Henry Kissinger on Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping thought of himself as a great revolutionary and a great reformer.  He had dismantled the Chinese communist management of the economy.  In my next-to-last conversation with him, which was about six months before Tiananmen Square, he said to me that his aim would be the next phase to reduce the Communist Party to philosophical issues.  And I said, "What's a philosophical issue?"  And he said, "Well, like if we make an alliance with Russia."  Given his view of Russia, that was not the likeliest thing that would ever happen.

~ Henry Kissinger

The diplomat Chiao Kuan Hua, Secretary of State Kissinger

and Deng Xiaoping in 1974

Tom Woods on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline attack

Our ruling class will not stop making catastrophic decisions.  Destroying society over Covid is now no longer their primary idiocy.  Now it's risking nuclear war, without so much as a thought of negotiation or diplomacy, as normal people would be pursuing right now. 

I agree with Dr. Pierre Kory from episode #2209 of the Tom Woods Show: I am not jumping on any bandwagon, or putting some mob-demanded emoji on my social media, ever, unless I have thoroughly investigated the situation and decided it is not yet another psyop being played on me by psychotics. 

So now we've learned of a terrorist attack, almost surely state-led, on the Nord Stream pipelines. 

Our CIA-run newspapers (no, they aren't literally run by the CIA, but if they were, how would they be any different?) of course rushed to blame the pipeline destruction on Russia, which has precisely zero motivation to do such a thing.  If they wanted to impede the movement of natural gas from Russia to other European countries, couldn't they just turn the pipelines off rather than destroy a $20 billion project? 

Meanwhile, we have footage of Joe Biden and creepy Victoria Nuland -- Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, an unnecessary office if there ever was one -- assuring the world at the beginning of 2022 that if Russia were to invade Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 would not go forward. 

For that matter, Der Spiegel ran this headline: "CIA warns German government against attack on Baltic Sea pipelines."  And Radek Sikorski, a member of the European Parliament who chairs the delegation that deals with relations with the United States, responded to the news of the pipeline blowing up by saying: "Thank you, USA." (At the same time, the Ron Paul Institute's Daniel McAdams notes that Sikorski could be distracting attention from the actions of his own government.) 

Do we know for certain what happened? Of course not. But we know this: it's now far easier to keep European countries in line that might otherwise have broken ranks to seek energy supplies in the face of the extremely challenging winter that's on the horizon.

~ Tom Woods, September 28, 2022

Pascal Canfin on EU's energy and Russia strategy

Our strategy is working, and that's very good news.  First leg: economic sanctions.  The economic impact on Russia is much worse than the impact of the sanctions on energy, on our own economy.  It's not perfect on us... but the situation in Russia is much worse than that...  Second leg: military.  Of course, support to Ukraine.  And it works...  But of course it has impact on us as well and we knew that from the very beginning...

[...]

For peak hours, it's putting the pressure on households - not with a policeman in their bedroom, of course -  but putting the pressure on households collectively, saying, "ok, if you have to put your washing machine on, then do it at 5 AM and not at 7, or not at 8 PM..."  Second, we need to cap the revenues - and that's a taxation issue - we need to cap the revenues of electricity and oil and gas companies...  Cap revenue on electricity generation companies in order to get the rents to the member states so that we can invest in solidarity to handle the social consequences and to invest in green energies.  Plus, let's say call it tax, it's one of levy on oil excess profits...  We are in an exceptional situation.  They have excess profits...  We cannot keep that rent untouched.  We will get it, part of it..., and it will be redistributed both on social aspects... and to invest in green technology...

[...]

[The Green Deal] is more than ever alive and more than ever the solution and not the problem.  More renewables means less dependence from Russia, mean less emission.  More efficiency, more investment in green technologies.  All of that is good for the climate, it's good for the Green Deal, it's good for independence from a political point of view.

~ Pascal Canfin, European Parliament Member, Bloomberg TV interview, September 14, 2022

Kim Iskayan on the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Very rarely are things as bad as they appear in the here and now...  What we always see is that, yes, there is an adjustment period, but human beings are incredibly resourceful and resilient and antifragile and flexible, so markets adjust, people adjust.  Right now it feels pretty awful, and of course it's heartbreaking to see some of what's happening, but I think that 3 months from now this will be like, "yeah, that sucked."  And maybe it's still going on, but it's nowhere near as bad.

