Marco D’Eramo, New Left Review:

It is not frequently noted that, for over two years, Covid-19 was used to justify the complete closure of China to the outside world: a sealing off which hadn’t occurred since the Qing dynasty attempted to block the importation of opium in the 1830s. The complete disappearance of Chinese tourists from other countries was only its most visible expression. From a certain perspective, Covid was the vehicle for the (at least partial) reorientation of China’s economy towards internal consumption; though here too, it merely highlighted a tendency that had begun before Trump’s election.

…

Globalization, the Chinese trade surplus and the American deficit are often folded together in a semi-mythic narrative. The story goes that China uses part of its surplus to buy US Treasury bonds in order to finance directly the US’s trade deficit – that is to say, American shopping in China. The graph below shows that this was substantially true until 2011 (indeed, we see an exponential increase in the Chinese Central Bank’s acquisition of US treasuries in the early 2000s). Yet the tale is interrupted in 2012. From then on, the amount of federal bonds held by Beijing has not increased – if anything, it has slowly diminished. Even as it continues to accrue an enormous yearly trade surplus, China has stopped buying new American bonds, only partially renewing those it already possesses.

Almost a quarter ($7.6 billion) of US public debt is held by other countries, but contrary to popular belief, the largest holder of American debt isn’t China ($1.095 billion in January 2022), but Japan ($1.3 billion). Nor are oil-producing states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE great acquirers of federal bonds; quite the opposite. Even more significant are the disproportionate amounts held by Luxembourg ($311 billion), Switzerland ($299 billion) and the Cayman Islands ($271 billion).

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The problem nobody seems capable of resolving is the superimposition of different temporal horizons: months of fighting in Ukraine; years of fallout from sanctions; and decades of a new world order (in which the eventual role of Russia remains a mystery, with or without Putin). What is certain is that the Chinese government is taking every precaution to avoid being hit by the unravelling of globalization, knowing full well that they – far more than Russia – are the real target of the US. After the phone call between Biden and Xi on 18 March, an anchor on Chinese state television mockingly paraphrased the former’s request to China: ‘Can you help me fight your friend so that I can concentrate on fighting you later?’

BBC:

Ukraine has called on countries to criminalise the use of the „Z“ symbol that shows support for the war.

Initially used to mark Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine, the letter Z – thought to stand for „za pobedu“ (for victory) – has been adopted by Russians to signal approval of the invasion.

Three German states – Berlin, Bavaria and Lower Saxony – have already said anyone brandishing the symbol to promote the war could be punished with up to three years in jail.

And Germany’s interior ministry has warned that those displaying the symbol to „endorse“ the invasion could be „liable to prosecution“.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dimitry Kuleba has called on other countries to follow Germany’s lead.

„‚Z‘ means Russian war crimes, bombed out cities, thousands of murdered Ukrainians,“ Kuleba tweeted. „Public support of this barbarism must be forbidden.“

The symbol has been daubed on a number of buildings in Germany, and has already been seen on T-shirts, flags and cars, according to the interior ministry.

Lithuania is among other countries considering a ban on the symbol. If approved there, offenders could face a fine of up to €500 (£423).

I have not been watching any hours, let alone hundreds and hundreds, as I tend to read, rather than watch much video. I do notice here, however, that as Ryan Chilcote says „targeting of civilian infra­structure“ we are shown a burned out armored car.

Die Zeit:

Und schließlich findet der Krieg in der Ukraine in den Öffentlichkeiten vieler Staaten schlicht nicht statt. Auch wenn der Krieg die Titelseiten praktisch aller Leitmedien in Europa und Nordamerika besetzt, ist er für die Gesellschaften in Südostasien, Südasien oder Lateinamerika ein fernes Ereignis mit primär ökonomischen Folgen – etwa für den Preis von Grundnahrungsmitteln. Darüber hinaus taugt Wladimir Putins Angriff kaum zur moralischen Entrüstung.

„The fact is that we’re in a situation where what complicates the situation at the moment is the escalatory efforts of Putin to continue and engage in carnage, the kind of behavior that that makes the whole world say, ‚My God, what is this man doing?‘ That’s what complicates things a great deal. And but I don’t think it complicates it at all.“

Die Zeit:

Mehrere Bundesländer gehen gegen das Z-Symbol vor, das als Unterstützungs­zeichen der russischen Armee im Krieg in der Ukraine gilt. Niedersachsen, Bayern und Berlin ordneten an, dass die öffentliche Verwendung des Symbols in Deutschland etwa bei Demonstrationen strafbar ist. Nordrhein-Westfalen kündigte an, strafrechtliche Konsequenzen zu prüfen.

