War At Home And Abroad--Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Up top here, a h/t is owed to Friend George.

The coin we speak of, of course, is Neo-gnostic, neo-liberal, Western ideology. The collective West, in the grip of globalist fantasy and anti-human ideology, has launched into a war on the rest of the world—which appears to be boomeranging in spectacular fashion. The question of the day is, Where will this lead, where will it end. Over the last few weeks every day seems to bring new attempts to gin up nuclear hysteria, hoax claims that Putin is being backed into a corner and will lash out with nukes.

The suspicion has been that these hoax claims of Putin’s nuclear intentions might be the prelude to a false flag nuclear incident in Ukraine, leading to all out war between the US and Russia. With Pentagon spokespeople now openly stating that there is no evidence, none at all, of any change in Russia’s nuclear posture, that hoax seems to have been put to rest—for practical purposes. Which is to say, we may continue to hear this nonsense, but the Pentagon has put their foot down—perhaps, behind closed doors, to the extent of stating that they simply won’t go along.

That doesn’t mean that crazy escalations won’t get us beyond what anyone planned for. The US sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines is a good example of the type of false flag provocation that could lead to consequences that might spin out of control. Russia has refused to escalate militarily after the Nordstream sabotage, is playing this smart, but the Neocon crazies are now setting their sights on another Russian pipeline—and there’s no way to forecast for sure what might happen:

Washington, Brussels Set Sights on TurkStream Pipeline Amid Crackdown on Ankara-Moscow Cooperation 

Read the whole thing, which covers a lot of strategic issues pertaining to pipelines—there are enough potential ramifications to make your head spin. The point is, however, as commentators have noted, all pipelines are potential targets now, as well, scarily, as LNG tankers and terminals. Read up on LNG risks if you need a sobering experience. But here’s the key excerpt:

At the beginning of this year there were four pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Europe, and a fifth (Nord Stream 2) was about to come online. Now Nord Stream 1 and 2 are dead, the Yamal Pipeline is closed, and the amount of gas flowing through Ukraine is greatly diminished.

That leaves theTurkStream pipeline, which transports natural gas from Russia to Turkey and then onto southeastern Europe, and it’s in the crosshairs.

South Stream Transport B.V., a Netherlands-based subsidiary of Gazprom that operates the Black Sea portion of TurkStream, said the Netherlands withdrew its export license on September 18 amid wider sanctions from the European Union. South Stream Transport applied for a new license but it doesn’t know if it will receive it.

Now South Stream plans to “suspend the execution of all contracts related to the technical support of the gas pipeline, including design, manufacture, assembly, testing, repair, maintenance and training” due to the sanctions.

That means that “no one will be able to carry out repairs if a pipe is damaged, gas leaks, or if a part of the pipeline comes apart due to an earthquake.”

The news comes on the heels of Moscow’s claim that it foiled an attack on TurkStream. And Washington luminaries are now homing in on the pipeline.

Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute writes that “Biden should kill TurkStream to promote transatlantic energy security.”

Please note: That’s a direct quote—”kill.” Also note that Zhou and the US have no legal or financial interest in Southstream, but Neocon Rubin wants Zhou and the US to unilaterally “kill” that pipeline.

Former CIA director and known perjurer John Brennan is very concerned about all pipelines bringing natural gas to Europe:

“Russia will attack other Russian pipelines soon” says John Brennan.

Translation: The US will blow up Turkstream. https://t.co/riSbbyhtg9

— Rosie’s Social Media Madhouse (@DarnelSugarfoo) October 3, 2022

We may be seeing more pipeline craziness in the near future. No one knows where it will lead.

