#MULTIPOLARITY

[sayruq]

[CONT] Seychelles

[kneedeepincynade]

Happy pride month to all comrades! Let's use this month to remember the roots of the movement and set ahead the revolutionary task to clean it from reactionaries. The liberals aren't friends of the movement but one of its enemies! Ask yourself what they have done to protect you? They always fanfare about being progressive and supportive, but what have they done when the push came? Nothing, they sold you! Their politicians refused to defend you when the right demanded your head, and they are more than willing to let you die if you don't support their genocide and their corrupted president. To them, you are only a pawn to destabilize the enemy of the hegemonic order and to further amplify the divide among the proletariat. If you want freedom, don't fall for their traps, choose socialism and choose liberty for all oppressed!

[workersolidarity]

*closes my eyes and taps my shoes together*

The US Dollar is still the dominant reserve currency

The US Dollar is still the dominant reserve currency

The US Dollar is still the dominant reserve currency

[theculturedmarxist]

Western media start to note how their politicians' unwavering support for Israel and Ukraine is diminishing their countries' global standing.

At Naked Capitalism Yves Smith notes the devastating political effects of the Gaza bombing on Biden's foreign policies:

Biden Gets Zelensky Treatment in Middle East as Israel Tries to Escalate

The US, in a continued demonstration of the degree of enbubblement of what passes for its leadership, seems to believe it still has the force and soft power to be able to bully talk its way out of its geopolitical messes. Yet this week we have stunning examples of how critical players in the rest to the world no longer buy what the US is selling. The gap between the American establishment’s connection to reality and facts on the ground has opened up to a yawning chasm as the Arab world, as Jordan cancelled a Biden summit with its King Abduallah II plus PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in response to Israel’s shelling of Al-Ahli Arab hospital. Not only are they rejecting the attempt to shift blame for the attack to Hamas (we’ll soon address the “rogue shell” claim), but also the bigger pretense behind that, that the US is incapable of, as opposed to unwilling to, applying the choke chain to Israel. Even the Western media are not much on board with the Israeli and Biden Administration pretense that somehow Hamas dunnit, when Israel has been trying to herd Palestinians out of northern Gaza and specifically attempted to order the evacuation of the hospital. Oh, and this follows Israel ordering the UN to evacuate from Gaza in 24 hours and then shelling its warehouse there: ...

Israel bombed, probably with a U.S. made Hellfire missile, the courtyard of the Baptist al-Ahli Arab hospital where thousands had sought refuge. A short video of the immediate aftermath shows several dozens if not hundreds of dead and wounded. Doctors later held a press conference while standing among some of the casualties.

Like other hospitals al-Ahli Arab had been told by Israel to evacuate but could not do so as there are no other places where the sick and wounded, including many intensive care cases, could be cared for.

Three days earlier, notes the UN, the same hospital had, like others, already been bombed:

14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured. Sources: Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication

To then claim, as Biden did, that 'the other team' was responsible for the attack is unfathomable.

It was also way too late says a RUSI fellow:

Going to repeat this as the situation has moved more in the past 16 hours than in the previous week. The plates have shifted, radically. The window for Israeli operations has shrunk from more than a month, to a few days...if at all. That is now the reality of where we stand.

No country besides the U.S. and a few Europeans will ever defend such barbarity. They will simply stop listen to what the 'west' has to say.

The Financial Times quotes a G7-official who struggles with this global divide:

Rush by west to back Israel erodes developing countries’ support for Ukraine (archived)

Western support for Israel’s assault on Gaza has poisoned efforts to build consensus with significant developing countries on condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine, officials and diplomats have warned. The reaction to the October 7 attack on Israel by Islamist militant group Hamas and to Israel’s vow to hit back against Gaza has undone months of work to paint Moscow as a global pariah for breaching international law, they said, exposing the US, EU and their allies to charges of hypocrisy. In the flurry of emergency diplomatic visits, video conferences and calls, western officials have been accused of failing to defend the interests of 2.3mn Palestinians in their rush to condemn the Hamas attack and support Israel. ... The backlash had solidified entrenched positions in the developing world on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, officials said. They warned that this could derail future diplomatic efforts on Ukraine. “We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” said one senior G7 diplomat. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.” ... Some American diplomats are privately concerned that the Biden administration’s response has failed to acknowledge how its broad support of Israel can alienate much of the Global South.

Looking at the current BRI anniversary meeting of some 140 states in Beijing, the New York Times voices similar concerns:

New Global Divisions on View as Biden Goes to Israel and Putin to China

Russia and China are siding with a Palestinian people seeking liberation and self-determination, while in Washington’s eyes, they themselves deny those same possibilities to the Ukrainians, the Tibetans, the Uyghurs and even to the Taiwanese. But in their reluctance to blame Hamas and effort to associate themselves with the Palestinian cause, both Russia and China are appealing to a wider sentiment in the so-called Global South — and in large parts of Europe, too. For them, it is Israel that is conducting a colonialist policy by its occupation of the West Bank, its encouragement of Jewish settlers on Palestinian land and its isolation of the 2.3 million people of Gaza, who are subjected even in normal times to sharp restrictions on their freedoms. The Global South, a term for developing nations, is a vital area of the new competition between the West and the Chinese-Russian alternative, said Hanna Notte, the director of a Eurasia program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. From the point of view of many in the Global South, she said, “the United States fights Russia, the occupier of Ukraine, but when it comes to Israel, the U.S. is on the side of the occupier, and Russia taps into that.”

The editorial board of the Washington Post also declares the failure of U.S. policies:

It would be a moral and strategic mistake to ignore Gaza’s plight

Still, the plight of Gazans has been treated by the United States and the wider international community as a sad but immutable fact in an irresolvable conflict. This was a moral and strategic error, helping promote the instability that has, for now, wrecked efforts on the part of Israel, the United States and Arab states to build a durable diplomatic settlement among the region’s big players.

