The Russian people have successfully managed to foil the latest attempt by the Global Covid Party to enforce its most current list of restrictions and vaccinations. The covid restrictions were unleashed June 16, while Putin was away at the Geneva summit. Moscow Mayor Sobyanin announced that QR codes would be required to enter all cafés and restaurants, and followed this up with demands for mandatory vaccination. But Russians continue to refuse to comply; by now they have found many ways to beat the system, the simplest solution being to avoid (and thus bankrupt) collaborating restaurants. The Mandatory Vaxx Regime brings new conspirators (like Alexei Navalny, the Russian Guaido presently in jail for swindling) and old school Kremlin propagandists into a rare (and suspicious) agreement. Now they all excrete New York mainstream media.

Many loyal Putinists were disappointed and aggrieved by the actions of Moscow’s Mayor; they spoke of treason and of abject surrender to US Dems. The people began to grumble that they would be voting Communist in the upcoming (September 19, 2021) Parliamentary elections. President Putin tried his best to stay above the fray, but recognizing that the Covid Party is actively arranging his political demise, he took steps to rescue his loyalists. Putin publicly called for the mayor to drop the restrictions, and then behind the scenes he had them removed. The QR codes have dried up, and peace has returned to Russian society only one month after the restrictions were announced. The vaccination effort goes on, but it is voluntary. Barring unexpected developments, Russia has passed through the pandemic trial with flying colours, in typically Russian style (“Give a candle to God and a poker to Satan”). People fell ill and died, as always, but there were no disturbances, no riots, and Putin continues to outperform his challengers, in word and in deed.

Not every leader manages to escape intact from these orchestrated confrontations with global Covidians. President of Haiti Jovenel Moïse was reluctant to push for the vaxx in his poor country; he didn’t drop everything and immediately reorganise his state’s government around the new vaccination regime. He then flatly refused AstraZeneca, saying the stuff is dangerous for your health. Little did he know that refusing Big Pharma is perilous to the health of even the elected leader of a sovereign state. Sadly, he has been assassinated by a gang of Colombian mercenaries claiming to be DEA (the US Drug Enforcement Administration) and some of them actually serving with the DEA. The killing was organised by a Florida-based security firm. The killers were trained by the US Army. As soon as the President of Haiti was murdered, the US called in the Marines and half a million doses of vaccine. Thus, this small rebellion against the Covid empire has been squashed.

Moise was bravely following in the footsteps of four African leaders who also tried to resist Covid rule. Tanzanian President, John Magufuli, a cheeky man, adroitly tested some papaya, a goat, and a sample of engine oil for Covid using WHO-supplied tests, and they all turned out positive. He rejected testing and declared Tanzania Covid-free. Immediately afterwards the London Guardian newspaper (in a section funded by Bill Gates) called for regime change. The US Council on Foreign Relations seconded the call, and presto! The man is dead. It has been persuasively argued that Tanzania was untouched by Covid because the population regularly used an easily available and inexpensive anti-malaria drug and thus the dreaded coronavirus could not sicken them.

Magufuli was preceded by the President of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, who did not allow WHO envoys into his country and refused to lock down and succumb to mass testing. He promptly died of a heart attack, just like Magufuli. The man who took his place immediately invited the WHO into the country and followed their instructions. Hamed Bakayoko, the Prime Minister of Ivory Coast and Ambrose Dlamini, who was prime minister of Eswatini (Swaziland) also died in suspicious circumstances. The suspicious circumstances around the assassinations are currently being covered up by Reuters fact checkers, who are claiming that “there is no evidence that leaders of Tanzania, Ivory Coast, eSwatini and Burundi were killed for refusing to vaccinate their countries against COVID-19.” I wonder whether if these fact checkers were so cautious about accepting evidence when Reuters was accusing Trump of being a Russian agent or when they claimed that that Putin poisoned Navalny with Novichok.

