Putin seals US fate
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 12-22-2014 MON)
The US is engaging Russia in a three-pronged attack: economic sanctions and currency assault; a massive information war; and political-military pressures on the Ukrainian front. The latest eruption of the conflict is in the currency markets where US-led currency attacks on Russia caused a 60-percent fall of the ruble, whereupon the information war follows targeting President Vladimir Putin for regime change.
Some mainstream Philippine writers and members of the intelligentsia are acting like rah-rah cheerleaders for the US in lambasting Putin, the same way they did against Gaddafi and other victims of their principal’s regime change efforts.
A UP Professor, writing in the Diliman Book Club Facebook page, blamed the currency fall on oligarchs Putin allegedly installed. The professor should have known better; it is Putin who’s been rolling back the power of the oligarchs installed by the West during the incumbency of its puppet, the wino Boris Yeltsin (chief of whom was Mikhail Khodorovsky, whose ante to take over Russian State assets was funded by Western financial mafiosos like George Soros and the Rothschilds).
Khodorovsky, like other oligarchs such as Boris Beresovsky, were later pursued by Putin’s anti-corruption campaign. They were either jailed or went into exile in the West.
The Philippine Star’s Alex Magno gloated over the 60-percent fall of the Russian ruble and the prospects of turning this against Putin for a “color revolution.” Magno, as usual, displayed total ignorance of the facts: Russia has $450 billion in forex reserves, which was reduced only to $415 billion in the current currency-attack-induced crisis; Russia has a current account surplus of 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) compared to the US’ deficit of 2.5 percent of GDP; Russian government debt to GDP ratio is at 13.5 percent while the US’ is at 105 percent; and Russia has one of the largest gold hoards to back its currency while US gold cannot even be found in Fort Knox.
Certainly, Russia is undergoing a crisis--as Russia under Putin makes the decisive shift away from becoming part of a Western European civilization that has treated Russia as a Eurasian version of its hillbilly cousins from the Siberian boondocks while coveting the Russian Federation’s unimaginable oil, gas, and timber wealth.
In turn, Putin has made a tectonic shift to become part of the new “multipolar world,” in partnership with the real “rest of the world,” i.e. China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and many others now gravitating around the 21st Century real power--the economic alliance of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the geostrategic alliance of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), which India is joining.
China, through several of its information arms, such as the Global Times, has signaled its readiness to assist Russia in its momentary currency crisis. Cheng Yijun of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing said, “If the Kremlin decides to seek assistance from Beijing, it’s very unlikely for the Xi leadership to turn it down... This would be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate China is a friend indeed, and also its big power status.” But Russia has more than enough resources to deal with this US economic-currency attack--and is militarily even more prepared.
Russia in Yeltsin’s time (under Western economic planners Jeffrey Sachs et al.) was designed to be a raw materials provider to Western Europe, one that purchases all its needs from the West. Back then, Russia exported oil and imported everything else, much like how the Philippines exports OFWs and imports even “patis.”
Now we read in Russian economic discussions the concept of “import substitution” where Russia will produce what it needs and generate jobs that way, and buy the rest from non-Western sources, such as fish from Chile (instead of Norway) and apples from China (instead of Poland), cars from South Korea and China (instead of Europe), etc.
Still, pro-Western zombies in the Philippines choose to tout a lot of nonsense. They bemoan the impact of a Russian debt default, not saying that the impact will be on Western banks that have relied on Russian oil giants’ loans to rake in mega-profits, as what Alex Magno worried about in his last column.
Instead, geopolitical export Pepe Escobar warns that Putin can even unleash “black swans,” like postponing Russian corporate debt payments by a year and two, which would collapse Western banks a la Lehman Brothers in the Wall Street debacle of 2008.
The truth is US sanctions are hurting Europe as badly as Russia; the only problem is Europe is politically unable to reject such suicidal sanctions.
While Magno cites US tech firm Apple stopping its sales in Russia, he should be made aware that Daimler-Benz and many European companies are going to set up factories in Russia to skirt these sanctions.
So as the US and its neocons don’t give a hoot about the global economy, so long as they can trigger more wars to feed their military-industrial-finance behemoth, Putin, a.k.a. St. Vladimir, is also driving the stake through the beast’s heart.
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