The Carnegie Council explains how the global rift necessitates a change in western policies. It especially sees a need to ditch the so called "value-" or "rules-based-order" policies:

A Requiem for the Rules-Based Order The Case for Value-Neutral Ethics in International Relations

Regardless of how it eventually concludes, the Russo-Ukrainian War represents a seismic event signaling profound changes in the global landscape. The unipolar era is at its end, major countries are more concerned with their cultural sovereignty and strategic autonomy than they have been in decades, and it seems inevitable that the once-dominant Western hegemony must gradually yield to a more diverse and multipolar system. The period following World War II witnessed the ascendancy of the United States and its allies as architects of a new international order premised on the institutionalization of Western values such as democracy and human rights. This Western-centric approach to global governance—known as the “rules-based order”—has encountered mounting challenges. China's rise, Russia's geopolitical subversiveness, and the growing assertiveness of emerging powers from the Global South have eroded Western dominance. The outcome is a more diverse world, characterized by multiple centers of power coexisting, challenging any single ideology or set of substantive values. ... Our particular sense of morality in the West should not stop us from aspiring to pursue what’s both wise and right. The evolving international order, characterized by polycentrism and multipolarity, challenges the conventional Western-dominated “rules-based” order. Drawing from Nietzsche's perspective on values, we recognize that values are context-dependent rather than innate, timeless, or universal. Similarly, the decline of our ancien regime does not spell the end of international ethics. If the current transition is understood correctly, it could promise the birth of a new normative system based on a functional, value-neutral, situational, and diplomatic ethic that has its primary concern in managing reciprocal relations between world powers. Instead of attempting to impose our values on others (no matter how good or true we think they are), we in the West should prioritize engagement with other major powers based on common interests and shared objectives. ... ... In sum, within the intellectual framework offered by cultural realism, we need an alternative instrumentalist and pragmatic ethic that 1) accepts the realities of power politics and spheres of interest without moralizing and projecting a Manichaean mentality upon the world, and 2) is grounded in principles that are conducive to a pluralist modus vivendi, including mutual and equal recognition, statesmanship, non-interference, humility, strategic empathy, and open dialogue.

Some might say that the west will never change its behavior but I do not believe that.

The west WILL HAVE TO change its behavior or it will go down into history's graveyard. There is no longer an alternative as the 'rules based order' has proven to be an unsellable dead end.

Posted by b on October 18, 2023 at 15:31 UTC

[thefreethoughtprojectcom]

Those who question multipolarity do not believe that any system of global governance can possibly serve the interests of humanity. Such as system is, by default, designed to benefit oligarchs, not the people.

Read More: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/foreign-affairs/multipolarity-is-just-the-new-world-order-by-another-name

#TheFreeThoughtProject #TFTP

[saltedlimes]

Imo a major takeaway is that escalatory attacks without enough power to end things harm more than they help in the long run. Ultimately the US is the one giving these junior partners enough money and support to keep up their violence against neighbors, and US imperialism must end before we can see an end to major conflicts like this one.

Also the point about how Hamas could possibly be being used to redirect attention away from the stalled Ukraine offensive and the unpopularity of the Israeli government was very interesting to me.

[whatisonthemoon]

The weakening of domestic resistance to U.S. militarism has resulted from the abolition of the draft and distancing of war from the public because of the reliance on private military contractors and sophisticated military technologies like drones. Of the more than 241,000 people killed in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, only one percent were U.S. military personnel.

Trump and other Republicans have effectively directed the lower-middle class’s resentment of the deteriorating economic and political situation toward China, whereas Obama, Clinton and Biden and the Democrats have done the same with the upper-middle class and Russia. The political climate in the U.S. increasingly resembles the McCarthyist period of the 1950s consequently, and in certain ways that of Germany in the early 1930s.

[ininterestingtimes]

Why the Global South Is Raising the Russian Flag

The people of Africa and much of the rest of the Global South are increasingly raising high the Russian flag in protest as a symbol of defiance and resistance against US-led Western Global Hegemony and as a symbol of hope for a multi-polar world. - The Real Politick with Mark Sleboda

[shamsaddinmegalommatis]

BRICS+: Bright or Dark Perspectives of a Block of Countries in the Path to Real or Delusional Multipolarity

When last August, in the XV BRICS summit (22-24.8.2023), it was announced that the five constituent members of the Block (China, India, Russia, and Brazil, as initial members in 2006, with the addition of South Africa in 2010) agreed to admit another six (6) countries, namely Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE (herewith mentioned in alphabetic order; Argentina did not make use of the offer, following the recent presidential elections), the member states ushered the world community in a new era. The groundbreaking decision will be effect January 1st 2024. The development -in and by itself- is neither good nor bad; the outcome will depend on the choices that will be made and the changes that will be implemented with respect to the nature, the status, the function, the targets, and the international role of the Block itself. In fact, right now, all options are open.

Contents

I - What BRICS is and what it is not 

II - Strong points of BRICS

III - Weak points of BRICS

IV - The Expansion of BRICS

V - What next for the BRICS?

VI - Economic interests can be the basis of only loosely associated states (or a League), not a union of states

VII - Multilateral organizations of states can never be established as an opposite pole of a world power

VIII - Multipolarity: a reality or a delusion?

IX - Multipolarity tomorrow: a reality only through the isolation of the unipolar world center

What is better or more suitable? Is it wise to enlarge BRICS or to deepen the integration of this block of 11 countries? The challenges are enormous and the repercussions will be cataclysmic for the entire world. This topic has indeed been controversial for some time; Russia, India and Brazil were not enthusiastic about China's incessant suggestions for the "influx of fresh blood". In fact, the decision to invite six emerging market group countries was a compromise; several other states had expressed their wish to join, but after numerous deliberations, for various reasons they were not accepted now.

Before new members arrive, the existing partners should define what they truly want BRICS or BRICS+ to be; this issue is still perplex, diverse and vague. In this regard, it is crucial to always recall that the original concept of BRIC (for only four countries) is credited to an Englishman, namely Jim O'Neill (Baron O'Neill of Gatley), who was at the time the chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management; the idea was first expressed within very different context -quite noticeably- in November 2001.

However, the governments concerned took some time to explore and evaluate the thought before adapting it to their interests and perspectives; the first high-level meetings started in 2006, and the first formal summit (4 members) was held in Yekaterinburg in July 2009. Everyone today effortlessly understands that the world was very different at the time; meanwhile, the achievements of the 5-country block, although significant for the beneficiaries, were modest at the international level.  

Consequently, before considering BRICS as the perfect counterbalance to the West (as President Putin stated openly last year), it is essential for anyone to accurately understand what BRICS is, what it is not, what it can be, and what it cannot.  

