[This article is from last December but I thought it was worth posting four months later as Tom's take on things seem pretty prescient in light of current events in the US and around the world . . . SC]

By Tom Luongo - December 6, 2022

The counter-revolution at the counter of a store
People buy the things they want and borrow for a little more
All those wasted years
All those precious, wasted years
Who will pay?
— RUSH, “Heresy”

There is no bigger heresy at this point in history than to suggest the US is not the main source of great evil in the world. There was a time, when the exact opposite was the case.

Today, however, As war rages in Ukraine and everyone in power in the West says they want peace but keep shoveling money and weapons into the conflict, the message is clear.

We want this war. We need this war and it doesn’t matter what the people want.

We will have this war.

But, here’s the big heresy, it’s not just the US that wants this war. Here’s another one does ‘The US’ as a global actor even exist anymore?

We are now digesting the most irresponsible escalation yet by “Ukraine,” a drone strike on a strategic airbase deep inside Russia attacking one leg of its nuclear triad — damaging strategic bombers capable of delivering nuclear warheads.

This is an explicit redline for Russia.

Regardless of what side of the line you stand on, Ukraine’s or Russia’s, in this war (or refuse to even define where the line is), this is a moment that should crystallize for you that this is a turning point in the war… and not for the better.

Escalations like this are a sign of weakness. They are tantamount to begging Russia to over-react, to force Putin’s hand and strike Ukraine mercilessly, which it seems they did in response.

Ukraine crossed the line where Russia would be free to use nuclear weapons per their use doctrine on attacking their nuclear deterrence capability.

Counterparts

“All around that dull grey world from Moscow to Berlin
People storm the barricades walls go tumbling in“

The Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union were fresh in our minds when RUSH recorded this deep cut off the album Roll the Bones. 1991 was supposed to be a time of hope, right? The Cold War was over. The free world triumphed over totalitarianism again.

A triumph of our system over theirs.

But at what cost?

The US began the rapid rise into empire, eschewing the humble foreign policy directives of the Founders to expand NATO into the vacuum created by the end of the USSR. The European Union began its formalization into a political and economic behemoth, introducing the euro while its agents deep within the UK overthrew a rightfully obstinate Margaret Thatcher to bring the UK into the fold.

These western institutions were supposed to be the promise of a better life was supposedly for the former Warsaw Pact… well, except Serbia, but only Putin apologists talk about that.

The costs for the Cold War were obvious to everyone east of the Berlin Wall. But the costs for the West were equally substantial. To fight the Cold War the US was turned into a massive corporatist nightmare, the security state justified at every turn and our monetary system of hard money dismantled.

That counter revolution really was at the “counter of the store” as the US morphed from the country with the cleanest balance sheet in the world into the biggest debtor the world has ever, and likely, will ever see via a voracious consumer gorging on ever cheaper fiat money.

The free world was enslaved by its leaders’ arrogance and hubris and the people bought off with cheap money for disposable goods to mollify the anxiety and psychological damage done to two generations with living under the threat of nuclear war.

Now make that four generations thanks to “Ukraine.”

Then when the system broke in 2008 we papered over the sins of the banking system, went full retard ‘printer go brrrrrr’ and ushered in the truly irresponsible era of zero-bound interest rates, round-robin Central Bank coordinated balance sheet expansion which funded a massive security state through portable technology while selling it all as ‘hope and change’ for a world safe for trannies and pedophiles.

Hold Yer Fire

“All around that dull grey world of ideology
People storm the marketplace and buy up fantasy”

We were supposed to be beyond the ‘dull gray world of ideology,’ but ideology is all we have left after having sold our souls for so little. As Alastair Crooke points out in his latest article, the West suffers from an ideological bias which precludes any other from being allowed to coexist on the planet.

This is where Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have practiced real heresy. They’ve said no to the Climate Change agenda of the West. But it goes far beyond that. They’ve said no to the entire western ideological framework of system over civilization.

Every argument made by European leaders like EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen is suffused with this ideological bias, this rightness of our system over any other.

And no escape route can be allowed. The EU is the one providing the ideological framework for continuing the war against Russia. The US is just cynically providing the weapons.

They are peas in the same aggressive collectivist pod.

It’s why there is a 9th sanctions package on the way. It’s why they are forming War Crimes Tribunals in courts not recognized by Russia, and looking for legal means to steal all Russian assets within their geographical borders.

This is nothing more than wholesale looting that goes far beyond the initial violations of international law even the most hardened Ukraine supporter can accuse Russia of over the February 24th invasion.

This war should have been over in March but the UK didn’t want it to end and blew up the Ankara peace talks. Everything that has happened since then can then be laid at the West’s feet.

And I mean everything.

The escalations have but one theme, take options away from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin until we get to the unthinkable moment.

For this defiance Putin is to be Milosevic’d for daring to say no to the EU and NATO for denying them control over Russia’s future and for embarrassing them by reminding the world of NATO’s involvement in the breakup of Yugoslavia.

And the worst part is that to say anything other than they are they are vassals to a crazed US government bent on global domination is, itself, heresy.

But is it really? By their words and deeds we shall know them.

Because the EU had many chances to stop this war but chose at every turn to double down. And now, they will deal with the flood of Ukrainians rightfully fleeing Russia’s now righteous indignation for keeping alive a war it didn’t want against people it considered brothers.

These escalations have a pattern. Ignore all of Russia’s security concerns and corner them into an invasion and use each move they make as justification for more aggression, until we’re now at the moment we’ve been groomed for for months, the decision by Putin to finally go nuclear.

So what’s really going on here? How did it come to this?

Crooke reminds us of a 2013 speech by Xi on the subject . . .

[SNIP]