The West vs. The Rest

welcome to the war against everyone

In this episode I talk about What I Learned This Week: Aaron Mate on US arming terrorists in Syria; Kanekoa on the Ukranian oligarch funding Hunter Biden, Zelensky & the Azov neo-Nazis; Moon of Alabama on Russia entering phase two; Scott Ritter on Russian strategy and false flags; Pepe Escobar interviewing Putin's economic czar, Sergey Glazyev, on the new global financial system; and Vijay Prashad on "We Don't Want a Divided Planet; We Want a World Without Walls." I end with some hopeful ways in which the empire might be dismantling itself and preparing the ground for a network of small, local economies.

Below are some quotes but see the video for my commentary connecting them.

syria in our hearts: the first ukraine

Aaron Mate on ‘Al-Queda is on our side’: how the Obama-Biden team empowered terrorists in Syria.

A concise articulation came from Jake Sullivan to his then-State Department boss Hillary Clinton in a February 2012 email: "AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria." 

The Obama-Biden team's record in Syria resonates today as many of its members handle the unfolding crisis in Ukraine. As in Syria, the U.S. is flooding a chaotic war zone with weapons in a dangerous proxy conflict against Russia, raising the threat of military confrontation between the world's top nuclear powers. "I deeply worry that what’s going to happen next is that we will see Ukraine turn into Syria," Democratic Senator Chris Coons told CBS News on April 17.

Based on declassified documents, news reports, and scattered admissions of U.S. officials, this overlooked history of how the Obama-Biden team's effort to oust the Assad regime – in concert with allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey – details the series of discrete decisions that ultimately led the U.S. to empower terror networks bent on its destruction. 

Aaron’s very thorough history details the weapons that were transferred from Libya, after the NATO ambush and disposal of Gaddafi, to al-Nusra in Syria. The killing of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, the port city shipping the weapons, stopped the transfers, revealing his role to be CIA and not diplomacy.

Biden made the candid admission in 2014 that “there was no moderate middle. Instead, U.S. "allies" in Syria "poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad." Those weapons were supplied, Biden said, to "al-Nusra, and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world."

After the ISIS takeover of Palmyra, Aaron writes,

In a leaked conversation with Syrian opposition activists months later, then-Secretary of State John Kerry explained the U.S. rationale for letting ISIS advance.

"Daesh [ISIS] was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus and so forth," Kerry explained. "And we know that this was growing. We were watching. We saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought, however, we could probably manage, that Assad would then negotiate" his way out of power.

In short, the U.S. was leveraging ISIS's growth to impose regime change on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.S. strategy of "watching" ISIS's advance in Syria, Kerry also admitted, directly caused Russia's 2015 entry into the conflict. The threat of an ISIS takeover, Kerry said, is "why Russia went in. Because they didn’t want a Daesh government."

From the contras in Nicaragua to the mujahadeen in Iraq to al-Nusra and ISIS in Syria to neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the US has funded terrorist militias with the populations sacrificed as pawns.

the oligarch in the shadows

On Caitlin Johnstone’s comments, BeliTsari posted a list of links that each should have been front-page news, in a world of actual journalism. First was a Substack blogger called KanakoaTheGreat who published How One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, President Volodymyr Zelensky, And The Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion:

Shortly after the Obama Administration’s Ukrainian coup, on March 2, 2014, Kolomoysky, who supported Yanukovych’s overthrow, was appointed the governor of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Hunter Biden, with no experience in the industry or region, would join Kolomoysky’s Burisma Holdings two months later on May 12, 2014.

A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC), an investigative nonprofit co-funded by American billionaire George Soros and the U.S. State Department, found that the true owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky.

Zelensky, like Martin Sheen of West Wing, made his reputation playing the role of President, and has continued to play that role under Kolomoysky’s direction:

Kolmoysky, who currently holds a net worth of $1.8 billion … has had a long history with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. For years, Zelensky’s company produced shows for Kolmoysky’s TV network, 1+1 Media Group, one of the largest media conglomerates in Ukraine. Zelensky achieved national fame portraying a president on a hit television sitcom called, Servant of the People, which was broadcasted on a channel owned by Kolmoysky.

In 2019, Kolmoysky’s media channels gave a big boost to Zelensky’s presidential campaign, while Kolmoysky even provided security, lawyers, and vehicles for Zelensky during his campaign. Kolmoysky’s bodyguard and lawyer accompanied Zelensky on the campaign trail as Zelensky was chauffeured around in a Range Rover owned by one of Kolmoysky’s companies.

The Pandora Papers showed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his TV production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore firms created in 2012, the same year Zelensky’s production company entered into a deal with Kolomoysky’s media group, which allegedly received $41 million in funds from Kolomoysky’s Privatbank.