I - What BRICS is and what it is not 

BRICS is not an 'organization' like the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), which is a Eurasian political, economic, international security and defense organization, and the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union), which is an economic union of several post-Soviet states located in Eurasia. To be constructive and effective in his approach to this topic, an astute observer should dissociate three totally distinct issues:

a- the hitherto achievements of the 5-country block;

b- what BRICS is nowadays; and

c- what BRICS can become in the future. In this regard, what Muhammad Kamal wrote in the Egyptian daily Al Masry al Yom (« نحو عضوية «البريكس; Towards BRICS Membership) is totally inconsistent; worse, his pessimism for Egypt's adhesion to the 5-country block only reflects the wishes of the idiotic and corrupt stooges of Western embassies in Cairo. This type of thought may be disastrous for Egypt. If BRICS did not achieve 'much' in the past, this fact hinges on eventually misplaced worldviews and pointless considerations that the member states may have had. All the same, with a new approach, with an accurate perception of what an expanded BRICS can or cannot become, and with a strong commitment to the interests of these countries' populations, one can certainly mark a spectacular success.

Definitely, BRICS is not an organization; it is not an economic bloc, in spite of the numerous projects launched and materialized, such as the New Development Bank (launched in 2014-2015), the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), the BRIC Cable (the construction of which has not yet started), joint publications, and various initiatives. Under discussion are issues of paramount importance, namely a potential BRICS payment system and an eventual common currency. It becomes therefore evident that there are slow steps toward a comprehensive partnership.

Precisely because BRICS is not an organization, they don't have a proper portal, as it happens in the case of existing international bodies like the SCO, the Turkic Union or the African Union. Instead, they have a rudimentary site with basic info, and every annual meeting comes up with a separate, new site.

The rest is up to private initiatives, think tanks, research centers, online magazines, and the world's mass media.

As group of countries, BRICS is a heteroclite array of states with certain common interests, but also with very divergent economies, structures and legislations, and partly different socioeconomic visions; until now, no common long-term perspective has been envisaged – let alone agreed upon. This means that the governments of the member states have to seriously consider and scrupulously study how they will manage to set up a common economic space and how to first offer themselves the necessary tools in order to advance in that direction. 

Many charts, tables, drawings and tables have been produced in order to highlight to all what BRICS really is; but this approach comprises also a drawback that can cause confusion and misjudgment. This is due to the fact that each visual representation highlights only one aspect of the reality; however one gets a complete idea of the reality, only if one goes through illustrations of all the existing aspects of the reality. One missing diagram about the BRICS is enough to obscure our understanding and confuse our perception.

II - Strong points of BRICS

As of end 2023, over 3.3 billion people lived in the BRICS countries, making more than 40% of the world population; BRICS states stretch over 30% of the world's land surface and account for 26% of the global economy. The 5-country block represents 18% of trade in goods and 25% of foreign investment. At this point, we already face some challenges in our effort to quantify the reality. Verifiable facts like the area and the population of a country are undeniable points of reference; the area of a country is measured in kilometers square, whereas the population is estimated in millions or thousands of people. However, when it comes to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country, there are two diametrically opposed methods of calculation; the end results may be very divergent.

GDP estimates published by financial and statistical institutions are calculated at market or government official exchange rates. But what is called 'Nominal GDP' is stated without taking into consideration the existing differences in the cost of living among the countries. This means that the data presented can vary enormously from one year to another due to fluctuations in the currency exchange rates; but this may be temporary and therefore irrelevant.   

That is why GDP (PPP) forecast estimates are to be considered as a better reflection of the economic realities, and of the comparison between two countries; to sort this data and publish their databases, financial and statistical institutions calculate using both, market and government official exchange rates. PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) is a method of measuring that takes into consideration the relative cost of local goods, services and inflation rates of the country.

The ensuing difference can be colossal: China's nominal GDP for the year 2023 is 19.37 trillion US$, but the PPP-based GDP of China for the same year is 33 trillion US$; on the contrary, on either case, US GDP amounts to 26.85 trillion US$. As it can be surmised, PPP-based GDP is preferable for comparison; all the same, the size of an economy being also a matter of political propaganda, many Anglo-Saxon institutions deliberately show a predilection for Nominal GDP in order to occasionally show that Russia is not among the top ten economies of the world.

III - Weak points of BRICS

Be that as it may, the aforementioned impressive figures about the BRICS are not attested on other occasions; for instance, the total voting quota of the 5-country block in the IMF is only 14.7%, although in 2021 they accounted for about a third of world GDP, a fifth of world trade, about a quarter of direct investment, and their foreign exchange reserves reached 35% of the world's total. This point was highlighted by President Putin in his address to President Xi Jinping on 22nd June 2022.

On another note, in the US$ 109 trillion world stock market, BRICS represent only a small segment of the world market capitalization (around 20%), whereas the US, which is home to 39 of the 100 largest companies in the world, has more than 40% of the market and the European Union amounts to ca. 11%.  

IV - The Expansion of BRICS

On the basis of the above mentioned data, one can understand that the recently admitted six (6) countries do not constitute a major expansion. When it comes to total area (in kilometers square), the six states {Argentina (2.780.400 km2), Saudi Arabia (2.149.690 km2), Iran (1.648.195 km2), Ethiopia (1.104.300 km2), Egypt (1.002.450 km2) and UAE (83.600 km2)} amount to ca. 20% (8768635 km2) of the land surface of the BRICS countries (ca. 40 million km2).

Similarly, with respect to population, the six newly accepted states {Ethiopia (107.334.000), Egypt (105.388.000), Iran (85.298.600), Argentina (46.654.581), Saudi Arabia (32.175.224) and UAE (9.282.410)} have a total population of 386.132.815 people, which is around 10% of the current population of BRICS. However, the 11-country block will be home to almost half the population of the world (46%); this marks a significant threshold indeed.

Similar conclusions we draw concerning the economic indicators of the six newly admitted states and notably their PPP-based GDP; combined the GDP of the six countries {Saudi Arabia (2.300.967 US$ million), Egypt (1.803.584 US$ million), Iran (1.691.819 US$ million), Argentina (1.274.807 US$ million), UAE (890.171 US$ million), Ethiopia (393.847 US$ million)} is around 8.350.000 US$ million; in other words, the six states produce only one seventh (1/7) of the total GDP of the current BRICS member states (56 US$ trillion).

