Introducing: Moscow World Standard

…Russia proposes to create a market for gold, platinum, etc., which will be regulated by countries that control the resources for these metals. This would be, simply put, a revolution. On the basis of this new market, it intends to further the system of bilateral trade in national currencies that specifically excludes dollars, euros and pounds…

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Waiting for the Russians

When the Ukraine’s Azov Battalion (Swastika-tattooed, drug-addled Nazi berserkers) was finally forced off the streets of Mariupol, a Russian town of half a million on the shores of the Azov Sea, and into the cavernous basements of the metallurgical plant, the residents, who had been forced to hide from the machine gun fire and the shelling in the basements of their own apartment buildings, were at first reluctant to leave their shelters. Then some of them, listening to the noise outside, heard loud shouts of “Allahu akbar!” (“Glory to God”), they breathed a deep sigh of relief—”the Russians are finally here!”—and flooded out onto the streets to greet their Russian liberators, who were, in this case, Chechen special forces.

This little real-life vignette may leave you confused. How can your valiant Ukrainian friends be Nazis? Your government has lavished countless billions in military aid on them, all of which swiftly disappeared into a sort of black hole with nothing to show for it except for a continuous string of military retreats, defeats and humiliations. Meanwhile, more and more of your own people can’t even afford to heat or cool their homes or feed their children properly. That must really sting! And how can Mariupol, a major Ukrainian industrial center formerly responsible for roughly a tenth of the former Ukraine’s GDP, turn out to be peopled almost exclusively by white-blue-and-red flag-waving, patriotic Russians? And how can Russians feel happy to be liberated by Moslem fighters shouting “Allahu akbar”—aren’t they Orthodox Christian, not Moslem?

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Old Way, New Way

The hardest part of living through a time of wrenching change is that nobody particularly bothers to inform you that the times have changed and that nothing will be the same again. Certainly not the talking heads on TV, who are often the last to know. You have to figure it out for yourself, if you can. But I am here to help.

It all has to do with energy. Not with technology—that’s incidental; not with military superiority—that’s fleeting and largely imaginary; certainly not with any sort of political or cultural self-righteousness—that’s delusional. There is no substitute for energy. If you run low, you can’t switch to running your industrial economy on fiddlesticks. It just shuts down. What’s worse, energy sources are not even particularly substitutable for each other. If you run low on gas, you can’t just switch to coal or to dried dung, even if you are up to your neck in it. Modern industry runs on oil, natural gas and coal, in that order, and they can be substituted for each other in very limited ways.

Furthermore, energy has to be very cheap. Oil has to be about the cheapest liquid you can buy—cheaper than milk; cheaper even than bottled water. If energy isn’t cheap enough, then all the energy-hungry industry that runs on it becomes unprofitable and shuts down. That’s the stage at which we are now in much of the world. So, what happened?

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The Fading Phantom of Western Unity

It is often possible to diagnose people’s problems by taking note of what they repeatedly, compulsively bring up in conversation. These tend to be objects of their ardent desire that happen to be woefully lacking in their lives.

For example, Americans will often talk compulsively about guns, which they tend to see as a way of providing for their personal security. This is because they are woefully lacking in personal security: at any moment some armed-to-the-teeth crazed maniac (of which there are millions circulating freely in their midst) could come at them and blast them away—while they are sleeping, or picking up their children at school, or sitting on the toilet, or bending down to pick up a penny. Thus they arm themselves to the teeth and subsist in a state of paranoid rage.

Another example: American leaders compulsively mention “freedom and democracy.” These are things that they supposedly have and must spread over the rest of the planet, whether the planet wants it or not. Specifically, the rest of the planet should not be allowed to democratically vote against this American “freedom and democracy” nonsense and remain blissfully free of it. Given that the US itself is not a democracy (as can easily be proven with numbers), what US politicians mean by “democracy” is anything but.

But by now most of the planet has figured out, all on its own, what is or isn’t “democratic” in American parlance: those who follow American dictate are democratic; those who wish to follow their own advice are undemocratic. That’s all it is: democrats are obedient while the disobedient are dictators who must be overthrown. This scheme being rather transparently self-serving and idiotic, the circle of obedience is ever shrinking and at this point encompasses just the EU and NATO countries, plus the Anglo countries and a few remaining scattered colonies and dependencies. And even this circle is now visibly fraying around the edges.

And this brings us to the next ardently desired but woefully lacking phantom entity to compulsively bring up at every international meeting where US or EU representatives are to be found: Western unity…

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The Real Perpetuum Mobile

Dreams of a perpetual motion monetary machine are being dashed, to be replaced by pain and disappointment. The US went under heavy monetary sedation in 2020 and hasn’t regained consciousness yet. It attempted to create an illusion of a perpetuum mobile: a state of affairs where it is possible to chaotically flood the markets with unlimited liquidity without suffering any consequences, all the while enjoying a fleeting sense of immortality. The markets are bubbling away, the budget deficit is unbounded, there is no inflation and all is sweetness and light!

