Unimaginable Folly (Extended Version)
Ukraine Follies
Zelenskiy has expressed anger that his demand for nuclear-capable Tomahawks, which he attempted to squirrel away from public sight in an appendix to his “Victory Plan,” among other shrill, over-entitled demands to the West, has not only been rejected by the US but has also been published.
The story of the supposed North Korean soldiers on their way to Kursk (whether 3,000, or 8,000, or 12,000) proves strangely difficult to authenticate. It has been supported by Blinken and the CIA, who may well be simply citing Ukrainian sources, and it is Ukrainian sources that allege that the story has been supported by Russian intelligence, while Russia denies the presence of North Korean forces and North Korea simply and correctly confirms that good relations between Russian (previously Soviet) and North Korean armies is a very long-established phenomenon as confirmed by a recent mutual defense treaty between Russia and North Korea .
The notion that spy satellite photos can detect North Korean faces in Russian uniform is silly and preposterous fodder for Europe’s most gullible. Note: North Korea can afford uniforms.
The story is being pushed by Zelenskiy who is ever more desperate to find reasons to chide the West into giving up more of its wealth (though Zelenskiy is apparently complaining that so far only 10% of the $61 billion package passed last April by Congress has actually arrived, and the latest tranche of $400 million wont arrive for a further two weeks at best. And his US douche bags are happy to play the same game as they prepare to be booted out of office in two months time because, after all, after that what do they care?
As I have argued before, a few thousand North Korean troops in Kursk (Russian territory, so it is absolutely nobody else’s business whom Russia invites to go there) would make zero difference to the outcome of the war which is being won, every day at greater speed by Russia. The story, whether true or not, might provide South Korea with a pretext for enhancing its sales of weapons to Ukraine and to Poland where it likely keeps F16s and which its well-trained pilots might theoretically fly on behalf of Poland against Russian targets in or beyond Ukraine, in a Polish escalation towards occupation of Western Ukraine at the invitation of Zelenskiy.
There is extremely little likelihood that South Korea would be stupid enough to put boots on the ground in Ukraine to get shot at and killed by Russia.
The notion that there were serious negotiations mediated by Qatar between Russia and Ukraine over the targeting of energy facilities, while taken for granted in many media outlets, is in no way proven and, even if there were, they have failed, on the eve of a planned new Russian offensive against Ukraine even as Winter bites.
Perhaps more likely than stories of South Korean troops in Ukraine are stories of the flights of Ukrainiansa into Russia, desperate for protection against the murderous Ukrainian State forces of conscription and mobilization for a losing war that is now being fought primarily for the benefit of Zelenskiy and his Banderite clique.
New Media Narratives
Glenn Diesen, in a recent Substack article republished at Natylie’s Place (Diesen) comments on the rapidly changing Western mainstream media narrative of the war. Like the New York Times today, this indulges in considerable unsubstantiated wishful thinking about coming Russian shortages of armored personnel vehicles, radars and men (which, when they do come, will allow Ukraine to resume its offensive). But it confesses that, right now, Russia is winning the war and every month acquires control over more territory than it did the previous month. The narrative still recklessly throws out egregious, and very silly lies (such as the claim that Ukraine has so far lost only 57,000 men), but for now the reality is impressing itself on Western media consciousness.
Focusing on a standard of war propaganda, Diesen notes how political-media elites weaponised empathy to get public support for war and disdain for diplomacy. All appeals to empathy became background noise for demands for escalation. The weaponisation of empathy enabled the war narrative to become impervious to criticism. The narrative falsely warned that Russia aimed to take the whole of Ukraine.
