy.
Unsurprisingly, Vladimir Putin has been observing all this, and he has been looking for partners in the West to resist the process that’s developing. That’s really what the war in Ukraine is about—not Ukraine but Russia, as the leader of opposition to the extension of globalist, transhumanist Ruling Elite hegemony to the entire world. In the conclusing section of his speech celebrating the return or accession of the four oblasts to the Russian Federation, Putin’s remarks—while formally addressed to the assembled crowd—are also aimed at those in the West who still value Western civilization. They’re worth pondering:
Let’s answer some very simple questions for ourselves. Now I would like to return to what I said and want to address also all citizens of the country – not just the colleagues that are in the hall – but all citizens of Russia: do we want to have here, in our country, in Russia, “parent number one, parent number two and parent number three” (they have completely lost it!) instead of mother and father? Do we want our schools to impose on our children, from their earliest days in school, perversions that lead to degradation and extinction? Do we want to drum into their heads the ideas that certain other genders exist along with women and men and to offer them gender reassignment surgery? Is that what we want for our country and our children? This is all unacceptable to us. We have a different future of our own.
Let me repeat that the dictatorship of the Western elites targets all societies, including the citizens of Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to all. This complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a “religion in reverse” – pure Satanism. Exposing false messiahs, Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” These poisonous fruits are already obvious to people, and not only in our country but also in all countries, including many people in the West itself.
The world has entered a period of a fundamental, revolutionary transformation. New centres of power are emerging. They represent the majority – the majority! – of the international community. They are ready not only to declare their interests but also to protect them. They see in multipolarity an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which means gaining genuine freedom, historical prospects, and the right to their own independent, creative and distinctive forms of development, to a harmonious process.
As I have already said, we have many like-minded people in Europe and the United States, and we feel and see their support. An essentially emancipatory, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is taking shape in the most diverse countries and societies. Its power will only grow with time. It is this force that will determine our future geopolitical reality.
Friends,
Today, we are fighting for a just and free path, first of all for ourselves, for Russia, in order to leave dictate and despotism in the past. I am convinced that countries and peoples understand that a policy based on the exceptionalism of whoever it may be and the suppression of other cultures and peoples is inherently criminal, and that we must close this shameful chapter. The ongoing collapse of Western hegemony is irreversible. And I repeat: things will never be the same.
The battlefield to which destiny and history have called us is a battlefield for our people, for the great historical Russia. (Applause.) For the great historical Russia, for future generations, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We must protect them against enslavement and monstrous experiments that are designed to cripple their minds and souls.
Today, we are fighting so that it would never occur to anyone that Russia, our people, our language, or our culture can be erased from history. Today, we need a consolidated society, and this consolidation can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creation, and justice. Our values are humanity, mercy and compassion.
…
The truth is with us, and behind us is Russia!
I submit that the principles that Putin enunciates here are far closer to a path toward a more human future—certainly than the transhumanist future, but also more human than the neoliberal or libertarian ideologies pushed by our ruling elites.
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