Sunday 31 December 2023

Zelensky's former top adviser now wants Kiev to join up with Russia against the West – what exactly is going on?

Aleksey Arestovich’s latest idea is that the two warring countries should sue the US-led bloc together

By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory

@tarikcyrilamar tarikcyrilamar.substack.com tarikcyrilamar.com

Zelensky's former top adviser now wants Kiev to join up with Russia against the West – what exactly is going on?

Ukraine needs to come to an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then Kiev and Moscow should unite to sue the West.

You may think the above idea is rather radical and unusual. Sue the West? Where? In what court? The same West that has no issue with either Ukraine or the US (or both) blowing up Germany’s – and the EU’s – vital energy pipelines? Or the West that ignores its leaders' complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a crime explicitly proscribed – the complicity no less than the act itself – in Article III (e) of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention?

But wait till you hear about the fertile mind that produced this very outside-the-box idea. It’s none other than Aleksey Arestovich, once an adviser to Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky. Not necessarily a household name (yet) outside Ukraine, Arestovich was, until very recently, a man of extraordinary influence in Kiev, and used it to energetically promote the very proxy war that he'd now like to end and to then blame on the West alone.

University dropout, sleazy pop psychologist (of the how-to-manipulate-others-to-succeed type), former military and virtually certainly also intelligence officer, blogger and would-be-geopolitics guru with very adaptable views, and, of course, Zelensky aide from 2020 to 2023, Arestovich is not merely an individual but a syndrome: He stands for a social type, the smart but psychopathically empathy-less conman who managed to ruthlessly exploit the disorientation left behind in post-Soviet societies with a coldhearted cynicism that would have made Machiavelli blush.

The knives are out in Kiev: Once Ukraine loses the war, its elites will eat each other alive

Now he deplores that Ukrainians and Russians are killing each other in droves over a couple of provincial towns. “And for what?”, it has occurred to him to ask himself. Arestovich's answer is of the kind that not long ago would've got you canceled in the West as a Putin stooge and appeaser: “We have pleased the head honchos from the Washington and Brussels obkoms – [a now derogative term from the Soviet lexicon, designating a district administration] – who stand around us and applaud, watching as two apes with knives have a go at each other.”

Arestovich’s 180-degree turn is yet another absurdity produced by the theatrical politics of the Kiev elite. But, embittering as it may be to hear this former warmonger extraordinaire speak about peace and who's blame, the stark contrast between the old anti-Russian jingoist Arestovich, and the new, would-be-friend of Russia and foe-of-the-West Arestovich, provides a depressingly accurate measure of just how irresponsible Ukrainian politics has become under the de facto authoritarian Zelensky regime.

In 2019, it was Arestovich who infamously 'predicted' a big and devastating war (beyond the conflict which started in 2014) with Russia over Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO, which, eventually, in 2022, left some naïve Western commenters gushing over his “eerie” foresight.

Except Arestovich did not really predict the big war in 2019. Instead, he sold it as good as he could. Ruling out any possibility of peacefully ending the then-ongoing, smaller-scale conflict with the Donbass republics (Minsk II, anybody?), he used the usual baseless talking points (“Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Union, destroy NATO, and the EU, dominate Europe” and so on, the whole hogwash then fashionable from Annalena Baerbock to Tim Snyder) to present an escalation into a bigger war as absolutely inevitable: Because not only did Minsk II hardly appear on this great fantasy-strategist’s radar, he also insisted that neutrality was impossible for Ukraine and misled his followers into believing that NATO would easily (“all very simple now”) accept Ukraine, even if it had unresolved territorial conflicts with internal insurgents or with Russia.

At the same time, Arestovich presented the future big war as Ukraine’s great chance. Having posited the false alternative – at least back then – of either joining NATO after that big war against Russia (which he recklessly assumed Ukraine would win) or being absorbed by Moscow in the near future, he wholeheartedly recommended course number one: war with Russia. Even three such wars in succession seemed to him both inevitable and advisable; back then, that is.