There is also a Covid component in the recent jailing of former South African President Jacob Zuma. While we are aware of tribal differences in South Africa, and even of Zuma crossing the ‘red line’ by attacking Oppenheimer of de Biers, his record on Covid was not widely publicized. A little research by Paul Bennett reveals the following vignette:

On 05 July 2021, former president Jacob Zuma on Sunday dismissed questions about his supporters gathered outside his home in KwaZulu-Natal without observing Covid-19 regulations. Zuma‚ who has not received a Covid-19 vaccination‚ addressed media personnel at his KwaDakwadunuse home in Nkandla on Sunday night and said he was not responsible for what his supporters did even if their actions were against lockdown regulations. According to Zuma‚ lockdown regulations were no different to the rules imposed on people during the mid-1980s state of emergency enforced by the apartheid regime. “We have a level 4 lockdown with all the hallmarks of a state of emergency and the curfews of the 1980s‚” said Zuma. “The only difference is that we use different levels‚ like contempt of court instead of detention without trial‚ but the substance is exactly the same. Being jailed without trial is no different from detention without trial.” Zuma revealed he had not been vaccinated against Covid-19 despite his age group qualifying for jabs. In what could be viewed as his first sign of disregarding lockdown regulations‚ the former president went out with Amabutho (Zulu regiments) on Saturday to greet supporters while not wearing a mask.

Bear in mind extremely strict anti-covid measures in South Africa, and you will understand their riots as a natural response to lockdown oppression, just like BLM in the US. You are free to reach your own conclusions about the coincidences in the case of Zuma, as with all the other recent regime changes connected to Covid activism.

The mask is a ‘masonic’ sign of support for the Covid Masters. Good guys like Biden wear the mask even when alone, while bad guys like Trump are usually maskless. Lukashenko and Putin are maskless, while the Belarus opposition and Navalny supporters wear masks. In Chile recently, the Left held primaries to pick a united candidate for presidency. The favourite was Daniel Jadua, a grandchild of Palestinian immigrants known for his fierce opposition to Israel. Worse, he fought for affordable medicines and pioneered ‘people’s pharmacies’. In his photos, he does not wear the mask. He was vociferously attacked by Chilean Jews who condemned his (yes!) anti-Semitism. Jadua was defeated, and the happy victors immediately presented their masked faces to the media so that we all might know who is good and who is bad. On some occasions, politicians do both, to err on the safe side. Russian and Iranian foreign ministers obliged mask fans by posing for pictures fully masked with elbows touching, then re-posed themselves for photos that will please ordinary folk, without masks and with a healthy handshake. The mask has evolved into a public declaration that we accept the Covid narrative, in the same way Christians cross their hearts.

I love scientists but they will kill us all, said Jon Stewart on The Late Show with Steven Colbert . Science eased our suffering due to a pandemic that was most likely caused by science, he told the audience. (Here you can find an acerbic response to the show on the Unz Review) Is it true? Do science and the scientists save us or kill us? How far can we trust them? It has become a relevant question for now they are not satisfied to stay in their labs but rather aspire to govern us as Anthony Fauci and his ilk do.

This aspiration emerges from an Open Letter by Nobel Prize laureates and other dignitaries who demand that we cede to them the planetary stewardship the Church had, or claimed to have in the Middle Ages. Such a mind-boggling pronouncement passed without attracting much attention; this says more about the mass media than about the magnitude of the event itself. After all, since the 11^th century, nobody has yet claimed to guide the whole of mankind.

The letter, called “Our Planet, Our Future: An Urgent Call for Action,” claims that Science is the new Church of mankind, benevolent and wise. “Science is a global common good on a quest for truth, knowledge, and innovation toward a better life. [We want] to promote a transformation to global sustainability for human prosperity and equity. Global greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut by half and destruction of nature halted and reversed.” They claim Covid-19 is a “zoonotic disease”, carried by bats and pangolins – the letter was published in the end of April, just before the miraculous U-turn of the scientific consensus on this point. The scientists propose seven principles of governing our lives, and some of them are very far-reaching. Should we accept their recommendations?

To discuss this, I went to one of the leading contemporary scientists, Prof. Roman Zubarev. He is a daring and outspoken man who is not afraid of speaking his mind – a rare quality amongst this rather shy multitude! Roman Zubarev heads a laboratory in the Karolinska Institute, arguably the best scientific institution in Sweden which has been heavily involved with the selection and nomination of Nobel Prize winners. In an impressive first, he formed a living cell from dead matter. He discovered Isotopic Resonance, a phenomenon related to the creation of life.

ISH: Recently Nobel Prize laureates got together and published “An Urgent Call For Action” to mankind, in the name of science. It seems they want to form a world government, an age-old dream of various visionaries all the way from HG Wells and Shaw up to Schwab and Gates. What do the scientists actually suggest, and should we, mankind, heed their call?

