Russia owes western banks $120 billion - why they won't get it back

By CNN  

Mar 11, 2022

Goldman Sachs is the first major Western bank to get out of Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

More are likely to follow at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.

The Wall Street giant said yesterday that it is "winding down its business in Russia in compliance with regulatory and licencing requirements," a Goldman Sachs spokesperson said.

Goldman Sachs is the first major Western bank to get out of Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The departure follows a scramble by Western banks to tally their exposure to Russia after President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, triggering punishing sanctions that cover most of the country's financial system, including its central bank and top commercial lenders — VTB and Sberbank.

It also comes after a stampede of Western businesses out of just about every other sector of Russia's economy, and as ratings agencies warn that a Russian debt default is imminent.

International banks are owed more than $121 billion by Russian entities, according to the Bank for International Settlements, which suspended Russia's membership yesterday.

European banks have over $84 billion total claims, with France, Italy and Austria the most exposed, and US banks owed $14.7 billion.

Goldman Sachs (GS) earlier disclosed that it had credit exposure to Russia of $650 million in December 2021.

People stand in line to withdraw money from an ATM of Alfa Bank in Moscow, Russia (File). (AP Photo/Victor Berzkin)

Other banks with more to lose could soon follow GS out of Russia. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said yesterday that the economic situation in Russia is "absolutely unprecedented" and blamed the West for an "economic war."

Moscow has pledged to retaliate for the sanctions, and some banks have suggested that their assets could be seized or nationalized by the Kremlin.

Fitch Ratings warned previously that "large western European banks' asset quality will be pressured by the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine," and that their operations also face increased risk as they race to comply with international sanctions.

French bank Societe Generale (SCGLF) said last week it is "rigorously complying with all applicable laws and regulations and is diligently implementing the measures necessary to strictly enforce international sanctions as soon as they are made public."

The bank said it had almost $21 billion in exposure to Russia at the end of last year. Societe Generale "has more than enough buffer to absorb the consequences of a potential extreme scenario, in which the group would be stripped of property rights to its banking assets in Russia," it said.

In the days since the West imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, ordinary Russians are feeling the painful effects — from payment systems that won't operate and problems withdrawing cash to not being able to purchase certain items. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

France's BNP Paribas (BNPQF) said on Wednesday that its exposure to both Russia and Ukraine totals $3.3 billion.

Italy's UniCredit (UNCFF), which has been operating in Russia since 1989, said last week that its Russian arm was "very liquid and self-funded," and that the franchise accounts for just three per cent of the bank's revenue.

On Tuesday, it said that its exposure to Russia totals roughly $8.1 billion.

Credit Suisse (CS) said yesterday that it has exposure to Russia of $1.1 billion.

Deutsche Bank (DB) said in a statement on Wednesday that it has "limited" exposure to Russia, with gross loan exposure of $1.5 billion.

The German lender said it has significantly reduced its exposure to Russia since 2014, with further action taken over the past two weeks.

US banks could feel pain, too. Citigroup (C) disclosed last week that it had roughly $10 billion in total exposure to Russia.

Russia has been bombing civilian targets in Ukrainian cities such as Mariupol. (AP)

Mark Mason, the bank's chief financial officer, told investors that the bank has been performing tests to evaluate the consequences "under different stress type of scenarios."

He said the bank could lose roughly half its exposure in a "severe" scenario.

Citi said Wednesday that it would stick to its plan of exiting its consumer banking business — but it might be very hard to find a buyer given the political and economic climate.

"As we work toward that exit, we are operating that business on a more limited basis given current circumstances and obligations," it said in a statement.

"With the Russian economy in the process of being disconnected from the global financial system as a consequence of the invasion, we continue to assess our operations in the country," it added.

The European Central Bank addressed the risk to the banking sector on yesterday, saying that Europe's financial system has enough liquidity and there were limited signs of stress.

"Russia is important in terms of energy markets, in terms of commodity prices, but in terms of the exposure of the financial sector, of the European financial sector, Russia is not very relevant," said Luis de Guindos, vice president of the central bank.