This aspect was duly discerned also by those who are accustomed to rather take into account the nominal GDP; that's why they underscored the fact that "Saudi Arabia is the only trillion-dollar economy being added to the BRICS".

Combined the nominal GDP of the six new member states {Saudi Arabia (1.061.902 US$ million), Argentina (641.102 US$ million), UAE (498.978 US$ million), Egypt (378.110 US$ million), Iran (367.970 US$ million), Ethiopia (156.083 US$ million)} amounts to 3.1 US$ trillion; this is about one ninth (1/9) of the nominal GDP of the current BRICS member states (27.7 US$ trillion).

If we stop at this point and we do not further explore the manifold aspects of BRICS expansion, we will be left with the idea that, due to necessary compromises, the first major phase of BRICS expansion did not include several other countries, which also expressed the interest to join, notably Algeria, Belarus, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Vietnam, etc. But this will prevent us from observing a very interesting and crucial aspect of the development. As a matter of fact, this was not particularly highlighted by anyone in the world's mainstream mass media. There is indeed one economic sector in which the present stage of BRICS expansion made a significant breakthrough; this is the energy sector, and more particularly, the Oil production.

As a matter of fact, the addition of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE will more than double BRICS' share of global oil production. With six out of the nine top oil producers being BRICS+ member states (Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Brazil, Iran, UAE), the 11-country block represents 43% of the world oil production.

This means that, in spite of the compromises made, BRICS made a big step ahead in preparing their forthcoming transformation from an ill-defined block of countries to a well-defined organization that will change the post-WW II world drastically and irrevocably. As I already said, the concept that they will have to adopt for their alliance is that of the common economic space.

V - What next for the BRICS?

Dangling between long term strategy and everyday opportunities, the governments of the 5- or 11-country block can really make of their partnership whatever they want. They can turn it to the tool par excellence for the transformation of the present world; indeed, they can make of the BRICS+ the cornerstone in the foundation of a human world order of unity, equity, justice, lawfulness, concord, and worldwide cordiality. Reversely, they can neglect their imagination, fail to create a vision, ignore their intellect, and thus waste their time.

In this regard, it is clear that BRICS+ will be the reflection of the shared vision that the member states, the respective governments, and -above all- the civil societies will initiate. It is therefore essential to avoid extreme optimism or pessimism and to make an effort not to mix a long term perspective with any type of unnecessary political propaganda. The difference can be understood in the following examples:

Speaking about Russia’s vision of the BRICS+ format as early as February 2018, Sergey Ryabkov, a noteworthy statesman and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister since 2008, stated: «we suggest that our partners consider BRICS+ as a platform for developing what could be termed an 'integration of integrations'».

This sounds as sheer advocacy of the 'single economic space' concept, which leads to economic union. Quite contrarily, Sergei Lavrov (Center for World Politics and Strategic Analysis) and Kirill Babaev (Director of the Institute of China and Modern Asia), both of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in their article «И вширь, и вглубь - Пути укрепления институциональной основы БРИКС» (Both in breadth and in depth - Ways to strengthen the institutional framework of BRICS / Бабаев К.В., Лавров С.В. И вширь, и вглубь // Россия в глобальной политике. 2023. Т. 21. № 5. С. 69–81)

present a far more realistic approach, opting for the 'common economic space' concept.

There are important differences between the two concepts, and it is essential to make this point clear, because the 'single economic space' concept simply cannot work in the case of BRICS, and even more so that of BRICS+. This is exactly what the authors of the aforementioned article do; the question is whether this is enough.

VI - Economic interests can be the basis of only loosely associated states (or a League), not a union of states

At this point, taking into consideration the international situation as it is evidently downgrading over the past few years, the governments of the BRICS+ member states must truly become consciously serious in their judgment, drastically bold in their action, and greatly resourceful in their vision before they are soon met with an aggravated deterioration of the world order in which their efforts will unfortunately be irrevocably meaningless.  

Although BRICS+ governments are correct in their analyses and conclusions as regards the major structural problems of the world economy, they all apparently fail to understand where the world community is led to; this is due to the prevailing, very confusing, and definitely perplex situation. But the present condition of the world affairs makes of the aforementioned economic problems only a tiny sector of the very grave troubles that currently exist and impact every human across the Earth.

Consequently, in spite of the fact that the world economy is in major trouble, all its aspects cannot be tackled independently of the other, grave and thorny, issues of intellectual, academic, educational, scientific, cultural, and socio-governmental order that we are currently facing. As a matter of fact, erroneous intellectual concepts, delusional interpretations of the reality, intentional distortions of World History, ideological aberrations, and overwhelming oppression of indigenous cultures are at the origin of developments that brought the world economy to the brink of collapse. Scientific absurdities, military interventions, and corrupt governmental practices contributed to the overall deterioration, and have therefore to be also taken into consideration.   

As far as BRICS+ member states are concerned, there is one word that terminally encapsulates the aforementioned reality in its totality: Western colonialism. What matters in this regard is that this term is not to be identified with only its military, political and economic dimensions.

Colonialism is basically a criminal and anti-human development the most crucial dimension of which is cultural; culture determines the psychology of people, nations, ruling classes and governments, and this -in turn- impacts the local economy.

In addition to the aforementioned points, there is a critical factor which must also be taken into account: only a union of loosely associated states can ever be successfully established on the basis of economic interests. This is a fundamental condition to retain. As situation, it is due to the fact that states do not exist in themselves, but constitute the receptacle of human activity related to the administration and the governance of the society.

Consequently, a number of states can form an effective organization that will impact worldwide developments only on the basis of major decisions taken by conscious peoples and statesmen genuinely representing their societies, which are known for their historically diverse values, distinct moral principles, varied cultural heritage, but shared goals and common vision. But this is much broader than an economic union.

The perfect example of failure is in this regard offered by the European Union. The debilitated union of states started before 72 years with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC; 1952), which was designed to integrate the coal and steel industries in Western Europe (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Evaluated for that purpose, ECSC was good, but it could never progress in the direction of transformation from an economic community to one nation-state.