This terrible injustice to the Ukrainian people (whose government of course was persuaded by NATO to provoke the war and then to allow NATO to use Ukraine to fight for Western hegemony with only the sacrifice of Ukrainian lives) then became an excuse for deception and self-censorship. Everything that did not fit the narrative was dismissed as a Kremlin “talking point.” Major deceptions were perpetrated: over Ukrainian casualty rates, the failure of sanctions, US destruction of Nord Stream, Western sabotage of the Minsk agreements, Washington sabotage of the 2022 Istanbul negotiations, the function of the war as a tool to buttress US hegemony, the false promise to Ukraine that it would quickly become a member of NATO, the US aim to “bleed” Russia and a broader Western aim, starting with regime change in Moscow of the destruction and scattering of the Russian Federation, perhaps even the deliberate weakening of Western Europe so as to augment US economic advantage
Now that Russia is actually winning the war, Western media search to construct new and mostly very silly narratives: e.g. that NATO really won the war because it made it impossible for Russia to fulfil its objective (which of course it never had) of seizing the entirety of Ukraine; the West has knocked Russia off its perch; NATO is stronger becsuse of Sweden and Finland; NATO has forced Germany to be independent of Russia for energy; Russian military are no longer a threat to Europe
Israeli Follies
Statements from senior figures of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps confirm that Iran will retaliate against Israel’s recent strike on Iran even though, as in the period leading up to Iran’s attack on Israel on October 1st, there is no evidence of when this retaliation will occur. Iran promises that the strike will be “unimaginable,” and one wonders whether the scale of its unimaginability will be commensurate with the unimaginable genocide of the Palestinians and the unimaginable cruelty and barbarism by which that gigantic war crime will be executed.
Lt. Col. Wilkerson considers that the evidence cited last Monday by Alastair Crooke to the effect that the Israeli strike on Iran was aborted afer the first wave is “solid,” and this is confirmed also by Larry Johnson, although I note a version referred to by Alex Mercouris which refers not so much to an unknown air defense system over Tehran as to unanticipated Iranian radar systems that would have locked Israeli planes into an air defense system of some description.
Iran claims that Israeli damage to Iran last Saturday was minimal, that Israeli planes did not enter Iranian air space, and did not, as Israel claimed, damage a signficiant air base or undermine Iranian air defense, and that there were no drone attacks on Iran - as some people have claimed - from Israeli ally Azerbaijan.
A senior advisor to Supreme Leader Khamanei has recently made a number of remarkable claims, as published by the Tehran Times, namely, that Iran has all the necessary means to construct a nuclear bomb, that the only consideration that prevents it from doing so is the original fatwa by Islamic revolutionary leader Khomenei against use of nuclear weapons, that the fatwa could be overridden in the event of an existential threat to Iran, and that Iran would also consider acquisition of longer-range missiles that might enable it to hit European targets.
I doubt such public comments are wise. They could tip the balance of the 2024 US election further towards Donald Trump, whose own behavior towards Iran by breaking the earlier agreement that would have taken the nuclear question off the table and integrated Iran into the Western trading system, amolunted to exceptionally stupid kowtowing to Israeli sense of entitlement to regional dominance. Secondly, they would suggest that although it might be easy for Iran to make the bomb, it currently does not have that bomb. This might encourage Israel to make a pre-emptive strike against Iran while Iran still does not have the bomb and perhaps with a view to putting a stop to nuclear development. On the other hand, it is not impossible that these comments from Iran are intended to magnify Western suspicions that Iran may already have developed the bomb.
Of the greatest importance is that the Russian Duma has been presented with the Russian-Iranian Strategic Partnership agreement to consider and, presumably very soon, to agree to. It is significant that this development occurs almost at the same time as Iran issues promises of retaliation.
Alexander Mercouris yesterday qualified this significance by a reminder of Russian and formerly Soviet care to maintain reasonably cordial relations with Israel (not least because of the large number of Russian Jews who migrated to Israel) and of recent Israeli delegations to Moscow. He recalls the agreements between Russia and Israel over the red lines of Russian assistance to the Assad regime during the (Western-instigated) “civil” war in Syria when Russia agreed not to interfere with Israel actions against Iranian assets in Syria just so long as Russian servicemen were not hurt, and just so long as Israel did not support the jihadists who were at war with Assad.
In short, Russia maintained a very nuanced relationship with Israel even as it provided existentially important assistance to Damascus, alongside Hezbollah and the IRGC. To be clear: the US has only a tenuous hold over Israel, and none at all over Iran; Russia has a hold over both Israel and Iran.