"The strains and the tensions that we have seen are not comparable at all to what happened at the beginning of the pandemic," he added.

THE WEST PROMOTES CHEM WAR FEARS

The chemical weapons at Vladimir Putin’s disposal and how Russia’s track record spells grim omen for Ukraine

The Kremlin has shown itself ready to use nerve agents on foreign soil, including on the streets of Salisbury in 2018

Emergency workers in protective suits in the aftermath of the Novichok nerve agent attack in Salisbury in 2018 (Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty)

By Cahal Milmo

March 11, 2022 

A key reason for the decision by the White House to issue its chilling warning that the Kremlin could be planning a chemical or biological weapon attack in Ukraine is that Russia has both the means and a record for doing so.

At the end of the Cold War, the former Soviet Union had one of the world’s largest stocks of chemical weapons, including nerve agents, and was known to be running the world’s largest and most advanced biological warfare programme, at one point employing nearly 70,000 people.

Both the production and use of biological and chemical weapons are banned under international treaties to which Russia is a signatory.

But despite such solemn geo-political undertakings, the Kremlin has in recent years shown itself ready to deploy chemical weapons in the shape of the so-called “Novichok” nerve agents used on the streets of Salisbury in 2018 and against Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny two years later.

It is also believed that when it comes to the even more terrifying pursuit of biological weapons – the use of viruses, bacteria such as Anthrax and other pathogens to effectively harness disease as a tool of war – Moscow remains unashamedly active.

The US State Department last year formally declared that in its assessment “Russia maintains an offensive [biological weapons] programme” and is in violation of the treaty banning their development, production or use.

The exact nature and quantity of what Russia holds in the chemical and biological weaponry sphere is hard to quantify.

According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the body with oversees the global ban, Russia is one of eight countries around the world which between them continued to hold some 72,300 tons of the most potent chemical toxins after the ban was put in place in 1997.

The OPCW said the Russian share of those weapons was certified as having been destroyed in 2017 but Washington and its allies say they do not believe Moscow made a full declaration of its weaponry stocks.

It is certainly clear that it has considerable manufacturing capability when it comes to nerve agents – the perfume bottle containing Novichok used to target Russian MI6 agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia held enough poison to deliver a potentially lethal dose to 10,000 people.

The vast majority of any remaining Russian chemical weapons stockpile is thought to be made up of nerve agents, including VX, a substance so deadly that just 0.4mg can kill an adult. It is believed its chemical arsenal also includes limited quantities of blistering agents such as mustard gas.

Western experts say the precise nature of the Kremlin’s biological weaponry research, believed to be carried out in a Soviet-era facility in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia, is unknown.

The question remains of how Russia might carry out the type of chemical or biological weapons atrocity of which Washington warns may be under consideration in Moscow as Vladimir Putin’s propagandists.

A heavy clue lies in the wreckage of Syria, where Russia successfully conducted a brutal campaign to bolster the regime of Bashar Al Assad.

According to one authoritative study, the Syrian dictator’s armed forces carried out the majority of 85 chemical weapons attacks during the country’s decade-long civil war, including the notorious Sarin nerve gas attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta which may have killed as many as 1,700 people.

One former military specialist said: “The Kremlin refined its tactics for this sort of scenario by watching – and standing alongside – Assad’s forces as they did their worst. The Syrians would routinely blame jihadist groups whenever there was a chemical attack.

“You can already see Putin trying to prepare the ground for a false flag attack by blaming the Ukrainians or Americans and retaliating. We should be in no doubt that chemical weapons form part of the Kremlin’s thinking.”

It is for this reason that Washington, and other Western capitals, have been aggressive in their denials of a steady drip of spurious claims from Moscow that Ukraine has smuggled noxious chemicals into the east of the country or that America had set up research laboratories in Ukraine.

As Ned Price, the US State Department’s official spokesman, put it: “There are no US chemical or biological weapons labs in Ukraine. However, Russia has a long and well-documented record of using chemical weapons against opposition leaders and innocent civilians.” 