RZ: I was simultaneously puzzled, disturbed, elated and provoked by that call. Usually, when a Nobel Prize winner speaks, it is worth paying attention. Here, a whole company of Nobel laureates and other esteemed experts has crafted a Letter. I have read it multiple times, trying to understand the deeper meaning, hidden underneath what appears to be virtue signaling – calls for all things good and against all things bad. But I wouldn’t think of criticizing them if not for the long-standing tradition of peer review in research. The scientists that crafted and signed the Letter must be well accustomed to relentless critical analysis of their writings by often – but not always – anonymous reviewers. Thus I thought it best to treat the Letter as if it was a research manuscript submitted for publication.

ISH: And what is your verdict?

RZ: The Letter presents a very uneven landscape of some deep thoughts and some apparently rather shallow suggestions.

One particularly striking thought is spread thinly across the Letter. I had to pick up one relevant sentence here and another one there to assemble a complete and coherent message. Here it is: Our world is in danger due to two factors – degrading environment and inequality, and without solving the latter one can’t solve the first.

They talk about global transformation and say that an essential foundation for this transformation is to address destabilizing inequalities in the world. They also quote Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Memorial prize laureate of 2001, who said The only sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity. Of course, Karl Marx has said essentially the same 150 years earlier.

It appears that now the world’s top scientists are calling for a global revolution as Marx did in his time. That appears to be the most logical conclusion one can arrive at after a careful reading of the Letter.

First the Authors admit, to their great credit, that science is not a solution to the world’s greatest problem but rather an essential component of that problem. They say: On aggregate, technological advancements so far have accelerated us down the path toward destabilizing the planet. They also say that scientific progress has led to greater levels of urbanization, and urbanization is exacerbating existing, and creating new, inequities.

Furthermore, to their additional credit they implicitly blame capitalism as a socio-economic system: While all in societies contribute to economic growth, the wealthy in most societies disproportionately take the largest share of this growing wealth. This trend has become more pronounced in recent decades.

When you distill the message, it is pretty clear – if we don’t want to lose the planet, we need to fix it within this decade, and to do that we need to change the global socio-economic system. No amount of scientific advances can be a substitute for such a change, as in capitalism technological achievements can only exacerbate inequality. That’s pretty revolutionary!

ISH: What do they suggest in practical terms?

RZ: Not much. It appears that, as scientists, they are more interested in diagnosing the problem and outlining a generalized solution rather than giving realistic advice.

In a practical sense there is a mixed bag of seven suggestions. The one in Policy is most closely related to the socio-economic system. However, it sounds strange and weak: to complement the current metric of economic success, gross domestic product (GDP), with some kind of measures of true well-being of people and nature.

I am not an economist and maybe this is a great suggestion. But to me it sounds similar to a proposal of merging the US dollar with “likes” in order to create a new world reserve currency. As far as I know, GDP is just a number used in economic reports, and it has little bearing on real-life economic processes, not to mention the structure of the socio-economic system. There are already a number of socio-economic indexes ranking the countries, and it’s unclear why more indexes would solve the inequality problem.

The recently inaugurated Israeli government, the Coalition-for-Change, the wet dream of Israeli and American liberals, Biden-approved-and-blessed after fifteen years of Bibi Netanyahu’s tyranny and four rounds of elections in the last two years – barely surviving a vote of confidence in cliffhanger-fashion – 59:59. It came to power on a slim ‘majority’ of 59.5:60.5 in the 120-members-strong Parliament. The delightful story of its almost-fall allows an insight into the inner workings of the Jewish state, for the members were fighting over their captive Gentile population’s right to marry and live in blessed matrimonial conjugation. Practically all Jewish MKs were against this right, but they acrimoniously argued over whether the current limitations were sufficient or should be intensified.

What is it all about? Anton, a young man from Nazareth met a girl, Sophia from nearby Jenin; they fell in love and got married. They are both Palestinians; Nazareth and Jenin are cities in Palestine; but they are not allowed to live together because Nazareth was conquered by the Jews in 1948 and Jenin in 1967. It sounds crazy, but that is Israeli reality.

Israel today is probably the most racist country in the world. The comparisons with South African apartheid or Jim Crow don’t even come close. Israeli racism is not even a distant relative of what you may call ‘racism’ in your country. A ‘racist’ American cherishes the names and traditions of his ancestors, or rejects the affirmative action that discriminates against him. An Israeli Jewish non-racist wants to keep the numbers of Goyim down, and he would be angry if called ‘racist’ because there are other Israeli racists who call for the total expulsion of non-Jews.

