Sergey Lavrov at the G20 summit, in the lead image for Patrick Wintour’s Guardian report of November 15, 2022
I regard Patrick Wintour as up there with Luke Harding 1 as one of the Guardian’s Russia baiters in chief. Which is to say, I see him contributing in spades to the rising prospect of Armageddon through the West’s proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. Of which I have spoken a good deal in other posts on the lies piled upon lies in respect of its causes …
… its conduct …
… and which of the immediately warring parties has the upper hand …
I’m unsurprised therefore by Mr Wintour’s Guardian piece of November 15: Russia strives to avoid G20 isolation as China and India distance themselves. He begins:
Russia has been battling to prevent diplomatic isolation at the G20 summit in Bali as its traditional allies – China and India – started to distance themselves from the war in Ukraine, which a draft communique said had caused untold economic damage to the world.
Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, and Xi Jinping, the president of China, both voiced concern about the war without breaking from their previous defence of Moscow.
US officials were still pushing for the final communique to pin more blame on Russia. The draft includes language noting “most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine” and stresses that “it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy”.
The summit’s host, Indonesia, has been trying to keep references to the war to a minimum, arguing the G20 is not a security forum and that reiteration of well known positions will prevent progress on issues such as global debt and post-pandemic recovery.
The summit being held on the Indonesian island of Bali marks the first time the G20 leaders have met since Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow has described as a “special military operation”. The war and worries over global inflation, food and energy security have overshadowed the meeting.
In his address, Xi warned against the “weaponisation” of food and energy, adding that he opposed nuclear war in all circumstances, remarks that cast a shadow over Russia’s repeated threats to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
“We must firmly oppose politicisation, instrumentalisation and weaponisation of food and energy problems,” Xi said.
Can we read Mr Xi’s remarks as China “distancing” itself from Russia? Of course we can! We just have to go with the flow and buy that wall-to-wall designation of the Ukraine horror show as “Putin’s war”.
See how the cogs and wheels of the brainwash machinery pull, in the main without conscious effort from its more junior scribblers, in the same empire serving direction?
But if instead of a media tsumani of Russophobic propaganda, to which Patrick Wintour and his Guardian colleagues have contributed shamefully, we look to objective facts – which is to say, once we drop the “Putin’s war” designation as ludicrous and criminally misleading – President Xi’s remarks lend themselves to no such reading.
Especially when, in a slice of Guardian-ignored realpolitik the size of an elephant in the alcove, anyone looking at this with an iota of clarity and a mental age above thirteen knows that, with Russia defeated in Ukraine, China would be next in line, and vice versa. And that Xi and Putin know it too.
(Modi is walking a tightrope on the war, and on the wider ramifications of the gulf between the West and Eurasia, while the rest of the global south watches closely. His remarks are those of a leader who drew the wrath of Team Biden by declining to join the sanctions bloc. As such they are in reality no more reassuring to Washington than to Moscow.)
Full marks, all the same, for Wintour’s acrobatic prowess. It’s on full display in the penultimate paragraph of the passage cited. That bland statement about Mr Xi “oppos[ing] nuclear war in all circumstances” (who the fuck doesn’t?) is respun as “cast[ing] a shadow over Russia’s repeated threats (actually Moscow has issued no such threats, which may be why Wintour provides not a shred of evidence of any) to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine …”
… though on Planet Guardian, no comparable shadow is cast over Exceptionalist America’s repeated refusal to rule out first strike use of nukes under “extreme circumstances”.
Do these look like extreme circumstances to you, Patrick? Bearing in mind that every invasion of Russia by the West has swept across that elastic entity, the Ukraine – literally “borderland”? 2
Move over, Just Stop Oil. Through the generous services of fools like Wintour – that’s me being charitable, by the way – the plutocrats who rule the West are taking us down more roads than one to the edge of extinction. 3
* * *
- Harding had neither the decency nor courage to admit that his 2019 ‘bombshell’ about Julian Assange having met the subsequently disgraced Trump ally, Paul Manafort, in the London Embassy of Ecuador – to which nonsense Harding added a Russia slant – had no factual basis. His boss Katharine Viner, a prolific tweeter who had trumpeted the ‘scoop’, maintained an equally shameful silence once the rest of our corporate media themselves did a distancing act – from a ‘scoop’ not so much evidence-lite as evidence-defiant.