READ MORE: Concerns grow Russia may use chemical weapons

READ MORE: British PM fears Russia may use chemical weapons

Ukraine war: 'You know' we don't have chemical weapons, Volodymyr Zelenskyy tells Russia

The suggestion that Ukraine is developing weapons of mass destruction is rubbished by the president, who says: "We are a decent country."

Ukraine war: 'You know' we don't have chemical weapons, Volodymyr Zelenskyy tells Russia | World News | Sky News

RUSSIA PROMOTES FAKE BIO WAR

WHO says it advised Ukraine to destroy pathogens in health labs

WHO tells Reuters it advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens to prevent disease spread.

Ukraine has public health laboratories researching how to mitigate the threats of dangerous diseases affecting animals and humans including, most recently, COVID-19 [File: Hannah Beier/ Reuters]

Published On 11 Mar 2022

The World Health Organization (WHO) advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country’s public health laboratories to prevent “any potential spills” that would spread disease among the population, the agency told the Reuters news agency.

Biosecurity experts say Russia’s movement of troops into Ukraine and bombardment of its cities have raised the risk of an escape of disease-causing pathogens, should any of those facilities be damaged.

Like many other countries, Ukraine has public health laboratories researching how to mitigate the threats of dangerous diseases affecting animals and humans including, most recently, COVID-19.

Its labs have received support from the United States, the European Union and the WHO.

In response to questions from Reuters about its work with Ukraine ahead of and during Russia’s invasion, the WHO said in an email that it has collaborated with Ukrainian public health labs for several years to promote security practices that help prevent “accidental or deliberate release of pathogens”.

“As part of this work, WHO has strongly recommended to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and other responsible bodies to destroy high-threat pathogens to prevent any potential spills,” the WHO, a United Nations agency, said.

The WHO would not say when it had made the recommendation nor did it provide specifics about the kinds of pathogens or toxins housed in Ukraine’s laboratories.

The agency also did not answer questions about whether its recommendations were followed.

Ukrainian officials in Kyiv and at their embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Ukraine’s laboratory capabilities are at the centre of a growing information war since Russia began moving troops into Ukraine two weeks ago.

On Wednesday, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova repeated a longstanding claim that the United States operates a biowarfare lab in Ukraine, an accusation that has been repeatedly denied by Washington and Kyiv.

Zakharova said that documents unearthed by Russian forces in Ukraine showed “an emergency attempt to erase evidence of military biological programmes” by destroying lab samples.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm her information.

In response, a Ukrainian presidential spokesperson said: “Ukraine strictly denies any such allegation.”

US government spokespeople also strongly denied Zakharova’s accusations, saying that Russia may use its claims as a pretext to deploy its own chemical or biological weapons.

The WHO statement made no reference to biowarfare.

The agency said it encourages all parties to cooperate in “the safe and secure disposal of any pathogens they come across, and to reach out for technical assistance as needed”.

It offered to help wherever possible with technical guidance and coordination.

The United Nations Security Council will convene on Friday at Russia’s request, diplomats said, to discuss Moscow’s claims, presented without evidence, of US biological activities in Ukraine.

SOURCE: REUTERS

WHO urges Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens to prevent ‘potential spills’ from bombed labs


Bombardment of Ukrainian cities could increase risk of disease spread if public health labs are damaged

Shweta Sharma

THE INDEPENDENT

March 11, 2022 


Psaki accuses Russia of telling 'outright lies' about US bioweapons labs in Ukraine

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has advised Ukraine to destroy “disease-causing pathogens” housed in the country’s public health labs at the risk of spilling and spreading diseases if bombed, as the Russian invasion of the country continued.

The UN health agency told Reuters on Thursday that there was a risk of disease spreading among the population if “high-threat” pathogens were not destroyed to prevent “any potential spills”.

The WHO did not provide details about what kind of pathogens or toxins could be inside Ukraine’s laboratories.

Pathogens are disease-causing microbes.

Biosecurity experts have said the bombardment of Ukrainian cities and troop movement has raised the risk of the escape of disease if such labs are damaged.

Ukraine’s public health labs were involved in research work on how to mitigate the threat of dangerous diseases, including Covid-19, like many other countries.

