Western moment of madness at the end of Modernity !

I terminated my last article, dated 2022-03-25, with the following words :

"... to keep your sanity, and to avoid having your mind being captured by Western propaganda, I hope everyone stays as far as possible from the daily news about the fighting in Ukraine. To keep one's sanity one better remember that the daily news is a propaganda ploy to distract from the big picture… "

These words now appear somewhat prophetic. Since then, the empire of lies has indeed unloaded tons of narratives to further inflame the minds of Western citizens in their racist hatred for all people who think differently or live differently from them. The resulting crescendo of hatred, and the grotesque fabrications of lies, in Western mainstream media has become so disgusting that many people simply don't want to read or watch them anymore. 

 

Michael Brenner is one of those who have had enough of this sad spectacle and he decided that he would stop writing about the conflict in Ukraine :

" ... it is manifestly obvious that our society is not capable of conducting an honest, logical, reasonably informed discourse on matters of consequence. Instead, we experience fantasy, fabrication, fatuousness and fulmination.
... our national leaders, elected or appointed, are equally incapable of sober deliberation, of intellectual honesty (with themselves as well as us), of elementary logic, even of acknowledging factual realities."
in Jerks", Consortium News, Michael Brenner. 2022-04-06.

Keeping mentally sane should be our priority in the present historical moment of Western madness at the end of Modernity. And to keep sane it is imperative that we reconnect with the factual realities which means — rejecting the propaganda spewed by all sides — rejecting naive analytical triumphalism.

Having thus clarified the intellectual context that shapes my own search to comprehend the present moment, one month and a half after the Russian operation in Ukraine started, some facts are being unearthed that are well worth mentioning :

1. The US definitely trapped Russia to invade Ukraine — by refusing to entertain Russia’s legitimate security concerns — by pushing NATO ever closer to the Russian borders — by instigating Ukrainian adventurism. 


2. An anti-Russian War Propaganda Network had been set-up as early as the summer of 2021 which means that the Western response to Russia’s operation in Ukraine had been formalized at least 6 to 12 months prior. 


3. Notwithstanding all the talking about a new world order the fact is that this is no more than talk. Changing the world order is a process that, at best, will take some 5 to 10 years and on the road many things will happen that will impact its definitive outcome.


4. How do Russia and Ukraine fit in this picture ?

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1. The US trapped Russia to invade Ukraine

President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov had exposed, at multiple occasions, the Russian perspective about NATO’s infringement on Russia’s security. And the Cato Institute argues as much in an article, dated 2022-01-24, titled Did Putin’s 2007 Munich Speech Predict the Ukraine Crisis? :

“Putin’s Munich speech was an important diplomatic warning to the United States and its allies that Russia’s patience with NATO’s encroachment was at an end.“

 

1.1. Refusing to entertain Russia’s legitimate security concerns 

 

During the 1st and 2nd decades of the 21st century the West multiplied actions that encroached on Russia’s security : 

• the Maidan coup against the Ukrainian government of Yanukovych, who had been duly elected, was a demonstration in the eyes of 87% of the world population that the respect of liberalism is not sufficient. Countries have also to submit to whatever are the whims of their Western masters. But the fact is that the Maidan coup was a severe blow to the foreign trade of both Ukraine and Russia : 

“In 2011, total trade between the two reached almost $49 billion according to the World Bank. That fell to $8.7 billion by 2016 – Ukrainian exports to Russia by $16.2 billion and Russian exports to Ukraine by $24 billion.“                                           in “How has conflict with Russia affected Ukraine’s trade?, in Eurasia net, by Sam Bhutia. 2019-11-25.

• The US installed anti-missile units in Poland and Romania that are a few steps from Russia’s borders. The Russians are saying that these systems can also act as launchers of offense missiles that could reach Moscow within a few minutes and for that very reason they say that these anti-missile units should be removed. Isn't that eerily similar to Cuba decades ago?
  