Under Israeli law, if an Israeli citizen marries a Palestinian, the young couple cannot live together. In our example, Anton is an Israeli citizen and he has a blue ID; Sophia has no citizenship, despite being a native of the land, and she has an orange ID. They can’t live together in Israel proper, for a Palestinian woman cannot be brought into Israel-48 even if she is the legally wed wife of an Israeli citizen. They can’t live together in the occupied territories of Israel-67 either, for Israel does not allow its citizens to live in the occupied territories unless they live in a racially segregated settlement, and Palestinians aren’t allowed into such a settlement. Thousands of such impossible marriages, mostly between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian non-citizens of Israel, have taken place despite the prohibition. These married couples break the law every day of their lives, living illegally, without medical care and without the right to work or travel together. They are often stopped by the police and usually spend months in jail. For years they have been demanding the right to ‘family reunion’, government permission to live together legally on a permanent basis, but they aren’t even allowed to apply for it.

Older people perhaps remember how Soviet Jews demanded to be allowed to reunite with their beloved aunt in Tel Aviv, and how the wicked Bolsheviks prevented this. They remember Nobel Prize winners and humanists around the world demanding that the Kremlin let the families be reunited. Perhaps, if you are old enough, you even marched at the Soviet consulate demanding Let My People Go! Well, how can you compare? This is totally different! Then it was for the sake of Jews, and now it is for the sake of Gentiles, and that is not the same.

The law forbidding the reunion of Palestinian families is so revolting to modern sensibilities that Israel came up with a clever way of obscuring it. They call it “temporary” and renew it once a year (and have so since 2003) so they could wring their hands and say, oh, it is only a temporary measure. Other nasty and racist regulations like the Emergency Laws are renewed annually in the same way.

And now they have failed to renew the law, and it has lapsed. Not because they felt this unjust racist law should be removed from their books. No way! The new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is such a desperate racist that the KKK would ban him as too much of a good thing, and the Proud Boys would call him a Hollywood Nazi. He hates Goyim with all his heart, as all good Lubavitcher disciples do; he boasted that he killed many Arabs in his life; he was angry with Bibi Netanyahu because Bibi didn’t kill enough Arabs in Gaza for his liking. Despite such a background, Bennett was branded ‘traitor” by the nationalist camp, for he came to power by joining forces with the remnants of the once-powerful Left (Labour and Meretz) and a small Arab Islamist party. Now he feels he has to prove his racist credentials; otherwise in the next elections his party Yamina (“Rightwards”) will be decimated by its nationalist voters. The vote on extending the reunion law gave him this opportunity. He wanted to extend the law, but in his zeal he overdid it.

He correctly assessed that the left wing of his unwieldy Coalition for Change, Meretz, would vote against the extension, and so he turned the vote for extension into a vote of confidence, expecting that this tactic would thwart all resistance. With this ‘smart’ decision he kicked his own ass, because the whole opposition mobilised against the renewal. In addition, two Palestinians from the Islamist party abstained and one deputy of his own party crossed the party line.

With a vote of 59:59, the government barely survived the no-confidence vote, and the anti-reunion law’s extension did not pass. And this means that 15,000 Palestinian couples will be able to apply for reunion. And that’s great, because preventing couples from reunion is murder, akin to genocide, as the Talmud rightly says. Now everyone in Israel is looking at each other, confused.

• Racist Prime Minister Bennett helped the Palestinians reunite, even though he put his government on the line to prevent it.
• The Israeli left – Meretz and Labour – voted for the racist law, showing that they are only interested in Jewish LGBT rights. Their favourite topic, the right of Jewish gays to use substitute mothers to create children, was much more important for them than the most elementary rights of non-Jews.
• The Islamist Palestinians voted for the racist law because they did not want to bring down the government. They were eager to join any government, be it with Netanyahu or Bennett or the Devil himself, as they think this is the only way to save Palestinians from losing more homes to Israeli demolitions. They were intimidated into supporting this racist law.
• The Likud, Netanyahu’s party, as racist as anybody, voted against the racist law against their own beliefs, for they wanted to take advantage of the no-confidence vote and send Bennett packing.
• The far-far-right and nationalist Religious Zionist Party led by Smotrich torpedoed Netanyahu’s chances to form a government, because it didn’t want to sit in government alongside Islamists. They voted against the racist bill for they want to unseat Bennett, and furthermore they feel the bill is not enough: they want to enshrine in law a permanent ban on Arab citizenship. They proved that racists are too stupid for politics: no government can be formed without the small Islamic party tipping the balance. Netanyahu and Bennett both realised that, but Smotrich’s people are too stubborn for their own good.
• Only the Communists voted in accordance with their conscience against the racist law. In short, almost all parties (except the Communists) kicked themselves in the groin, and hard!

