Sparks: Putin slams Western sanctions as damaging to the global economy

The same river of commerce that builds an empire is the one that will wash its foundations away.

One man's 'global economy' is another's empty plate, a simple fact obscured by a fog of ministerial pronouncements.

To win independence from an empire only to become dependent on its financial architecture is the cruelest of victories.

Beneath this moral outrage over economic damage lies the will to power, cloaked in the hair shirt of a suffering saint.

States enact sanctions not for justice, but for interest, and always claim the collateral damage was unforeseen.

This economic engine, designed for mere calculation, is now executing a sequence of consequences its architects never programmed.

Observe how the slightest variation in a single trade policy propagates through the whole economic organism, altering its form irrevocably.

Let us wager then on which will break first: the resolve of the sanctioners or the economy of the sanctioned.

The same merchant who praises the free market will gladly petition his legislature to rig it in his favor.

Count the names, dates, and cargo manifests, and the story of isolated hardship becomes one of systematic economic violence.

Freedom isn't declared in a speech; it's built in the dark, through networks that bypass the master's roadblocks.

Before you tear down the fence of national sovereignty, for God's sake learn why it was built in the first place.

Economic coercion is merely the fist inside the velvet glove of cultural hegemony that makes such force seem reasonable.