At that time, the US federal government, beguiled by a feeling of invulnerability and suffering from a permanent lapse of reason, generated endless rescue plans. Helicopter money fluttered about endlessly: around $1 trillion in March to May of 2021; $1.2 trillion of infrastructure plans from November 7, 2021. There were dozens of such plans spawned into being by Biden et al.

When their faith in immortality reached its apogee, fear faded away, brains shut down, and $6 trillion was given away to all who could possibly soak it up for any sort of shoddy excuse. People were literally being forced to shut up and take the fake money.

Back then, in 2020 and in first half of 2021, when inflation was still low, it seemed that this state of affairs would last forever. It was being said at the time that inflation is temporary and being caused by various transitory and nonrecurring factors. These factors would go away, it was being said, and the situation would normalize. Now there is a new topic for such shameless banter: that there is no risk of recession—none at all! They are trying to manipulate public opinion using idiotic official predictions of 2.5% GDP growth for 2022.

In both cases they were dead wrong. Inflation is at a 40-year high while the economy has entered a terminal crisis. Standard procedures of reacting to it would be useless in finding an exit from it.

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Superpower Competition Flowcharted

It is generally dangerous to oversimplify complex things, but sometimes a grand conjecture simply begs to be made. I have carefully watched the interaction between Russia and the US over former Ukraine for the past few months. By now, I feel quite sure that I can accurately flowchart the algorithms that are being followed by Putin and by Biden. Note that when I use Putin’s and Biden’s names, I implicitly mean something like “team Putin” and “team Biden.” Here, then, are the flowcharts.

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Sanctions from Heaven

It’s midsummer, the weather and hot and everyone is feeling lazy. Yet we must press on with our relentless blogging and do our best to feed the cuckoo bird that lives inside your hat. And today I will write about Sanctions from Heaven which were designed to enrich Russia, destroy Europe and temporarily distract America from its failing economy and batshit-crazy society.

There are a couple of theories as to where these sanctions came from and how they were imposed. One theory is that they were drafted in Washington, and when the Russians found out about them, they absolutely loved them and launched the Special Military Operation in the former Ukraine to make sure that they are enacted forthwith because they couldn’t wait to reap their bounteous benefits.

Another theory is that the sanctions were drafted in the Kremlin, ratified in Washington and signed off on by Biden during Putin’s and Biden’s tête-à-tête in Geneva. Then Biden and Putin together did the whole endless shadow puppet theater around the Ukraine which culminated in the launch of the Special Operation once Putin could claim that Biden made him do it and Biden could say that Putin was going to do it all along and that it’s time to impose sanctions, gently elbowing his faithful Europuppets into issuing loud cries of “It’s all Putin’s fault!” before ceremonially slitting their wrists on Putin’s altar by mercilessly wrecking their economies and causing grave and irreparable harm to their constituents.

And that brings us to the metaphysical question of Who rules the world, really? If you think that it’s the Deep State or the Davos crowd or some other shadowy clan, then perhaps you should be reading some other blog. Yes, all of these groups have nefarious plans but, no, their plans are not working out as planned and the present, never mind the future, is looking nothing like what they had imagined. If Sanctions from Heaven were designed to maim and mangle the European economies while greatly benefiting Russia (as we will show) and briefly distracting Americans from their sorry predicament, then it follows that Russia rules the world. And who rules Russia? You could say that Putin rules Russia, but then Putin would beg to differ and say that Russia is ruled directly by God and that no other answer makes any sense.

There are a couple of takes on that is well. If you like the idea of God, then you could just agree with Putin and think that it’s all God’s doing and all Putin has to do is practice the ancient Taoist method of Doing Nothing, or Action Through Inaction, called wúwéi (traditional: 無為; simplified: 无为). Metaphysically speaking, Putin is then just God’s agent for ruling Russia while the West, which He wishes to destroy, He drives mad directly. An alternative take, for those who don’t like God, is that it’s all Putin’s doing: that Putin is a superhuman prime mover behind most human affairs. You may then quibble over whether he is an angelic or a satanic presence. A middle position is to claim that Putin is a god, but this immediately begs the question Who else is part of that pantheon? Stumblegramps Biden, perhaps, or bloviating buffon Trump, or Ursula von der Lyin’?

At this I wish to suspend the metaphysical discussion, stating for the record that I personally prefer the view that Russia is a most unlikely country that would have ceased to exist ages ago were it not continuously willed into existence directly by a just and merciful God, and that Putin is no more than His faithful servant. But that’s just my wild-ass guess; feel free to formulate your own.

It remains to expound the wholesome and beneficial effects of the Sanctions from Heaven (as far as Russia is concerned) and their fire-and-brimstone effects on the Sodom and Gomorrah of contemporary European Union, about which I will now go into in detail.

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