- On geographic aspects of “Putin’s war”, this 2015 piece in The Atlantic – an organ not noted for Russophilia, and favourite pulpit of a warmongering Anne Applebaum whose husband, Polish MEP Radek Sikorski, thanked the USA for sabotaging Nordstream at no small cost to Germany’s shivering households and industrial competiveness
- Another Guardian piece today, by the great granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst and granddaughter of Sylvia, rightly points out that climate protestors will one day be seen, like her gran and great gran, as heroes. (Assuming there is a tomorrow.) How bold of the Guardian to run it! Will it now run one on how those it today vilifies as Putin apologists will be tomorrow’s heroes? Or if that’s too big an ask, on how the wars it does so much to promote today will tomorrow be fearlessly exposed by its Pulitzer winning columnists – again, assuming there is a tomorrow?
Yes drivel. Think I’ve already said I never read the Guardian. They really are responsible for the rising prospect of nuclear war.
And speaking of fools, I see Paul Mason features in this.
Great piece again.
Thanks Margaret. Call me pedantic but Paul Mason, with whom I once rubbed comradely shoulders in Workers Power, is no fool. But in his self-appointed role as gendarme for a Left unrecognisable to me, I diagnose a man obsessed to the point of being unhinged. His willingness to collaborate with dark forces – against academics insufficiently condemnatory of the RF President – puts me in mind of the way George Orwell provided MI5 with lists of communists.
I do read it, as I do Mail and Economist, to keep tabs on what those organs are saying and not saying. As for GMG’s ‘liberal values’, Julian Assange, a man of rare intelligence, understood these perfectly:
And yes, Guardian writers like Wintour and Harding have crossed over from sloppy journalism to active empire toadyism. Theirs is a heavy burden of guilt.
Firstly I’m shocked that George Orwell did that. I admit I don’t know very much about him though.
I called Paul Mason a fool because he comes out with such obvious nonsense, but then so many supposedly intelligent people do the same. I agree he does seem unhinged.
I stopped reading the Guardian a few years ago at the height of the Corbyn and Assange bashing and I never read or tune into any of the so called MSM. I can see why you and others do but I personally would just get angry. On the rare occasions I catch a couple of minutes of it, I’m amazed at how awful it is.
I know a few “educated liberals” who’ve been reading the Guardian their entire adult lives and always will. Don’t understand that but there you go.
I look forward to your posts anyway. I’ve got a lot of time on my hands at the moment as I’m resting while recovering from surgery, recovering really well actually, so I’m very lucky, and thankful we still have an NHS, for how much longer who knows?
Keep up the good work!
Will do!
On Orwell, at least one of those on his secret list – Norman McKenzie – was kind enough to attribute such behaviour to his TB having sent him “ga-ga”.
Yes, educated liberals can be remarkably stubborn, massively aided by sheer ignorance and amnesia, about the Guardian.
Glad to hear you’re doing so well, post op. Keep up the good work yourself!
On the fantasy of a Russian defeat the Saker….
https://thesaker.is/what-would-a-russian-defeat-mean-for-the-people-of-the-west/
….cautions’ be careful what you wish for’:
“For the leaders of the Hegemony, this would be a dream come true. In fact, the Neocons running the Hegemony will most likely decide that they need to “finish the job” which they did not finish in the 90s, and that Russia needs to be broken up into several parts. This would be the West’s latest “final solution” for the “Russian problem”.
For the leaders of the Free World, a Russian defeat would signal that there are no alternatives to the Hegemony and that like it or not, the AngloZionists will rule the planet. Like the Borg in Star Trek like to proclaim: “We are the Hegemony. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated“.
For most people in the Free world, a Russian defeat would be a crushing disappointment for the simple reason that most people would see the AngloZionist plan for what it is: get Russia first, then take on and bring down China and then, eventually, Iran and any other nation daring to disobey the rulers of the Hegemony…..
……But what about the regular people in Zone A? The ones whose “side” supposedly “won”?
