Noseweek on ‘Big Bad Putin’ — Mockingbird Editor Gives His “expert opinion”

by Katherine Frisk, The Phaser.com: 

Noseweek is a South African, sort of cutting edge, on line and off line monthly magazine. Those who write for it and read it are under the impression that they are the leading intellectual and critical minds of the day. Often they get it right. But then like so many others they can also get it horribly wrong, so wrong in fact that it discredits the rest of the publication to it’s detriment. Especially when disinformation is coming from the Editor in his regular monthly rant. The March issue did just that. On the one hand we had Hilary Venables in her op ed Bananas:

” Gates Foundation money squandered reinventing fruit for ‘ungrateful’ Africans.

Might Microsoft billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates’s plan to feed starving African children with high-tech superfoods have slipped on a banana? Nutritional tests on their first viable effort, a banana enriched with pro-vitamin A, have been postponed, with awkward questions being raised about the true purpose of the project.

Last November, the world’s first genetically bio-fortified banana, developed at an Australian university at the expense of the Gates Foundation, was due to be fed to young student volunteers at Iowa State University in the US.

Although the only creature previously exposed to the banana was a Mongolian gerbil and no safety testing had been done, 12 eager young things signed up in return for $900 each.”

You will have to pay to read the rest I am afraid. I cheered her on! The battle against GMO is slowly gaining momentum and very slowly I might add, in South Africa. Voices of dissent are finally being heard and articles of the same calibre and integrity as F. William Engdahl’s recent fat klap at the Gates Foundation ( see Gates and Obama Share a Dark Secret ) are beginning to appear.

But then we turn to the Editor’s article for the month. Dear Reader: From Russia with Love?

What an opportunity for Putin bashing! I do not mind Putin bashing or anyone bashing in the least, but when then factual information is so wrong, it makes you wonder.

Take this paragraph:

“The third President of a newly liberated South Africa also appears to have forgotten that for centuries Russia has been – and continues to be – a pretty ruthless and corrupt imperial power that takes large profits but no crap from its vassal states. Those that don’t deliver get killed.”

Centuries? As I recall it was Roman Catholic crusaders who destroyed Constantinople and the Haggia Sophia and their Inquisitors burning people at the stake who followed for the next centuries who persecuted the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe, including Russians, not the other way around. It was the Mongol hoards who invaded Russia not the other way around. It was Napoleon who invaded Russia and later Hitler who invaded Russia not the other way around. The Soviet Union which lasted for barely a century, not “centuries,” no longer exists, which is what is really being referred to here, and Russia now functions as a Federation of States each with their own autonomy.

A for “a pretty ruthless and corrupt imperial power that takes large profits but no crap from its vassal states. Those that don’t deliver get killed.” Russia has yet to reach the heights of imperial power that Rome and later the British imposed on other nations. More recently Russia has yet to score a credit rating of wars on their school report card that can even begin to compare with what the USA has achieved since 1945.

Need I remind anyone of General Wesley Clark and the now famous “We’re going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off , Iran.”

These countries wanted to break away from their vassal state status, being under the yoke of the petro dollar. Most notably Saddam whose great crime was not the lie of WMD, but that he was going to sell oil to Europe for Euros and Gaddafi who was going to establish the African Gold dinar, by passing the dollar as international reserve currency altogether. Clearly the imperial petro dollar power took “no crap.” Those who have not delivered have got, and still are being killed. The body count by now reaches into the millions, as does the damage to the infrastructure of these countries.

The Editor then goes on to say:

“Russia, too, has neither cash on hand, nor creditworthiness to be able to finance the deal. It has had to cancel or stall the construction of several of its own nuclear power stations because it can no longer afford them. It’s blown all its reserves on the war with Ukraine and on propping up the rouble in the face of international boycotts. Meanwhile the price of oil and gas (its primary exports) has plummeted.”