And, finally, he also invited Ukrainians to indulge in the West’s favorite fantasy, namely that Russia might suffer collapse and undergo a regime change. “Some kind of liberals” would come to power, he claimed, and say “we are a nice country again.” That part of his sales pitch for a steadfast “no” to diplomacy, compromise, and peace is particularly ironic now. For he has announced an utter and complete change of heart in an interview with Russian journalist and broadcaster Yulia Latynina.

World War III approaches – just as planned

Latynina is, of course, the embodiment of the kind of “liberal” (or “libertarian,” as she prefers) almost no Russian can stand, for excellent reasons: Having received her 2008 “freedom award” from the US State Department, she has been a reliable purveyor of right-wing propaganda, ranging from denying global warming, via finding that poor countries need not have too much democracy, to an almost obsessive islamophobia.

Even good old Europe is still too soft on simple people for her: All that “social-democratic” mumbo-jumbo about human rights, etc. won’t cut it for Latynina; her true European 'values' are about property, innovation, and competition. So much for those regime-change fantasies, then. It’s the Latynina type that Arestovich was wagering on. No wonder most Russians, including those critical of President Vladimir Putin, say “anybody but that.”

Yet in their recent tête-à-tête on YouTube, the Ukrainian conman and the Russian libertarian couldn't see entirely eye to eye. Even Latynina felt that Arestovich’s idea of joining up Russia to sue the NATO states was a bit of a non-starter. Moreover, as much in awe of the West as she is, she had to remind him that it “doesn't owe Ukraine anything.” Arestovich, carried away by his newest brainwave, insisted it does.

Both were missing the point: It does not matter what the West owes or does not owe you. The West will always only give you what is best for the West (and that usually means the US). And when that is “nothing,” then that is what you will get. If only arrogant former warmongers like Arestovich could finally start facing reality. All of it.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

https://www.rt.com/russia/589697-arestovich-ukraine-russia-kiev/

US dollar losing its dominance – data

The greenback’s share of global reserves plummeted below 60% in the third quarter of 2023, according to the IMF

The US dollar’s share of global central bank reserves has continued to decrease, nosediving to 59.2% in the third quarter of 2023, according to the latest data released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The decline comes amid the de-dollarization trend gaining momentum across the globe.

IMF statistics show the greenback’s share is down from roughly 70% in 2000. The dollar remains the world’s leading reserve currency with the euro coming second, while the latter’s share has slid to 19.6%. The Japanese yen’s proportion of world reserves grew to 5.5% from 5.3% in the previous three-month period. The Chinese yuan, British pound, Canadian dollar and Swiss franc were little changed.

Meanwhile, according to data compiled by global financial messaging service SWIFT, the yuan’s share of international payments hit a record high in November, with the renminbi becoming the fourth most used currency worldwide. Cross-border yuan lending has risen as well, while the People’s Bank of China holds over 30 bilateral currency swaps with foreign central banks, including Saudi Arabia and Argentina.

The growing share of the yuan in cross-border transactions reflects China’s trend of shifting away from the dollar, as well as Beijing’s efforts to promote the use of the renminbi, according to SWIFT.

The global trend towards using national currencies in trade instead of the US dollar began to gain momentum last year, after Ukraine-related sanctions saw Russia cut off from the Western financial system and its foreign reserves frozen. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has warned that Russia’s growing trade in the Chinese yuan as a response to Western sanctions could potentially erode the strength of the US dollar. Economists have been also indicating that Western trade restrictions have led to an increased usage of the Chinese yuan globally at the expense of the greenback.

https://www.rt.com/business/589896-us-dollar-losing-dominance-imf/

The Left Is Not “Anti-Jewish”

What we are witnessing is an effort to get people to see slogans like “Free Palestine” as antisemitic and the protests as threats to Jewish existence.

DAVE ZIRIN

Bill Maher hasn’t been funny since the 1983 movie D.C. Cab. Yet, 40 years later, he’s still trying.

“The good news is that the far left and the far right in this country have found common ground,” he said in one recent attempt at a joke. “The bad news is that they both hate the Jews.”