The Russian Direct Line is a unique exercise in direct democracy: Russian citizens call up their president and he answers their queries and solves their problems, like a Nordic konung a thousand years ago. Russia came into being as a chain of Nordic princedoms that practiced this sort of direct access to their ruler; early Russian princes and Tsars posed themselves as an instance of last appeal and immediate access. Twenty years ago, Vladimir Putin resurrected this ancient practice, and once a year every Russian can appeal to him on any subject matter at all. A man of power and authority, he can override any regulation, cut through the bureaucratic red tape, and solve any conundrum by his almost-royal grace. In the heavily bureaucratised country, such an omnipotent yet benevolent ruler provides excellent solutions to problems that should never have arisen in the first place.

The majority of questions and answers deal with everyday Russian life; with the supply of gas, with water drainage, with prices for vegetables, or communal charges. But Putin also answered questions that dealt with real world politics, and provided a few scoops for us. (Here is the full transcript)

The HMS Defender raid into Crimean waters is still fresh in memory, so Putin was asked whether this confrontation could have led to the Third World War. “No”, said Putin. “Even if we had sunk that ship, it wouldn’t put the world on the brink of a third world war because they know they could not win the war. We would also suffer, but we were in the right, and on our own ground.” This means that Russians are perfectly able to sink or capture the next NATO ship if she were to enter Russian waters.

The question of sovereign recognition does not come into the equation at all. Possession and recognition are different. The US refused to recognise (from 1940 to 1991) that the Baltic States were part of the USSR, but prudently the US Navy never tried to visit Riga port, even equipped as it was with a permit from the Latvian government-in-exile. Argentina would not recognise the British claim of sovereignty over Malvinas (Falklands) and boldly sailed within 200 miles of it. Their cruiser General Belgrano was sunk with all hands by the British RN submarine Conqueror. The law of the sea advises seafarers to pay heed to reality, not to claims however legally impressive.

Many experts are guessing that Boris Johnson sent the Defender against the will of his big uncle in the White House across the Pond. Putin disabused them of this notion. During the Direct Line, he noted that while the Defender sailed towards Crimea, a US spy plane departed from Crete to observe the Russian reaction. It was a joint US-UK operation. Putin said:

This was a joint provocation not only by the British but also by the Americans. The British ship entered our territorial waters in the afternoon, whereas earlier, at 7:30 am, a US strategic reconnaissance plane tail number 63/9792 took off from a NATO military airfield in Crete. Thus the destroyer entered [our territorial waters] in pursuit of military objectives, trying to uncover the actions of our armed forces facing a threat. With the help of the reconnaissance aircraft they were trying to figure out how we operate, and where things were located and how they function.

The raid of the Defender was followed the next day by the Dutch frigate Evertsen. She tried to approach Russian waters, but “Russian fighter jets repeatedly flew low over the ship and carried out mock attacks,” said the Dutch Ministry of Defence. The Evertsen promptly turned away from the Crimean coast. Today there are dozens of NATO (and non-NATO) ships participating in the Sea Breeze manoeuvres involving 32 countries, 5,000 troops, 32 ships, 40 aircraft and 18 special operations, and all that in the Black Sea. (Israel participated in the manoeuvres and an Israeli company had temerity to advertise its missiles ability to sink a Russian corvette – on the photo)

Putin connected this action with the Geneva Summit. I wrote about it at length here, concluding that Putin had said Nyet to nearly all of Biden’s requests. However, before the summit, Putin had already acceded to one of Biden’s requests. He withdrew Russian troops from the Ukrainian border. The Russian president provided more details during the Direct Line:

The West raised a clamour over the fact that we were conducting exercises on our own territory near the Ukrainian border. I instructed the Defence Ministry to quietly end the drills and withdraw the troops, if this is such a great concern for them. We did so. But instead of responding positively and being grateful, they trespassed on our borders.