An Iranian strike now could be devastating as Israel continues to take significant losses from Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and as tensions between Netanyahu, Gallant and other members of the Israeli cabinet flare
Clintons for Genocide
As Israel, pursuing a policy of starvation in its genocidal war against Palestinians, bans UNRWA (to whom it once looked to off-load its responsibility for Palestinians) from Gaza, Jordan Shilton for World Socialist Web Site (Shilton) reports pro-Zionist Clinton’s statement in Michigan:
“Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died,” Clinton said. “People who criticize it are essentially saying ... look how many people you’ve killed in retaliation. So how many is enough for you to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?”
To this, Clinton replied, “What would you do if ... one day they come for you and slaughtered the people in your village, you would say ... I’m not keeping score that way. ... It isn’t how many we’ve had to kill.”
Clinton spoke as the Netanyahu government adopted and implemented a plan to systematically starve the population of Gaza, ethnically cleanse the entirety of northern Gaza and massacre everyone who remains. According to official figures, over 43,000 people in Gaza have been killed by Israel since October 7, including 13,000 children, and virtually the entire population has been turned into homeless, starving refugees.
Clinton’s defense of the Israeli genocide flagrantly violates both criminal and international law, neither of which allows “revenge” as the justification for the murder of unarmed people.
There is no legal protection for murder in the cause of revenge. Shilton notes that Israel has no right to “defend” itself against the population of Palestine, whose land it has illegally occupied in Gaza since 1967; Gaza is one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world, into which Israel has dropped the equivalent of multiple nuclear bombs worth of ordnance over the past year - talk of Hamas using civilians as human shields is ridiculous; there is no archeological evidence that a king named David, whom Clinton invokes in defense of Israel, ever ruled in the Levant, much less that his supposed kingdom included the territory of what is now called the West Bank.
“Israel’s ability to conduct the genocide is due above all to the unconditional support it enjoys from American imperialism. Washington views the “final solution” of the Palestinian question as a critical component of its preparation for a region-wide war targeting Iran, which moved one step closer last week with Israel’s US-backed missile strike on Tehran. The planned Middle East-wide war is one front in American imperialism’s pursuit of world war, including against Russia in Eastern Europe and China in the Asia-Pacific, to consolidate its global hegemony against its rivals and nominal allies.
“Clinton has been throughout his career a bitter enemy of the Palestinian people. His open advocacy of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine recalls the fact that he negotiated with Palestinian leaders entirely in bad faith throughout his presidency. In fact, the negotiations at Camp David in 2000 only paved the way for a quarter-century of Israeli murder and oppression, capped by what is now unfolding as the “final solution” of the Palestinian question”.
Russia’s Warming Economy
Russia’s recent increase of interest rates to 21% as a means of breaking a period of high inflation of 9%+, higher prices (9-12%), and rapid economic growth (4-5%), amidst conditions of high war-related demand, labor shortages, and higher real wages is occasioning the usual alarmism among pro-Western economists. Drago Bosnic Bosnic) responds in an article for Global Research.
He notes the failure of the Western imposed price cap on Russian oil, which was circumvented by Japan and other countries, even the UK. The US continued to buy Russian commodities.
The NATO war against Russia over Ukraine, intended to cripple Russia economically has strengthened it. Saddled with what the West thought would be crippling economic sanctions, Russia not only overtook Germany as the world’s fifth largest economy, while the economic performance of both Germany and the UK has sunk to record levels, but has now overtaken Japan as the world’s fourth largest economy in GDP PPP. Helping the process along, in the aftermath of the exodus of major Western companies who were forced to leave or suspend their activities due to sanctions imposed by their own countries, there has been an unprecedented growth in number of small and medium-sized enterprises registered in Russia. Domestic brands not only replaced their foreign predecessors, but also quickly outpaced them.
Russians are still getting virtually all the goods and services they had before, including through imports via third countries (Georgia, Kazakhstan, China, Turkey, etc). Local brands that took over the Western market share are actually more affordable while offering similar or even better quality.
There has been a resurgence of investment in defense, as one might expect, but launch of National Projects 2.1 prioritizes investment in the civilian economy and improves the quality of life for the average Russian, to the great advantage of Russia’s poorest regions.