The country’s labs have received support from the US, the European Union and the WHO, the report said.

WHO said it has been collaborating with the country’s public health labs for several years to promote security practices that help prevent “accidental or deliberate release of pathogens”.


“As part of this work, WHO has strongly recommended to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and other responsible bodies to destroy high-threat pathogens to prevent any potential spills,” the global health agency said.

This map shows the extent of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
(Press Association Images)

The agency’s remarks come as Russia has accused Ukraine, without providing any evidence, of secretly operating chemical and biological weapons laboratories at the behest of the US.

In a tweet, the Russian embassy in London repeated a longstanding claim that cited “recently found documents” that it said showed components of biological weapons were made in Ukraine’s labs with the help of the US Department of Defence.

At the same time, Russian media and right-wing news outlets have promoted the theories and also mischaracterised testimony given to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday by Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland regarding “biological research facilities” in Ukraine.

The US promptly dismissed the claims that emerged from Russia, calling them “laughable” and warned the country was laying the groundwork for using chemical or biological weapons against Ukraine.

“The Russian accusations are absurd, they are laughable and you know, in the words of my Irish Catholic grandfather, a bunch of malarkey. There’s nothing to it. It’s classic Russian propaganda,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday.

A Ukrainian presidential spokesperson has also said the country “strictly denies any such allegation”.

Meanwhile, the WHO made no reference to biowarfare. It said it encourages all parties to cooperate in “the safe and secure disposal of any pathogens they come across and to reach out for technical assistance as needed.”

It offered to help with technical guidance and coordination to the countries and Ukraine.

UN Security Council to Meet Friday on Biological Weapons, at Moscow's Request

March 11, 2022 
Agence France-Presse

The U.N. Security Council meets to discuss the situation between Russia and Ukraine, at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, New York City, Jan. 31, 2022.

UNITED NATIONS —

The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Friday on alleged manufacture of biological weapons in Ukraine at the request of Moscow, whose credibility on chemical weapons was questioned during a session on Syria.

Russia on Thursday accused the United States of funding research into the development of biological weapons in Ukraine, which has faced an assault by tens of thousands of Russian troops since Feb. 24.

Both Washington and Kyiv have denied the allegations, with the United States saying they were a sign that Moscow could soon use the weapons itself.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Russia's allegations in a video address on Thursday, saying, "No one is developing any chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction" in Ukraine.

Western states have charged that Russia is employing a ruse by accusing their opponents and the United states of developing biological and chemical weapons to lay the ground for their possible use in Ukraine -- something Moscow has been accused of doing in Syria.

At a monthly Security Council meeting on the use of chemical weapons in Syria -- a case that remains unresolved and continues to suffer from a U.N.-denounced lack of information from Damascus -- both Washington and London raised Ukraine.

"The Russian Federation has repeatedly spread disinformation regarding Syria's repeated use of chemical weapons," the deputy U.S. envoy to the U.N., Richard Mills, said.

"The recent web of lies that Russia has cast in an attempt to justify the premeditated and unjustified war it has undertaken against Ukraine, should make clear, once and for all, that Russia also cannot be trusted when it talks about chemical weapon use in Syria."

Mills' U.K. counterpart, James Kariuki, denounced Moscow's attack on Ukraine and said the "parallels with Russian action in Syria are clear."

"Regrettably, the comparison also extends to chemical weapons, as we see the familiar specter of Russian chemical weapons disinformation raising its head in Ukraine."

In 2018, Moscow accused the United States of secretly conducting biological weapons experiments in a laboratory in Georgia, another former Soviet republic that, like Ukraine, has ambitions to join NATO and the European Union.

The Security Council meeting Friday is slated to begin at 11 a.m. (1600 GMT).

GMO IS OMG BACKWARDS

Billions Of Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Permitted For Release in California And Florida

THE AEDES AEGYPTI MOSQUITO IS A PROMINENT VECTOR FOR SEVERAL HUMAN DISEASES INCLUDING DENGUE, CHIKUNGUNYA, ZIKA, YELLOW FEVER, AND MORE. IMAGE CREDIT: FRANK60/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

By Tom Hale

10 MAR 2022


The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has given the go-ahead for biotech company Oxitec to release billions of genetically engineered mosquitoes in Florida and California, with a mission to combat mosquito-borne diseases like Dengue fever and the Zika virus.