• The last trespassing of Russia’s red lines was the equipping and training, of Ukrainian Nazis, that boosted their increasing role in the Ukrainian army which resulted in violent attacks against Russian speaking people in the East of the country that by all accounts have cost at least 14,000 lives since 2014 ! 
  

 

In December 2021 Russia’s decision-makers had had enough of the US and NATO’s arrogance and proposed the text of 2 treaties as a base of negotiations : — the Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees  — and the Agreement on Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Both President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov insisted multiple times, and very publicly, on the fact that these treaties relate to the urgent stabilization of the concerns of both Western Europe and of Russia. Both leaders also insisted on the fact that these treaties would need to be signed by all parties concerned sometimes by the end of January 2022 which meant before President Putin’s visit to Beijing. This last part was never expressed so clearly as stated here but everyone knew about President Putin's scheduled visit to Beijing in early February. And both leaders also informed very publicly that if the US did not follow suit Russia would take its interest in its own hands through military and technical means.

 

1.2. Pushing NATO ever closer to the Russian borders

 

Russia says that, in the summer of 2019, it had observed a recrudescence of activities around the 2 Eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and became convinced that an attack on these 2 regions was being prepared for spring of 2022. The fear of the Russian leaders was that such an attack could have forced the submission of these 2 regions and freed Ukraine to access NATO membership which would have been rapidly followed by the installation of NATO missiles in the Donbass that would take no more than 3 minutes to reach Moscow.

The Russians also say that the decision to start their operation in Ukraine was motivated by President Zelensky’s address before the Munich security conference in 2022-02-19, where he raised the issue of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum ‘On Security Assurances in Connection with Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’. To the applause of the audience President Zelensky suggested that his country would pursue nuclear weapons to defend itself from Russian aggression. The attack on Ukraine started on 2022-02-23 ! This was a mere 4 days after President Zelensky's speech !

2. A coordinated Western strategy to fight Russia in Ukraine was formalized in 2019-2020

The stealth imposition of the large program of Western sanctions against Russia could not have taken place without many months, perhaps years, of preliminary preparations and negotiations between the most important Western countries involved in the strategy to quell Russia.

How do we know that ?

Well we know for a fact that the readying of a Propaganda Network of PR firms, to be able to act from day one of a Russian operation in Ukraine, was already activated in July 2021 :

“Russian-speaking journalists taking part in this network were convened, from 19 to 21 July 2021”. See 1.3. 

This implies that the operation was in preparation at the least 6 months before that. Public Relations start indeed long after a project is being formalized.

 

2.1. Trapping Russia to engage in a military operation in Ukraine

 

Rick Sterling, at AntiWar.com, wrote an excellent article titled “Rand Report Prescribed US Provocations Against Russia & Predicted Kremlin Retaliation In Ukraine” that opens pandora’s box on the infinite range of possible Western provocations of Russia.

This Rand report dates from 2009 and is titled "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia".  This report, among other, notes the following :

“Today’s Russia suffers from many vulnerabilities — oil and gas prices well below peak have caused a drop in living standards, economic sanctions that have furthered that decline, an aging and soon-to-be-declining population

... Such vulnerabilities are coupled with deep-seated (if exaggerated) anxieties about the possibility of Western-inspired regime change, loss of great power status, and even military attack...”

It did not escape US attention that the cheapest and easiest way to accentuate Russian anxieties, while also enervating EU countries, was to supply advanced weaponry and training to Ukrainian NAZI groups. Rick Sterling references some articles that document this kind of amoral and cynical US intervention in the heart of Europe :

“This has been documented in articles such as "U.S. House admits Nazi role in Ukraine" (Robert Parry, 2015), "The US is arming and assisting neo-nazis in Ukraine while the House debates prohibition." (Max Blumenthal, 2018), "Neo Nazis and the far right are on the march in Ukraine" (Lev Golinken in 2019) and "The CIA may be breeding Nazi terror in Ukraine" (Branko Marcetic Jan. 2022). “

 

2.2. Preparing the Western response to Russia’s operation in Ukraine

 

Joe Lauria summed up the US strategy in an article titled Can Russia escape the US trap ? :

“The U.S. got its war in Ukraine. Without it, Washington could not attempt to destroy Russia’s economy, orchestrate worldwide condemnation and lead an insurgency to bleed Russia, all part of an attempt to bring down its government.”