Different peoples do not integrate into one nation-state without a unifying force; this can certainly be a faith, a cult, a worldview or even an ideology, but never economic interests. That is why BRICS+ member states, although they are forced to define how to set up a 'common economic space', have to broaden the box and try to see things as widely as they can.

VII - Multilateral organizations of states can never be established as an opposite pole of a world power

In spite of the urgency of their economic demands for new standards and rules or a new world order (as many people say), BRICS+ member states have got to approach the world affairs in a different, far broader, and definitely comprehensive manner. This imperative is due to both, their incomparably enormous size and the undeniable fact that they altogether constitute a worldwide organization with major, not only economic, interests that they have in common. Actually, the troubles that all these countries face at the level of the international trade and world economy are due to

a- political developments that took place over the last70-80 years,

b- two successive World Wars,

c- numerous earlier conflicts,

d- extreme ideological aberrations,

e- preposterous intellectual assumptions,

f- outrageous educational-academic forgeries, and

g- a 5-century long, nefarious and calamitous, colonial legacy.

In this case, BRICS+ member states cannot possibly imagine that they are able to rectify a so deeply rooted injustice and inhumanity that prevail worldwide by merely sidestepping the US dollar via

- local currency trading,

- Mbridge (a multi-central bank digital currency platform, which is shared among participating central banks and commercial banks, as it is built on distributed ledger technology in order to enable instant cross-border payments and settlement) or

- other alternative payment routes and methods of de-dollarization.

In fact, their true problem is what is accurately called 'the Collective West' in its entirety. The US dollar replaced indeed the British pound as the world’s reserve currency (in 1944 following the Bretton Woods Agreement); it ceased unilaterally to be convertible to gold (in 1971, due to the so-called Nixon shock); and it became the sole currency in which Saudi Arabia is paid for Oil (in 1974, as per the terms of the Saudi Arabia and US Agreement on Cooperation, signed June 8, that made the petrodollar possible, which also known as 'the petrocurrency effect' and 'the petrodollar recycling').

However, all these developments consist, truly speaking, in Microhistory, if viewed within a wider context. In fact, they constitute only in the latest episodes of the colonial conquest, contamination and putrefaction, which have progressively enveloped the world. That is why BRICS+ member states must see things within a macrohistorical context and shape their decision making processes accordingly.

Precisely because the aspects of the world troubles are so many, BRICS+ member states have to realize that the country, which capitalized on its monetary privilege, namely the petrodollar, did so while also defending all the other aspects of the 5-century long Western predominance, which proved to be catastrophic for the entire world, except for the West European colonial powers and their annexes.

As a matter of fact, the historically true definition of the USA is not "the country with the US dollar as national currency", but "the heir of 5-century long, colonial legacy". This is what the US stands for – not just a currency.

Indeed, the US dollar is not only the default world currency, but at the same time, the strongest currency of the Western world. All the same, people often tend to forget that the American currency was first one of the strongest in the Western world, then its strongest, and only 'recently' the world's medium of exchange. It is therefore undeniable that, also at the financial and economic level, it represents the 'Collective West'.

Due to the successive historical developments, which led the entire Mankind to the present occurrence and on which the US predominance has persistently based its delusional legitimacy, it would be foolish to believe that the US will ever accept the reduction of the systemically omnipotent Western world into merely two or three poles (EU, US, and -eventually- Japan) of a delusional multipolar system composed by them and by the rising, major BRICS+ forces. Nuclear wars of any form are far more plausible to take place than a multipolar world to be potentially formed with the participation of the EU and the US.  

To put it in simple words, you can never possibly ask someone, who considers himself as extraordinarily enormous as a 'dinosaur', to condescend to accept few 'cockroaches' as equal; this metaphor does not constitute the exact representation of the reality, but it accurately reflects the mentality of the people who currently run the EU, the US, the UK and their annexes. These forces have by now carried out a fully obvious colonial agenda across the Earth; even worse, they are evidently intending to implement the next parts of the agenda, which has already been proven as inherently unacceptable to the mankind – the majority of the misfortunate inhabitants of the Collective West included. In other words, the world situation is far worse than what most of the foolish or fooled leaders of the BRICS+ member states have imagined.  

VIII - Multipolarity: a reality or a delusion?

Discussing about the chances for the emergence of a multipolar world system does not hinge only on a qualitative examination of intentions and a quest for world peace and security; it is not sufficient to only scrutinize the purposes of the decayed and ailing but raucous and rancorous elites of US, Germany, France, England and Italy from one side and assess the aspirations of the ruling classes of China, India, Russia, Brazil and a nebula of several heavily populated countries, namely Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Mexico, Ethiopia, Egypt, Congo, Vietnam, Turkey, Iran, Thailand, Tanzania and South Africa.

Despite the undeniable importance of all the aforementioned parameters, there is another factor that determines even more conclusively the outcome of the present cleavage. This pertains to the process of historical developments that brought about the present state of international affairs. There are only specific procedures that allow a multipolar world community to be formed; it cannot rise anytime anywhere.

The past eighty (80) years have been characterized by a unipolar system of world governance; this was not the first time in World History in which a very large part of the Earth was under the control of one state (the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Achaemenid Iran, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, the Chagatai Empire of Timur/Tamerlane, etc.) without any other state being able to challenge it.

Several political commentators often dare to portray the present period as the first time in which one country 'controlled' almost the totality of the surface of the Earth, but this is definitely a maximalist approach. In fact, as description, it is wrong. As conclusion, it has only a nominal value; this is so because the 'control' was asserted only via various layers of proxies, who were, practically speaking, unable to always govern all the territory that they claimed to possess.

It is essential not to confuse the present conjecture with the days that antedated WW II or WW I; many irrelevant historians and inconsistent intellectuals are pleased to draw parallels between 1914 and 2024 or between 1939 and 2024, but they are very wrong, confusing, and dangerously deceitful.

Parallels as regards the ensuing consequences or outcome cannot be drawn between a past circumstance and the present occurrence; this is so because people know what came next, after the past circumstance that they take as one pole of the parallel, but only assume that the other pole (namely the present occurrence) will have the same exit (namely a war).  

