ramifications;

The global financial system is on the brink of being thrown into chaos.

The United States and Europe moved to target Russian central bank reserves and sever the country’s banking system from the SWIFT global financial network.

It is the financial equivalent of the nuclear option – something the Biden administration had explicitly declined to invoke last week before abruptly announcing the move on Saturday.

Moscow considers it to be an act of war. An increasingly bellicose Russian President Vladimir Putin could retaliate against the U.S. and its allies in a number of ways, including cutting off energy supplies, launching cyber-attacks on financial institutions, and further partnering with China to create alternative payments platforms that challenge U.S. dollar hegemony.

Geopolitical and financial analyst James Rickards tweeted his prediction: “If you ban SWIFT payments, Russia will stop selling oil.

That's about 9% of global output. There's an energy shortage already. The result will be a global depression.”

Even if global energy markets stabilize over time as new sources of supply come on board, trust in the global financial system could be permanently impaired.

Mutually assured confidence in counterparties is the only thing underpinning transactions conducted in fiat currencies.

When the financial system is used as a large-scale weapon of war to freeze assets and deny transactions, it’s not just the immediate targets of the sanctions who will lose confidence in it. The system itself becomes less trustworthy.

Russian authorities had been preparing for a financial doomsday scenario long before they decided to launch an offensive in Ukraine.

They have steadily boosted their central bank gold reserves and developed alternative systems for transacting with trading partners – though it remains to be seen how effective their preparations so far will be.

It seems clear that China, which depends on Russia for oil, coal, grains, and other commodities, will continue doing business with Putin. Will the U.S. cease doing business with China?

The reality is that the American economy is highly dependent on cheap Chinese imported goods. The shelves of every Walmart would be nearly empty without them.

If China began to fear global sanctions, it could start demanding payment in a hard currency with zero counterparty risk such as gold. Given the sheer size of China’s economy (several times larger than that of Russia), any significant new move by the Chinese to de-dollarize would be difficult for the U.S. and its allies to counter.

Uncertainty about what happens next is itself enough to trigger strategic shifts in asset allocation by countries, businesses, and individuals alike.

To the extent that people are less confident about holding their wealth in banks or in rubles, yuan, euros, or dollars, they will seek out sounder alternatives.

There is no sounder, more durable store of value than precious metals. No war or global financial reset of any kind can diminish the universally recognized status of gold and silver as the ultimate money.....http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/03.22/brink.html

 pcr presents thoughts on the empire and the ukraine with the implications about why this was created in the first place, among other ideas;

Ukraine is a manageable localized problem in a distant part of the world and Russia is going to manage it. The American crisis of confidence in its own operating system is something else.

Did “Joe Biden’s” handlers actually want to start World War Three? They are the same posse who contrived the Russian Collusion hysteria of 2016-19, then launched Covid-19 — and the even more deadly mass “vaccination” response to it — and have now successfully goaded Russia into cleaning up the international hub of grift and mischief known as Ukraine. One thing established for sure as fact: the “Joe Biden” family received plenty of cash off that grift wagon, and those “handlers” have neatly ring-fenced it from official scrutiny. Where does that leave the so-called president of the US in the current crisis?

The scant news coming out of Ukraine is so infected with propaganda that it’s impossible to know exactly what’s going on there these early days of the Russian invasion. Some interested parties say that Russia is getting its ass kicked by a Ukrainian resistance. More temperate reports suggest that Russian forces are proceeding methodically to capture and neutralize Ukraine’s meager military assets. Apparently, Ukraine and Russia are holding a diplomatic parlay today at the Belarus border. You might style that as “peace talks,” but who knows? There are no real functioning international news agencies anymore.

The current CIA-approved narrative wants you to believe that Vlad Putin seeks to reassemble the old Soviet Union and will move next to capture the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. I doubt this since all those countries have their own cultures rather emphatically hostile to Russia and required onerous operating subsidies from Moscow back in the Soviet day. Ukraine will surely be enough of a burden for Russia going forward.

An alternate narrative to the CIA’s scare story would follow the Occam’s Razor rule that the simplest explanation is probably the truth — namely, that there was no other way to stop Ukraine’s shelling and mortar attacks against the ethnic Russian population in the Donbas which, by the way, was carried out with US-gifted armaments. And there was no other way to disabuse the USA from the idea that Ukraine should join NATO and thereby become a missile launching base on Russia’s border.........read more........

 US/NATO is in the Grip of a Daemonic Death-Wish & the Entire World is Threatened

Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia.

