Putin Recognizes Donbass Republics, Sends Russian Military to 'Denazify' Ukraine

[lilies]

WILL RUSSIA DESTROY THE US DOLLAR?

Farewell to Inordinate Privilege
Earlier this week, Russia announced that countries on its Unfriendly Nations list must pay in roubles for its gas. Within hours, the rouble regained its pre-embargo value on international markets. De facto, the rouble also established itself as a reserve currency in the EU, as is the petrodollar in the Middle East. Having renounced coal and nuclear power, Europe left itself with no alternative to Russian gas.

But wait, there’s more on the currency front: next week, Russia and China will offer frictionless access to the world’s largest market, via cheap, secure, trackable, instantaneous transactions that are free of government manipulation, currency fluctuations, embargoes, and sanctions.

This is a beautiful concept for an exciting future! I want to be part of it! I see this development clearly a move toward the remote STO Governance on a planet. After reading Web of Debt and Confessions of an economic hitman I have been collecting the finance-speak videos of CAF and others. Clearly there exist an impossible to manipulate framework for an excellent management of economy that is very prosperous for The People and ruinous for the Rockefella' and Rot-hschild types.

Here’s the backstory: after helping America out of the GFC, PBOC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan observed, “The world needs an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and able to remain stable in the long run, removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.” Zhou proposed SDRs, Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic reserve currency dynamically revalued against a basket of trading currencies and commodities. Broad, deep, stable, and impossible to manipulate.

Nobelists Fred Bergsten, Robert Mundell, and Joseph Stieglitz approved: “The creation of a global currency would restore a needed coherence to the international monetary system, give the IMF a function that would help it to promote stability and be a catalyst for international harmony”. Dr. Putin and Mr Xi wasted no time.

2012: Beijing and Moscow began valuing their currencies against an international currency/commodity basket.
2014: The IMF issued the first SDR loan
2016: The World Bank issued the first SDR bond
2017: Standard Chartered Bank issued the first commercial SDR notes.
2019: All central banks began stating currency reserves in SDRs
Mar. 14, 2022: “On April 1, China and the Eurasian Economic Union – Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan – will reveal an independent international monetary and financial system. It will be based on a new international currency, calculated from an index of national currencies of the participating countries and international commodity prices”.

SDRs are inspired by John Maynard Keynes’ invention of a synthetic currency that derives its value from a vast, global, publicly traded basket of currencies and commodities. Utterly resistant to manipulation it is as stable as the Pyramids.
SDRs pose an attractive alternative to the toxic US dollar for the EAEU, 143 BRI member states, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), ASEAN, and the RCEP, none of which counts the United States as a member and all of which count Russia as a full or correspondent member. Adding amusement to this development is the fact that the EAEU, BRI, SCO, ASEAN, and RCEP were already discussing a merger before the Ukraine operation.

I predict a currency mutiny.​

It felt so good to read this. I want to be part of the future, where this is realized!

 

[siftingmaterials]

There is no hope for nowadays humanity through war, where the end result, at best, would be the creation of another empire on the ruins of the current one, which would still be detrimental to our planet and people's life, IMHO...
May be there is no other way though.
What a crazy world !

Just rubs me the wrong way when people shut down others and tell them where hope is or isn't. There is truth in the above statement, I think, and I wish it weren't so immediately dismissed. There's a lot to unpack in our reactions to geopolitical events. Woe, pity, remorse, putting yourself in different shoes - we, here and now, have the privilege, the luxury, of considering these concepts without being "completely dominated" by them.

 

[bjorb]

Just rubs me the wrong way when people shut down others and tell them where hope is or isn't. There is truth in the above statement, I think, and I wish it weren't so immediately dismissed. There's a lot to unpack in our reactions to geopolitical events. Woe, pity, remorse, putting yourself in different shoes - we, here and now, have the privilege, the luxury, of considering these concepts without being "completely dominated" by them.

When you confront the bully in the schoolyard because of his despicable behavior. Does this mean that you want to dominate or, on the contrary, that he will stop and just go along with others.

