Seeing through American “news” coverage of Russia

russia-argentina-local-currencies1.siFor anyone viewing American news with the proper jaundiced eye, the above photograph tells us everything we need to know. It is Russian president Putin alongside Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez after meetings these past few days.

American vulture funds are shaking down. Having purchased Argentinian debt for pennies on the dollar, they want full compensation. They are willing to use full faith and credit of the Obama Administration to get it. (John Oliver does a credible report on this matter behind HBO’s pay wall.)

If you want to understand the real reason for the aggressive posture the US and its agents are taking against Russia these days, look no further than the photo above, and some accompanying text.

“We agreed to hold extensive consultations on the question of using national currencies in trade payments between states and between commercial partners,” the Russian President said.

Russia has set up similar schemes with China, Iran, Egypt, and Turkey to cut out the US dollar, the so-called middleman used in most transactions.

In October, Russia and China agreed a currency swap worth over $20 billion, in order to increase trade and business between the two.

Russia, China agree on more trade currency swaps to bypass the dollar

Earlier in April, Russia proposed setting up a similar system with Vietnam and Indonesia.

We need read no further than the words “to cut out the US dollar.” Such a move created the urgency to invade Iraq, destroy Libya, and encircle Iran. It’s all about propping up an empire in decline, and its floundering currency.

Historically, this has meant war. Right now it is causing the international banking community to attempt to bring Russia down, and Ukraine is merely the lever.

4 thoughts on “Seeing through American “news” coverage of Russia”

  1. Finance wars and military wars are now fought in tandem. BRIC countries are tired of being abused and have found viable alternatives to debt-based usury.

    “By August 1971, war spending in Vietnam and other foreign countries forced the United States to suspend gold convertibility of the dollar through sales via the London Gold Pool. But largely by inertia, central banks continued to settle their payments balances in U.S. Treasury securities. After all, there was no other asset in sufficient supply to form the basis for central bank monetary reserves. But replacing gold – a pure asset – with dollar-denominated U.S. Treasury debt transformed the global financial system. It became debt-based, not asset-based.” – MICHAEL HUDSON http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/10/11/why-the-u-s-has-launched-a-new-financial-world-war-and-how-the-the-rest-of-the-world-will-fight-back/

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  2. We’re already in a hybrid war with Russia. From War on the Rocks, on Russia’s use of hybrid war (and of course side-stepping the U.S. use of it):

    ”

    The hybrid warfare concept gives many in the West the luxury of picking and choosing from a range of actions – a media campaign here, a cyber-intrusion there (and even the occasional political assassination) – and interpreting them as one-off isolated events. There is no need to connect the dots. Indeed, it is often easier to look at the unfinished page, suggestive of possibilities that become clear only with a deliberate completion of the picture. Inadvertently, the flexibility of the instruments inherent in hybrid warfare tempts policy makers to detach the specific tactics from the overarching political goals that drive a war. A war fought with hybrid means becomes thus an incomprehensible sequence of improvisations, disparate actions along various geographic fronts – “humanitarian convoys” followed by conventional war with artillery and tanks in Eastern Ukraine, “peacekeeping operations” in Transnistria, cyber-attacks in Estonia, vast disinformation campaigns on mass media, seemingly random forays of heavy bombers in the North Sea, submarine games in the Baltic Sea, and so on – that appear vaguely connected. But they are a part of a whole.

    Hybrid tactics are not a random sequence of improvisations but reflect an order behind the spectrum of tools used. That makes it incumbent upon political leaders and strategic thinkers (not always one and the same) to fit such activities squarely within the political objectives discussed by Carl von Clausewitz, who explained that war was an extension of politics by other means. In thinking through the ongoing competition with Russia, we must keep in mind that “hybrid” refers to the means, not to the principles, goals, or nature of war. There is nothing inherent about the concept that prevents this. Indeed, the Russians have it down. We do not.”

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  3. One last thought. Obama & Co. talk about us being in an “information war” with Russia and need to greatly expand our spending. While Russia’s investment in the likes of RT to inform western audiences of an alternative take of the news, our use of information war is much different. It isn’t so much an attempt to inform Russians about western news as it is to wage information war (propaganda) on our own citizens.

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