Parallels can be drawn between a past circumstance and the present occurrence only with respect to the anteriority of both moments that are taken as parallels. In this case, we know very well that no unipolar system of world governance existed either in the period 1870-1914 or during the interval between the two world wars.

Prior to WW II, the world community revolved around six major poles, i.e. England (as the British Empire), USSR, USA, France, Japan and Germany; the six powers gradually formed two heteroclite groups of allies of which one prevailed in 1945.

Prior to WW I, the world community revolved around nine major poles, i.e. England (as the British Empire), the Russian Empire, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, USA, and Japan. 

It is very critical at this point to comprehensively comprehend that those major poles or constituents of the world community did not seek to establish a multipolar system of world governance either in 1914 or in 1939; it is actually necessary to take into consideration the fact that the concept of 'world community' had not yet been formed or formulated as a substitute to the criminal colonial activities of England and France, which attempted to divide Africa, Western and South Asia, and Oceania among themselves.

Even worse for the silly raiders of the lost multipolarity, it is even more crucial to take into account that, if a proposal for the establishment of a multipolar system of world governance was made back in 1914, the colonial powers England and France would be the first to reject it. Actually, the criminal gangsters, who always ruled Paris and London and later hijacked Washington D.C., deliberately triggered WW I, by duly utilizing their paranoid Serbian lackeys.

Why England and France back in 1914 would vehemently oppose any proposal for the establishment of a multipolar system of world governance is easy to assess; this development would block their effort to terminally dismantle Austria Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, while also effectively carrying out cruel operations of regime change in the German and the Russian Empires.

Furthermore, we have to also reckon with the fact that, if someone advanced a proposal as regards the establishment of a multipolar system of world governance back in 1939, he would surely be resolutely reprimanded by the criminal colonial rascals of London and Paris. England and France declared war on Germany, because they did not want to establish a multipolar world community including the USSR, Japan, Germany, and Berlin's ally Italy. As we all know, regime change operations took place in the latter three states in 1945, and 40-45 years later in the (until then greatly marginalized, continually defamed, and shamelessly vilified) USSR.

So, to conclude the present assessment, we have to perceive the establishment of the so-called 'world community' and the inception of the 'international law' as mere tricks, intentional schemes, and colonial contrivance deceitfully presented but successfully elaborated by England, France and their successor, namely the US. In fact, on multiple occasions over the past 80 years, it was fully proven that there is no world community, but a perilous jungle inhabited by ferocious monsters, which are more incensed and more devilish than any wild animal, those of the Mesozoic included.

The sole reality is this: what the mankind attested for 300 years -from the Carnatic Wars (1740-1763; Anglo-French wars in India) to the end of WW II- was only the rise of the Western colonial powers to world predominance. The world impressively shifted from a multipolar system of world belligerency (with 11 poles, namely Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Safavid-Afshar Iran, Mughal India, and Qing China) to a unipolar system of world governance, which can be conclusively described as the Western barbarism and colonial tyranny over mankind.  

The above makes clear to all that the termination of a unipolar system of world governance can never happen through negotiations with the central pole of the system; in a Jurassic environment, only idiots would believe in and count on such 'negotiations'.

IX - Multipolarity tomorrow: a reality only through the isolation of the unipolar world center

It would be anything between foolish and paranoid to imagine that the forces, which controlled the Western states and elites over the past five centuries, will be ready to yield power to those whom they have been considering, for at least 350-400 years, as targets for conquest and world dominance.

BRICS+ member states stand therefore in front of a dilemma: either reject the Western unipolar dominance or capitulate. Since the latter is a non-option, it would be useful to explore the possible ways to reject the barbarian, catastrophic and heinous Western rule. However, before pondering on how the 5-century long colonial impact can be overthrown by the countries that represent ca. 90% of the world population, it would be essential for all of them, and more particularly, for the BRICS+ governments, to specify the sectors in which the rejection of the colonial rule (or unipolar system of world governance) must take place.

Because it will be partly functional and basically ineffective, if the BRICS+ member states challenge the Collective West only at the monetary, financial and economic levels, it is imperative for the respective governments to come to an agreement about launching BRICS+ commissions specializing in almost all the sectors for which there are presently fully-fledged UN Specialized Agencies, Programmes and Funds, Research and Training Institutes, Other Entities and Bodies, as well as Related Organizations. A separate commission in Decolonization and De-Westernization should be added, involving groups of study and rejection of all aspects of academic, educational, scientific, intellectual, cultural, moral, behavioral and socio-governmental colonialism.  

Following a 6-month period of tense consultations, the commissions and the groups of study should come up with conclusive proposals about the restructuring of all the international bodies, their priorities, works, methods and processes. Effectively backed by a comprehensive refutation of the 5-century long Western colonial order, an overwhelming denunciation of the racist and fallacious Western version of World History, and an all-encompassing condemnation of the preposterous and biased function of the UN for 80 years, BRICS+ member states and all their allies should irrevocably withdraw from all the UN organizations, unequivocally deny any legitimacy to the fake international body, and immediately launch the All Peoples Assembly, as the sole legitimate international body. This will convene initially for an indefinite period of time and institute the fair, just, unquestionably multilateral, and solid international milieu to which all the people worldwide have long aspired. A new Internet will have to be rapidly launched for all the member states totally independently from the US-based legacy system.   

This will be tantamount to complete transformation of the BRICS+ into the new international body, which has been badly missing to almost all the people across the Earth. All the employees of the new international body and its specialized agencies, institutes and related organization will have to be proportionally hired on the basis of ethnic origin, language and religion/belief. It will therefore be impossible for a group that constitutes approximately 0.2% of the 8 billion world population to literally invade key positions, promote sectarianism, and thus become the well-justified reason of its own rejection by all the rest.  

Subsequently, BRICS+ member states and all their allies will be accepted as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (CSO), which will turn out to be the de facto guarantee of worldwide peace and security. International relations with the NATO member states, their allies and satellites will be totally severed at all levels, commercial, educational, recreational, academic, intellectual, scientific, technological, economic, social, governmental and military.

This abrupt separation will evidently produce a tremendous international economic shock; but the BRICS+-led countries will be able to face the challenge, recover in relatively short time, and adapt in a far better environment totally void of the Western colonial barbarism, horrific criminality, heinous inhumanity, and evil delusions.