Maher was rehashing the same incendiary line being repeated in an endless number of articles, op-eds, and news reports across the political spectrum: The left “hates Jews.” Their evidence for this is the rapidly spreading protest movement against Israel’s war on the Palestinian people—a war Maher supported long before it was fashionable to do so.

The same point The New York Times is making is being echoed by many of our families: that Jews are without allies in the current “conflict”; that the left is “cheerleading” Hamas and by extension the Hamas massacre of October 7; and that Jewish lives across the political spectrum simply do not matter.

These are lies that have begotten more lies. Celebrity disinformation peddler Mayim Bialik recently posted that UCLA student protesters were chanting, “We want Jewish genocide.” The post was shared hundreds of thousands of times. It also wasn’t true.

That Bialik chose to divert attention from Palestinians facing genocide is abhorrent. But, to offer some grace, everyone is tense and scared right now. The combination of wrung-out emotions and social media creates the kind of viral disinformation that can turn this sort of crisis upside down. It creates, to use Naomi Klein’s phrase, a “mirror world,” where college students fighting against the bombing of refugee camps are recast as little more than Nazis. This is not an exaggeration, either—not when the Biden administration shamefully compares those marching for a cease-fire and a free Palestine to the fascist thugs of Charlottesville.

Right now, we need clarity—the mirror world’s kryptonite. So let’s be clear: No organization or mass of people on the left is calling for “Jewish genocide” at these protests. At UCLA, the chant, aimed at Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “We charge you with genocide.” Given the bombings of Gaza and unchecked settler violence in the West Bank, this is entirely appropriate and true. I have been to many anti-war demonstrations and vigils since the horrors of October 7, and I have witnessed no antisemitism. In fact, most have featured rabbis as speakers and coalition organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now.

What we are witnessing by people supporting the war on Gaza is an effort to get people to see slogans like “Free Palestine” as antisemitic and the protests as threats to Jewish existence. This organized hysteria is yet another attempt by both the right and pro-war liberals to conflate every challenge to Israel’s war agenda as anti-Jewish, ignoring that (as I wrote) anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same. They also ignore that many of these demonstrations are led by Jews. Instead, these protesters are either branded “not real Jews,” in the words of Trump’s ambassador to Israel, or are erased entirely. To them, these Jews are inconvenient because they say “Not in our name,” challenging the shameless falsehood that the Gaza horror is somehow moral because it’s aimed at preventing another Holocaust.

Israel has spent decades weaponizing the Holocaust to justify the Palestinian occupation. Now, we’re seeing that line of thinking on steroids, with a member of the House of Representatives showing up to work cosplaying in an IDF uniform and then, on the floor of Congress, comparing Palestinian civilians found in the rubble to Nazis. This is a campaign of racist dehumanization aimed to have us more upset about a fake demonstration at UCLA than the real mass casualties of Gaza. The pro-Israel conservative and liberal media are obsessed with activism on college campuses because they’re becoming aware that they’ve lost an entire generation.

Calling the left antisemitic, in addition to being a lie, also obscures the right’s extensive history of anti-Jewish bigotry. Today, this takes the form of a growing proto-fascist movement, like what we saw in Charlottesville in 2017 and in Pittsburgh in the Tree of Life massacre. Christian Zionists that make up the GOP base love Israel but think Jews will be consigned to hell come the Rapture. They are all led by a dangerous purveyor of anti-Jewish hatred, Donald Trump.

The left, which has historically been disproportionately Jewish, fights antisemitism, fights fascism, fights oppression, and has a proud tradition of doing so. The idea that the left woke up after October 7 and became anti-Jewish—or self-hating—is a mirror-world delusion. Unlike, say, Bari Weiss, who has made a cottage industry of cozying up to right-wing antisemites to slander opponents of the Israeli occupation, those on the anti-Zionist left are principled fighters of anti-Jewish animus.

