Illustrative Image
Written by Eric Zuesse
Throughout history, imperialists have always ‘justified’ their empires by moral-sounding excuses such as that the empire comes from ‘God’ or from the nation’s being somehow ’superior’ to all others; but this has always been a fraud. The latest excuse is that only ‘our’ nation and its ‘allies’ (vassal nations, colonies) are ‘democratic’ — but how can an imperial nation be a democracy since it dictates to its vassal nations; so: neither the imperial nation nor its colonies can even possibly be a democracy? They’re all dictatorships.
There is only one imperial nation in the world right now, and it is the U.S.A., which, on 25 July 1945, decided to become the world’s first-ever all-encompassing imperial nation, aiming ultimately to control all others. It would defend the rights of existing empires so long as they subordinated themselves to the U.S. Furthermore, it would call any nation that it wants to add to its empire “autocratic” or “not a democracy” (as opposed to itself, which, it alleges, IS a democracy). And this is the way that the U.S. dictatorship is being carried out — by lying both about its targets and about itself.
Today, that empire encompasses not only NATO. but also Japan and South Korea. Its coming targets for take-over (“regime-change”) are mainly Russia and China, but its other targets are Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and all others that it doesn’t yet control.
The current hot war in the battlefields of Ukraine isn’t between Ukraine and Russia, but between the U.S. and Russia, and is being waged in the battlefields of Ukraine by Ukrainian soldiers and NATO (mainly U.S.-built) weapons, against Russian soldiers there. So, it is enormously profitable for the U.S.-and-allied billionaires who control those weapons-manufacturers, and they want it to continue this war for that reason.
The U.S. has increasingly, ever since Obama in 2012, been applying sanctions against Russia, and especially after 2021 when Russia responded to America’s take-over of Ukraine on Russia’s border, by demanding that no U.S. missiles be placed that close to (onlhy 300 miles away from) Moscow, and on 7 January 2022 the U.S. and its NATO heaped contempt upon Russia’s demand. Then, on 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in order to prevent that, and immediately the U.S. slapped severe sanctions against Russia, and all of America’s colonies have complied with these sanctions ever since.
The chief source of gas to all of the EU countries was the by-far cheapest, which was Russian-supplied pipelined natural gas, which became increasingly barred by the EU countries throughout 2022, and was replaced mainly by U.S.-supplied fracked canned and cross-Atlantic-shipped liquefied natural gas (LNG), at prices many times higher than what EU countries had been paying for Russian pipelined natural gas.
There are many ways in which each aspect of this recent history is ‘justified’ by statements that are false and that hide the key truths, so as to fool voters in these ‘democracies’, as will now be documented:
A big meme is that Russia endangers “The West” (which is false), instead of that “The West” endangers Russia (which is true). Here are some examples of this:
Fig. 1. International gas price markers. Henry Hub indicates the US gas markets, Fig. 1. International gas price markers. Henry Hub indicates the US gas markets, JKM the Asian gas markets and TTF the European [It nowhere indicates what “JKM the Asian gas markets” are; it hides this; because revealing it would reveal what caused the soaring gas-costs in not only the EU, but also Japan and South Korea. “JKM” is, in fact, the “Platts JKM™ (Japan Korea Marker) LNG Price” — in other words, it is the price of liquified natural gas (LNG) — mainly U.S. fracked, compressed, canned, and shipped, instead of pipelined natural, gas — as opposed to Russia’s pipelined natural gas, which is enormously less expensive, and which was the main supply-source there until 2021. In other words, TTF and JKM are the EurAsian portions of the U.S. empire, the parts of EurAsia (EU, Japan, and South Korea) that have been complying with the imperial regime’s, the U.S. Government’s, sanctions against Russia, and that thus are no longer buying Russia’s gas. So: that’s the cause of soaring gas-costs in the EU (and in “Asia” but ONLY the U.S. vassal-nations there. And here is the graph the article presented showing how MUCH those gas-costs have soared:]
Click to see full-size image
[It shows that, starting in April 2021, gas-prices in both TTF (the EU) and JKM (Japan and South Korea) soared, from about 12 EUR/MWh, to 250 EUR/MWh. That’s a twentyfold increase. Meanwhile in U.S., gas prices (the “Henry Hub” price sold in America) remained almost unchanged. The study analyzed why, and stated that,
“Therefore, it can be concluded that it is not Nord Stream 2 but additional Russian deliveries through any route that would alleviate gas prices in Europe.”
[However: at the end it said]
- Conclusions and policy implications
The current EU gas price crisis is rooted in strong Asian demand related to the economic recovery from the 2020 COVID crisis. The current situation is somewhat different compared with past Asian gas price spikes since European gas prices are more exposed to global prices with the decline in domestic EU production.
This allows Russia, Europe’s largest import supplier, to gain substantial market power by withholding extra spot supplies beyond the quantity of the long-term contracts via the existing Ukrainian route. The escalation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the problems related to the vulnerability of the EU, especially the Eastern Member States more reliant on the Russian gas supply.
So: in the study’s “Conclusions,” it blames “The escalation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the problems related to the vulnerability of the EU,” instead of the U.S.-&-EU sanctions. It blames Russia “withholding extra spot supplies.”
In the entire article, the word “sanctions” doesn’t appear even once.
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The EU’s Energy Commissioner proudly tweeted, on 6 September 2022: “Over the weekend I told @cnbc that #Russia is using gas as a weapon. Yesterday, they proved it again with #Gazprom announcing that flows via #NordStream1 will not be resumed.”
Russia’s Gazprom was actually saying that EU nations had sanctioned and were cutting off Russia’s gas into Europe. But this wasn’t Russia “using gas as a weapon” against those receiving nations; it was instead those receiving nations using their cut-offs of Russian gas, as a weapon against Russia.
On 22 April 2022, the New York Times had headlined “Germany’s economy is expected to contract under a Russian gas embargo.”, and reported that, “An embargo on Russian natural gas could cause Germany’s economic output to drop as much as 5 percent this year.”
The meme that Russia — not America — was the aggressor here has been constant.
In an interview with Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer (Austrian People’s Party), he was asked whether Austria can get along without Russian gas, and he said that it could not, but that “Russisches Gas ist per se nicht billiger als jedes andere.” (“Russia’s gas is per se not cheaper than any other.”) However, even if that were true, the U.S.-Government-demanded cutting-off of Russian natural gas into Europe has added such enormous expenses to getting gas into Europe, with all of the huge compression costs, shipping costs, and other added costs (including corruption) to get it delivered there, so that European industry (which relies predominantly upon gas, not oil, for fuel) will inevitably get crushed because of its skyrocketing energy-costs. And Europe’s leaders hide from their voters these realities.
This is how not only the leaders of the U.S. regime but the leaders of its colonies in Europe and in Asia, ‘justify’ their empire, and demean their targets. This new type of ‘democracy’ is all lies. That’s all it takes.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.