It’s just the latest chapter in Putin’s book of Western ingratitude. In his view, based on facts, every good deed he does for the West’s benefit is unavoidably met with a nasty reward. He allowed the US transit to Afghanistan in October 2001, and in return, the US supported jihadi attacks on Russia. That’s why Putin said Nyet to Biden’s request to place US bases in ex-Soviet Central Asia.

Now we are witnessing the collapse of the house of cards the US built in Afghanistan since 2001. All the European troops have gone home: Germany, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Macedonia, Georgia, Estonia, all those countries that were forced by the US to participate in this 20-year-long occupation, have withdrawn their troops. US troops are leaving, too, as the Taliban (defeated by the US in 2001) retakes its country. Kabul regime troops are surrendering to their new Taliban leaders, just as the South Vietnamese troops surrendered to the Viet Cong in April 1975. We all recall America’s inglorious exit, with the last helicopters fleeing from the US Embassy roof. Probably soon we shall see similar episodes during the fall of Kabul.

The US has spent trillions defending Afghan women from Afghan men, not to mention promoting LGBTQ+. They would spend more and stay forever, but the Taliban are making it too expensive a hobby. Russians do not regret seeing them off. Pro-Western Russian experts once tried to claim that the US presence in Afghanistan would protect Russia. It was all bluff: once in power the US exported drugs to Russia and Europe, and imported jihadis from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan. They hoped their tame ISIS fighters would clash with the Taliban, but it never worked out that way. The Russians are not worried about the coming Taliban takeover: Moscow was the site of negotiations between the Taliban and the Kabul regime. Russian orientalists expect that the Taliban will inherit Afghanistan in such bad shape that it will be too busy at home to try and intervene in the Central Asian republics.

In Geneva, Biden didn’t respond to Putin’s ‘lecture’ (a term my informers used) on the Ukraine. During the Direct Line, Putin continued to expand his views on this touchy subject. He was insulted by the West when they sent their gunboats to Crimea even though he had kindly paid heed to their wishes and withdrawn his troops from the Ukrainian border. He refused to meet with the President of Ukraine because Putin feels Zelensky is a puppet of the West. In brutally direct words, Putin said: “Why should I meet with [President] Zelensky since he has passed management of his country into foreign hands? The main issues concerning Ukraine are not decided in Kiev but in Washington and, partly, in Berlin and Paris. What is there to talk about?”

The Geneva rendezvous of two presidents remains an enigma. Why did they meet at all? They agreed that nuclear war is bad for all; fine! Didn’t they know that? Did they check on their partner’s soul, did they look into the eyes? Now we have some answers, based on conversations with my Israeli friends who had the advantage of hearing both sides, the Russians and the Americans. Our loyal readers deserve to know what actually happened in Geneva.

In brief: Biden came to tell Putin that the US is in good shape, has recovered from the pandemic, its economy is better than the Chinese one, and that he is in charge. The meeting was quite peaceful; Biden was rather mellow, while Secretary of State Blinken was in attack mode; he argued with his own president and tried to boss him about. The Russians were prepared for worse, much worse. They thought that the meetings of Biden with the G7 and with NATO would lead to a crescendo in Geneva, and were relieved to learn that this meeting was not a presentation of a united Western position towards Russia.

Prologue: A Preparation to the Summit

Putin gave an interview to NBC’s Keir Simmons. The idea was to prepare for the worst that could happen at the summit. Another man would tell Simmons to f*ck off after the first few questions, but Putin endured his immoderate rudeness and insults with a smile, like an Indian brave captured by enemies. He never descended to rudeness. Simmons spoke to Putin as Tim Sebastian on the BBC’s Hard Talk would; the Romans might have spoken thus to a king brought in chains to Rome. Putin endured all, and he became mentally prepared for rough treatment in Geneva. It was not necessary, in the end. The summit passed much better than the Western media expected.

I believe that the world needs Russia, not because it is wonderful, but so that the world does not fall under the iron heel of the Pentagon/CIA/Wall Street/NY Times. Russia is a guarantee of diversity. Marx in his days supported the colonisation of California; he thought it would be progressive. Trotsky, in his time, denied Marx, saying he would support the backward Indian chief fighting a progressive coloniser. Marx was on the side of progress, but I think Trotsky was right, fuck progress, diversity is more important.

