A discussion with Canadian geopolitical analyst Patrick Armstrong about the current tensions between the Empire and the Russian bloc, exacerbated by the Empire’s refusal to recognize Russia’s just demands for her right to her own national security.
CALEB MAUPIN—Peter Navarro, the crackpot anti-China hack who worked in the Trump administration after a career making sponsored documentaries, used his platform on FOX Business to make similar statements on November 15th writing: “The Beijing Winter Olympics offer a golden opportunity for Biden to exert pressure on Communist China on all of these issues.” (https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-meeting-china-xi-trade-climate-human-rights) Prior to working with Trump, Navarro was considered fringe by most academic economists, and since 2020 he has been a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” claims that China somehow teamed up with Venezuela to rig the US elections and remove Trump. And while heated words against the Beijing Olympic Games from the usual suspects shouldn’t be surprising, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has jumped in with a very out of character criticism specifically directed at sponsors.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The problem with preemptive false flag accusations is of course that the side making the claim can simply launch an unprovoked attack and then say “See? They’re staging a false flag to frame our side, just like we said they would!” And then they can present their subsequent actions as defensive in nature, when in reality they were the aggressors and instigators. We are seeing nothing from the obedient western news media to suggest they’d do anything other than uncritically regurgitate such claims into the minds of their trusting audiences.
MICHAEL T. KLARE—The word “encirclement” does not appear in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law by President Joe Biden on December 27th, or in other recent administration statements about its foreign and military policies. Nor does that classic Cold War era term “containment” ever come up. Still, America’s top leaders have reached a consensus on a strategy to encircle and contain the latest great power, China, with hostile military alliances, thereby thwarting its rise to full superpower status.
The gigantic 2022 defense bill — passed with overwhelming support from both parties — provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory and potentially cripple its economy in any future crisis.
RUSSELL BENTLEY—The U.S. and Ukraine are secretly preparing for all-out war while advancing propaganda to make it appear that Russia is the aggressor. Diplomatic talks in Geneva by the U.S. and Russia have failed to alleviate tensions because the U.S. refused to adhere to Russia’s demand that Ukraine “never, never ever” become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman stated that the U.S. would “not allow anyone to slam closed NATO’s Open Door policy.”
Since the February 2014 Maidan coup—where worshippers of Nazi collaborators Stepan Bandera overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych—the U.S. has provided $2.5 billion in military aid to the Ukrainians, including $450 million in 2021 alone. (Since 2014, the EU has provided 17 billion euros to Kyiv!)