#Multipolar World Order

[techniche]

Back in the lead-up to the First Gulf War (1990-1991), for example, another member of the Bush dynasty, President George H. W. Bush, invoked the “new world order”, in his address to Congress on September 11, 1990: Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective — a new world order — can emerge: a new era — freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world – East and West, North and South – can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. And today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak (emphasis added).

Witness U.S. Pres. George H.W. Bush addressing Congress after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait

Source

The term “new world order” as a name applying to a new socialist world government can be traced back at least as far as 1845, to the book The Holy Family by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Amusingly enough, it was attributed to someone on President George H.W. Bush’s staff back in 1990, when Bush turned a lot of heads by endorsing the creation of the “New World Order” and affirming the UN’s key role in it. -  How Biden’s Latest “New World Order” Remark Affects You (By Larry Greenly in thenewamerican.com, March 2022)

[kesarijournal]

Unraveling India’s BRICS and BRI Conundrum

In a world where geopolitics often resembles a complex game of 3D chess, India finds itself pondering its next move on a board set by two ambitious projects – the expansion of BRICS and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Imagine a chessboard, not with mere black and white squares, but a vibrant mosaic of global interests, strategic rivalries, and the occasional pawn aspiring to be a queen.…

[politicoscope]

Africa Will Be A Power House of the New Multipolar World Order

Introduction In this era of rapid globalization, the world is undergoing a marked shift from the hegemony of a few dominant powers to a more balanced and inclusive multipolar world order. Among the emerging players, Africa is poised to take center stage and flourish as a power house of this new era. With its vast resources, untapped potential, and dynamic youth population, Africa is…

[digitalguap]

China & Russia Just Launched Their Great Reset | Multipolar World Confirmed!

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Is Lula Anti-American? It's complicated.

It’s the question in Washington that won’t go away: “Is Lula anti-American?” Since returning to Brazil’s presidency on January 1, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has repeatedly caused alarm in the U.S. capital and elsewhere with his comments on Ukraine, Venezuela, the dollar and other key issues. An unconfirmed GloboNews report in June said President Joe Biden may have abandoned any intentions of visiting Brasilia before the end of the year because of frustration with Lula’s positions.    

The question causes many to roll their eyes, and with good reason. Three decades after the end of the Cold War, some in the United States continue to see Latin America in “You’re either with us or against us” terms. Washington has a long record of getting upset with Brazil’s independent stances on everything from generic AIDS drugs in the 1990s to trade negotiations in the 2000s and the Edward Snowden affair in the 2010s. A large Latin American country confidently operating in its own national interest, neither allied with nor totally against the United States, simply does not compute for some in Washington, and maybe it never will.   

That said, there is a long list of reasonable people in places like the White House and State Department, in think tanks and in the business world who are perfectly capable of understanding nuance — and have still perceived a threat from Lula’s foreign policy in this, his third term. The list of perceived transgressions is long and growing: Lula has repeatedly echoed Russian positions on Ukraine, saying both countries share equal responsibility for the war. In April, Lula said blame for continued hostilities laid “above all” with countries who are providing arms—a slap at the United States and Europe, delivered while on a trip to China, no less. Lula has worked to revive the defunct UNASUR bloc, whose explicit purpose was to counter U.S. influence in South America. He has repeatedly urged countries to shun the U.S. dollar as a mechanism for trade when possible, voicing support for new alternatives including a common currency with Argentina or its other neighbors. Lula has been bitterly critical of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela–”worse than a war,” he has said—while downplaying the repression, torture and other human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship itself.    

For some observers, the inescapable conclusion is that Lula’s foreign policy is not neutral or “non-aligned,” but overtly friendly to Russia and China and hostile to the United States. This has been a particular letdown for many in the Democratic Party who briefly saw Lula as a hero of democracy and natural ally after he, too, defeated an authoritarian, election-denying menace on the far right. And for the record, it’s not just Americans who feel this way: the left-leaning French newspaper Liberation, in a front-page editorial prior to Lula’s visit to Paris in June, called him a “faux friend” of the West.  

To paraphrase the old saying, it’s impossible to know what truly lurks in the hearts of men. But as someone who has tried to understand Lula for the past 20 years, with admittedly mixed results, let me give my best evaluation of what’s really happening: Lula may not be anti-U.S. in the traditional sense, but he is definitely anti-U.S. hegemony, and he is more willing than before to do something about it.  

