Sensing Blood, Obama Moves In For The Kill Against Russia

Just as the Russian economy appears ready to crack wide open, with the ruble plunging (in turn causing inflation- the ruble has fallen about 50% so far this year), oil prices dragged way down with the connivance of Saudi Arabia, inflation rising, Russian citizens panic-buying as the value of their currency craters, and forecasts for a contracting economy, the U.S. is tightening its economic vise on Russia still further.

The U.S. Congress voted for additional sanctions to cut off more Russian enterprises from the external financial system, blocking access to finance needed for trade. Russian companies that owe external debts denominated in dollars or Euros will be hard hit as it takes more of their rubles to convert into foreign currencies to make debt payments. Some will be forced into bankruptcy. Obama is set to sign the latest punitive measures into law, ratcheting-up economic warfare against Russia. [1]

Check out this smug gloat from one Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (an official body of ideological priests): "I mean, if I was chairman of President Putin’s Council of Economic Advisers, I would be extremely concerned. They are between a rock and a hard place in economic policy. The combination of our sanctions, the uncertainty they’ve created for themselves with their international actions and the falling price of oil has put their economy on the brink of crisis." Yeah, take THAT! That's what you get for crossing the U.S.! We want Ukraine, and we're taking Ukraine, Russia! So BACK the HELL OFF!

I think that's a reasonable translation.

Obama's top official mouthpiece, press secretary Josh “I Kid You Not!” Earnest, blamed the pain in Russia caused by the U.S.-led economic warfare on Putin: “It’s a sign of the failure of Vladimir Putin’s strategy to try to buck up his country. Right now, he and his country are isolated from the broader international community.” (That's what you call Blaming the Victim.)

And a sinister long-time U.S. apparatchik, R. Nicholas Burns, weighed in: “Given Russian military resupply of the separatists in Ukraine during the last month, the U.S. had to raise the economic costs to Putin for his outright aggression,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former diplomat and. “Combined with the collapse of the ruble, sanctions will hit Putin’s government where it is most vulnerable — its very shaky economy.” (Burns last official government job was undersecretary of state during the regime of George W. Bush (the stolen presidency, 2001-2009).

Speaking of “military resupply,” the law Congress just passed provides $350 million in military supplies to the Kiev cabal to continue its artillery and aerial devastation of eastern Ukraine and finally crush the separatists. Weapons to be provided include antitank weapons, tactical surveillance drones and counter-artillery radar, to help the Kiev cabal's forces destroy the separatists' artillery, allowing the West's client regime to better reduce eastern cities to rubble as it will enjoy impunity. (Russia is also constantly attacked for “violating the truce,” when in fact the Kiev cabal never honored it and continued its shelling regardless.)

On the other side, Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov sounded a defiant, if a tad overly-optimistic note: “Russia will not only survive but will come out much stronger,” he blustered on France 24 television network. “We have been in much worse situations in our history, and every time we have got out of our fix much stronger.” I guess that's a reference to World War I, the Bolshevik-White Russian civil war, World War II, and the economic catastrophe wrought by Yeltsin, which the West hailed Yeltsin for.

It's true that Russians are inured to suffering. And it's true that Russia-the Soviet Union-Russia has gone through much worse- like over 20 million people slaughtered by the fascists and much of the country physically devastated. Eventually they recovered (“came out stronger”), but it didn't last, as the U.S. empire, like an anaconda slowly strangling its prey, helped destroy the Soviet Union. (An unworkable economic system and social and ideological sclerosis played major roles too, contrary to the triumphalism of American reactionaries who worship at the altar of the Reagan Cult.)

In terms of Russia's geopolitical position and power in the world, which is the point, I wouldn't bet on Russia at this point. Here's the U.S. bloc, pressed right up against Russia's border, threatening the vital Black Sea naval base on the Crimean peninsula, while at the same time crushing Russia's economy.

The fact is, the U.S. has such a vast “toolkit” of imperialist weaponry at its disposal, so many assets and options. Look at the role of Saudi Arabia. By having a close relationship with a feudal monarchy, which is cunning and ruthless and unprincipled and willing to do favors for the U.S., the U.S. is able to drive down the price of oil to hammer Russia- and as a bonus, hammer the other enemy states of Iran and Venezuela simultaneously! It's not necessarily cost-free- U.S. oil corps will make less money, and shale oil and fracking drillers will be squeezed, but those are minor costs, and eventually will reverse at some future date when the price of oil is allowed to go back up. Notice the Saudis are willing to screw their fellow OPEC members to help out U.S. foreign policy. (The Saudi autocracy is so cynical that their secret police have covert relations with Mossad, the Israeli external secret police/assassination agency, while the Saudis pretend to be on the Palestinians' side.)

Lavrov also opined that he sensed a plot to overthrow Putin on the part of the U.S. Well, it's no secret that the Western powers don't like Putin. Over the years the attitude has mostly ranged from skeptical, to frosty, to hostile. And it's NOT because he's an autocrat. (He is.) The U.S. and the other “western democracies” have cordial relations with far worse rulers (like the aforementioned Saudis, or Guatemala, and Honduras, and any number of despots and dictators, an endless number in fact, in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, over the years). And certainly in terms of suppression of dissent, China is far worse (and the U.S. itself about as bad or worse). But while they wag their fingers at China's human rights misdemeanors, there's no question of trying to punish China, including for the seizure of islands property claimed by neighboring nations. Indeed, there is huge trade and commerce with China, despite China's very aggressive cyberespionage against the U.S. government, military weapons manufacturers, major media, and other targets. (By the way, China's worst human rights crimes, like the oppression of the Tibetans and the slow genocide being committed against them, or the persecution of Falun Gong adherents, including their torture, execution, and harvesting of their organs for transplantation, are mostly ignored in western media. They prefer to focus on the comparatively minor harassment of the millionaire artist Ai Wei Wei, who gets major and ongoing play in the New York Times, for example, the most influential U.S. newspaper, and other such smaller acts of repression.)

But the new law could have been worse. Before it was passed, Obama had Congress remove a provision that would have barred the lifting of sanctions until Russia gets out of Moldova and Georgia. Now Russia only has to abandon Ukraine for the sanctions to be lifted. (Does that mean Russia has to vacate the Black Sea naval base to get the West's foot off its economic windpipe? The U.S. media has maintained a total blackout on even mentioning the fact that Russia has a key naval base in Crimea.)

Let's give the last word to the corrupt New Jersey politician Robert Menendez, of the Democratic Party, a supporter of Cuban exile terrorists and one of New Jersey's two U.S. Senators (each state gets two Senators): “President Putin bears responsibility for any outcomes that flow from his actions and breach of the international order,” said Menendez, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who was a prime mover of the sanctions along with the committee's senior Republican, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. “The United States Congress stands with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression,” Mr. Menendez said. So whatever the U.S. does to Russia is Russia's fault. Duly noted, Robert.

U.S. Turns Up The Heat on Russia: Obama Determined To Break Putin.

1] The new law has a typically propagandistic name, the “Ukraine Freedom Support Act.” It passed the U.S. Senate 100-0. In the House of Representatives there were 10 dissenters in a body of 435 members that supposedly represents the entire American people- 315 million people- in all their diversity of opinion. (The near-totalitarian nature of U.S. society is often on display in matters of “national security,” that is, imperialism and domestic repression.

Other U.S. laws with sinister, even Orwellian names, are the notorious USA PATRIOT Act, which cemented the U.S. as a police state, and the Bank Secrecy Act, which in fact stripped all privacy from people's bank accounts.