Antony Blinken, Double Agent.

Uncle Volodya says, “…And the future is dark, and the present is spread, Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head..”

“That’s like leaping off a precipice and trying to knit yourself a parachute on the way down.”

Kelli Jae Baeli

“Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, ‘See, he is a wise man!’ Is it not so?”

H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure

“When every little bit of hope is gone
Sad songs say so much (ooh, la, la-la, ooh, la, la-la)”

Elton John, from Sad Songs (Say So Much)

The time has come to consider the unthinkable – that Antony Blinken, career politician and diplomat, foreign-policy advisor to the political stars and current United States Secretary of State, is a double agent secretly working for the Russian state. In this pursuit, judging from his performance, he seeks to help Russia sabotage American efforts to bring the goodly goodness of freedom and democracy to benighted masses around the world who know them not.

Okay, I’m being sarcastic, but come on – he must be. He gives such a convincing performance of trying to wrestle Russia to the ground so freedom-lovers everywhere can kick it to death …but somehow, his cunning plans keep resulting in a net benefit to Russia. He certainly doesn’t look that clever. But he wouldn’t be as effective as a Russian agent if his bumbling appeared to be anything other than a totally-unforeseen accident.

Take his earlier work on arm-twisting Europe into banning sales of Russian oil to European countries. Back then, Blinken took credit for persuading ‘European allies’ to kick sanctions up a couple notches by banning sales of Russian oil to the United States and those selfsame European allies, while ‘ensuring an appropriate supply of oil on world markets’. How’d that work out? Like an ashtray on a motorbike. The average price of gasoline in the USA is $4.90 per gallon, even with Preznit Biden releasing a million barrels of oil a day from the strategic national reserve for a forecast six months – the largest release in U.S. history – and calling on Congress to declare a three-month ‘gas-tax holiday’ for Americans. That’s a 55%-plus jump year-over-year from 2021. And the USA doesn’t even buy very much oil from Russia.

It’s…ummm…quite a bit worse in Europe. June gasoline average price in France, for example, is $2.19 USD per liter. To get the U.S. gallon price, multiply by 3.7 – $8.10. In the UK, $8.43. In the Netherlands, $9.21. Most western news sources blame it on ‘Russia’s war in Ukraine’, which had little to do with world gas prices directly, and everything to do with Washington-inspired sanctions which restricted the global supply of oil. Well played, Blinken.

Well played? Well, yes, if you consider who benefited from that self-inflicted debacle – Russia. It fell to the U.S. Senior Adviser for Energy Security, Amos Hochstein, to announce that Russia had made more money than ever; according to the International Energy Agency (IEA);

The International Energy Agency said in May that Russia’s oil revenue was up 50% since the beginning of the year to $20 billion a month, with the EU taking the biggest share of its exports. The EU’s ban on Russian oil, expected to take full effect at the end of the year, could cut that revenue.

‘Could’ cut that revenue. Take that forecast with the grain of salt appropriate to knowing the deliberate plan to crash Russia’s hydrocarbon revenues resulted in it making even more money than before the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, even as it sells less oil because the world price is higher, leaving it with more oil to sell at the higher price, and the oil ban will not even take effect until the end of this year.

If it ever happens. Germany is already gearing up for full-crisis mode, as natural-gas flows through the Nord Stream pipeline have been cut by 60%. Talking dildo and sometime German Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck announced the incipient panic, along with exhortations to stay strong and prepare for rationing.