That is, Lula and his foreign policy team do not wish ill on Washington in the way that Nicolás Maduro or Vladimir Putin do, and in fact they see the United States as a critical partner on issues like climate change, energy and infrastructure investment. But they also believe the U.S.-led global order of the last 30 years has on balance not been good for Brazil or, indeed, the planet as a whole. They are convinced the world is headed toward a new, more equitable “multipolar” era in which, instead of one country at the head of the table, there will be, say, eight countries seated at a round table—and Brazil will be one of them, along with China, India and others from the ascendant Global South. Meanwhile, Lula has lost some of the inhibitions and brakes that held him back a bit during his 2003-10 presidency, and he is actively out there trying to usher the world along to this promising new phase—with an evident enthusiasm and militancy that bothers many in the West, and understandably so. 

Continue reading.

[communist-ojou-sama]

interimperialism already exists as a concept you don't have to make up ones like multipolarism

As of now there's little in the way of evidence to suggest that relations between emerging world powers in a multipolar world order will be characterized by imperial expansion or competition of a specifically imperialist character. That's just looking at the past and extrapolating it into the future innit.

Also the term multipolarity refers specifically to exiting a period unprecedented in world history where there was a single unipolar hegemon in global geopol, don't be a snide little bitch anon.

[mileenaxyz]

Y'all, Namor was right. 😒

"This is not the only challenge to an international order that has made Palestinian claims so difficult to validate. The ICJ case shows how western logic is wearing thin and its persuasive power waning in a multipolar world. The significance of the fact that the country bringing the case is South Africa – an icon of the ravages of colonialism, settlement and apartheid – cannot be lost on anyone. It symbolises a vast racial injustice, too raw and recent to be dismissed as ancient history. In the figure of Nelson Mandela, there lies an evocative example of moral clarity undimmed by persecution. It is no surprise that the support expressed for South Africa is entirely from countries in the global south."

[techniche]

The Ugly Truth of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Transhumanism and Canadian History talk with William Ramsey and Mathew Ehret (1 Oct 2022)

In this discussion between investigative journalist and podcast host William Ramsey and the Canadian Patriot Review's Matt Ehret, we discuss the continuous evolution of evil ideas from Hobbs to Malthus to Darwin to Galton and thence to Chardin's Transhumanism as well as the suppressed stories of some forgotten Canadian heroes who risked everything for the idea of a free and independent Canada.

[argyrocratie]

(...)

"To describe this situation we, the Permanent Assembly Against the War, have spoken of a Third World War. We repeat it. This means not only that the war is spreading, but also that its effects and logics go beyond the spaces where it is fought, affecting also social struggles. Even admitting that a new multipolar world is emerging from this scenario, we do not believe that more and new political managers of the capitalist social order will be favourable for social justice, or that they will renounce the logic of war. On the contrary, an even greater expansion of the logic of war could result.

Even in a multipolar world, we don’t believe that an autonomous antiwar position could emerge when workers struggles and social movements are buried under the weight of geopolitics, or reduced to supporters of authoritarian regimes, confessional political projects, or national politics. As long as we remain passive or take positions in favour of one or the other belligerent side, we are digging our graves with our own hands. It is more urgent than ever to form some clear positions and work collectively for the practice of a transnational politics of peace, finding our resources in the ongoing struggles and manifold acts of refusal which today fuel an expanding and long-lasting opposition to the war.

From the very beginning of the war in Ukraine, we have witnessed the lack of a strong, transnational movement against the war. We have been galvanized, in the first weeks of the Israeli blind revenge and politics of death and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, by the people who protested massively on the streets of the world demanding a ceasefire. This massive and spontaneous opposition to militarist horror is crucial, and, beyond humanitarian sentiments, it expresses a claim for justice voiced by a multitude of subjects, workers, migrants, women and lgbtqi+ people, who do not want to be oppressed and exploited any longer.

Yet, denouncing massacres is not enough if we want to fight against the war and its reproduction. This is why we need to support the claim for freedom for Palestine and the call for an immediate ceasefire by strengthening our transnational connections. We shouldn’t perceive the atrocities committed by the IDF in Gaza as a mere continuation of the 75 years of occupation, nor the ones committed during the Hamas’ attacks as an inevitable continuation of the Palestinian Resistance. The Third world war scenario connects Palestine, Ukraine, Yemen, and is more than the mere sum of many local wars: it is reshaping what is happening in Palestine beyond the history of a long-lasting experience of colonial oppression.

It is up to us to reshape also our solidarity with Israeli war resisters and the Palestinians who are killed, exploited and oppressed, as part of a stronger, transnational opposition to the war, fuelled by the force of collective struggles against racism, exploitation, and patriarchy which could not be reduced to nationalist claims, State politics or authoritarian religious projects.

(...)