Their hypocrisy and nihilistic thirst for death and destruction are so extreme that it boggles my mind.  They accuse Russia of starting a New Cold War when they did so decades ago and have been pushing the envelope ever since.  Now they act shocked that Russia, after many years of patience, has struck back in Ukraine.

In 2017, Oliver Stone released his four-part interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  The Putin Interviews were conducted between 2015, the year after the US engineered the coup d’état in Ukraine installing Nazis to power in that country bordering Russia, and 2017.

Stone was of course bashed for daring to respectfully ask questions and receive answers from the Russian leader who the American media has always cast, like all the mythic bogeymen, as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world, when it is the United States, not Russia, that has over 750 military bases throughout the world and has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – the list is endless.

In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin and the matters that concern him as the leader of Russia.  In 2018, I wrote of those interviews:

…he [Putin] makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts.

1. that the US needs an external enemy (“I know that, I feel that.”). 
2. the USA engineered the coup d’état in the Ukraine on Russia’s border. 
3. the US has surrounded Russia with US/NATO troops and bases armed with anti-ballistic missiles that can, as Putin rightly says to Stone, be converted in hours to regular offensive nuclear missile aimed at Russia. ........read more........

 more thoughts and comparisons on the war ukraine will be bringing the world and perhaps soon;

while we don’t yet know how it will end, one thing we can be sure of is that “the illusion of liberal democracy … has collapsed.”6 That doesn’t mean the globalist cabal will pack up their briefcases and retire. No, they’re going to fight to stay in power until the bitter end.

But the hill they’re standing on is getting steeper and slipperier by the day. Everyone can see that they’re saying one thing and doing the complete opposite. You can’t lay claim to being a defender of democracy, freedom and equal rights for all while simultaneously declaring peaceful citizens the enemy of the state. It’s just not credible. As noted by historically left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald:7

“When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored.

Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging …

That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable. But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited..........read and watch more........

 some questions you'll never hear on your tv;

The West has taken an extreme stance against Russia over its invasion in Ukraine. This reaction exposes a high degree of hypocrisy considering that US-led wars abroad never received the punitive response they deserved.

If the current events in Ukraine have proven anything, it’s that the United States and its transatlantic partners are able to run roughshod across a shell-shocked planet – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, to name a few of the hotspots – with almost total impunity. Meanwhile, Russia and Vladimir Putin are being portrayed in nearly every mainstream media publication today as the second coming of Nazi Germany for their actions in Ukraine.

First, let’s be clear about something. Hypocrisy and double standards alone do not provide justification for the opening of hostilities by any country. In other words, just because NATO-bloc countries have been tearing a path of wanton destruction around the globe since 2001 without serious consequences, this does not give Russia, or any country, moral license to behave in a similar manner. There must be a convincing reason for a country to authorize the use of force, thereby committing itself to what could be considered ‘a just war’. Thus, the question: Can Russia’s actions today be considered ‘just’ or, at the very least, understandable? I will leave that answer up to the reader’s better judgment, but it would be idle not to consider some important details.

Only to the consumers of mainstream media fast food would it come as a surprise that Moscow has been warning on NATO expansion for well over a decade. In his now-famous speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Vladimir Putin poignantly asked the assembled global powerbrokers point blank, “why is it necessary to put military infrastructure on our borders during this [NATO] expansion? Can someone answer this question?” Later in the speech, he said that expanding military assets smack up to the Russian border “is not connected in any way with the democratic choices of individual states.”.........read more.......

 follow the money or how the empire's response to the ukraine game may well cause it more trouble than the russians, in a large way;

So a congregation of NATO’s top brass ensconced in their echo chambers target the Russian Central Bank with sanctions and expect what? Cookies?

What they got instead was Russia’s deterrence forces bumped up to “a special regime of duty” – which means the Northern and Pacific fleets, the Long-Range Aviation Command, strategic bombers and the entire Russian nuclear apparatus on maximum alert.

One Pentagon general very quickly did the basic math on that, and mere minutes later, a Ukrainian delegation was dispatched to conduct negotiations with Russia in an undisclosed location in Gomel, Belarus.

Meanwhile, in the vassal realms, the German government was busy “setting limits to warmongers like Putin” – quite a rich undertaking considering that Berlin never set any such limits for western warmongers who bombed Yugoslavia, invaded Iraq, or destroyed Libya in complete violation of international law.