Creditworthiness. Now there is a thing. To the best of my knowledge Russia is not in debt to anyone. Somebody else, and we won’t mention names here, is in debt for trillions. Russia has the second largest gold reserves next to China as well as gold and platinum mines of it’s own. Russia no longer trades using the dollar but now trades oil and gas for gold, Euros, Rubles and Yuan. When the Ruble crashed last year, Putin traded in USTreasuries, bought more gold and bought Rubles at a very low price. Since then the Ruble has recovered and as a result Russia has profited.

Russia did not blow all it’s reserves on the war in Ukraine. Over 1 million refugees fled to Russia for safety. If anything Russia has gained. With a very low population of approx 150 million in the largest country in the world (17,075,400 km²) Russia has reaped huge benefits in human resources. The majority who fled Eastern Ukraine when the Kiev tanks rolled in and started Grad Rocket shelling cities and towns, were all middle to upper middle class, educated people. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, technicians, artisans and metal workers. Many, in this whole diabolical mess, who owned their own companies, moved lock stock and barrel from Eastern Ukraine into Russia.

The majority of these refugees were not of the calibre of the uneducated, poverty stricken South Americans flooding across the Mexican border into the USA, or the equivalent who have flooded across South Africa’s borders from all over Africa. They are not there for free handouts adding to unemployment figures and increased social security benefits paid out by the US taxpayer.

The very efficient refugee camps run by the Russians to absorb these people managed to process them within three days. The large majority of them found homes and jobs and those with their own companies who have relocated have hardly skipped a beat. They were doing business with Russia anyway, all they did was move their premises across the border.

As for the Nuclear Power Stations that Russia has signed deals to build in many countries, not only in South Africa, they are designed to recycle nuclear waste and make it harmless. The nuclear waste that we have accumulated to date, will keep these power stations running for the next 300 years. But most people skip that part and ignore it completely. This is why Russia has won the tender, over and above countries like France and the UK. It will be an environmental clean up job, at the same time producing a much needed energy grid.

At the moment South Africa suffers from split personality syndrome. On the one hand the Neo Liberals have their hands in many pies. Monsanto, Du Pont and Syringa have gained a strangle hold on the production of Maize and Wall Mart has bought out much of the country’s retail.

The drop in the oil price has been of huge benefit , simply because the planned Fracking in the Karoo, which many have opposed, has been put on hold and saved this region from the total devastation that Fracking would have done to the environment by companies like Shell and Sasol.

Eastern Ukraine had to fight a war to stop Monsanto, Chevron and Shell. South Africa luckily, seems to have managed to slip through the hoop without any Grad Rocket shelling of cities and towns or tanks rolling in to Matjiesfontein, Leeu-Gamka or Beaufort West. To date, according to German sources, over 50,000 people in Donetsk and Lugansk have been killed by lunatics who want to expropriate the land in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine for GMO corporate farming and Fracking. Joe Biden’s son being in on these deals. Now about that:

“a pretty ruthless and corrupt imperial power that takes large profits but no crap from its vassal states. Those that don’t deliver get killed ” part.

Unlike the USA that has lost millions and many jobs due to the drop in the oil price which has detrimentally effected their Fracking industry which runs at very high costs, neither Russia nor South Africa have taken this knock. They do not Frack and one hopes they never will.

On the other side of the split personality syndrome, South Africa is a part of the new BRICS bank, something that most South Africans still cannot get their heads around or even understand. They see it as Jacob Zuma dabbling with the commies in the East, and still look to Wall Street and the City of London for leadership. The change in the economic power has escaped them, certainly not aided by the information dished out in the media, including Noseweek.

The recent moves by the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Australia to join the China Development bank which will run in competition to the IMF and the World Bank, should have been a wake up call, but reality has not set it. The old mindset of “Reds under the beds” prevails and the changing winds that have swept over China and Russia in recent years is beyond comprehension. The East is still regarded as third class, communist, backward and technologically in the dark ages. The coming years will no doubt lead to enlightenment and a reconfiguration of this inaccurate perception, not by the media obviously, but by the situation as it unfolds.