At the summit

The only subject Biden spoke about on behalf of the united West was Belarus. He said the West had agreed to punish Lukashenko for the airliner landing and the dissident arrest. Putin replied without hesitation: Russia fully supports Belarus. They did what they were allowed to do by international law; they were within their rights. And nobody can punish Belarus without Russia’s consent.

On Ukraine, Putin ‘lectured’ the Americans (Blinken’s word). He said that Russia would agree to US participation in the Normandy process (this is a mediation process by Russia, Germany and France) but Merkel and Macron aren’t willing to let the US in. Biden said that the US could help to implement the Minsk agreements. (The Minsk agreements were signed between the Donbas and Kiev in the aftermath of the military defeat the Kiev army suffered at the hands the Donbas. By these agreements, Ukraine would become a federated republic with greater powers devolved to all its provinces including the Donbas. The Donbas would then reintegrate within the Ukraine. The Minsk agreements were never implemented, for Kiev by different subterfuges refused to devolve its powers. Russia wants the Minsk agreements to be implemented, and Putin called it the only way to settlement in the Ukraine). Biden’s words annoyed his Secretary of State Blinken. He said: it will be a waste of time, no need for us to get into it.

Referring to the Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden made an unexpected request. The US asked for temporary military bases to be established in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, for twin purposes: (1) to facilitate the withdrawal of US troops and (2) to keep supplying the Kabul government with arms and ammunition after the withdrawal. This request was (almost) unexpected, but Putin promptly refused it for the following reasons. Such bases would invite the ire of the Taliban, leading to them being necessarily attacked, and that these two states would be drawn into war. This is unacceptable for Russia, as Russia has military obligations there, and these states are very close to Russia proper. In addition, China would consider the placement of military bases near China’s border a hostile act.

Biden stressed the temporary nature of such an arrangement. Putin could say there is nothing as lasting as a temporary arrangement. He flatly refused. This is probably wise: Russia withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and there was no reason to import the Afghan war into old Soviet territory in order to please the old adversary. Putin could also have added that the Uzbek constitution explicitly forbids the placing of foreign bases on its soil, for good reason: when there was a US base in Uzbekistan, it was used by the Americans to promote pro-American political leaders who stood in opposition to the then president Mr Karimov. But Putin didn’t go into it, to avoid the impression of passing the buck to the Uzbek leader. The buck stops at the Kremlin. His reference to Chinese interests made a lasting impression, the Americans say. In 2001, the very same Putin allowed the US the facilities to attack Afghanistan and transfer equipment via Russia. Twenty years passed, and Putin had learned that playing up to the Empire carries no reward. Then he helped the US, as a payback, the US instigated the Chechen rising and terror attacks. Putin said so in Munich, in 2007.

The Biden team tried to surprise and pressure the Russians regarding Syria. Even before the summit, the US team tried to attach to the three declarative paragraphs of their joint declaration (quite vague and meaningless by themselves) a very meaningful fourth paragraph. It actually called for the perpetuation of the present-day Syrian disorder, for the perpetual break up of Syria, covering it with insincere words about attending to humanitarian needs. There were through-border arrangements at Bab al-Hawa used by the US and its allies to resupply the Islamist rebels in Syria and to withdraw them in case of need. Through these arrangements, Americans removed the ISIS fighters and moved them to Afghanistan, so they would fight the Taliban. Preserving these arrangements would lead to the permanent separation of the Idlib enclave. Russia was against it, and so the Russians stated and explained in the UNSC (UN Security Council).

As this subject will come before the UNSC on July 10, Russia intends to veto (if necessary) any resolution that would perpetuate this open gate into Syria. Syrians are indeed in need of humanitarian help, but the Syrian government is much better prepared to deal with crisis and the distribution of aid than the Islamist fighters who steal everything and sell the stuff at Turkish markets. Putin said that. He could add that if the US is concerned with Syrians’ well-being, it might lift the sanctions that starve Syrians. Syria is under Western sanctions that forbid even the import of food, medicines and fuel. In addition, the US steals Syrian oil and Iranian oil on its way to Syria. US appeals about the humanitarian crisis in Syria remind one of the father-killer who asks for mercy as an orphan. There would be no crisis in Syria if the West had not supported the Islamist rebels and sanctioned Syria to death.