Essentially the strategy was to provoke Russia to engage in a military adventure in Ukraine while preparing a global PR campaign that would paint Russia, from day one of its adventure, in the darkest colors possible so as to provoke the strongest rejection among Western citizens.

It was thought that a strong popular rejection of Russia’s action would force Western European political decision-makers to impose drastic sanctions that, in time, would collapse Russia’s economy. And it was hoped that the social pain endured by the Russian population would eventually provoke social movements that would destabilize the government which would then open a window of opportunity to push Western leaning candidates, at the image of Yeltsin, to come to the fore of the Russian political scene.

A new Yeltsin, or Navalny or Chubais, would then open Russia to the financial raids of Western companies against Russia’s resource extracting corporations thus terminating the resource procurement security that China was thinking it had attained by entertaining good relations with Russia. 

 

Is this picture not looking, more and more, like what the USA is imposing on the ground these days ? By the way did anyone see the signal that China just sent to the West about said picture ?

2.3. Readying an anti-Russian War Propaganda Network of PR firms to act from day one of a Russian action in Ukraine : 

 

A few days after the Russian army entered Ukraine a professional journal, for the PR and advertisement industry, informed its readers that a network of Ukrainian PR professionals was volunteering to work with the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  

 

It appears that these Ukrainian volunteers are organized by a London PR firm that has very close ties with the United Kingdoms' government... 

 

Here follows a short summary about how this information started to spread around the world. Of note here is the fact that the mainstream media has avoided relaying this information to the Western public; until now at least.  

• 2022-02-28 : John Harrington from P.R.Week (a professional magazine for the PR and advertisement industry), in an article titled Global PR community rallies to help Ukraine government comms was the first, to my knowledge, informing about the following :
  

  “The founder of a Ukraine-based PR agency, who asked to not be named, and her colleagues are volunteering for the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and are helping to engage with the global comms industry. PRCA director-general Francis Ingham has been helping to co-ordinate the volunteers.The unnamed agency founder said:
  “Today we have more than 150 global agencies who are ready to help us globally.
  We realize all our responsibilities for distributing and sharing the transparent information with the world. Because one of the Russian weapon in this war is disinformation. We hope together we can tell the truth for all the world.”
  Ingham, who is acting in a personal capacity, said in-house teams and agencies “across all continents” have agreed to help.
  Standing with Ukraine requires more than words. It requires action. And the world PR community is taking that action right now, combatting the lies of the Russian state and its puppets,” he stated.”

• 2022-03-22 : Having been alerted most probably, by John Harrington’s article in P.R.Week, Dan Cohen from Mint News published a well researched dossier titled Propaganda War: International PR Firms, DC Lobbyists and CIA Cutouts. Cohen’s dossier is a very useful complement to the information that Harrington supplied nearly a month earlier :
  

  “The international effort is by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UK’s government. 

  Ingham previously worked for Britain’s Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms. 

  According to the anonymous figure, more than 150 public relations firms have joined the propaganda blitz.”

  Ingham was perhaps acting in a personal capacity. But his strategic position in “the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council” suggest that his personal actions must have been part of a bigger plan unleashed by the services of the United Kingdom's Government.

• 2022-03-26 : The Voltaire Network further relayed the material exposed by Nick Cohen in an article titled Anti-Russian War Propaganda Network :
  

  “According to Dan Cohen of MintPress News, more than 150 public relatons companies are involved in the war propaganda campaign against Russia. NATO is coordinating them from London via PR Network, a firm co-founded by Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham. 

