Beware – here be sanction-loving warmongers

 

 

It may be Spring – the garden birds tell me so, as do my little apple trees which have produced the first blossoms – but inside, especially inside the minds of the Westminster Village denizens, there’s dense fog. It’s not just the ‘fog of war’, it’s the ‘fog of ignorance’, especially the fog created by inane posturings with no thought for reality, a reality which we plebs have to face.

Having glanced at this morning’s print papers’ headlines in the usual place (link) I note that “we” must be very upset because Mr Sunak’s wife, a woman rich in her own rights, is escaping taxation here in the UK. The horror. These reports surely are both misogynist and racist! But then again, it’s only we peasants who must watch our attitudes – the mighty in Brussels, Washington, London and Berlin can do as they like.

There were, you might recall, ‘more sanctions’ going to be imposed on Russia. Well, now the two daughters of Mr Putin are being sanctioned because they’ll surely go back to day now and tell him to stop this war. That is of course not misogynist and certainly not racist. The EU was most eager to create more sanctions. Didn’t their dahlink Mr ‘e call for more of those? Oh yes he did, as Reuters reports:

“Ukraine wants sanctions that are economically destructive enough for Russia to end its war after accusing some countries of still prioritising money over punishment for civilian killings that the West condemns as war crimes. The democratic world must reject Russian oil and completely block Russian banks from the international finance system, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his daily video address early on Thursday.” (link)

There’s more – Mr ‘e was not mincing words in his accusations:

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday called on Western politicians to quickly agree on an embargo of Russian oil, complaining that their failure to do so was costing Ukrainians their lives.” (link)

Yes, it’s ‘commit economic suicide to save Ukrainian lives’. Negotiating with Russia to stop this war? Bah – you’re ‘avin a larf, right? The USA is happy to support Mr ‘e’s demands. It’s all about ‘degrading Russia’s economy’ – but sadly, this will only work in the long-term, according to a very intelligent and knowledgeable White House spokesperson:

“WASHINGTON, April 6 – RIA Novosti. The U.S. and its allies will strive to deprive Russia of any revenues from oil and gas exports over time, Deputy Advisor to the U.S. President on National Security Dalip Singh said on Wednesday. “You are right, revenues from oil and gas supplies are the main income that Russia has left. And we believe that over time we will be able to deprive Russia of the status of a key energy supplier. We are working with Germany to close the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, we have cut off Russia’s access to the necessary technologies in the energy sector,” Singh said on CNN.” (link, in Russian, machine-translated)

Does Mr Singh really not know that Germany has already taken the knee and closed NordStream 2? Are these the ‘knowledgeable people’ on whose decisions the west’s economic future are based? Still, Brussels was keen to obey Mr ‘e, convening a meeting yesterday to get an agreement for more sanctions. Sadly, they couldn’t, and have to meet again today, as RT reports (link). 

Meanwhile, it is slowly dawning on ‘experts’ in the USA that the sanctions demanded by Mr ‘e might perhaps become a bit more difficult to implement. Reuters writes “Easy Russia sanctions exhausted, U.S. and allies face economic bite” (link). There are some quite extraordinary observations from a US Treasury ‘official’, e.g. that “the sanctions are starting to turn Russia back into an austere, 1980s Soviet-style closed economy” (link). How do they know that? And won’t these sanctions also turn ‘the west’, the USAUKEU, into a closed economy, perhaps not soviet-style but WWII-style?

The US treasury secretary, Ms Yellen, acknowledged that “stronger curbs on Russian energy are not yet possible for European allies dependent on Russian oil and gas” (link) – the poor things. Reuters then describes the dependency of the EU on those Russian imports and quotes ‘an expert’ who now carefully hints that this next bunch of sanctions might also be painful for ‘Teh West’:

“We are at the point where we have to take some pain,” said Benn Steil, international economics director for the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York. “The initial batches of sanctions were crafted as much to not hurt us in the West as much as they were to hurt Russia.” (link)

You don’t say! But no worries: our shroud-waving, virtue-signalling politicians won’t feel that pain. It’ll only hit us peasants and we can take it, right? And look at intrepid Finland showing Putin they really, really mean those ‘sanctions’ to hurt:

“Finland announced on Wednesday that its customs service has seized Russian artwork coming back from being loaned to exhibits in the EU and Japan, citing EU sanctions against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine. The paintings and sculptures in question belong to Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery and St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, among others, and their value has been estimated at $46 million or more.” (link)

One might call this outright robbery, one might wonder if sanctioning Russian art is helping to support the Ukraine with more armaments. Perhaps these treasures might be sold off to the highest bidder to pay for more arms … but mightn’t that be called ‘war profiteering’? 

There’s another kind of ‘sanction’ which has swept the EU: the expulsion of Russian diplomats. “We” really mean it when we say we’ll not talk to Russia, when we say we’ll cut all ties with Russia so we can point our fingers at Russia because it’s becoming a ‘soviet style close economy’, a soviet-style country behind a soviet style iron curtain. There might be consequences:

“If Western countries continue to expel Russian diplomats, Moscow won’t rule out the possibility of severing diplomatic ties with the states concerned, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned on Wednesday. He explained that the recent wave of expulsions threatens continued diplomatic relations.” (link)

Well, “we” in the west can do nicely without those diplomatic relations, correct? And “we” are so good, rich and untroubled by any economic consequences, from food shortages to energy shortages to supply chain disruptions that “we”, in the form of Miz Truss, can make another war-mongering promise. I’ll only quote the headline:

“The West must show Putin its collective strength – To secure a safer, more peaceful world, we need to double down in supporting Ukraine so that it prevails” (link)

I believe her ‘comment’ piece in the DT isn’t paywalled, so you can go and see her delusional proposals for yourselves if you must. I’ve mentioned her piece because there’s no better example to demonstrate that she, her colleague in No 10, those in Whitehall, in the HoC and indeed in the whole Westminster swamp, are living in cloud-cuckoo land while dancing on the summit of a volcano soon to erupt. 

How are “we” going to build all the armaments to replace those we send to the Ukraine? How are we going to pay for the fuel needed to transport those things? Will we plebs have to put up with fuel shortages, perhaps even rationing, to prop up the proxy war against Russia? Will we peasants have to pay ever more for our food, given the supply chain shortages, given the increasing difficulties producing it – because Mr ‘e demands it? Will we be told to “freeze and starve for the Ukraine and mr ‘e”? 

Will the nice old WWII campaign to ‘dig for victory’ be resurrected? Victory not against an enemy which attacked us but in a proxy war which the USA at least aims to keep going until Russia is ‘degraded’ and there’s ‘a regime change’, all sanctions gone without any ill aftereffects?

I think we might find another use for our spades and pitchforks …



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