While openly proclaiming their desire to “stop the development of Russian industry,” damage its economy, and “ruin Russia” – echoing American edicts on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, Venezuela and others in the Global South – the Germans could not possibly recognize a new categorical imperative.

They were finally liberated from their WWII culpability complex by none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Germany is finally free to support and weaponize neo-Nazis out in the open all over again – now of the Ukrainian Azov battalion variety.

To get the hang of how these NATO sanctions will “ruin Russia,” I asked for the succinct analysis of one of the most competent economic minds on the planet, Michael Hudson, author, among others, of a revised edition of the must-read Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.

Hudson remarked how he is “simply numbed over the near-atomic escalation of the US.” On the confiscation of Russian foreign reserves and cut-off from SWIFT, the main point is “it will take some time for Russia to put in a new system, with China. The result will end dollarization for good, as countries threatened with ‘democracy’ or displaying diplomatic independence will be afraid to use US banks.”

This, Hudson says, leads us to “the great question: whether Europe and the Dollar Bloc can buy Russian raw materials – cobalt, palladium, etc, and whether China will join Russia in a minerals boycott.”..........read more........

 one more bit of timely thoughts about the ukraine from mr  margolis;

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

---

Having been a soldier and correspondent in 14 wars, I’m trying to see through the inevitable fog of war that beclouds the current conflict in Ukraine.

This is no easy task. Moscow has done a poor job of explaining its position and scared the hell out of everyone with its nuclear alert.

Western media has championed the cause of Ukraine in a totally one-sided manner. So, we have plucky David v. evil Goliath. Never mind that civil war between Ukrainian nationalists, militant rightists and the Kiev regime has been flaring for 14 years.

Russia, which ruled Ukraine with a few pauses since the 1700’s, sought to rapidly overthrow the western-backed Ukrainian nationalist government in Kiev by launching what the French calls ‘un coup de main’, a lightening attack to seize Ukraine’s centers of power.

But this effort did not work out. Ukrainian government forces, secretly armed with the latest anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons by the Western powers, blunted Moscow’s initial attacks. I strongly suspect the presence of US and/or British Special Forces. More heavy offensives appear to be on the way. An initial attack on the key port of Odessa quickly petered out.

Did the Russian soldiers lack enthusiasm? Hard to say at this point. Many were reportedly loathe to attack their Ukrainian ‘brothers.’ This conflict was not popular in Mother Russia.

We have not yet seen any eruption of ever-mighty Russian nationalism that was so powerful in World War II. Nor the pure racial-religious hatred seen in the crushing of Chechen independence in 1990. In that gruesome conflict, Russia destroyed the Chechen capitol and many towns across Chechnya. But the fierce Chechen were Muslims, not fellow Orthodox Slavs.

So far, Russian forces, whose doctrine calls for massive artillery use, have been sparing in their use of big guns and rocket batteries. Much more is very likely to come. The Russian Air Force and Black Sea Fleet have also been notably absent. Perhaps President Vladimir Putin has sought to keep the Ukraine conflict to a low-key punitive action.

But many other dangers are evident. Turkey says it will adhere to the important 1936 Montreux Convention that limits the entry of warships into the Black Sea. The US Navy plans a very aggressive campaign against Russia in the Black Sea – and around Vladivostok in the North Pacific. Will Turkey bar the US Navy from that inland sea?

Regarding the nuclear scare. President Putin has previously stated that because of Russia’s reductions in its conventional forces it would henceforth rely increasingly on tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. Anyone who attacked Russia could expect at least a limited nuclear riposte.

Western politicians have had a field day denouncing the ‘barbarity” (Boris Johnson’s words) of Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets. This is shameless bunkum. British pilots and mechanics have kept the Saudi air forces pounding Yemen’s cities and villages. The US Air Force and Navy have destroyed many of Iraq, Libya’s and Syria’s urban areas, notably Falluja, Aleppo and Mosul. Israel’s US-supplied air force flattened parts of Gaza.

Our side is not without sin.

The western powers need to abate their righteous jeremiads against Russia and work to find a face-saving way for Russia out of this dangerous morass. France has made a good start. By contrast, Germany has again shown its total lack of independent policy.

As much as we feel sympathy for Ukraine, we must also remember that Russia remains a great power of sorts and needs to be shown a clear exit from this mess. America must not be carried away by glee at Russia’s discomfort and try to complete the destruction of the once mighty Soviet Union into an eastern Yugoslavia..........https://www.globalresearch.ca/playing-fire-ukraine/5772671