After passing a risk assessment, Oxitec's technology was given an experimental use permit allowing 2.4 billion gene-tweaked mosquitos – over 2 billion in California and just under 400 million in Florida – to be released in two separate periods between 2022 to 2024.

This recent permit comes off the back of a pilot project in the Florida Keys successfully carried out in 2021. Now the project has received the EPA permit, applications can be sent to local state regulators to mull over.

The plan is to release billions of male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which don’t bite, genetically modified to express the protein tTAV-OX5034. The Aedes aegypti mosquito is not native to California or Florida, but it’s become a prominent vector for several human diseases including Dengue, chikungunya, Zika, and yellow fever.

Once the introduced males mate with wild female mosquitoes, the protein will be passed on and effectively kill female offspring before they reach maturity, thereby reducing the local population of mosquitos and quashing disease transmission (at least in theory).

While the mosquitos and Oxitec’s technology have undergone dozens of tests and trials, not everyone likes the prospect of releasing swarms of genetically engineered bugs into the wild. Previous pilot trials have received some resistance from concerned locals, with some critics calling it a “Jurassic Park experiment.”

One source of controversy was a 2019 paper studying Oxitec’s genetically modified mosquitoes in Brazil, concluding that the project didn’t work as intended as many mosquitoes were surviving into adulthood and potentially deepening the area's mosquito problem. However, the journal’s editors then issued an Editorial Expression of Concern for the study, noting that a number of concerns had been raised with the research.

News of releasing the genetically modified mosquitoes in California is also causing some heads to turn.

“Once released into the environment, genetically engineered mosquitoes cannot be recalled,” Dr Robert Gould, President of San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility, said in a statement released by Friends of the Earth. “Rather than forge ahead with an unregulated open-air genetic experiment, we need precautionary action, transparent data and appropriate risk assessments.”

“This experiment is unnecessary and even dangerous, as there are no locally acquired cases of dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya or Zika in California,” added Jaydee Hanson, Policy Director for the International Center for Technology Assessment and Center for Food Safety

Oxitec has tried to quell these concerns from the public, maintaining that their mosquitos offer a safe and sustainable pest control technology that does not harm beneficial insects, such as bees and butterflies. Nevertheless, the controversy is unlikely to die down anytime soon.

“Given the growing health threat this mosquito poses across the U.S., we’re working to make this technology available and accessible. These pilot programs, wherein we can demonstrate the technology’s effectiveness in different climate settings, will play an important role in doing so. We look forward to getting to work this year,” Grey Frandsen, CEO of Oxitec, said in a statement.

UPDATE
Scientists Investigate 300-Year-Old Mummified "Mermaid" Said To Be Caught In The 1700s




ANOTHER SIMILAR 'MERMAID'. 

IMAGE CREDIT: THOM ATKINSON/WELLCOME IMAGES (CC BY 4.0)

By James Felton09 MAR 2022, 17:11

A team of researchers have started their project to analyze a "mermaid mummy" – a strange-looking creature (or creatures) said to be caught in a fishing net off the coast of present-day Kochi Prefecture, Japan, between 1736 and 1741.

Since its discovery (or, if you're a little more healthily skeptical, since someone sewed a fish to a monkey) the "mermaid" has been kept at the Enjuin temple in Asakuchi, where it has been seen as an object of worship.

“We have worshipped it, hoping that it would help alleviate the coronavirus pandemic even if only slightly,” the head priest told Japanese news outlet Asahi. “I hope the research project can leave (scientific) records for future generations.”

Now, Asahi reports, it is to be studied scientifically for the first time. Researchers from the Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts have so far removed the mummy from the temple in order to place it on a CT scanner.

