Dirty West

Where to start, in what has to be a rushed review of a collapsing imperial order?

The Skripal Hoax

Why not with the Skripals whose attackers, it turns out, were British, not Russian, agents? I have long argued that the case against Russia has been yet another example of British duplicity in a filthy war of anti-Russian propaganda that the British, at the service of their neocon masters in Washington, have been pursuing with gathering ferocity at least from before the illegal US/allied invasion of Iraq in 2003 but one that, in truth, has a pre-history of a couple of centuries.

The British fart off almost as much pontificating nonsense as the Americans in international relations. Their chosen moral crusades generally say nothing true about the intended victims, and nearly always end up exposing the criminality of both Mr. Evil (Washington) and his favorite Mini-Me (London). Neither of these regimes, current and former hegemons, despite their white robes of “democratic” purity, are representative of anything beyond their own elites’ interests.

Here are the first two paragraphs of an article by British foreign correspondent in Moscow, John Helmer:

“Yulia Skripal communicated from her bedside at Salisbury District Hospital on March 8, 2018, four days after she and her father Sergei Skripal collapsed from a poison attack, that the attacker used a spray; and that the attack took place when she and her father were eating at a restaurant just minutes before their collapse on a bench outside.

The implication of the Skripal evidence, revealed for the first time on Thursday, is that the attack on the Skripals was not perpetrated by Russian military agents who were photographed elsewhere in Salisbury town at the time; that the attacker or attackers were British agents; and that if their weapon was a nerve agent called Novichok, it came, not from Moscow, but from the UK Ministry of Defence chemical warfare laboratory at Porton Down”.

Imperial Proxy Wars

Most sources today suggest that the SNA-HTS invasion from Idlib province has been stalled by the Syrian Army (SA) along the lines I indicated in my post of a couple of days ago. Interestingly the Kurdish SDF has fought alongside the Syrian Army in a gesture that is not only predictable, given the primordial Turkish culpability for staging this offensive (almost certainly with Israeli support and, very likely, direct and indirect support from the usual imperial suspects, the USA, UK, France and the Netherlands), but one that is also promising, given that a closer relationship between Damascus and the Syrian Kurds would help boot out the US (which has been paying the Kurds, essentially, to police Syrian oil and agricultral wealth in the northeast that the US has essentially stolen - with some Syrian oil being siphoned off for the benefit of Israel), and provide a major building block for a more robust, prosperous and safe Syria in the future.

The pretence that HTS has magically toned down its extremism is a piece of theater to justify what has been considerable Western support for what are now the jihadists of Idlib province and, back in 2011, were the failed executors of a theocratic revolution ludicrously masking itself as “pro-democratic,” and, most likely, their continuing active support for the current invasion.

Of great importance has been Russia’s solid support for Syria. This provides reassuring evidence that Russia is not about to let Iran down either. Bad news for Israel. Other aid for Damascus is coming from Iraq, Iran and Hezbollah. There are strong indications that the Arab League, including the two countries most active behind jihadi militia in the period after 2011 namely, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are now on the side of Damascus. (Qatar’s Al Jazeera, nonetheless, is still reporting this conflict through a pro-jihadi lens).

This in turn suggests to me that the idea that the conflict is related any longer to what in 2011 had been a narrative about an ambitious pro-Western Qatar proposal for an oil pipeline across Syria that would rival an earlier Russian pipeline proposal, no longer pertains in what has become a very different geopolitical environment.

Erdogan has shot himself in two feet. His demonstrated incompetence in preparing his country a couple of years ago against the predictable shocks of earthquakes and other environmental disasters, and their aftermaths, is now matched by a depth of senseless and immoral treachery which exposes Ankara as a lackey of Washington, an unworthy candidate for the BRICS (Turkiye is only an associate member), an opportunistic aggressor, a ruthless predator on his own Kurdish people, an effective supporter (through this action in Syria and in his continuous flow of oil to Israel) of Israel’s Palestinian genocide (and an inheritor of the Armenian genocide to boot) while also the instigator of extremist Sunni Islam, which includes both the caliphate-inspired and the international terrorist varieties, both of them far more lethal for host Arab nations than for their Western puppet-masters.

Of course, Russia and Iran must deal with Erdogan, to an extent, while he strill struts the world stage in the false guise of elder statesman, but they will have their revenge.

In expecting to further crush Hezbollah’s flows of weapons to Lebanon across Syria, even while it violates (130 instances already, just in a couple of days) the laughably christened 60-day “ceasefire” that it just signed with Lebanon and Hezbollah, Israel may yet see the return of Iranian troops to the Golan Heights and along the border with Israel. Northern Israel will not be safe, and its Israeli residents will not return. There will be no safety in Haifa or in Tel Aviv.