A shift towards the right is also happening at the other end of the political spectrum: ”democratic”’ forces embrace militarism as an unavoidable choice while pushing for racist policies in the name of national security; as authoritarian and oppressive regimes present themselves as leaders of an emerging “multipolar” world, sections of the left advocate that tyrannical, authoritarian, and reactionary forces and regimes represent a progressive resistance to “Western imperialism”. Many of those who one year ago supported Iranian women shouting “Woman, Life, Freedom” are now supporting the so-called Axis of Resistance, thus legitimising a political Islam which is not a rival of capitalism and makes patriarchy a foundation of its projects.

Nationalism ends up being the language of those who fight for the end of oppression, whether this oppression is represented by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, by the West, or by the unbearable ethnic cleansing of the Israeli State against Palestinians. We take a firm stand against people being exploited and oppressed because of their nationality, since we know that all nationalisms are exclusionary and oppressive. For building a transnational politics of peace, we must confront all these contradictions: as Iranian feminists clearly stated, we will not pursue a collective liberation by choosing between national fronts, we refuse that our only chance is that to choose between the “bad and the worse”. A transnational politics of peace begins by refusing the imposition of belligerent fronts as part of the war logic, and to organize our side: together with workers, women and queer people, migrants who are challenging that logic beyond the war fronts.

As we clearly stated right after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war is limiting our possibilities of struggle, deploying its consequences beyond the horror of the battlefields. Movements for climate justice are increasingly repressed; war and militarism reinforce patriarchy and patriarchal societies reinforce a culture where violence against women and Lgbtq* persons are normalised. The ordinary disagreements of the European Union disappear when the war on migrants is to be fought. To practice a transnational politics of peace, we need to recognize that the war on workers, the war on women, the war on migrants are not side-effects but rather the everyday reality of the ongoing world war, which we must fight back.

This is why on February 24th, we will organise an on-line public meeting where voices from the different fronts of war can speak against the war, but also voices of those who, aware of its consequences, have taken a stance against the war. Together with class struggle organisations and social movements, together with war resisters and deserters from the various war fronts, together with feminists, migrants, precarious workers and environmental activists we aim to create an autonomous anti-war movement against the capitalist machine of death and despair. This event will hopefully also serve as a bridge towards the mobilization of March 8th, when we need to support the speaking out against the war in all the initiatives that are going to take place. We express our solidarity with our comrades in Kazakhstan, where the protests for March 8 have been prohibited."

[because--palestine]

INTERVIEW: Industrial-scale mass murder

Apartheid Israel should be banned from the Olympics and all sporting contests.

I think the hypocrisy of it, the so called rules based order which is basically: my rules today and I change them whenever I feel like it, everyone has seen it out in the open. No one is buying it anymore. It's absolute nonsense. It's nothing more than whatever they feel like choosing, and they don't feel they should be held to account. Well the world isn't buying it anymore. The multipolar world is here. The age where NATO countries can do whatever they want is over. This has been a ginormous failure for them. The only thing that Israel and NATO are good at doing is murdering women and children. Militarily they are being destroyed in Gaza and in around the area. And they have lost the entire narrative so they have nothing left.

[voskhozhdeniye]

Sadly, since then events have gradually confirmed this, culminating in the recent cancellation of UNRWA funding by the collective West - led by the US - which is the starkest and most cynical confirmation that this prism is unfortunately correct.

UNRWA is of course an expression of international law since it is a UN agency, established in 1949 by a resolution of the UN General Assembly to provide relief to all refugees victims of the Nakba. It is now the largest agency of the UN with 30,000 employees and, especially these days, the Palestinians' main lifeline.

UNRWA's role is all the more critical after the ICJ's recent ruling - the ICJ, the world's court, being of course THE most important expression of international law - that Israel was "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza, and its order in the form of a binding provisional measure that "the State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip".

There is simply no way for Israel to fulfill this provisional measure without UNRWA, given that it runs the very infrastructure for basic services and humanitarian assistance on the ground in Gaza.

Worth mentioning, according to international law, an ICJ ruling is binding on all of the world's countries - which very much includes Western states - and they therefore have a legal obligation to also take actions that they can to facilitate the fulfillment of the provisional measures. And certainly taking actions that directly contravene the ruling would be a direct violation of international law, and in this case would place violating countries in direct violation of the Genocide Convention.

Yet that's exactly what they did. A mere few hours after the ICJ ruling they cut UNRWA's funding. I believe that as of this writing we're at 10 Western states having done so, with the US having initiated the move, followed by its henchmen.

So in effect we have proponents of the "rules-based order" yet again in a frontal assault against international law. What's the "rules-based order"? A good definition is that it's a system outside of international law that essentially defends whatever the US judges is in its and its allies' interests at any moment in time. For the best definition that I've ever read on it, see this fascinating study in the Leiden Journal of International Law:

The message this sends couldn't be clearer: do not defy us, we make the rules and we will be ruthless with whoever dares challenge this. It is, first and foremost, a power dynamic, which is immensely telling: the US clearly saw the ICJ ruling as an affront and responded by upping the ante. Which means it sees itself as an adversary of international law, with the latter a force that needs to be brought to heel. In effect this is the US admitting it's lost its role as "the world's policeman" and that it became an insurgent. Much like a disgraced former president would rather launch a civil war than lose their power, the US is in many ways announcing it's now the lead insurgent against a new multipolar world order they don't like having full control of anymore.

