By Jacqueline Brook

On January 20, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, declared at Davos, that the conflict in Ukraine is a “global war.” She would no doubt know, since Wikileaks leaked a 248-page manual entitled “Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare.” From page 2-8:

“ …ARSOF [Army special operations forces] can use financial power as a weapon in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war. … Financial incentives and disincentives can build and sustain international coalitions waging or supporting U.S. UW [unconventional warfare] campaigns. … Participation in international financial organizations, such as the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), offers the U.S. diplomatic-financial venues to accomplish such coalitions.”

Right there, in black and white: Financial arm twisting (or bribery) and disincentives (or sanctions) are declared to be weapons for use in any and all types of conflict, including unconventional warfare campaigns and “large-scale general war.” And available as such to Army special operations forces! It is for informing us about such matters that journalist Julian Assange has been mercilessly persecuted for years. The mountains of secrets that the U.S. government keeps from the population that it is supposed to serve makes it look like a vast criminal cabal. Like the Mafia with its code of omertà.

Indeed, what is the difference between destroying a country with mines and missile and bombs and crushing it economically? In the case of Iraq, one action was prelude to the other: We crushed Iraq economically and, according to Susan Lindauer (who was negotiating back and forth with Iraqis, at the time), when Saddam Hussein was ready to agree to absolutely anything, we dropped the talks, implicated Hussein in the events of 9/11, and proceeded to bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age.

I’ve been asserting that we started the conflict in Ukraine when we supported (6) the overthrow of a democratically-elected government in 2014, thereby sparking a civil war, which was ongoing when Russia invaded—Ukrainians killing Ukrainians. So, when the nightly news insists that Russia is inflicting all the death and destruction, that wasn’t the case for at least 7 years prior to Russia’s invasion.

Indeed, former Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, has admitted that Western leaders negotiated the Minsk agreement with Russia in bad faith, to allow Ukraine time to strengthen itself militarily. So, the West was not working diplomatically for peace, But rather, for the escalation of war—a proxy war against Russia. And Biden has committed to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. Until the country is a wasteland and Monsanto, perhaps, can buy up the breadbasket of Europe for pennies on the dollar and drown it in glyphosate.

Meanwhile—and this comes under the heading of supporting both sides of the conflict—the U.S. has placed sanctions on Russian gas and oil, however India is importing more Russian crude than ever. And it turns out that the biggest buyer of India’s refined products is the U.S!

Telegraphindia.com reports: 

“India has stepped up its buying of Russian crude oil in January from already record levels of the previous month. And, astonishingly, the United States has emerged as the biggest buyer for the refined products, despite Washington’s entreaties to the rest of the world not to buy Russian fuel.”

One thing you can take to the bank, if someone in Warshington declares it to be so, the exact opposite is true.

The author is a Putney resident.