An article by Ben Aris in the Moscow Times and republished on Natylie’s Place (Aris) confirms this positive picture. Productivity at large enterprises is up even as Europe has lost its competitive edge and fallen badly behind both China and the U.S. The EU is well behind Russia in terms of the military-industrial complex
But recruitment for the war in Ukraine has driven unemployment to an all-time low of 2.4% and sent nominal wages soaring, making the issue of productivity more important than ever before, increasing production costs amid inaccessibility of Western technologies and industrial equipment. The need to increase productivity is now widely talked about at the highest levels.
According one survey, for 39% of companies, sanctions restrictions created only problems, for 3% had only positive consequences, and for 25% experienced both. Another survey showed that 31% of respondents had an increase in production over the past five years, another 22% had a constant increase in production depending on market conditions, and 19% had no change or decreased slightly. There was a small decline in 2023 for all companies. Russian oil companies have reoriented oil exports to China and India, friendly countries of Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Oil production in Russia in 2023 decreased by only 2.2% to 523mn tonnes.
Sanctions against Russian gas were not imposed, but imports of pipeline gas from Russia to the EU in 2022 were halved. Domestic companies, primarily Novatek, began to very successfully increase LNG exports to the EU, and Russian liquefied gas began to displace LNG from the United States in Europe. The company's revenue and output rose in 2023.
Iron and steel enterprises' revenues fell in 2019, then in 2021 there was a noticeable increase, followed by a decline in 2022 due to sanctions. According to Worldsteel, steel production in Russia in 2022 decreased by 7.2% to 71.5mn tonnes. But according to RosStat, already in 2023 the total metallurgical production in Russia climbed by 6%. The domestic market became the main driver of growth.
Among non-ferrous metallurgy enterprises, UC Rusal showed the largest increase in revenue from 2020 to 2023. At first, the rise in aluminum prices helped, but in 2023 dollar revenue fell by 13% due to sanctions, supply chain disruptions and price reductions. However, UC Rusal managed to step up the production of aluminum, bauxite and sales of primary aluminum and alloys, according to the company's IFRS.
The chemical industry group includes the manufacturer of polymers and rubbers Sibur and manufacturers of mineral fertilizers. In 2023 Sibur increased sales of polymers in the domestic market, replacing foreign supplies of synthetic materials. Thanks to significant investments in R&D, the company replenished the range with new brands of products, continued import substitution of critical special chemicals. For Sibur, 2023 was a year of rapid take-off.
In 2020-2022, the revenue of fertilizer manufacturers grew, and only in 2023 there was a decrease. Most of the products of these companies traditionally go abroad. In 2022, exports decreased by 15%, according to the Russian Association of Fertilizer Producers, and in 2023 they exceeded the level of 2022 by 5% in physical terms. Nevertheless, the companies' revenue decreased due to a decrease in export prices by 1.5-2 times compared to the first half of 2022.
The sanctions crisis benefited Russian banks, insurance companies and the Moscow Exchange. In 2023, all of them increased revenue (banks had operating income before the formation of reserves) and production. In 2023, banks received a record net profit of 3.3 trillion rubles ($34 billion), according to the Central Bank. The main contribution was made by the growth of interest and commission income.
2020 turned out to be a turning point for transport and infrastructure enterprises. But in 2021-2022, almost all companies with data were able to recover, except for airlines. Revenue and production grew at Rostec, Transmashholding (TMH), Kamaz and Rosatom (Atomenergoprom).
For telecommunications companies, the sanctions meant that it would be impossible to purchase new equipment, which was 90% imported from operators, in the EU and the United States. Companies had to look for new suppliers. They manage to maintain services and infrastructure, but it becomes increasingly difficult to develop. Operators' revenue is rising and production is also expanding, although not much.
Food retail grew steadily in 2020 and 2022-2023. The two leading supermarket giants X5 Group and Magnit had the best revenue growth rates.
Aris asks whether Russia can compete with the biggest foreign companies? He finds thst the median output of an employee in the United States is about four times higher than the employer's costs, and in the most efficient companies this figure is 7.3 times. According to this parameter, Russian enterprises are ahead of American ones: 38 companies out of 71 correspond to the group of 25% of the best enterprises in the United States. And only six sample companies had worse than the median figures in 2020.
A Vedomosti survey found the most common reason for improving productivity was improving business processes (55%), followed by staff training (48%) and introduction of new IT or automation (45%). Staff reduction was the least popular in sixth place.