The Collective West must die and it will die; powerfully quarantined, asphyxiated within its borders, economically collapsed, socially imploded, and irreversibly poisoned by the evil delusions, sick literature, inhuman governance, rotten thoughts, insidious ideas, demented ideologies, corrupt arts, suicidal philosophies, absurd disbelief, and utter nonsense that their supposed spiritual, religious, intellectual and social leaders produced, the Western world will totally perish in the most deserved hecatomb, which will be the price they will pay for the unipolar system of world governance that they imposed and for the plans of human annihilation that they developed.

Quite unfortunately for the BRICS+ member states and their allies, there is no alternative; by totally isolating the unipolar world center (namely Canada, USA, UK, EU, Australia and New Zealand), which is what is called the 'Collective West', they will be in a position to effectively install a genuinely representative, peaceful, secure, sustainable multipolar system of world governance, which will extend covering the quasi-totality (ca. 90%) of the world population.

The only other possible transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world is nuclear; if the eventually foolish and fooled leaders of the BRICS+ member states do not truly know or do not duly expect this, it will certainly be too bad for them. If they do not act immediately according to the aforementioned description, they will inevitably offer their worst enemies the privilege of a surprise attack. This is so because the Collective West is very close to the point of no return; they reached the stage of irreparable social disintegration. Consequently, their own chance of survival is to trigger further wars abroad. This is actually what these barbarians have always done after 1492; but this time, it will surely be nuclear.

All those, who 'calmly' wait for the US presidential elections to take place and -even worse- anticipate the victory of Donald Trump, will be proven as the best, although unpaid, agents of the Collective West among the leadership of the BRICS+ member states.

And the establishment of a country, which is hit by a nuclear attack of any type, will have either to cause tremendous nuclear devastation -which involves also terrible collateral damages- or to leave in History the memory of a protracted but failed tenure. It will be a shame and an example to avoid.

[sayruq]

[kneedeepincynade]

Hello everyone, and welcome to sov says shit again.

Through people I follow, i was unfortunately made aware that people don't understand what it means to have access to imperial benefits.

Let's say you tick all of the boxes neded for the US Government to hate you

Minority,both religious and etnich

Darker skintone

Outside of the gender binary

Non heterosexual

Disabled

And more

Now,your life is literally hell, and yet,you still have access to imperial benefits

For example,going in whatever grocery store you like and finding a cheap banana in the middle of winter.

This is because a country is being imperialised in the south of the world to produce your Banana all year round, damaging their local agriculture

Or again,your passport

An American passport is incredibly powerful and guarantees less burden from security

Imperial benefits are not some kind of original sin or whatever,they are a fact of life that one must recognise and understand that they won't exist in a better world. So yes,your banana may cost more,but some farmer down in the south of the world has finally sent his kids to school and his government has begun to improve the life of its citizens trough various reform the old imperial government would have never allowed.

Clear?

[workersolidarity]

🇮🇷 I support Iran. I want to make that clear. 🇮🇷

Iran's anti-Imperialist creds are unquestionable. The entire basis for the existence of the revolutionary Iranian Islamic Republic is anti-Imperialism. No country supports Palestine and the Palestinian people more than the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The moment the Iranian government no longer supports the fight against Western Imperialism, the justification for its existence vanishes with it, along with the support of the Iranian people it enjoys today.

National Sovereignty is the basis of Socialism. And though Iran is by no means a Socialist country, neither is it a Neoliberal Western Proxy, and Iranians enjoy one of the largest economic safety nets in the Middle East, as well as an economy who's natural resources are dominated by SOEs. Including their National Oil Company...

Iran's oil, of course, was initially Nationalized under Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh in March 1951... and of course two years later he was couped by the United States in a typically American Colonialist move, giving full political power to the Shah who used it to stifle dissent, especially and not coincidentally, Socialist and Communist dissent, responsible for a multitude of slaughters against the Iranian people, who were demanding a more active and independent government.

At least, that was until the Islamic Revolution, beginning in 1978 and culminating in the overthrow of the Shah, imposed on the Iranian people by the United States, in February 1979.

You cannot have Socialism without National Sovereignty. And one way the Iranian government can be thought of, is as a radical movement for National Sovereignty; an anti-Imperialist project to expel the colonizers and Western Capitalists who would see the wealth sucked out of their country by Wall Street.

Please, please please don't fall for more US sponsored color revolutions!

Support the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran and its fight against Western Imperialism and US Hegemony! And join our fight to build a Multipolar world and Socialism!

[theculturedmarxist]

Posted onOctober 18, 2023 by Yves Smith

The US, in a continued demonstration of the degree of enbubblement of what passes for its leadership, seems to believe it still has the force and soft power to be able to bully talk its way out of its geopolitical messes. Yet this week we have stunning examples of how critical players in the rest to the world no longer buy what the US is selling. The gap between the American establishment’s connection to reality and facts on the ground has opened up to a yawning chasm as the Arab world, aa Jordan cancelled a Biden summit with its king Abduallah II plus PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in response to Israel’s shelling of Al-Ahli Arab hospital. Not only are they rejecting the attempt to shift blame for the attack to Hamas (we’ll soon address the “rogue shell” claim), but also the bigger pretense behind that, that the US is incapable of, as opposed to unwilling to, applying the choke chain to Israel.1

Even the Western media are not much on board with the Israeli and Biden Administration pretense that somehow Hamas dunnit, when Israel has been trying to herd Palestinians out of northern Gaza and specifically attempted to order the evacuation of the hospital. Oh, and this follows Israel ordering the UN to evacuate from Gaza in 24 hours and then shelling its warehouse there:

To wind back to just before the hospital attack, first, we had the highly visible snub of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken by a nominal ally, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan, by keeping Blinken cooling his heels for hours. Blinken got a less impolite but still chilly reception in Egypt and Jordan.

Then Biden decided to go to the Middle East, as if he would be able to get Egypt and Jordan to reverse their firm position that they are not taking in Palestinian refugees. Not only do they not want to enable ethnic cleansing or take on aneconomic burden, they also don’t want the militant contingent operating in and from their territories.

Israel has been acting as if it’s indifferent to forcing Palestinians out of Israel versus eliminating them in place. There are credible accounts of Israel not only refusing to allow humanitarian aid in from Egypt and foreign passport holders out, but also multiple Isreali shellings of the crossing point. It does not take much in the way of discernment to see that denying Palestinians in Gaza water and food is a death sentence.