Because that's what this, in geopolitically terms is all about.

 

[Pierre]

From ASB Military News (Telegram):

"Serbia will not join NATO because it cannot forget children killed in 1999"
— Aleksandar Vucic, president of Serbia

 

[siftingmaterials]

When you confront the bully in the schoolyard because of his despicable behavior. Does this mean that you want to dominate or, on the contrary, that he will stop and just go along with others.

Because that's what this, in geopolitically terms is all about.

If parents and teachers - if the adult community, in general - look at a schoolyard conflict between two students and imagine that it had to come to that, or that it was good or natural or appropriate, well... School, itself, and the whole pretext that leads to childhood alienation, not eating when you need to eat, not eating what you need to be healthy, being separated from your friends, suffering the psychological abuses of teachers, being sent to the principle's office for acting out... Kids don't often have the words to describe the problems they're experiencing, let alone the opportunity or the confidence to do so with each other or school administration. To many students, a schoolyard feels like a prison yard.

That's the context you bring into this discussion with your metaphor. Is it as applicable as you want it to be? Because in that context I do see a schoolyard brawl as a tragedy. There are so many missed opportunities in that scenario, so many blind spots. So much is missed simply because the people around these children have "jobs to do," or because they're drinking, or disinterested with the psychological development of their kids, or incurious about the root causes of violence.

 

[Gwenllian]

Balancing of powers towards the next game plan?! A-pril?

Welcome to our forum, syldan! Would you be so kind as to go to our newbies section and introduce yourself, so we can get to know you a bit better. Don't worry if you do not wish to divulge anything personal, just tell us how you have found us and whether you have been reading Laura's books, SOTT and so on. Thank you!

 

[Aeneas]

There is no hope for nowadays humanity through war, where the end result, at best, would be the creation of another empire on the ruins of the current one, which would still be detrimental to our planet and people's life, IMHO...
May be there is no other way though.
What a crazy world !

Just rubs me the wrong way when people shut down others and tell them where hope is or isn't. There is truth in the above statement, I think, and I wish it weren't so immediately dismissed. There's a lot to unpack in our reactions to geopolitical events. Woe, pity, remorse, putting yourself in different shoes - we, here and now, have the privilege, the luxury, of considering these concepts without being "completely dominated" by them.

One could also think of how Putin and Russia for the last 15 years at least have tried to talk sense to the West exactly to avoid a war. The US and the collective West have created the conditions for this war. If Putin had not gone in now, it would only be a matter of time before the next war but this time in trying to split up Russia or carve China into smaller digestible pieces in the ever present strategy of 'divide and conquer'. Putin said that this operation was to end the war which has been going on for the last 8 years and Russia did not want this conflict with Ukraine as it is brotherly nations fighting each others. Something which the West is only to happy to see.

To say that it will only end with the creation of another empire similar to the current one is a defeatist attitude. Like Bjorn was saying that is like capitulating to the school yard bully and preventing anyone to stand up to this bully, just out of a belief that the one standing up to the bully would just be another bully. But bullies rely on this type of thinking, doing everything to kill hope and infecting people with the idea to just suck it up and don't rock the boat, because any resistance would just mean another bully. So better the bully we know than the bully we don't know. This is a slave like mentality and a type of faulty thinking, I think.

I have been reading a book from 1991 by a man called William Baldwin, about Spirit releasement therapy. What he describes about demonic spirits fits very much with what we are seeing. What Russia is doing on a geopolitical scale is an attempt at the release of a demonic spirit which along with a whole army of lesser spirits have taken over humanity. Demonic spirits lie, the cheat, the never keep promises, they enter into contracts with entities promising them something they want, like revenge, wealth or power, but the demonic spirits never keep their bargains which they promise sometime in the future, though it means never. The demonic spirit tells their underlings which have entered the contract that they are bad, that they have no light, that there is no hope and that they must fear the light. Obedience is demanded or else there are massive punishment. To me at least it made a lot of sense in the current geopolitical play which is a time old battle between the forces of the dark and those of the light. It just plays itself out through us on this level.