“As companies are increasingly investing in their staff’s training Russian companies have become increasingly reluctant to sack them to simply save money”.
Always anxious to play its role of party pooper, and ever energetic in its search for reasons why Western sanctions have, after all, been effective, The Bell (The Bell) claims that Western financial sanctions (and secondary sanctions on institutions such as Chinese banks whose clients trade with Russia) have “warped” Russian trade and banking. They have forced the Kremlin to relax regulations, allow cash payments, crypto-currency, and legalized barter, measures which The Bell’s readers will be alarmed to hear, have threatened the role of traditional banks in cross-border payments. While this may have had a restraining effect on Russian imports, one could argue that the problem encourages further Russian self-reliance. The Bell notes that China does not want to breach U.S. sanctions because the country’s financial system is still heavily reliant on the U.S. dollar and its largest state-owned financial institutions are closely entwined with the U.S. financial system. But it adds only as an afterthought China’s key role along with Russia and within the BRICS in undermining the long-term viability of the dollar system. It does concede that China has its own payment system – CIPS – which can make payments outside of SWIFT. The fact that most fully-fledged participants in CIPS are Chinese subsidiaries of leading global banks, or offshore subsidiaries of Chinese banks, creates a further incentive for China to wean itself off the dollar system.
On a separate note, The Bell notes that Russian authorities have delayed the exit of many foreign companies from selling up and leaving the country. Permits for companies from “unfriendly” countries to sell Russian assets have become more expensive, as has had the “voluntary contribution” to the state, up from 15% to 35% of the market value of the assets.
These considerations deserve contextualization with reference to attempts by Western governments to use interest on frozen Russian assets to pay for the West’s war in Ukraine. International depositary Euroclear held frozen Russian assets worth €176 billion ($191 billion), and received €5.15 billion in the form of interest from reinvestment in the first nine months of this year.
Since the start of the war, foreign owners have been unable to withdraw profits in the form of dividends, which remain locked in special ruble accounts. There were 1.2 trillion rubles ($12 billion) in such accounts in December last year.
“That’s at least 20 times less than the Russian funds that were frozen in the West at the start of the war, but Russia has made it known that it is prepared to seize this money in response to any perceived attempt to seize its assets in the West…Companies that decided to write off their Russian assets have already lost $107 billion.
More than 1,500 foreign companies remain in Russia, but only about half of the companies are Western. In early 2023, the flow of companies leaving Russia slowed to a trickle.
Georgia
Anatol Lieven, for Responsible Statecraft (Lieven) adds to the skepticism about Western hysteria over the victory of Georgian Dream in the recent Georgian elections. The results issued by the National Election Commission show the governing Georgian Dream Party won 53 percent of the vote to 38 percent for the different opposition parties. Lieven notes that the opposition immediately alleged fraud, and declared that its MPs would boycott the new parliament, thereby depriving it of a quorum.The pro-opposition President, Salome Zourabichvili, claimed that Georgians were “victims of what can only be described as a Russian special operation.” Zourabichvili equates the “real” Georgian population only with that part which identifies with the West.
But there can be no doubt at all that a very large proportion of the Georgian population voted for the government. Western leaders, lacking anything like sufficient information, immediately called the result into question, citing only local observers who were overwhelmingly from NGOs closely linked to the Georgian opposition. The slightly more neutral OSCE judgment, on the other hand, actually discerned “sign of a system that is still growing and evolving, with a democratic vitality under construction.” This hardly alleges that the elections were rigged. But two early assessments seemed plausible:
First, that there were most probably a good many cases where the government bought votes, intimidated voters, and engaged in other acts of electoral manipulation. Second, however, to legitimately endorse the reversal of a 53% to 38% government victory will require proof of rigging on a very large scale. Maybe that can indeed be provided. Let us wait and see”.
Lieven critiques much media “reporting” from Georgia, that has been closer to opinion articles based on interviews with the Georgian opposition, indicating a bias towards Georgians who identify with the West and the opinions of the journalists asking the questions. An RFL/RL assessment cited one U.S. official, five EU officials, two Western NGOs, and — no doubt to give an impression of “balance” — one Hungarian and one Russian.