  Russian-speaking journalists taking part in this network were convened, from 19 to 21 July 2021, to be given a training course titled “Media Network 2021+”.

  Of note in the Voltaire network's article is the info about the NGO "Reporters Without Borders" which pitched in with its specialized branch, "the Institute for Mass Information", headed by USAID war propaganda specialist Oksana Romaniuk. The participation of Oksana Romaniuk suggests that US propaganda agencies had answered the call of the United Kingdom's Government agencies.

3. About building a new world order

Naive reporters nowadays are shouting from the rooftops that the demise of the US dollar, and its replacement by a new world currency, is a given now that the West has weaponized the world reserve currency to sanction Russia and that Russia has countered this Western move by forcing the payment, for its energy products by non-friendly countries, to be executed directly in Russia, through an account opened with Gasprom Bank, instead of their traditional payment route through their own Western banks. 

 

This little technicality forces Western currencies to enter Russia while before they stayed put in the West which allowed the US long arm jurisdiction to seize these funds before Russian companies could transfer them back to Russia...

This is merely a little technicality that protects Russia's interests. But it should be noted that this little technicality leaves intact the status of the dollar and of the Euro as world reserve currencies. 

 

So this idea that we are on the cusp of a shift to a new world reserve currency is just preposterous. The most pointed remark to that effect was given by Michael Hudson in an interview with the Saker : 

“Your questions are about specific problems and solutions. But the overall resolution needs to be system-wide, not patchwork. These specific problems cannot really be solved without a far-reaching institutional restructuring of the international financial system, world trade, a world court, and a UN without US veto power. And such an institutional reformation requires an economic doctrine to provide its basic principles. A New International Economic Order will be constructed on non-neoliberal principles – along the lines of what used to be called socialism, when that was what people expected industrial capitalism to be evolving into.”

The first building-block in the construction of a new financial system is indeed the theory that will sustain the edifice. Michael Hudson affirms that :

“A New International Economic Order will be constructed on non-neoliberal principles – along the lines of what used to be called socialism”.

But Neo-liberalism and Neo-socialism are two theories rooted in the realities of the 19th century ! We are in the 21st century and the reality has fundamentally changed in so many ways that even economists can no longer agree on any one economic theory.

On a more fundamental plane the fact is that the present Geo-political context is not yet pregnant. Or to say this otherwise the time is still not ripe for a Geo-political re-alignment. The center of gravity of the economy-world has certainly been shifting away from the West, with Washington at its core, toward East-Asia with Beijing at its core. But Beijing has still not accumulated the decisive economic might that would command the uncontested respect of the majority of the other nations on this earth. That time could possibly arise within the next years. That means if no substantial surprise happens before then.

But let me rephrase what I mean to say in order to attain a greater clarity. The world is faced today with 2 major societal powers that have a different vision of the future world order :

• the USA, which is in decline in all fields, proposes the model of Neo-Liberalism, which is an ideology at the service of Western big capital holders, that has no other recourse to keep Western societies together than to use force, manipulation, and propaganda which in their combination give a form of totalitarianism.

• the Chinese model, in contrast, is rooted in pragmatism and its objective is to satisfy its peoples' interests while rejecting any ideological absolutism. Chinese pragmatism is not interested in big theoretical discussions. It functions based on surfing on the present realities by following a few basic principles like : — the respect of national sovereignty — the equality of all nations by recognizing one vote to each in the institutions of the United-Nations — the respect of the “otherness” of the other and the rejection of the idea that one nation could better than the others — non-interference in the affairs of other nations — the rejection of the use of force by any nation — the governments of each nation should be judged on their merits to respect their own peoples’ will and not on their implementation of an ideology — all nations on earth form a community that shares common interests — and so on.