~ Kim Iskyan, "The Risks Have Yet to Come Home to Roost," Stansberry Investor Hour, 55:30 mark, March 14, 2022

Jeffrey Tucker on the military industrial complex and external enemies

In foreign relations, here we are today: the US is in a de facto but undeclared war with Russia.  No one calls it that, but that’s what it amounts to when the US is providing armaments through intermediaries to the forces that Russia is battling on its border.  This intensifies and escalates conflict, same as sanctions.  The dangers right now are intense, on all fronts.  It’s not clear that decision makers even understand what they are doing. 

Or maybe they do.  Since the end of the Cold War, the US military-industrial complex has been searching for a reliable enemy that the US population could hate, as a way to distract from the misdeeds of the political elite at home.  After decades of cycling through them, it appears that the old enemy was the best enemy.  And with a small turn of a dial, vast swaths of high-end opinion are exclusively focused on the terrible plight of Ukraine.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "How Seventy Years of Progress Came to an End," Brownstone Institute, March 11, 2022

Jim Rogers on Russian stocks

I am not sure why Putin is keeping this up...  I'm not sure why Washington hasn't said, why Ukraine hasn't said, "Ok, we're not going to join NATO.  We'll sign a treaty that we will not join NATO."  What do we care if Ukraine is part of NATO or not?  That would solve the problem and if that happens - no, of course for a while people are going to be angry at Russia, rightly or wrongly, it doesn't matter... - but that would mean that Russian stocks are very, very, very cheap.  Eventually, I presume, that people would be drinking tea with the Russians again and drinking vodka and having a good time with the Russians again.  I doubt if it [the war] will last forever.  We had a horrible war with the Germans and the Japanese...  Now they're our great friends.  So times change.  Peoples' attitudes change.  And if you buy something cheap you usually - if you have staying power - usually make money.

~ Jim Rogers, interview with Daniela Cambone, Stansberry Research, 17:00 mark, March 8, 2022

Kim Iversen on poking the Russian dog

The dog barked and barked and growled and growled.  People even pointed year after year that the dog is growling and dangerous, yet we kept taunting the dog, and now the dog is attacking.  And we're sitting here acting shocked, claiming there was no provocation on our end. 

~ Kim Iversen, "Kim Iversen: ”Ukraine Will Be Wrecked." OMINOUS Warnings Of NATO-Provoked War Given For DECADES," The Hill, 7:00 mark, March 2, 2022

Kim Iversen on the end of American hegemony

I do think this is about NATO expansion.  I think that's upset Putin.  I also think this was very planned.  And I think we are being very shortsighted thinking that this is just a Ukraine issue.  I don't think this is about Ukraine.  I think this is about American hegemony.  And the more we understand this: that is what they're taking on [Russia and China], we're already in World War III, be just don't realize it.  Hopefully it doesn't escalate to a nuclear war, but at this point they're taking us on.  That statement, if you read the whole statement that was put out by China and Russia on February 4th, it is ominous.  They're basically saying, "Your days are numbered, guys.  It's over." 

They then forge all these economic partnerships to one another and then suddenly Russia goes in and invades Ukraine, as if they were going to have a NATO vote tomorrow to bring them in?  They weren't.  There was nothing truly imminent about it.  Why did it happen?  Because I think these guys planned this out and thought this through and I think the U.S. dollar's been replaced.  We just don't realize it yet...

~ Kim Iversen, "Kim Iversen: Ukraine-Russia Is REALLY About The Demise Of US Hegemony, Petrodollar," The Hill, 15:00 mark, March 1, 2022

Chris Hedges on NATO buildup that preceded Russia's invasion of Ukraine

NATO is building a missile base in Poland that's a hundred miles from the border with Russia.  We almost had a nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba.  That's 90 miles from the coast of Florida.  I don't think Russia's fear and sense of betrayal...  I don't think any of that is unreasonable.  That's the tragedy.  That does again - I'm going to reiterate - not justify the war crime that they have committed and are committing in the Ukraine, but they had far more reason to be concerned than we did in Iraq where we just fabricated and lied and created weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist.