The team will also test DNA samples taken from the mummy, to ascertain what animals have been used to create it – it is believed to be a monkey and a fish. Previous studies have looked at similar animals, including one "mermaid" that turned out to be a fish that was attached to a wire and wood torso, with human hair for a finishing touch.

Perhaps the most famous mermaid hoax was the "Fiji Mermaid", put on display by P. T. Barnum. Barnum advertised the exhibit with drawings of typical mythical mermaids: Beautiful creatures with the head and body of a woman (depicted as naked in the leaflets) attached to the bottom half of a fish. What actually greeted punters when they showed up to see the mermaid was the top half of a monkey, which had been sewn to a fish, and both parts were also extremely dead.

The mermaid was likely created by a Japanese fisherman as a joke. The fisherman claimed the monkey-fish had made a prophecy that everyone on the island would become sterile, and the only cure was to have a picture of the mermaid itself, which handily he could allow for a small fee.

The team will publish their findings on the "mermaid" later this year, though don't hold your breath for confirmation that mermaids are real. According to Hiroshi Kinoshita of the Okayama Folklore Society who first sparked this latest project, another "mermaid" specimen turned out to be a monkey stitched to a salmon.

"You Look Ridiculous" Scientists Tell Big-Nosed Bat Upon Rediscovery After 40-Year Hiatus


“THE FACIAL FEATURES WERE EXAGGERATED TO THE POINT OF COMICAL.' 

IMAGE CREDIT: JON FLANDERS, BAT CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL


By Rachael Funnell

10 MAR 2022

A critically endangered “lost species” came crashing back into existence in the Nyungwe Forest National Park in Rwanda recently, as the Hill’s horseshoe bat was rediscovered in the net of a team of conservationists marking its first appearance in 40 years.

“When we caught it, we all just looked at it and said, ‘You look ridiculous. Look how big your nose leaf is,’” Dr Jon Flanders, director of endangered species interventions at Bat Conservation International, told Mongabay. Quite the welcome party.

Behind the comical discovery was a multi-national team of experts led by Bat Conservation International (BCI), Rwanda Development Board (RDB), and the Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association (RWCA). Surveys had been conducted since 2013 but it was on a fateful night in January 2019 that the rediscovery occurred.

With a sizable schnozz, the Hill’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hillorum) certainly made an impression.

“We knew immediately that the bat we had captured was unusual and remarkable,” said BCI Chief Scientist Dr Winifred Frick in a statement.

“The facial features were exaggerated to the point of comical. Horseshoe bats are easily distinguishable from other bats by characteristic horseshoe shape and specialized skin flaps on their noses.”

Known as a nose leaf, the voluminous bit of kit on the Hill’s horseshoe’s nose is an adaptation that is thought to help certain bats who echolocate nasally in shaping and modifying their calls.

Rare bat in hand, the team carefully took measurements and made the first-ever echolocation recording for the Hill’s horseshoe bat before letting the big-nosed star of the show fly free again.

The world-first recordings are a particular win for the conservation of the species, as the Nyungwe Park Rangers have since been able to set up detectors to eavesdrop on any Hill’s horseshoe bat conversations. Sneaky.

When they caught the bat, its size and the sheer volume of its nose pointed towards the likely species. To be sure, Flanders later took a trip to museum archives in Europe to compare against the only known Hill’s horseshoe bat specimens in the world to confirm.

“Going into this project we feared the species may have already gone extinct,” he said. “Rediscovering Hill’s horseshoe bat was incredible – it’s astonishing to think that we’re the first people to see this bat in so long.”

“Now our real work begins to figure out how to protect this species long into the future.”

Speaking of bats with wondrous faces, have you seen the built-in face masks of the wrinkle-faced bat (Centurio senex)? Or how about the unbeatable schnozz of the hammer-headed fruit bat (Hypsignathus monstrosus)?

Marx After Marx: Time, History and the Expansion

 

This book deprovincializes Marx and the West’s cultural turn by returning to the theorist’s earlier explanations of capital’s origins and development, which followed a trajectory beyond Euro-America to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Marx’s expansive view shows how local circumstances, time, and culture intervened to reshape capital’s system of production in these regions. His outline of a diversified global capitalism was much more robust than was his sketch of the English experience in Capital and helps explain the disparate routes that evolved during the twentieth century. Engaging with the texts of Lenin, Luxemburg, Gramsci, and other pivotal theorists, Harootunian strips contemporary Marxism of its cultural preoccupation by reasserting the deep relevance of history.