My personal take is that after the defeat of Russia, the defeat of China (by whatever means) would be next. Once that happens, all of the following will become decapitated and irrelevant: BRICS, SCO, CSTO. The next country on the Hegemony’s kill list is Iran which, having lost the backing of both Russia and China will not be able to successfully challenge the Hegemony. That, in turn will have major consequences for the entire Middle-East. Wannabe Pasha Erdogan would be very quickly brought to heel. Ditto for MBS….
….With Russia and China out of the way, Central Asia would be frankly easy picking for the Hegemony. In fact, all the Russian limitrophes would quickly be absorbed into the Hegemony.
The same goes for Pakistan and India, who would quickly lose most (or even all) of their sovereignty. Afghanistan will be handed over to the (US-baked and run) ISIS. Eventually, both Latin America and African will be fully recolonized (to the immense relief and joy of the local comprador class).
Now I submit that anybody with a modicum of information and intelligence will agree that the gang of woke freaks currently running the USA and almost every EU country out there doesn’t give a damn about the people they rule over: they see them only as means of production, in other words, as slaves who need to be given sufficient amounts of (bad) food and immense amounts of (truly demonic) “entertainment” to keep them nice, and happy and, above all, obedient and ignorant. So here comes my question:
With Zone B gone, what hope for a better future, if any, could the slaves of the AngloZionist Hegemony keep in their hearts if our entire planet turns into Zone A?
The current repressive apparatus available to the US ruling class which includes 17 “intelligence” agencies, the biggest military aggression budget on the planet, the highest number of prisoners kept in jails, the total informational control provided by Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. etc. militarized police forces and other agencies ready to deal with “internal terrorists” (sometimes defined as any MAGA person), and a school and college system designed to create obedient office plankton (white collar) and fast food employees (blue collar) with almost no awareness, never mind any understanding, of the outside world. EU states are not quite there (yet) but they are catching up fast.
This is not a system which will simply collapse by itself or, even less so, be overthrown by its “deplorables”.
I have mentioned this many times in the past: the US political system is neither viable nor reformable.
The EU political system is basically an extension of the US political system, just with a more strongly pronounced colonial mindset (“fuck the EU” right?).
So will the Hegemony turn our entire planet into a giant and “woke” Disney World run by Neocons?”
On the present state of play former CIA operative Larry Johnson……
https://sonar21.com/angry-turks-talking-turkey-in-turkiye/
observes:
In short, you don’t initiate negotiations when you are winning.
Meanwhile, the British elite channeling their inner Perfidious Albion default position, are getting their excuses in early doors for not being able to directly provide any armed forces to counter the inevitable winter offensive from Russian allied forces once the frost hits the ground running……
… as what remains of the British Armed Forces will be tied up breaking the wave of strikes taking place across the Country.
The utter shite coming out of the Guardian along with that of the rest of the Western Corporate Media is for Zone A domestic Zombie consumption – vaingloriously attempting to polish a turd/put lipstick on a pig in the hope no one will notice the megaplussomnishambles as the juveniles running the shit show desperately attempt to find a way out to lick the self-inflicted wounds they have visited upon their own societies this time around.
At this point the following quote seems appropriate:
‘Woe to that land that’s governed by a child’.
William Shakespeare: Richard III, act 2, sc.3, l.11.
Great minds think alike, Dave. Not that any of us need brag about seeing the blindingly obvious!
Good quote from The Bard, btw.
Luckily for us all, the ‘defeat of Russia’ is not going to happen. Even if the worst came to the worst (which it assuredly won’t), China would have to step up to the plate and intervene, otherwise, as Dave says, they would be next.
But if anyone cares to peruse the ‘Military Watch Magazine’ online, they will find that US weapons systems are far, sometimes very far, behind Russian and Chinese ones. And if Russia may in some cases be behind the US in terms of numbers, the Chinese make up for that in spades.
Finally, Russia knows that for them this is a life or death struggle, while the US is just in it for the money and power. I know who I’m betting on (although I would have to make the same choice anyway).