The book is well worth a read for those who haven't heard of it before. Just to be clear, it is not a book about politics, but purely on the subject of spirit releasement therapy, yet the parallels appear obvious.

 

[bjorb]

If parents and teachers - if the adult community, in general - look at a schoolyard conflict between two students and imagine that it had to come to that, or that it was good or natural or appropriate

Meaning you don't see Putin as the adult. While in fact, he is the only adult in the room.

It is worth noting that Russia does not want the downfall of the US, given Russia's repeated proposals in the past to normalize relations with the US. The olive branch Putin offers here has a clear message: accept the peaceful and multipolar world that lies ahead or continue on the same self-destructive course, create more resistance, become even more exposed and eventually drown in your own lies.

You simply see two opposing parties and think they are both morally wrong. While, if you watch closely. One is doing the bullying, while the other is resisting the Imperial menace.

 

[siftingmaterials]

Meaning you don't see Putin as the adult. While in fact, he is the only adult in the room.

It is worth noting that Russia does not want the downfall of the US, given Russia's repeated proposals in the past to normalize relations with the US. The olive branch Putin offers here has a clear message: accept the peaceful and multipolar world that lies ahead or continue on the same self-destructive course, create more resistance, become even more exposed and eventually drown in your own lies.

You simply see two opposing parties and think they are both morally wrong. While, if you watch closely. One is doing the bullying, while the other is resisting the Imperial menace.

Just to be clear, I see complex collective entities at play here, and I make no blanket moral judgements against them or profess to understand how this will all shake out. Like you say, much of what we see is in the cards, so to speak. It's been building to this. I'm not a pacifist. But I think it's fair to temper our approach to violence with pity or sympathy or empathy for the other, and for the planet. An attack against any nation is often an attack against the soil. For every harm done, we all must heal. The bully, yes, but the kid who throws even the righteous punch in these complex times will need to heal. We inevitably must heal collectively. I don't think Putin is ignorant of this, necessarily.

 

[siftingmaterials]

I reject certainty[edit: i should have qualified, "in the geopolitical space," sorry! other spaces too, but here, especially.], though, so if what I say goes against what you are certain of, so be it, I leave you to it. I spoke up mostly because I didn't appreciate how an expression of pity amid all the rest of this conversation was immediately shot down. No, in fact, it's a valid reaction.

 

[bjorb]

I spoke up mostly because I didn't appreciate how an expression of pity amid all the rest of this conversation was immediately shot down. No, in fact, it's a valid reaction.

It wasn't shot down. I think we are talking and learning here and trying to grow together. Disagreeing and agreeing is part of that :)

 

[Mari]

According to Intel Slava Z telegram channel:
Mariupol is part of the DPR. Expect an official announcement.

Messages on this topic start here:

Intel Slava Z

🇷🇺🇺🇦❗ The guys report by radio that they have cleared the administration building of Mariupol and hoisted our flag over it. The surviving bandits did not take risks, abandoned their positions, as had already become traditional for them, and rushed to their heels. Other units move in parallel...

t.me

 

[bjorb]

Ukraine war in a nutshell. Kind of. Depends on how you interpret it.

 

[cassandra]

RT-Reportage: Wie die Menschen in Mariupol unter Beschuss überlebten

Fast 60.000 Einwohner von Mariupol sind in den letzten drei Tagen nach Russland evakuiert worden. RT hat mit den Evakuierten aus Mariupol darüber gesprochen, wie sie drei Wochen unter Beschuss überlebt hatten und dann die Stadt verlassen konnten.

de.rt.com

Almost 60,000 residents of Mariupol have been evacuated to Russia in the past three days. RT spoke to the Mariupol evacuees about how they survived three weeks under fire and were then able to leave the city.