~ Chris Hedges, "Ukraine: Prelude to a War Crime," 16:00 mark, March 3, 2022

Jamie Dimon on banking restrictions following sanctions against Russia

I'm an American patriot and we're going to do what the American government tells us to do.

~ Jamie Dimon, Bloomberg interview, March 3, 2022

Doug Casey on why governments need external enemies

Over thousands of years of history, governments have always threatened each other with war.  It’s a good part of what they do to justify their existence, and it’s been said, correctly, that war is the health of the state.  Nothing has changed in that regard. 

The main reason that the US government is beating the war drums is that war [Russia-Ukraine] has always been a distraction from domestic problems.  Create a foreign enemy on whom to blame domestic problems, and it will reliably divert the news cycle from things you don’t want the hoi polloi to hear or talk about.  A real or fabricated foreign enemy unites the public.  The further the economy and the society deteriorate, the more war-mongering we’ll hear from Washington.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on the Likelihood of a Military Conflict Over Ukraine…," International Man, February 4, 2022

Doug Casey on the Russia threat

Russia itself isn’t a threat to anybody.  It’s really nothing but a gas station with an attached gun store in the middle of a wheat field. 

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on the Likelihood of a Military Conflict Over Ukraine…," International Man, February 4, 2022

Marko Papic on the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Let's just be aware that Russians have their propaganda, we have our own.  And I think that's very important because if you're an investor trying to make asset allocation decisions, just be sure you understand that our own media can often obfuscate issues or make them seem more alarmist.  And I think that's a little bit of what's going on with the Russia situation...  Keep in mind, Russia has its RT, we have our own media organizations as well.

~ Marko Papic, "Geopolitical Expert Marko Papic on Ukraine, Commodities, and Ignoring the Media Noise," Stansberry Investor Hour, 45:40 mark, January 27, 2022

David Stockman on the perceived Russian military threat to the U.S.

Russia’s pint-sized economy can not support a military establishment anywhere near to that of Imperial Washington.

To wit, its $61 billion of military outlays in 2018 amounted to less than 32 days of Washington’s current $750 billion of expenditures for defense. Indeed, it might well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland security in America short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.

That’s because the 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons on each side represent a continuation of mutual deterrence (MAD) – the arrangement by which we got through 45-years of cold war when the Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time it had been armed to the teeth via a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the Soviet empire to the military.

By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to less than 4% of the country’s anemic present day economy – one shorn of the vast territories and populations of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian “stans” among others. Yet given those realities we are supposed to believe that the self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs the Kremlin is going to go mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?

Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is laughable. Not only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is the extent of what he’s got. That is, Russia’s conventional capacity to project force to the North American continent is nonexistent – or at best, lies somewhere between nichts and nothing.

~ David Stockman, "Congrats, Dems! You've Empowered a Pack of Paranoid Neocon Morons," LewRockwell.com, November 23, 2019

Sheldon Richman on war in Georgia and the failure of U.S. foreign policy

The tragic events in the nation of Georgia show that U.S. foreign policy is a bust. In particular, NATO must go. This may seem counterintuitive, but this relic of the Cold War has nothing to contribute to peace. On the contrary, it is a destabilizing tool of America’s provocative imperial foreign policy.

~ Sheldon Richman, "War in Georgia Shows U.S. Foreign Policy Is a Bust," FFF Commentaries, August 15, 2008

Gazprom planning to build 1,300-foot tower in St. Petersberg

Built by Peter the Great as Russia's gateway to the West, St. Petersburg is known for its baroque and neoclassical architecture. So a 1,300-foot tower planned by Russia's energy giant Gazprom that exceeds zoning laws has critics aghast - and Unesco threatening to yank the city's World Heritage designation. But Gazprom is St. Pete's largest taxpayer, and the city is helping finance the project, which a Gazprom spokesperson says represents the "ambition of new Russia." The smart rubles are on the tower's getting built.

~ "Nyet in My Backyard," Fortune, March 3, 2008, by Eugenia Levenson

(Tapei 101 has held the title as "World's Tallest Building" since 2004 with a roof height of 1,474 feet.)