The liberation of Palestine and ending the Israeli occupation is a bedrock leftist position for which millions of people—and countless Jews—have fought. It is rooted in a just demand: that Palestinians not live under occupation. Some believe in a two-state solution, others in one state with equal rights for all. But they share a position of ending what people from former president Jimmy Carter to the Rev. Desmond Tutu have recognized as Israeli apartheid. We should be proud to stand in the tradition of people ranging from Muhammad Ali to Howard Zinn in fighting the injustice of occupation.

And while the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has been described repeatedly as “genocidal,” the slogan’s roots actually come from Hamas’s enemies—secular Palestinians—for whom the phrase meant the right of return to the land from which they had been forcibly removed. As Adam Johannes wrote, “‘From the river to the sea’ is a recognition that apartheid began in 1948 when Israel was created through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It is no call for genocide…any more than the call for the destruction of apartheid in South Africa was a call for the destruction of white people.” Decriers of this slogan also leave out that Netanyahu was holding up his own “from the river to the sea” map of Israel at the UN just a month ago—something that isn’t being mentioned even as he advances that right-wing fever dream by razing Gaza to the ground. It’s the mirror world again, where a chant at Columbia is deemed a greater sin than Netanyahu’s pursuing his wildest “from the river to the sea” fantasy by ethnically cleansing the Palestinian Territories in plain sight.

The notion also that the left “cheerleads Hamas” is also a lie. Liberals on The New York Times editorial page to ex-DSA members are promulgating it. This isn’t truth—it’s gaslighting. Making such accusations against a movement of millions because one person makes an awful speech at a demonstration, or a college student calls in a terrible threat, is a desperate act by a ramshackle pro-occupation political coalition rapidly losing ground. When antisemitism does appear, like the recent Halloween vandalism of a Bronx Yiddish cultural center, it must be decried from all corners.

Blaming all Jews for Israel’s war agenda is antisemitic, and it plays right into Netanyahu’s hands. He wants to use the actions of a few unknown and unaccountable individuals to justify attacking a massive young left protesting his indiscriminate bombing of children. As a result, far too many liberal op-ed writers and Instagram influencers have taken it as their duty to amplify Netanyahu’s own “big lie”: that the millions in the streets represent a surge of antisemitism under cover of aspirations for a free Palestine.

Rarely do the summer soldiers of liberalism mention that the greatest engine of antisemitism is actually Netanyahu. He has given cover to, and even elevated, the radical right wing of the United States who love Israel and hate Jews. Their minions chant, “Jews will not replace us.” He also has done more for Hamas than a million chanting leftists, funding their violent religious zealotry to prevent the building of a secular resistance among the Palestinian people. But Mayim Bialik and Amy Schumer and other digital prizefighters for this war leave this out. They also leave out that Netanyahu is stoking the fires of antisemitism in his insistence that he is protecting Jewish lives by committing war crimes.

This all comes back to a very basic question: How do we as a community best fight antisemitism? Is a nuclear nation-state in the Middle East really the best answer we have? Or would we perhaps be better off by building solidarity with others who oppose oppression whenever it rears its head? There was a time when it would have been laughable to express the former. A century ago, there were, as an elder pointed out to me, more Jewish socialists on the Lower East Side of New York City than Zionists internationally. The Holocaust and its attendant traumas turned that on its head. Now we live with the results.

The world certainly did change after October 7, but not only in the way commentators imagined. It has raised the question of how we as a people can be safe. The answer lies not in the Israel state—that’s like looking to gasoline to put out a fire. The answer lies in solidarity. The answer lives within those four precious words: not in our name.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/jewish-left-israel-protests/?fbclid=IwAR3AKDd1GvOCL75ytf7vp5fzspXRTxyM5t3lcPCZqKqLHXv0aZx2Bcrt9Oc

Moscow retaliates for Ukrainian ‘terrorist attack’ – MOD

Numerous defense officials who orchestrated Saturday’s missile barrage on Belgorod have been eliminated, the Defense Ministry has said

Russia’s military has conducted a string of high-precision missile strikes targeting Ukrainian military facilities and officials in response to the Ukrainian strike on Belgorod on Saturday that left more than 20 civilians dead, the Defense Ministry has said.