Source: RT
Nadezhda Viktorovna and her dog Tusik
Report by Elizaveta Koroleva
A convoy of three minibuses enters the territory of the Russian border crossing "Vesyolo-Voznesenka" and stops in the parking lot. Such buses from the embattled Mariupol have been coming here regularly since the middle of last week. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, on March 18-20, nearly 60,000 residents of Mariupol and 139 foreign nationals were evacuated to Russia.
At the same time, according to the ministry, Ukrainian nationalists are still holding hostages and preventing up to 130,000 civilians from leaving the city.

rt
The city no longer exists

As soon as the doors of the buses open, Emergencies Department staff board and quickly count people, paying particular attention to the number of children. They are followed by volunteers who bring bottles of water and bread rolls into the minibus so that people can refresh themselves: they drove more than twelve hours to the border and risked coming under fire. One of the women on the bus tells:

"Since March 1, there has been no electricity, gas, or water in the city. Communications didn't work, and we only found out about the evacuation because the Russian military came to our houses. They said that there was a green corridor and that they will take us out ."

In the basements of the houses where they hid from the bombing, people had to make fires to warm themselves and cook the food they took from their apartments. Water was fetched outside: the most daring took to the streets to collect snow under constant fire, which they then thawed in flames. Another passenger reports:

"During this time, a woman gave birth to a child in our basement. We heated water for her on the fire. Luckily there was a doctor among us, she gave birth to the child. And it's also good that the woman herself gave birth quickly and without complications."

She herself is five months pregnant and managed to leave Mariupol together with her school daughter. According to the woman, some of her neighbors, including a young pregnant woman, stayed in that basement. During the evacuation, they did not manage to get out.

Mariupol residents say they couldn't recognize their hometown when they left the basement for the first time in several weeks.

"There is no longer a city, everything is destroyed and burned down: not a single shopping center, not a single shop. There are dead bodies on the streets because there is nobody who could clear them away. And there are so many dead because you have to pass through the didn't allow the green corridor for a very long time. If it weren't for Russia..."

At that moment, a volunteer on the bus accidentally drops a large pack of water bottles: it falls loudly on the floor. The man next to him flinches and quickly turns in the direction of the noise. Then he catches the startled look of his 14-year-old son, relaxes his shoulders, smiles and tries to cheer up the teenager: "I was scared too, I thought I heard shelling. I've gone completely mad."

rt
"Nobody will harm the dog"

After crossing the border, minibuses go to temporary accommodation in Taganrog: Here the evacuees spend a few hours to a day. Some are picked up by relatives or friends, some are taken on special trains to other Russian cities that are willing to house refugees for a longer period of time.

House-to-house fighting in Mariupol: people hold out in stairwells while shots are fired (video)
One of the transitional shelters is in Sports School No. 13. A month ago, refugees from the People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk were taken in here. Now people from Mariupol are brought here. There are 220 beds in the sports hall.

One of them currently belongs to 82-year-old Nadezhda Viktorovna. She took her dog, Tusik, with her to the evacuation: the dog had survived in the basement of a nine-story building with its owner for 12 days. Now the pensioner, bending down from her bed, carefully covers the dog with her knit blouse, feeds him the leftovers from the canteen and recalls how the Russian military saved them both:

"They ran towards us and started shouting for us all to hurry. And there were too many of us, with the door being small. There was a rush. The soldiers began to pull us out of the basement. I shout to them: 'Please don't throw away my dog!' They said to me, 'Grandma, hurry up! Nobody's going to harm your dog.' They put us on a tank, so we drove to the next junction, and then we ran along the wall to the bus, right under the fire."

She says her tusik understood everything at that moment: like people, he bowed down at the sound of bullets and grenades, did not bark or whimper. Their house was already on fire when they ran out of the basement. The woman is sure that if they had stayed there, everyone would have been undermined under the collapsed building.

"I've never seen a fire like this. You don't even put it out. And now it turns out we 're homeless. I loved my Mariupol, and now we're crying that this city is gone. And we didn't have time "To take things with us. My neighbor Natasha and I even burned down our dentures: the day we ran down to the basement, we didn't even have time to get them out of the glasses."