Zelensky’s political rival, President Petro Poroshenko commented on their connection during the campaign trail, “Fate intended to put me together with Kolomoyskiy’s puppet in the second round of the elections.”

After Zelensky’s victory, Kolomoysky, who had spent the last few years living between Israel and Switzerland, returned to Ukraine to keep up his relationship with the new president, nominating over 30-lawmakers to Zelensky’s newly established party and maintaining influence with many of them in parliament.

new nazis, old tactics

As reported by Aljazeera, Newsweek and Reuters, Igor Kolomoysky has been a top funder of the Azov Battalion since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions and has personally deployed them to protect his financial interests.

In one of the most bizarre exchanges:

Text messages found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, show Hunter Biden asking Hallie Biden, his brother’s widow and his mistress, if she believed that he had “children burned alive in DONETSK” or “children killed in donetsk, Ukraine”.

Most likely, in reference to Kolomoysky, his reported Burisma Holdings boss, who was also funding the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion that was accused of war crimes and the shelling of civilians in eastern Ukraine.

And to put the cherry on top:

In 2016, Kolomoysky’s Privatbank collapsed amid accusations of embezzlement and fraud. The bank failure cost the Ukrainian government — and by extension the American and European taxpayers who propped it up with aid funds — about $5.5 billion in a bailout.

In 2020, the Justice Department moved to seize Kolomoysky’s U.S. properties after accusing the oligarch of embezzling and defrauding billions of dollars from PrivatBank and laundering it into American properties, including a steel plant in Kentucky, a commercial high rise in Cleveland, and a Motorola manufacturing plant in Illinois.

In March 2021, the Biden administration barred Kolomoisky and members of his family from traveling to the United States because of “involvement in significant acts of corruption.” It is highly unlikely Kolomoisky would have returned to the United States considering the Justice Department had already begun seizing his properties the year before and he had reportedly been traveling between Switzerland, Israel, and Ukraine in fear of being extradited to the United States.

the moon of alabama predicts sunset for ukrainazis

On the progress of the war we’re told Russia’s losing, a website called Moon of Alabama notes that the start of phase two was officially announced:

In an India Today TV interview, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday, "Another stage of this operation (in eastern Ukraine) is beginning and I am sure this will be a very important moment of this entire special operation."

After the heavy artillery preparations last night several offensives were launched into multiple directions. A major one is from Izyum (in the upper left on the map) towards Slovyansk. The distance between the two cities is 27 miles (47km).

Several villages on that route have already been taken. The "low quality proxy conscript" who "continue to face significant morale and supply issues" [from the neo-con Institute for the Study of War] might have something to do with that.

Phase two will include the liberation of all of Donetzk and Luhansk … I expect the whole phase two operation to take four to six weeks.

sowing the wind & reaping the whirlwind

Scott Ritter concurs with Moon’s analysis in The Ukrainian conflict is a U.S./NATO Proxy War, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively. Interviewed by the Strategic Culture Foundation, here are some of his points:

Russia is fighting a very difficult campaign hampered by its own constraint designed to limit civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure and the fact that Ukraine possesses a very well-trained military that is well led and equipped. Russia deployed some 200,000 troops in support of this operation. They are facing some 600,000 Ukrainian forces. The first phase of the Russian operation was designed to shape the battlefield to Russia’s advantage while diminishing the size and capacity of the Ukrainian ability to wage large-scale conflict. The second phase is focused on destroying the main Ukrainian force concentration in eastern Ukraine. Russia is well on its way to accomplishing this task.

The Ukrainian conflict is a proxy war, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively. While there appears to be a NATO/western plan to embroil Russia in a “new Afghanistan”, I don’t see any risk of this conflict dragging on for more than a few more weeks at the most before Russia accomplishes a strategic victory over Ukraine.

Russia was warned well in advance about the scope and scale of U.S.-led sanctions that would be imposed if Russia were to invade Ukraine. Russia has prepared its own counter-sanction strategy which will not only defeat the Western sanctions but further strengthen Russia’s economy by decoupling it from the West and Western control/influence. We see evidence of the effectiveness of this counter-campaign as the Russian ruble is strengthened, the Russian stock market enjoys positive traction, and Europe and the U.S. flounder economically. The West has sown the wind in sanctioning Russia; Russia will not reap the whirlwind.

Their predictions seem borne out by a report that Ukranian soldiers have tried to surrender but the Azov Battalion started firing on them.

