Escalating Extortion Rackets
Plus, more US sanctions under a new name.
Published: 2025-03-31
Updated 2025-04-01: A second article from MKB provides the details of the new US “deal” [debt trap] for Ukraine. The article reference and details were added.
Extortion
"Military Industrial [Congressional] Complex" really was too generous a euphemism. A more accurate label for the outgrowth of the US Department of War would have been the US War Industry, though this might have been a bit too brutal for Eisenhower.
The champagne corks were popping in the boardrooms of the US War Industry when Russia finally succumbed to the pressure of the terrorism being exerted on the Russian speaking peoples of the Donbas by the US puppet government in Kiev and its ultra-nationalist militias. Russia’s Special Military Operation converted the civil war into a international one.
European NATO member states emptied their inventories of Soviet era armaments gifting them all to Ukraine. This would create some of the purchase orders underneath Europe's current fantasy of spending a trillion Euro on rearming itself. The rest were created by slowly reducing the age of NATO armaments gifted to Ukraine, typified by Germany's move from Leopard 1 to Leopard 2 tanks. The US and its willing NATO allies also chose to fund Ukraine's government.
The most corrupt government in Europe was suddenly awash in money and armaments. The corruption got so bad that the US sent Mr. Burns (no, not the character from the Simpsons, the head of the CIA) to Kiev to demand that they tone the corruption down a bit. A modern, multiple launch rocket system had turned up in the hands of a Mexican drug cartel.
Meanwhile, Russia was quietly winning the war, destroying Ukraine’s gift wrapped military material. One can almost understand why the Ukrops were selling it instead of wasting it on the battlefield, so meagre was its impact. The Ukrops were not only gun running but also running an extortion racket in which to avoid being sent to die under Russian FABs (the glide bombs) or drones Ukrainians could pay the "recruitment officers" or "border security" to be left alone or emigrate.
Enter peacemaker dealmaker racketeer DJ Trump.
Just before his second inauguration Sir Starmer, the current occupant of No. 10 Downing St, signed a "100 year" deal with the expired President of Ukraine which contained annexes in which rights to mineral leases and ownership of ports and other utilities were secreted away. The powers behind the British government had seen the writing on the wall and wished to secure some profits from the likely soon to end war. As readers of this newsletter repeatedly remind this author, the theft of land and other national assets of Ukraine had started immediately after the 2014 US coordinated coup. The grasp for the Monopoly board ports, railways and electricity utilities and mineral leases was the Brits scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Trump would not be outdone by these Brits who’d undermined his first term with the Russiagate Hoax and campaigned against him for his second term. Re-branding the Democrats' "unending support" as unending "loans", he strode onto the extortion field demanding some of those "raw" earth minerals. He paused supplying US targeting data to get the Ukrops' attention. While Zelensky & co. were absorbed observing the tables being turning on them, the sneaky Russians popped up out of a gas pipeline and collapsed the one morale boosting, British conceived operation which the Ukrops' had going. Kursk crumpled.
Two inoperable, mini-ceasefire proposals negotiated between the US and Russia, and handed to the Ukrops to sign, have come and gone. Each has been instantly voided by Ukrainian attacks on Russia. At the same time, Trump regime operatives began to reiterate the Kremlin's point that Zelensky is politically illegitimate. Elections, Zelensky, elections are on the way!
Uncle Vlad has just slipped a note under the White House door suggesting they take a trip to New York and get the U.N. to put Ukraine under receivership government.
Within the framework of the United Nations peacekeeping operations, there have been several cases of what is termed external governance or temporary administration. This occurred in East Timor, I believe in 1999, in parts of the former Yugoslavia, and in New Guinea. In short, such precedents exist.
In principle, it would indeed be possible to discuss, under UN auspices with the United States and even European countries – and certainly with our partners and allies – the possibility of establishing a temporary administration in Ukraine. To what end? To conduct democratic elections, to bring to power a competent government that enjoys public trust, and only then to begin negotiations on a peace treaty and sign legitimate agreements that would be recognised worldwide as consistent and reliable.
[Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin in Murmansk on 2025-03-27, quoted by M. K. Bhadrakumar, whose article is noteworthy for several reasons mentioned in its citation in Sources.]
MKB noted that:
The Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi is expected to visit Moscow next week on Tuesday. It is entirely conceivable that the topic of UN governance in Ukraine will figure in Wang Yi’s talks.
The suggestion of a U.N. administered interim Ukrainian government to hold elections is a little strange given that the international body can't enforce international law in the face of a genocide by Israel. The US has moved from "just" providing political cover, funding and arms for the genocide, to an active military role in it by restarting its war against Yemen, the only nation using military means to apply economic pressure on the genocidal colony. How the U.N. is going to manage an interim Ukrainian government against neo-Nazis is anyone’s guess. But, Vlad is just being helpful, providing ideas for ways out of the mess which the West created. Being quoted by a former senior Indian diplomat will not do the creative proposal any harm. Indeed, if one squints a little one may even see a bit of BRICS in action with the idea voiced by Russia, noticed by India just before China is about to turn up in Moscow.