But the Azov fighters couldn't have let them into the basement, the woman says:

"My neighbor, an old woman, eventually turned to the Azov fighters who were near our house. She asked them: 'Help me bring my husband down to the basement. He is paralyzed and can't stand on his own at all move.' And they said to her, 'Go to hell with your husband.'"

rt
"Your apartment is needed for overview"

Humanitarian aid is brought to emergency shelters for refugees: clothes and shoes that volunteers have collected for people. 70-year-old Galina (name changed) sits in the hallway and looks at the blue dress she took from the room with things on offer. She wears sandals that are too small for her, so they don't fully fit her feet. She tells:

"I had everything: three apartments, a house, a car. And now there is none of that. Now I have to wear clothes off someone else's shoulder."

From her previous life, Galina brought bright pink lipstick, which she continues to use even during the evacuation.

She smells a little like alcohol: the pensioner commemorated her husband, who died in Mariupol while they were trying to hide in the hallway of their apartment. The woman defiantly says:

"Yes, I drank alcohol today. Today is the ninth day since my husband died. He just died of fear, couldn't take the constant bombing. Thank God he died quickly. He only had one heart attack, and in ten minutes he was gone. He was a respected person, the head of a department at the 'Azovstahl' plant."

Galina could not bury her husband. She only managed to wrap his body in cloth and hide it in the basement. Her son came to her, and together they were able to leave for Russia. Now they are waiting in the temporary accommodation for Galina's daughter to come to them from abroad and pick up her relatives.

rt
The people who managed to return home to collect essentials are lucky. 25-year-old Lisa tries to smile, but it turns out to be more of a bitter grin:

"We're lucky, very lucky. Our apartment didn't burn down. We were hiding in an air raid shelter when the Russian military came to us and said we had to go. This area should soon become unsafe underground as well."

Lisa and her boyfriend were able to return to the apartment for their belongings. Of the three entrances to her house, only the second did not burn out:

"The house looked like a zebra. A black stripe, our entrance white, and then black again. The house next to ours with six entrances burned down completely."

Together with her boyfriend and a few other acquaintances, Lisa is now considering exactly where to go next. You have no contacts in Russia.

US accuses Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine - rightly so?
79-year-old Lidia Alexeyevna walks past her to the exit of the shelter. Her son Igor and her adult granddaughter, who burst into tears upon seeing her grandmother alive, linked arms and supported her from either side. Relatives came from Yalta to pick up grandma. In Mariupol, Lidia Alexeyevna and her neighbors did not go into the basement of the house, but lived in the safest apartments on the lower floors. Fires were made on the first floor to warm up, and there were still a few retirees living on the top floor who found it too difficult to go downstairs.

According to the woman, in March, Ukrainian soldiers came to her house and occupied her apartment on the sixth floor:

"They came to me and said, 'We need your apartment for the overview.' "Well, I took my stuff and moved in with a neighbor on the first floor. They also asked which neighboring apartments we had the keys to to set up bases there as well."

Two days later, the military of the Armed Forces of Ukraine just left her apartment, Lidia Alexeyevna said. She didn't even ask the soldiers about the evacuation:

"What would they have said to me? They would have said they had another job and that was it."

A few days ago, the military of the DPR came to her house. They asked ten people to pack their things and get ready for evacuation.

"We grab our bags and leave the house. And outside, first two soldiers with machine guns run, and then we, ten people: there was continuous shooting in the street. We walk along the sea with my girlfriend and understand that we will not make it . Our knees don't work anymore. Suddenly two more guys, soldiers of the DPR, run towards us. One grabs my bag, lifts me up with the other hand, orders: 'Hold my neck.' And so we ran with him. Or rather, he almost carried me across the floor and I barely had time to move my legs at times."