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Grundlage für das Vorgehen der Länder ist Paragraf 140 Nummer zwei des Strafgesetzbuches. Demnach wird ein Verhalten unter Strafe gestellt, das als öffentlich zur Schau getragene Billigung von Angriffskriegen zu verstehen und geeignet ist, den öffentlichen Frieden zu stören.

Anthony Zurcher, BBC:

Over the past week, US President Joe Biden has made a series of unscripted remarks that have upped the temperature of US-Russia relations to near boiling point.

However, his ad-libbed line at the end of what was billed as a „major speech“ in Poland on Saturday – seemingly calling for President Vladimir Putin to be removed from power – may have landed the hardest.

…

The speed with which the US issued its „clarification“ – later echoed by Mr Blinken – suggests the US understands the danger inherent in Mr Biden’s words.

Earlier in the day, the US president had called Mr Putin a „butcher“. Last week, he seemed to get ahead of his own administration’s diplomatic process by accusing the Russian leader of war crimes.

…

Idaho Republican Jim Risch, the senior Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, called Mr Biden’s remarks a „horrendous gaffe“.

„My gosh, I wish they would keep him on script,“ he said. „Any time you say or even, as he did, suggest that the policy was regime change, it’s going to cause a huge problem. This administration has done everything they can to stop escalating.“

I can’t recall when I read language laying out more clearly the existence of the US president as marionette, spokesman for policymakers rather than orchestrator of policy. This was very obviously the case during the George W. Bush and Reagan administrations, but I don’t remember reading media reporting it so clearly.

Ted Postol:

My grave concern is I know some of these characters who worked for Obama, and who now work for Biden. And I’m sorry to say it—I know it will be considered arrogant to say this—but they are ignorant. Let me be very clear: this is not an accidental statement on my part. They are outright ignorant. And they’re a bunch of—you know, they trained at these elite schools; they don’t know anything, but they think they know things.

I have taught at Stanford; I have taught at MIT; I have taught at Princeton and at Harvard. So I know what a lot of these people are, because they are very privileged—this is of course a generalization; there are certainly some extremely intelligent and thoughtful people among these. But a great bulk of these people are just completely in love with themselves; they are convinced that they know a lot more than they do; they will not listen, they’re not interested in learning—I mean, you try to present facts to them, they sort of walk away from you laughing.

And they are not experts. And it’s not a problem—it’s no problem at all that they are not experts. The problem is that they’re not interested in learning. So, you know, I had this character, a guy named Colin Kahl, he’s the deputy assistant secretary now for policy at the Pentagon. He doesn’t know anything. He was at Stanford, they made him a co-director of the center there. Rude beyond belief. And you know, he tells me at one point, I’m trying to discuss something with him—discuss something—he turns around and he says, I’ve got a job, I’ve got a real job, I don’t have time for this. This is a guy who’s at the Department of Defense, top levels now, possibly advising Biden.

This is the danger. And if we look at the Obama administration, we saw similar dangers. There’s a very interesting Atlantic Monthly article written by a guy named Ben Rhodes. Rhodes was the national security advisor for communications in the White House, and he wrote a totally fraudulent, supposedly government intelligence report that was released to the public about the nerve agent attack that occurred in Damascus in August of 2013.

And it’s very interesting; I would suggest your readers go read that Atlantic Monthly article. Because in his attempt to show everybody what a smart guy he is, he’s revealing that his main objective with Obama, with the president, was to get him to make a decision which would have been a disaster for the United States, but he [Rhodes] didn’t know it. But to attack Syria, before the public outrage from the misinformation people had about that nerve agent attack died down. In other words, he didn’t want the public outrage to die down before he forced or tricked or got Obama to make a momentous decision that would have been a disaster for the United States. A total disaster. [Ironically, it was Russian President Putin who pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of that fire.]

So Rhodes is bragging about in this article about the role he played. That’s a real window that people ought to use to look into the mindset of an individual who basically, through privilege and accident [check out Collegiate School in Manhattan, where he spent his formative years], became a national security advisor with no real knowledge of what’s going on.

So we’re in a dangerous situation. We have a lot of—I’m sorry, because I’m so disturbed by this—we have a bunch of punks, you know, 30-year-old punks who come from privileged backgrounds, claiming they’re experts in policy when they actually do not have the basic knowledge. And they’re advising presidents. And this is not a good professional system. we need to do something about it.