Returning to the racket, Team Trump has just issued a new "minerals deal" for Ukraine, extending it into the realm of owning utlitites and whatnot; theft of whatever is left to steal from their bankrupt and corrupt erstwhile ally, Ukraine. The special bond between the UK and US is deep [Carrol Quigley documented it in “The Anglo-American Establishment”]. They are now dual extorting a decrepit Ukraine.
MKB, in a next-day article, gave us The Telegraph’s description of the new “minerals deal”. It is a colossal debt trap which even the IMF may baulk at:
Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that under the latest version of the deal, the US would control half of Ukraine’s oil and gas reserves, its metals and much of its infrastructure, including railways, ports, pipelines and refineries, through a joint investment fund. The US plans to receive all profits until Ukraine pays it at least $100 billion in compensation for military aid, with a 4% surcharge. Kiev will start receiving 50% of the profits only after the debt is repaid.
[MKB]
Zelensky is caught between two former backers running an extortion racket on a far higher playing field that he and his ultra-nationalist backers had been running in Ukraine.
The Kiev regime is caught in a deathly vice between Western international larceny, ultra-nationalist violence and a war with Russia. The walls seem to be growing and closing in. A transformation is occurring from arms sales and forced conscription to the wholesale theft of national assets.
Behold, an escalating, international extortion racket!
Tariffs
To a man with Trump's talents, this is just stealing candy from a baby. Only challenging deals can slake his thirst for recognition. Surely, he can profit from both sides of the war!
As a first gambit towards his lofty ambition, he issued the clearest of threats, which the good people at Antiwar have reported for us:
“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault — which it might not be — but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said.
“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil,” the president added.
There is a backstory to this. It has gained little attention and begins to reveal the role that Trump's Tariffs will play in US economic warfare.
A week ago the US President issued an executive order in which he deputizes to the US Secretaries of State and Commerce the ability to impose tariffs. Those 25% tariffs can be imposed on nations which the secretaries believe are purchasing oil from Venezuela. This executive order is the first clear example of how the US will target its tariffs, tying them to the sanctions regime. Trump's threat of tariffs against Russia will, one would expect, follow the same pattern.
Trump's tariffs are sanctions by another name. The same tools are used from one US regime to the next. This, of course, is why the BRICS+ member states have been building financial instruments to work around the mightily abusive US dollar. Trump's tariffs will supposedly attack BRICS+ economies by raising prices in the US market. How Trump thinks this is going to work escapes me. It failed against Russia. The same strategy of avoidance will be used.
It takes a large amount of investment and construction, and hiring and training, to create cost effective consumer product manufacturing. Thus, while, and even if, this happens in the US, products from BRICS+ countries will be re-routed within them on their way to the US to avoid the tariffs. This is precisely what Russia did with the oil supplies which Europe was buying from it via India. The re-routing will work nicely, until are almost all BRICS+ nations are US tariff sanctioned. The intermediary beneficiaries will be shippers and lawyers.
The response to the end state of near universal US tariffs on BRICS+ is to abandon the US market. Thus, other markets are required.
One of the reasons that China is investing in the BRI project is to elevate economies in participating nations to create these exact markets. Beyond central and southwestern Asia, Africa is a particular prize, with both excellent natural resources and under-developed economies which could become important export markets.
I repeat, a potential end state of Trump's tariff war for BRICS+ is to just abandon the US market; an almighty Fuck You.
or support this work via Buy Me A Coffee or Patreon.
Sources
[Expect more references to be added as this fun hits the US media.]
A Third Way to end the war in Ukraine; M. K. Bhadrakumar; Indian Punchline; 2025-03-29
In this short article, MKB acknowledges that:
the Kursk disaster was an operation planned by the British.
MI6 have been providing personal security to Zelensky for years and are involved in the ultra-nationalists behind the Zelensky throne: “the MI6’s unholy alliance with the notorious Azov militia units comprising Ukrainian ultra-nationalists fired up by neo-Nazi ideology who wield control of the power apparatus in Kiev even today, is a key factor in the war”
Obama and then Vice-President Biden “were very much in the loop on the Russia hoax” manufactured with the assistance of MI6 (the Steele “dossier” of fabrications).
Trump-Putin parley is a bit under the weather; M. K. Bhadrakumar; Indian Punchline; 2025-03-31
'We Will Not Allow It': Zelensky Rejects New Mineral Draft That Would Recognize US Support As Loans; ZeroHedge; Archive.today; 2025-03-28
Trump Says He's 'Pissed Off' at Putin, Threatens 'Secondary Tariffs' on Russia; Dave DeCamp; Antiwar; 2025-03-30
IMPOSING TARIFFS ON COUNTRIES IMPORTING VENEZUELAN OIL; US Executive Government; The White House; 2025-03-24
The Anglo-American Establishment [the book, in PDF]; Carroll Quigley; 1981
Ray McGovern : Putin Addresses His Troops.; Napolitano interviews McGovern; Judging Freedom; 2025-03-31
Minerals deal HORROR. Elensky rejects US debt terms. NATO, ZERO Oreshniks. Meloni sides with Vance; Alex Christoforou; Alex Christoforou; 2025-03-29
Copyleft: CC0
Thank you for your thoughts.