In the meantime, Russia appears to be willing to accept the loss of European customers and will inflict revenge in its own way. Or so one hopes. Instead, Russia appears to be maintaining its focus on a greatly ramped up military campaign in Ukraine in the relatively near future. What that may portend is to some extent speculative, but as I pointed out this morning, attacks on satellite infrastructure—by means of which the US provides operators (whether NATO or Ukrainian) of advanced artillery and missile systems with crucial targeting information. Without that targeting information from US satellites those systems are largely useless—they revert to the status of dumb weapons, as compared to advanced Russian systems. Andrei Martyanov has pointed out that Russia is speaking publicly and pointedly about this possibility:

Translation: United Nations, 4 October. /TASS/. The United States, in the context of the conflict in Ukraine, deploys components of civilian infrastructure in space for military purposes, but such quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for retaliation. This is stated in a statement by Vladimir Yermakov, Director of the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control of the Russian Foreign Ministry, announced on Tuesday at a meeting of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly. The text was read by his deputy Konstantin Vorontsov. "In the course of the events in Ukraine, a new extremely dangerous trend has emerged. We are talking about the use by the United States and its allies of civilian infrastructure components in space, including commercial ones, for military purposes," the diplomat said. "Such activities, in fact, represent indirect participation in armed conflicts, and quasi-civilian infrastructure can be a legitimate target for retaliation. As a result of the actions of the West, the sustainability of peaceful space activities, as well as numerous socio-economic processes on Earth, on which the well-being of people depends, are exposed to undue risks.

As I pointed out this morning, this will represent a significant escalation—but one which is a proportionate and rational response to open provocations, not an escalation that is coming out of the blue or a false flag operation.

Now, I want to transition back to the beginning—the domestic and foreign fronts of the neo-gnostic West’s war on the rest of the world, starting with Russia—because all of the above ties in together. Alistair Crooke has written a smart article on that topic. His main thesis—at least for the first half of the article—is that the nuclear brinkmanship of the Zhou regime may get out of control. As I indicated above, it appears that that gambit may have been scotched by the US military. Russia observer Gilbert Doctorow also believes that we’ve gotten past that: Has Vladimir Putin put the fear of God into the Satanic West? Doctorow begins by bemoaning Putin’s willingness to tolerate insults and demonization, but then he notes a shift:

Until now, Putin played a careful balancing act between domestic liberals and conservatives ... 

Putin’s recognition of the new ‘subjects of the Russian Federation’ … as irrevocably integrated into the Motherland, has been correctly identified by Western observers ... Everyone now understands perfectly that Russia will defend its new borders with all its considerable military and other resources.

Russia’s showing its claws has changed the game. Within hours, Ukrainian President Zelensky formally asked NATO for expedited approval of its membership application, by which we may assume he meant immediate admission. In a press conference later in the day, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg effectively rejected this request, ... There can be little doubt that this answer was given to him by Washington. Of course, the days of the Kiev regime are numbered as Russia steps up its war effort. Zelensky & Co. will not survive in power long enough to pursue their NATO application.

Meanwhile the dummy in charge of the U.S. State Department, Antony Blinken, told reporters yesterday that in fact the United States has no indications Russia intends to use nuclear arms in Ukraine. This reversal of his remarks of the past few weeks is no minor point; it means that U.S. flirtation with staging yet another anti-Russian false flag operation, this time by detonating a nuclear device somewhere in Ukraine that might be blamed on the Kremlin, has, thankfully, been abandoned. The world is much safer for all that.

So, turning to Crooke, we will skip over his fears of nuclear conflict and focus on his interesting analysis of how what looks like the upcoming defeat of Ukraine in a Russian blitz will play in US politics—the home front of a two front war:

Will Biden know when to stop?

…

However, Biden – though he says he has no stomach for a war with Russia and will not permit one – likes to tout the idea that “our democracy” is under threat. “We have an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to defend, preserve, and protect ‘our democracy’”, he says.

Biden is not referring to generic democracy as a whole, but specifically to America’s liberal-élite hegemony (aka ‘our democracy’), and to its predilection for forever wars abroad being under threat — ...