Uh huh; that’s the same guy who strutted and pranced for the admiring western press back in March, and reported that Germany planned to halve Russian oil intake by summer – which is now, in most countries – and terminate Russian coal imports by autumn. This year. Yes, the same Germany that is now scrambling to find enough of its own coal to replace lost gas flows, while the same talking dildo – well, more of a weeping dildo, now – blubbers that this amounts to Vladimir Putin declaring war on Germany. I swear. I mean, you heard him say that what is happening now was Germany’s plan, and Germany was an enthusiastic (officially, anyway) participant in the sanctions which aimed to deliberately reduce dependence on Russian energy. And if it isn’t too much like kicking him when he’s down, I would like to point out that Germany’s plan to replace Russian energy relies on shipborne LNG imports transported by tanker, probably the single biggest contributor to global air pollution, and would drastically increase the amount of heavy marine transports at sea and maneuvering in restricted waterways where collision could be disastrous. Habeck himself – supposedly some kind of progressive – claims to have ‘secured deals’ to receive LNG imports from Qatar, which is a constitutional monarchy ruled by a male member of the al-Thani family since 1918. But it punishes Russia, see? Except, obviously, it doesn’t really, and the countries securing low(er) oil prices are India and China, one of whom is arguably the USA’s biggest geopolitical foe, and the other what the U.S. State Department considers a loose cannon that will not obey American directives. The latter has bought five times as much oil from Russia so far this year – only half over, remember – than it did all of last year, and both countries can use the savings to promote and support development the west cannot afford with energy prices so high. Well played, Agent Blinkenov.

“Since Russia’s invasion in late February, global oil prices have soared, giving refiners in India and other countries an added incentive to tap oil Moscow is offering them at steep discounts of $30 to $35, compared with Brent crude and other international oil now trading at about $120 per barrel.”

Like that? How about this?

“Chinese state-owned and independent refiners also have stepped up purchases. In 2021, China was the largest single buyer of Russian oil, taking 1.6 million barrels per day on average, equally divided between pipeline and seaborne routes, according to the International Energy Agency.”

China buys four times as much Russian oil as India, about 1.6 million barrels per day. And who’s in charge of pitching arguments to them, or at least to India, to cut it out? You know.

“The U.S. recognizes India’s need for affordable energy, but “we’re looking to allies and partners not to increase their purchases of Russian energy,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after a meeting of U.S. and Indian foreign and defense ministers in April.”

That’s right – double-nought Blinky, Kremlin enabler. Insert sinister bass-organ notes here.

But, as usual, that’s just background, and not even what I wanted to talk about; nope, what I wanted to talk about is Agent Blinkenov’s latest cunning plan to do for the world gold market what he did for the world energy market.

Gold is “the second most lucrative export that Russia has, after energy,” Blinken told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “It’s about $19 billion per year, and most of that is within the G7 countries. Cutting that off, denying access to about $19 billion of revenue a year, that’s significant.”

As the reference correctly pointed out, gold is a long way from Russia’s ‘second-most-lucrative export’. Russia signed contracts for more than $50 Billion in arms exports in 2021, and agricultural exports dwarf gold sales at $37 Billion. But more importantly, will American persuasion of its allies to stop buying Russian gold shut down Moscow’s gold revenues?

How? Gold is a fungible commodity – like oil, an ounce of gold is interchangeable with any other ounce of gold. That’s according to American guidance. The same reference goes on to lecture,

“There’s a reason why thousands of years ago, humans adopted gold, rather than some other commodity, as a medium of exchange in their commercial lives: Gold’s combination of luster, malleability, density, and  scarcity sets it apart from all other commodities known to humankind. Gold is uniquely portable,  identifiable, and available in finite quantities—the perfect combination for a reliable medium of exchange and store of wealth.”

Hmmm. Scarce, and available in finite quantities. Let me ask you this – what traditionally happens to the price of valuable commodities available in finite quantities when that commodity’s availability is artificially restricted?

Agent Blinkenov is setting up an increase in the price of a commodity that can easily be marketed by any country as having originated from its own reserves, and two of the top four global gold importers are countries that commonly just roll their eyes these days when Uncle Sam starts laying down the law – India and China. The biggest importer of gold, by a wide margin, is Switzerland, but Switzerland produces no gold of its own. If gold is harder to get, it will cost more. Not rocket science. Gluing this parcel of foolishness together are unenforceable regulations that will do nothing to stop the movement of Russian gold, while making its unstoppable trade in gold more lucrative.

Now that Alexei Kudrin has departed Russia for Israel in a liberal huff, because Russia does not take American orders seriously, his last job – Chairman of the Accounts Chamber – is vacant. I propose the position be offered to Blinken. After all, his machinations to increase Russia’s wealth and global influence cannot be made to look like accidents forever. At some point even American intelligence is going to catch on, and Blinken will need to be extracted. Planning for his long-term employment in Russia now will pay dividends later.

Come on, Ms. Zakharova; do I have to think of everything myself?