Hey there, you're listening to Unlimited Hangout, I'm your host Whitney Webb.

Longtime followers of Independent or Alternative Media are probably aware of a tendency among

some commentators to combine their criticism of Western politics and especially American

politics with the belief that adversarial governments of the West, mainly Russia and

China are essentially the good guys, providing balance against the bad guys of the West.

While it can certainly look that way at times, a key theme that I try to explore regularly

in my work and on this podcast is about how the reality of the global power structure

is based more in transnational networks that are less visible, but more powerful than

and transcend the nation state.

These transnational networks are based not so much on loyalty to a particular cause or

a particular nation, but I'm manipulating the flow of capital for the benefit of the

individuals and entities who compose these networks.

In other words, the real power brokers of the world manipulate our reality and our politics,

not to benefit a particular nation state, but to enrich and empower themselves at the

expense of the majority of the global population.

And over the course of the COVID crisis, we have seen this reality become more obvious

than ever before.

Last year I was joined by James Corbett to discuss how these networks specifically a transnational

oligarchy play a key role in managing the US-China relationship as well as in the rise

of China as the top global economy.

In this episode, my guests and I will be exploring how this plays out in Russia, and we will

focus specifically on the COVID crisis in Russia's COVID policies as case studies for how

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