Crooke speaks loosely here of a “predilection for … war.” I’ll just remark that that’s an inadequate explanation for what we’re seeing, and for the motivations that Crooke himself will point to a bit later. There is certainly a unifying ideology behind these “forever wars.” Crooke now ties those wars abroad to the new war at home.

In a speech made in Philadelphia recently, Biden – speaking in an eerie set-up at Independence Hall – extended threats to ‘our democracy’ from those abroad to warn against the threat of a different terror, closer to home — from “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans” who “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic”.

Everyday the news brings us a new example of the aggressively political operatives at DoJ/FBI launching raids on harmless people—all the way from the former presidents to “the little people.” Conservatives, clinging to an idealized vision of America that is rapidly being transformed into a national security state. The Covid Hoax saw that national security state bring the First Amendment into its crosshair—the freedoms to communicate with fellow citizens, to express views and exchange information, to assemble and to petition government, all of these were attacked with the acquiesence of the SCOTUS and with the entire, bipartisan DC establishment falling into line. It continues day by day, so that today we’re treated to this gem: American Medical Association asks DOJ to investigate 'disinformation' against gender surgeries for minors.

Arta Moeini and Professor Carment argue that US politics have moved a complete circle: From Bush’s initial warning to the external world that, in the War on Terror, you are either ‘with us or against us’ — to Biden “weaponising the mythos of our democracy for partisan gains”.

Now, I don’t doubt for a moment that Zhou wants the Dems to win in the Midterms and beyond. Nevertheless, the GOP’s largely supince acquiesence in all this strongly suggests a bipartisan consensus at work—a ruling class determined to crush government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and to construct a new form of government.

Seen together, Biden’s rhetoric depicts his administration’s war against the amorphous specter of “MAGA fascism” at home and its stated goal of militarily defeating autocracies abroad as being but two sides of the same coin.

This doctrine ensnares all sides of the spectrum — by enmeshing them in false equivalencies: Deny the Establishment’s liberal interventionist foreign policy (in say, Ukraine) and be branded as an ‘extremist’ or even a ‘traitor’ – as Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán has been labeled in the European parliament, for taking Russia’s side in EU deliberations. Or, defend America’s civil liberties and due process toward participants in the 6 January demonstrations, and (then again) you are tarred as being in league with Putin.

So here is the rub: The Biden Administration still exhibits decidedly hawkish attitudes in respect to toppling Putin; to defending Taiwan; and containing Iran, in order to save ‘our democracy’. And he now uses this existential framing to attack his American political opponents at home, and to coerce American support for his agenda: “A battle for the soul” of the United States and the “challenge of our time” (autocracies).

Now comes the core of Crooke’s thesis. Once these wars—home and abroad—are linked in this fashion, is it possible to delink or decouple them? What if the unthinkable happens—defeat on one or even both fronts? What then? Whither America? You’ll have to go along with Crooke’s fantasy of Biden playing a ‘clever’ game of any sort. This war is being managed by others. Zhou is just a prop:

But by linking them, were he to walk back one, he would undermine the other. Can Biden afford to see the Ukraine war end on terms favourable to President Putin, without it also being perceived as undermining his war on Trumpist ‘authoritarianism’ too? Is Biden trapped by his own ‘clever’ language game, one that was predicated on the expectation of Putin losing in Ukraine?  Yet, dare he risk nuclear escalation to maintain the ideological equivalence?

Moeini and Carment have noted: “This logic has now become the operating principle behind what may be called the Biden Doctrine, which is expected to be unveiled in the administration’s forthcoming National Security Strategy. It holds that the fight for democracy is incessant, totalising, and all-encompassing. That neutralising the alleged threat of fascism at home, personified by MAGA and former president Trump, is part of a larger apocalyptic struggle to defend the liberal international order abroad.”

Apocalyptic struggles don’t happen in politics, not unless apocalyptic ideologies are guiding the struggles. This isn’t “partisan” politics as that term has heretofore been understood in America.

The West and its delusions are deeply entrenched. It can end as a débacle for the Biden ‘doctrine’.