Georgia

The First Cold War divided the world into two major camps, pro-Washington and pro-Moscow. All international events were given meaning, in Western policy making and in Western mainstream media, only through the lens of whether they related to this existential battle and for whose benefit. The same is true of the Second Cold War, which has already reached and is quickly surpassing its Cuban Missile moment, liable therefore, to become so intensely hot, at any moment, that the passing of the human species is not only imminent, but deeply unregrettable for any interest other than human.

A quick review of many of the major current crises of the world demonstrates this truth: Georgia, I will talk about in a moment; Washington-backed support for the independence of Taiwan to provoke China to assert its legitimate claim to governance of Taiwan is an important illustration; Washington-backed support for the pro-Washington persecutors of former prime minister Imran Khan in Pakistan is another; the swift transition away from tolerance for French forces in the countries of the African Sahel (most recently, Chad) in favor of Russia, is another; the conflict between the Philippine President (pro-Washington), his seach for causus belli in the South China Sea, and the Philippine Vice-President (pro-China) is another.

Then earlier today we had the disturbing example in South Korea of a rather dour and stupid, and deeply unpopular President Yoon of South Korea, dependent on Washington support for his precarious hold on power, another fanatic who would spend South Korean wealth on the losing proposition of a war in Ukraine against Russia, aggravate hostility towards his cousins in the North, and repair relations with Japan simply to help Washington contain China, declare martial law. (Worryingly, Judge Napolitano greeted the news with the hope that “it wont happen here.”)

Not only did he declare martial law and have his military mini-me send off troops to shut down the Assembly building, but he tried, unsuccessfully, to deny his opposition their constitutional right to vote on the declaration. Thanks to the quick action of his Democratic Party opposition who roused the political class (including many of Yoon’s own party) and public to surround the building and face off against the military, this deeply illegal and totally unjustifiable manouver met the fate that it deserved, humiliating Yoon, requiring him to back down from his declaration, leading either to a quick resignation or a fairly immediate impeachment. The media did not comply with the Martial Law requirement that they publish news only favorable to the government (a measure that a cynic might wonder would even be necesssary in Washington, London, Paris or Brussels).

In Georgia, the attempt to “Ukrainize” (or “Maidanize") the political system continues in the name of a demand very similar to that of the Banderite Maidan protestors and their snipers in Kiev in 2014, namely that Georgia be allowed to resume negotiations for access to the EU.

In Ukraine in 2014 it was about whether the government should reject a plan to depend on European assistance (with strong conditions, negative for the welfare of the country) or go once again for a larger assistance package from Russia (that came with far fewer conditions).

Although the founder of the Georgian Dream party that won national elections a few weeks ago (I believe quite legitimately) is a billionaire with pro-Russian sympathies, the party does not actually reject accession to Europe. Its prime minister merely wishes to postpone the process until the country is ready, with a view to resuming negotiations in 2028-2030, with the result, even if this is genuine, that Georgia would become part of Europe in about as much time as it would take if negotiatons were to continue straight away.

There is some sense to this, as a delay would not only actually give Georgia time to build its economy so that the country would have a chance of meeting the conditions for membership, but it would hopefully put the conflict in Ukraine in the rearview mirror, so that a decision with respect to the EU could be a technocratic more than an ideological choice, one taken in what may by then be quite a different geopolitical environment in any case.

I have little doubt that many of those Georgians who now favor accession to Europe (80% of the population some polls say) are very underinformated or misinformed as to the real character of the EU as it has evolved under the tutelage of Liberal Authoritarians (“the West is Best” because we say so, variety) such as Ursula Von der Leyen and her acolytes in the de-industrializing zone, and what might be its relations to the US (dependent), and to the Global South (not nearly as aspiring and growing as they).

Ukraine

In Ukraine, there is still talk of a likely Ukrainian new offensive, possibly taking off near Marivka and the ZNPP in Zapporizhzhia (other potential targets include Russian oblasts Belgorod or Bryansk), where there is a significant concentration of forces on the Ukrainian banks of the Chervonohryhorivka resevoir, when the resevoir itself, following Ukrainian sabotage in 2022, is more grass than water.

If true, such an offensive is part of a pattern of escalating east-west tensions, particularly impacting the interests of Russia and/or Russian allies, and including the speeding up of aid to Ukraine in the final moments of the Biden regime, with a view to giving Ukraine a stronger hand in preparation for what are anticipated to be negotiations under the incoming US President Trump.

This narrative overlooks the strong possibility that Ukraine will by then actually be much weaker, and given the absence of any indication, yet, of a plausible Western foothold on any kind of rationality likely to secure a positive outcome for the West.