"I've never seen a fire like this. You don't even put it out. And now it turns out we 're homeless. I loved my Mariupol, and now we're crying that this city is gone. And we didn't have time "To take things with us. My neighbor Natasha and I even burned down our dentures: the day we ran down to the basement, we didn't even have time to get them out of the glasses."

But the Azov fighters couldn't have let them into the basement, the woman says:

"My neighbor, an old woman, eventually turned to the Azov fighters who were near our house. She asked them: 'Help me bring my husband down to the basement. He is paralyzed and can't stand on his own at all move.' And they said to her, 'Go to hell with your husband.'"

 

[cassandra]

... continued:

"Your apartment is needed for overview"

Humanitarian aid is brought to emergency shelters for refugees: clothes and shoes that volunteers have collected for people. 70-year-old Galina (name changed) sits in the hallway and looks at the blue dress she took from the room with things on offer. She wears sandals that are too small for her, so they don't fully fit her feet. She tells:

"I had everything: three apartments, a house, a car. And now there is none of that. Now I have to wear clothes off someone else's shoulder."

From her previous life, Galina brought bright pink lipstick, which she continues to use even during the evacuation.

She smells a little like alcohol: the pensioner commemorated her husband, who died in Mariupol while they were trying to hide in the hallway of their apartment. The woman defiantly says:

"Yes, I drank alcohol today. Today is the ninth day since my husband died. He just died of fear, couldn't take the constant bombing. Thank God he died quickly. He only had one heart attack, and in ten minutes he was gone. He was a respected person, the head of a department at the 'Azovstahl' plant."

Galina could not bury her husband. She only managed to wrap his body in cloth and hide it in the basement. Her son came to her, and together they were able to leave for Russia. Now they are waiting in the temporary accommodation for Galina's daughter to come to them from abroad and pick up her relatives.

rt
The people who managed to return home to collect essentials are lucky. 25-year-old Lisa tries to smile, but it turns out to be more of a bitter grin:

"We're lucky, very lucky. Our apartment didn't burn down. We were hiding in an air raid shelter when the Russian military came to us and said we had to go. This area should soon become unsafe underground as well."

Lisa and her boyfriend were able to return to the apartment for their belongings. Of the three entrances to her house, only the second did not burn out:

"The house looked like a zebra. A black stripe, our entrance white, and then black again. The house next to ours with six entrances burned down completely."

Together with her boyfriend and a few other acquaintances, Lisa is now considering exactly where to go next. You have no contacts in Russia.

US accuses Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine - rightly so?
79-year-old Lidia Alexeyevna walks past her to the exit of the shelter. Her son Igor and her adult granddaughter, who burst into tears upon seeing her grandmother alive, linked arms and supported her from either side. Relatives came from Yalta to pick up grandma. In Mariupol, Lidia Alexeyevna and her neighbors did not go into the basement of the house, but lived in the safest apartments on the lower floors. Fires were made on the first floor to warm up, and there were still a few retirees living on the top floor who found it too difficult to go downstairs.

According to the woman, in March, Ukrainian soldiers came to her house and occupied her apartment on the sixth floor:

"They came to me and said, 'We need your apartment for the overview.' "Well, I took my stuff and moved in with a neighbor on the first floor. They also asked which neighboring apartments we had the keys to to set up bases there as well."

Two days later, the military of the Armed Forces of Ukraine just left her apartment, Lidia Alexeyevna said. She didn't even ask the soldiers about the evacuation:

"What would they have said to me? They would have said they had another job and that was it."

A few days ago, the military of the DPR came to her house. They asked ten people to pack their things and get ready for evacuation.

"We grab our bags and leave the house. And outside, first two soldiers with machine guns run, and then we, ten people: there was continuous shooting in the street. We walk along the sea with my girlfriend and understand that we will not make it . Our knees don't work anymore. Suddenly two more guys, soldiers of the DPR, run towards us. One grabs my bag, lifts me up with the other hand, orders: 'Hold my neck.' And so we ran with him. Or rather, he almost carried me across the floor and I barely had time to move my legs at times."

Lidia Alexeyevna smiles.