I broadly agree, Jams, but there’s a factor too few appreciate. In an exchange below my post, Ukraine and the Democrat ‘progressives’, I wrote:
That last may be a slight exaggeration, but no one should underestimate what is at stake for the US Empire. Of course, faced with a stark choice of rowing back or serious loss, it will choose the former. The problem lies in what may happen, through one round too many of playing chicken, in the meantime.
I should add that for half a millennium it has been a geopolitical axiom – Carter’s NSA, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was a staunch subscriber to it – that the greatest threat to Western empires is of Eurasia united. See my January 2022 post, Eurasia’s rise is unstoppable.
Meanwhile the masses slumber on. See this piece on Putin stashing billions in the Central African Republic. It’s a thirty second read and if you can find an iota of evidence, well, you’re a better man than me Gunga Din.
Just to avoid misunderstanding: The quote published above is from the Saker blog and in no way can I take any credit for it.
No the next victim after Russia would be Iran.
But the real victims of an established imperialism will be the working class, in the US, in the EU, in the UK, everywhere.
And the process has already started, as anyone reading the Order Papers of western legislatures, from Kiev to Westminster can see: strikes are already close to being illegal. They soon will be. Protests are becoming very difficult, legally, to organise effectively too. Imperialism began with the dispossession of the working people, it will reach its climax in their reduction to slavery-monitored and controlled by a state which will make Mussolini or Hitler’s ‘totalitarianism’ seem amateur and sporadic by comparison.
We are, indeed, all Palestinians now.
Happily I don’t believe that imperialism will establish its hegemony. Or that either Russia or China is likely to be defeated. It seems clear to me that having thrown everything including the kitchen sink into the offensive against Russia the west is left with the sweat from its tantrums, hoarse and red faced while the world, most of which was at one time or another both patronised and plundered by the imperialists, is deeply embarassed by the ludicrous claims by the proprietors of a thousand or more military bases abroad, to be defending the sovereignty of small nations. Or International Law.
Well said bevin. On the narrower speculative question, as to whether Iran or China would be next in line in the event of a Russian defeat, I wouldn’t want to be held to my own call on its being the latter. Too many variables.
What we surely all agree is that both states would be staring into the shotgun barrels of an Uncle Sam intoxicated. Nuff said.
Something seems to have altered in the approach taken by The Official Narrative (TON) at present.
Here’s Gilbert Doctorow observing the shenanigans over the claimed missile in Poland:
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/11/16/missile-strike-on-poland/
Could be that the Kiev Clownfish is a tad concerned that his sponsors are getting cold feet and are attempting to negotiate over his head?
In other news its plausible that the usual suspects named in this blog article have been up all night trying to brain shower how they are going to spin a possible ignoble and hubristic retreat from the field to their zombified and captive plebeian audiences?
They were probably going after another airliner.
Yes Dave very salient points. Cui bono applies to so many of these crimes during the west’s wars, going back at least as far as the Gulf of Tonkin, also WMDs in Iraq, false flags in Syria, and of course Nord Stream. Benghazi was another one. I could probably think of more.
The US/UK/NATO never “win” any of these wars, but the MIC are raking in the profits. Who said war is a racket?
“war is a racket”
The late, great (ish) General Smedley Butler:
Smedley D. Butler, “War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier”.
He also refused to lead a coup on the US government, organised by ‘Big’ business, and finked them to the authorities. Luckily, the US don’t have any of these sorts left now. Luckily, because I fervently hope for an unpopular coup leading to civil strife in the US and its break-up into several mutually antagonistic states. Hopefully with the minimum loss of life, but it will maybe save the planet.
The concluding paragraph of that Gilbert Doctorow link raises another interesting point:
Too-wit: If that missile came from the Ukraine and it was not an accident that would surely meet the criteria of an armed attack on a NATO member State (Poland) by the Ukraine.
In such a circumstance NATO Article 5 would logically apply – an attack on one member State is an attack on all member States. A situation which, in any other circumstance, would have the Western Political and Media Clownfish screaming the house down to wreak vengeance on the offending Party.
Tip of the day: Get down to the local bookies early tomorrow and bet everything you have that The Official Narrative (TON) will be pushing this as an unfortunate accident directly attributable to the Counter Air Defence electronic jamming built into all those Russian missiles – which they ran out of six months ago – from all those washing machine chips they have installed in them.