Marx After Marx: Time, History and the Expansion

Harry Harootunian
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

In Marx After Marx, Harry Harootunian questions the claims of Western Marxism and its presumption of the final completion of capitalism. If this shift in Marxism reflected the recognition that the expected revolutions were not forthcoming in the years before World War II, its Cold War afterlife helped to both unify the West in its struggle with the Soviet Union and bolster the belief that capitalism remained dominant in the contest over progress.

Marx After Marx: Time, History and the Expansion – The University Seminars (columbia.edu)

Ukraine: A conflict soaked in contradictions

There are wars in Africa and Asia and some are rarely commented on in the media, so why is Ukraine different?

By VIJAY PRASHAD

MARCH 3, 2022

A military vehicle drives along a road in Armyansk in the northern part of Crimea on February 24, 2022. Photo: Sputnik

Surprise and horror have defined the reaction to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. That’s likely because although the intervention has followed the contours of a modern land war, it has also marked a break with the past in a number of ways.

The world has become used to military interventions by the United States. This is, however, not a US intervention. That in itself is a surprise – one that has befuddled reporters and pundits alike.

Even as we deplore the violence and the loss of life in Ukraine resulting from the Russian intervention – and the neofascist violence in the Donbas – it is valuable to step back and look at how the rest of the world may perceive this conflict, starting with the West’s ethnocentric interest in an attack whose participants and victims they believe they share aspects of identity with – whether related to culture, religion or skin color.

White wars

War in Ukraine joins a sequence of wars that have opened sores on a very fragile planet. Wars in Africa and Asia seem endless, and some of them are rarely commented upon with any feeling in media outlets across the world or in the cascade of posts found on social media platforms.

For example, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which started in 1996 and which has resulted in millions of casualties, has not elicited the kind of sympathy from the world now seen during the reporting on Ukraine.

In contrast, the startlingly frank comments from political leaders and journalists during the conflict in Ukraine have revealed the grip of racism on the imaginations of these shapers of public opinion.

It was impossible recently to get major global media outlets interested in the conflict in Cabo Delgado, which grew out of the capture of the bounty of natural gas by TotalEnergies SE (France) and ExxonMobil (US) and led to the deployment of the French-backed Rwandan military in Mozambique.

At COP26, I told a group of oil-company executives about this intervention, which I had covered for Globetrotter, and one of them responded with precise accuracy: “You’re right about what you say, but no one cares.”

No one, which is to say the political forces in the North Atlantic states, cares about the suffering of children in Africa and Asia.

They are, however, gripped by the war in Ukraine, which should grip them, which distresses all of us, but which should not be allowed to be seen as worse than other conflicts taking place across the globe that are much more brutal and are likely to slip out of everyone’s memory because of the lack of interest and attention given by world leaders and media outlets to them.

Charlie D’Agata of CBS News said Kiev “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that … [a conflict] is going to happen.”

Clearly, these are the things one expects to see in Kabul (Afghanistan) or Baghdad (Iraq) or Goma (the Democratic Republic of Congo), but not in a “relatively civilized, relatively European” city in Ukraine. If these are things that one expects in the former cities respectively, then there is very little need to be particularly outraged by the violence that is witnessed in these cities.

You would not expect such violence in Ukraine, said the country’s deputy chief prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, to the British Broadcasting Corporation, because of the kind of people who were caught in the crossfire: “European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed every day.”

Sakvarelidze considers the Ukrainians to be Europeans, although D’Agata calls them “relatively European.” But they are certainly not African or Asian, people whom – if you think carefully about what is being said here – certain world leaders and international media outlets expect to be killed by the violence unleashed against them by the global great powers and by the weapons sold to the local thugs in these regions by these great powers.

Worst war?