In light of this pragmatism there is no doubt that China is working hard to find a viable solution, to foreign trade payments, that dismantles once and for all Washington’s long arm jurisdiction. All kinds of speculations have arisen in the media about CIPS or the Chinese “Cross-Border Interbank Payment System” (settlement and payment clearing system for transactions in renminbi).

But CIPS, and its Western equivalent SWIFT, are de facto antique technologies. And the fact is that China has taken a 10 years lead upon the rest of the world in the most advanced financial technologies of the day that are behind CBDC networks (central bank digital currency). 

 

The digital Renminbi is already in application within the Chinese territory and international networks are presently being tested that couple the digital Renminbi with blockchains which manage tax, transportation and other matters related to foreign trade. The implementation of China’s CBDC network will — radically lower the handling costs of import and export operations between China and other countries (possibly by as much as 3 or 4% on all transactions) — terminate once and for all the existence of exchange risks in foreign trade — radically reduce the time necessary for handling all the paper-work of these operations from weeks to “in real time”... — and they will also allow real time visualization of the shipment process.

No radically new world-changing system will be adopted in the near future. But new technological systems like CBDC's are going to be tested and be put in application and ... the first to attract a large following will have set the standards that others will be forced to follow... and the fact is that China is far more advanced than its competitors !

 

China, most probably, has already started to share and implement its CBDC network technology with selected friendly countries on a case by case base. Once its system will start to get adopted it will put non-friendly countries at a disadvantage which they will try to circumvent — or by setting up a CBDC network of their own knowing full well that China has taken a technological lead of some 5 to 10 years — or by negotiating the sharing and implementation of China’s technology. 

 

To those who would like to know more, about China’s CBDC network technology, I advise the video-interviews of Richard Turrin. Richard is one of those rare guys who is specialized in both financial technology and in information Technology while furthermore living in China since quite some time. All this gives him a decisive advantage over the voice of most other specialists.

This discussion, about China’s path forward in the field of foreign trade payments, indicates a step by step evolution that gives China the advantage of being the first to implement the payment system of the future. Having said that Western big capital holders and their servant state institutions are not only watching. They are redoubling their investments in FinTech and in other technologies hoping to catch up. 

 

 

4. How do Russia and Ukraine fit in this picture ?

In light of the deep trends that get imprinted in the reality of our epochal era the big question that arises about the future world order relates to the attitude of Western totalitarian Neo-Liberal countries toward a more advanced, a more dynamic, and above all a highly pragmatic China.

Contrarily to most Geo-political analysts I do not see how Russia’s operation in Ukraine is impacting in any serious way the technological dynamic that China is presently forcing on the world. I consider that what is presently brewing, as the determinant accelerator of the re-balancing of world power, is something that is taking place inside the West itself.

What awaits the West, in a very short order, is indeed the greatest of all economic depressions. Sanctions against Russia are boomeranging all kinds of unintended consequences like hyper-inflation, doubts about the role of the dollar as world reserve currency, and so on. And all signs are now pointing to a collapse of the stock markets that is going to bankrupt an untold number of enterprises which will shed extreme misery all around. 

 

And the fact is that history has already shown us how easily extreme economic misery combines with democracy to chain Western countries into totalitarian experiments. In this Late-Modernity the experiment will most probably end in Western Neo-Liberal camps for indebted slaves.

But at the end of this greatest of all economic depressions, something like ten years down the road when things slowly start to pick up, these totalitarian Neo-Liberal camps for indebted slaves will be forced to recognize the painful reality that their financial paper shenanigans have nearly halved their GDP’s in comparison with the humming production economies of East-Asia that will have continued to grow mostly by interacting among themselves and with the countries long the Belt and Roads. 

 

It is at that precise moment of recognition, at the end of Modernity, that Geo-political realities will definitely shut down the Western circus of madness that the whole world is forced to watch nowadays. And Ukraine will then appear as having been no more than one among many local symptoms of a shifting world order.