My friend Ernest Gusella, after I recorded the video, reminded me of Biden’s condescension towards Scott in a Congressional hearing five years before the Iraq invasion, as Biden insists that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was the only way to stop his program of weapons of mass destruction. From Ryan Grim in the Intercept:

During questioning, Biden mocked Ritter as “ol’ Scotty boy” and suggested that his demands — that the international community compel Iraq to cooperate with inspectors — if met, would give Ritter the unilateral authority to start a war in Iraq. Biden argued that such decisions belonged to higher-level officials. “I respectfully suggest they have a responsibility slightly above your pay grade, to decide whether or not to take the nation to war,” Biden said. “That’s a real tough decision. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. That’s why they get the limos and you don’t. I mean this sincerely, I’m not trying to be flip.” 

the big bucks stop here

How accurately have those in the pay grade to start wars predicted the outcome? On the currency front, Pepe Escobar interviews Putin’s economic advisor, Sergey Glazyev, on the rollout of his global financial system:

Glazyev: In a bout of Russophobic hysteria, the ruling elite of the United States played its last “trump ace” in the hybrid war against Russia. Having “frozen” Russian foreign exchange reserves in custody accounts of western central banks, financial regulators of the US, EU, and the UK undermined the status of the dollar, euro, and pound as global reserve currencies. This step sharply accelerated the ongoing dismantling of the dollar-based economic world order.

Over a decade ago, my colleagues at the Astana Economic Forum and I proposed to transition to a new global economic system based on a new synthetic trading currency based on an index of currencies of participating countries. Later, we proposed to expand the underlying currency basket by adding around twenty exchange-traded commodities. A monetary unit based on such an expanded basket was mathematically modeled and demonstrated a high degree of resilience and stability.

At around the same time, we proposed to create a wide international coalition of resistance in the hybrid war for global dominance that the financial and power elite of the US unleashed on the countries that remained outside of its control. My book The Last World War: the USA to Move and Lose, published in 2016, scientifically explained the nature of this coming war and argued for its inevitability – a conclusion based on objective laws of long-term economic development. Based on the same objective laws, the book argued the inevitability of the defeat of the old dominant power.

After Glazyev explains the three phases of transitioning to a basket of currencies, Pepe queries:

The Cradle: Michael Hudson specifically asks that if this new system enables nations in the Global South to suspend dollarized debt and is based on the ability to pay (in foreign exchange), can these loans be tied to either raw materials or, for China, tangible equity ownership in the capital infrastructure financed by foreign non-dollar credit?

Glazyev: Transition to the new world economic order will likely be accompanied by systematic refusal to honor obligations in dollars, euro, pound, and yen. In this respect, it will be no different from the example set by the countries issuing these currencies who thought it appropriate to steal foreign exchange reserves of Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Russia to the tune of trillions of dollars. Since the US, Britain, EU, and Japan refused to honor their obligations and confiscated the wealth of other nations which was held in their currencies, why should other countries be obliged to pay them back and to service their loans?

In any case, participation in the new economic system will not be constrained by the obligations in the old one. Countries of the Global South can be full participants of the new system regardless of their accumulated debts in dollars, euro, pound, and yen. Even if they were to default on their obligations in those currencies, this would have no bearing on their credit rating in the new financial system. Nationalization of extraction industry, likewise, would not cause a disruption. Further, should these countries reserve a portion of their natural resources for the backing of the new economic system, their respective weight in the currency basket of the new monetary unit would increase accordingly, providing that nation with larger currency reserves and credit capacity. In addition, bilateral swap lines with trading partner countries would provide them with adequate financing for co-investments and trade financing.

In closing, Vijay Prashad states, We do not want a divided planet; we want a world without walls. He cites Cuba’s ‘army of white-coats’ as an example:

Castro reminds us that there are two ways to be alive in this world. We can live in a war-filled world awash with weapons and confounded by intimidation, a world that continuously prepares for combat. Or, we can live in a world of teachers and doctors, scientists and social workers, storytellers and singers. We can put our confidence in people who help us create a better world than the one we live in today, this wretched world of war and profit, where ugliness threatens to overwhelm us. …

We do not want a divided world. We want a realistic world: a world of humanity that deals adequately with the climate catastrophe. A world that wants to end hunger and illiteracy. A world that wants to lift us out of despair into hope. A world with more armies of white coats instead of armies with guns.

My book, How to Dismantle an Empire, ends with how to create a network of local economies, like a microcosm of Glazyev’s plan. The biggest objection people raise is “how are you going to bring this about?” But now it seems that the empire is dismantling itself and it’s not too soon to be planning its replacement. Towards this, I’ll be looking at different areas and how we might want to reinvent them. To get a headstart on this, here are two other videos:

Patriarchal Pyramid or Matriarchal Matrix? on Vandana Shiva

What Emerges from the Emergency? on Luke Kemp