But even with rising international outrage over these war crimes, the shelling of the hospital was an escalation too far. It’s derailed even the feeble US attempts to get in front of this crisis. Israel, being stymied in its desire to clear Gaza by its obvious inability to do so (lack of experience, lack of equipment, reluctance to take the baked-in high casualties) instead appears to have settled on Plan B of shelling and starving it until everyone there dies.

To clear up “whodunnit”:

Recall that Jacob Dreizin reported that JDAM kits were being sent in bulk to Israel:

I also reported extensively from Raqqa during the war against ISIS, and from Ukraine during the battle of Kyiv. No Palestinian group has a missile powerful enough to level a hospital. It was a fucking JDAM. https://t.co/mRhsjvpcLq — Seth Harp (@sethharpesq) October 17, 2023

This is not yet confirmed as of posting time but should go viral shortly if this rumor pans out:

While as far as I can tell, the Western media has yet to take this press conference up, the number of views on Twitter indicate it is getting traction in the Algosphere, and one has to think elsewhere:

Now to the stunning spectacle of the US/Collective West surprise as to the reaction outside the rapidly shrinking US sphere of influence. A new story in the Financial Times, Western rush to back Israel erodes developing countries’ support for Ukraine, makes for good one-stop shopping.

Before we get to the body of the story, let’s deal with the headline claim. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that various votes in the UN intended to condemn Russia have shown lower and lower vote counts supporting that position. US former at least sometimes friendlies Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Argentina joining BRICS is another proof of waning US influence.

In addition, in the 2023 Munich Security Conference, the US invited Global South members to enlist their support for Project Ukraine. That plan backfired as the US/NATO team was told that Ukraine was a European affair and of no concern to the rest of the world….save they were being dragged in via sanctions blowback, specifically denying poor countries access to Russian grain and fertilizer. Recall that the Collective West doubled down on showing its lack of concern about suffering in poor countries by not delivering on its half of the Ukraine grain deal, which included ending sanctions on the Russian agricultural bank to allow for purchase of Russian fertilizer, as well as not barring Russian shipments.

And finally recall that even UN votes are not a great indicator of sentiment outside the US. There have been reports of the US browbeating foreign diplomats, including threatening expulsion of the kids of UN representatives from schools in the US and dinging any applications to US higher education institutions.

So now to the Financial Times:

Western support for Israel’s assault on Gaza has poisoned efforts to build consensus with significant developing countries on condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine, officials and diplomats have warned… In the first days after Hamas’s assault, some western diplomats worried that the US was giving carte blanche to Israel to attack Gaza with full force. That had eroded efforts since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to build consensus with leading states in the so-called Global South — such as India, Brazil and South Africa — on the need to uphold a global rules-based order, said more than a dozen western officials.

I have to stop here. Those of you who watch Alexander Mercouris or Alex Christoforu regularly will have seen clips of how Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is received at various conferences…as in enthusiastically. And as both Putin and Lavrov have taken to saying, no one has the rules for this supposed rules-based order, calling out the US pretense that it means anything more than the US preserving its hegemony.

The story continues:

“We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” said one senior G7 diplomat. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.” Many developing countries have traditionally supported the Palestinian cause, seeing it through the prism of self-determination and a push against the global dominance of the US, Israel’s most important backer…. “What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility,” the senior G7 diplomat added. “The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?”

This comes off as Western diplomats having gotten high on their own PR. The fact that some countries are still trying to maintain a productive relationship with the US can’t be seen as tantamount to support. But the US has been desperate to depict our relations with key players as better than they are, witness in particular China. Chinese officials repeatedly turned down US meeting requests and were apparently upset when the US leaked the fact that a supposedly confidential meeting between Jake Sullivan and (IIRC) Wang Yi in Italy was publicized, apparently to depict US and Chinese relations as on the mend. Recall also that after that incident, Xi decided not to go to the G20, with some pundits taking the view that it was to make sure he was not buttonholed by Biden, which the US would then try to depict falsely as a thawing.

And now the US is reduced to desperately scheming to prevent a Russian UN Security Council proposal, which includes among other things a cease fire, from garnering enough votes to force US veto. The article skips over what it would take to get such a resolution to the floor of the General Assembly where the odds are good that the US and Israel would get a stunning rebuke by it passing:

Russia’s proposed UN security council resolution garnered support from only four countries — China, the United Arab Emirates, Mozambique and Gabon — but many western diplomats worry that an amended Russian resolution could gain the nine votes required to pass. The US, UK or France might then veto it, handing Moscow a propaganda victory. “We have to prevent Russia . . . supported by the Chinese . . . taking the initiative to use this against us,” said a senior western diplomat. “There’s a risk that at the next vote in the [UN] General Assembly on supporting Ukraine, we’ll see a big explosion in the number of abstentions.”

In other words, the loss of US authority has become so visible that even loyal organs like the Financial Times are forced to take notice. How long before the rest of the mainstream media follows suit? Or is Biden so deluded that he too will escalate in the hope that playing war president will force a show of loyalty?

____

1 Consider how intransigent Israel would be if it were told replacement parts for US weapons would not be forthcoming until they shaped up. The reason the US does not use that and other obvious sources of leverage is fear of the Israel lobby in DC. It’s striking how the US tries to bully pretty much everyone except our military dependents who need to have their ears boxed. And that is set to decline generationally as young Jews in the US don’t much identify with that cause.

2 Anyone who knows the procedure is encouraged to pipe up.

[rivage-seulm]

U.S. Divide & Rule Strategy vs. China’s Unifying Belt & Road Initiative

Readings for Pentecost Sunday: Genesis 11: 1-9; Psalm 104: 1-2, 24, 35, 27-30; Romans 8: 22-27; Acts 2: 1-11. Last week Russia’s Vladimir Putin got the red-carpet treatment when he and virtually his entire government leadership met with Xi Jingping and his governing counterparts for a two-day summit in Beijing. The collective west was apoplectic in response. What were these two villains up to?…

[rethinking-the-dollar]

Is America's quest for global dominance leading to its own downfall? Discover the unexpected impacts of U.S. policies on the world stage.