In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said that Moscow’s forces had struck decision-making centers and other military targets in the city of Kharkov, not far from the border between the two countries.

It noted that a high-precision missile strike on the building formerly housing the Kharkov Palace Hotel eliminated “representatives of the Main Intelligence Directorate and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who were directly involved in the planning and execution of the terrorist attack in Belgorod.”

The building also housed up to 200 foreign mercenaries who were gearing up for “terrorist raids” into Russian territory, officials added.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

https://www.rt.com/russia/589963-moscow-retaliates-ukrainian-terrorist-attack/

"When Israel runs out of rockets to murder children with they simply hold their hand out to daddy for more," said one critic.

by Brett Wilkins

Citing “the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs,” the Biden administration on Friday said it would bypass Congress for the second time this month to approve an immediate arms sale to the key Middle East ally as it continues to wage a genocidal war against Gaza.

The Associated Press reported that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken notified lawmakers of the new emergency determination involving the sale of $147.5 million in equipment including fuses, charges, and primers for 155mm artillery shells that Israel has already purchased from the United States.

The unguided explosive rounds – which Israel is using in heavily populated urban areas – have a “kill radius” of about 50 meters, with shrapnel able to inflict lethal wounds on people hundreds of meters away.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” the State Department explained.

The move follows a similar State Department determination on December 9, which expedited 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose troops have killed and maimed more than 80,000 Palestinians – mostly women, children, and elders – during 84 days of near-relentless attacks on Gaza.

Some of the deadliest Israeli attacks of the war have been carried out with U.S. weapons, including an October 31 airstrike with 2,000-pound bombs on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp. More than 120 civilians were killed.

The State Department also said that “we continue to strongly emphasize to the government of Israel that they must not only comply with international humanitarian law, but also take every feasible step to prevent harm to civilians.”

Critics pushed back against that language, with Ibrahim Zabad, a professor of international relations at St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York, asserting on social media that the State Department’s move to bypass Congress “shows the U.S. administration wholeheartedly supports the mass slaughter of Palestinians, their ethnic cleansing, and the demolition of Gaza.”

British journalist Andy Worthington, known for his work chronicling the cases of Guantánamo Bay detainees, asked: “Do they think not enough Palestinian children are being orphaned or killed in Gaza?”

Eli Clifton, a senior researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, noted Blinken’s lamentation Thursday that 2023 “has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world.” Blinken’s statement did not mention the scores of journalists killed – sometimes allegedly on purpose – by Israeli troops during the war.

The U.S. already gives Israel almost $4 billion in nearly unconditional military aid each year. Since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks and Israel’s retaliatory onslaught, U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly affirmed his “unwavering” support for Israel. His administration has blocked multiple global cease-fire efforts at the United Nations while seeking an additional $14.3 billion in armed assistance for Israel.

The United States has given Israel more than $150 billion in inflation-adjusted aid since the nation was founded in 1948 following a yearslong campaign of terrorism and ethnic cleansing.

While Biden recently decried Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, he has refused to acknowledge what many international experts have called Israel’s genocide against the people of the besieged strip. Some activists have dubbed him “Genocide Joe.”

On Friday, South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Hundreds of rights groups and a handful of progressives in the U.S. Congress have implored the Biden administration to suspend military aid to Israel, while others including Democratic lawmakers have called for conditions to be placed on such assistance.

Earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led a letter urging Biden to boost oversight of how American arms are used against Palestinian civilians. The letter specifically mentions 155mm artillery shells.

“The IDF has previously used these shells to hit populated areas including neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, shelters, and safe zones, causing a staggering number of civilian deaths,” the senators noted.

According to a Quinnipiac University poll published on December 20, less than half of registered U.S. voters support sending military aid to Israel – an approximately 10-point decrease from the previous month.

Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams and is reprinted with the author’s permission.

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2023/12/30/once-again-biden-bypasses-congress-to-approve-arms-sale-to-israel/

SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.