On February 23, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, in a heartfelt statement about the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, said: “In the name of humanity do not allow to start in Europe what could be the worst war since the beginning of the century.”

The next day, on February 24, with Russia launching “the biggest attack on a European state since World War II,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned this “barbaric attack” and said “it is President Putin who is bringing war back to Europe.”

“Bringing war back to Europe”: this is instructive language from Von der Leyen. It reminded me of Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism (1950), where the great poet and communist bemoaned Europe’s ability to forget the terrible fascistic treatment of the peoples of Africa and Asia by the colonial powers when they spoke of fascism.

Fascism, Césaire wrote, is the colonial experiment brought back to Europe.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, neither the United Nations secretary-general nor the president of the European Commission came forward to make any immediate condemnation of that war. Both international institutions went along with the war, allowing the destruction of Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of more than one million people.

In 2004, a year into the US war on Iraq, after reports of grave violations of human rights (including by Amnesty International on torture in the prison of Abu Ghraib) came to light, the UN secretary-general, at the time, Kofi Annan, called the war “illegal.”

In 2006, three years after the war had started, then Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who had been the president of the European Commission in 2003, called the war a “grave error.”

In the case of the Russian intervention, these institutions rushed to condemn the war, which is all very well; but does this mean they will be just as quick to condemn the United States when it starts its next bombing campaign?

War stenography

People often ask me what is the most reliable news outlet. This is a hard question to answer these days, as Western news outlets are increasingly becoming stenographers of their governments – with the racist attitudes of the reporters on full display more and more often, making the apologies that come later hardly comforting.

State-sponsored outlets in Russia and China now increasingly find themselves banned on social media sites. Anyone who counters Washington’s narrative is dismissed as irrelevant, and these fringe voices find it hard to develop an audience.

So-called cancel culture demonstrates its limits. D’Agata has apologized for his comment about Ukraine being “relatively civilized, relatively European” compared with Iraq and Afghanistan and has already been rehabilitated because he is on the “right side” of the conflict in Ukraine.

Cancel culture has moved from the chatter of social media to the battlefields of geopolitics and diplomacy as far as the Russian-Ukraine conflict is concerned.

Switzerland has decided to end a century of formal neutrality to cancel Russia by enforcing European sanctions against it – remember that Switzerland remained “neutral” as the Nazis tore through Europe during World War II, and operated as the Nazis’ bankers even after the war.

Meanwhile, press freedom has been set aside during the current conflict in Eastern Europe, with Australia and Europe suspending the broadcast of RT, which is a Russian state-controlled international media network.

D’Agata’s reliability as a reporter will remain unquestioned. He “misspoke,” they might say, but this is a Freudian slip.

Calculations of war

Wars are ugly, especially wars of aggression. The role of the reporter is to explain why a country goes to war, particularly an unprovoked war.

If this were 1941, I might try to explain the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II or the Japanese assumption that the Nazis would soon defeat the Soviets and then take the war across the Atlantic Ocean. But the Soviets held out, saving the world from fascism.

In the same way, the Russian attack on Ukraine requires explanation: The roots of it go deep to various political and foreign policy developments, such as the post-Soviet emergence of ethnic nationalism along the spine of Eastern Europe, the eastward advance of US power – through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – toward the Russian border, and the turbulent relationship between the major European states and their eastern neighbors, including Russia.

To explain this conflict is not to justify it, for there is little to justify in the bombing of a sovereign people.

Sane voices exist on all sides of ugly conflicts. In Russia, State Duma Deputy Mikhail Matveev of the Communist Party said soon after the Russian entry into Ukraine that he voted for the recognition of the breakaway provinces of Ukraine, he “voted for peace, not for war,” and he voted “for Russia to become a shield, so that Donbas is not bombed, and not for Kiev being bombed.”

Matveev’s voice confounds the current narrative: It brings into motion the plight of the Donbas since the US-driven coup in Ukraine in 2014, and it sounds the alarm against the full scale of the Russian intervention.

Is there room in our imagination to try to understand what Matveev is saying?

This article was produced by Globetrotter, which provided it to Asia Times.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.