This can't end well, and presages a period of destabilizing chaos characterized - as we're tragically seeing in the case of the Palestinians - by untold human suffering. It was always naive to imagine the US would take its loss of hegemony constructively but optimists could have at least hoped they wouldn't go full genocidal maniacs. Unfortunately it looks like they've concluded that a couple of genocides here and there are acceptable prices we humanity should pay for their attempt to preserve their fast declining hegemony.

The only silver lining in all this is that this can only hasten this declining hegemony. I fundamentally believe that we as a species strive for order and justice and with all this - coupled with its immensely unhinged internal politics - the US is telling the whole world it has become the principal force of chaos and injustice. Also, at a fundamental level, the vision behind it is absolutely revulsive for 90% of the planet as it's all about subjugating them, denying them a voice in the way the world - our shared world - should run. So buckle up for a very bumpy ride, but one which - if we aren't all genocided on the way (and unfortunately that's becoming a bigger "if" by the day) - has some light at the end of the darker tunnel we find ourselves in.

[mariacallous]

From September 1, Russian college students will be required to take a state-approved ideological course, “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood.” Course creators have made films to serve as a guide — intended as an easy way to prepare students for seminars and tests on the material. In the new videos, students are told about “Russia in the World and in the Modern World System” “The Backbone of the Nation: The Russian Constitution,” and “Self-Sacrifice for the People.”

A ‘reliable partner’ against Western domination

The “World System” film begins by reminding the audience that Russia “unites Europe and Asia, facilitates the interaction of various cultures, and tries to preserve a multipolar and just world.”

Students learn that after World War II, the international order became “based on a new balance of power,” dominated by the USSR and the United States, which “in terms of the totality of their military, political, and ideological capabilities, as well as their potential for cultural influence, rapidly surpassed other countries.” The “cultural influence” of the U.S. is illustrated on the screen by shots of sex shops — that of the USSR by footage of Soviet ballet.

The film does admit that the Cold War order “was not ideal,” but emphasizes that it “allowed peace to be preserved and the use of nuclear weapons to be avoided” (naturally, there is no mention of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world was on the brink of nuclear war).

Following the lead of Vladimir Putin, the video proclaims the collapse of the USSR “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe,” not only for the people of the country itself but also for the entire world, which lost its “balance and collapsed.” “Russia is still the largest country in the world, but its geopolitical influence has significantly decreased. The West interpreted the collapse of the USSR as a victory in the Cold War. This allowed the U.S. to return to the idea of world domination.”

The film also lays out “rules” by which the U.S. is allegedly trying to “build the world”:

The access-to-technology rule: "By allowing or not allowing a particular technology to be sold to a country, the U.S. determines who will be an unskilled worker and who will be a banker."

The dollar rule: "Wherever you live, you have to exchange your national currency for dollars to buy goods around the world. Every time, you pay a commission."

The Hollywood rule: "Movies shape behavior, slip in values, and create certain images, archetypes, and frameworks."

The international-media rule: "The international media determines which places are good and which are evil."

The U.S. Navy rule: "If the international media declares you a villain, the U.S. Navy machine will be used against you."

Shortly after that, the screen shows footage of protests in the former Soviet Union with a large inscription in capital letters: “U.S. INTERVENTION IS ALWAYS NEGATIVE.”

However, the film immediately reassures viewers that Russia has “destroyed U.S. plans to create a unipolar world” and prevented the States from “turning into a world dictator.” This, apparently, is thanks to “the strengthening of Russia’s position in the international arena and the growth of its military-political and economic potential.” How exactly Russia “destroyed the plans” of the United States and how much Russia’s “potential has grown” remain unspecified.

The video “study guide” also makes mention of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, calling it “measures to protect [Russia’s] vital interests with regards to Ukraine,” which Western countries then supposedly used as a “pretext for escalating longstanding anti-Russian policy” and “unleashing hybrid warfare against Russia.”

Freshmen will be told that these “measures to protect vital interests” are part of Russia's “mission” to “preserve stability in the world.” The country has already won a “number of geopolitical victories,” related to this, the film emphasizes — particularly, by engaging in open military conflict with Georgia and occupying Ukrainian territories, the annexation of which is referred to as “the return of territories lost during the collapse of the USSR.”

“Countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America perceive Russia as a reliable partner and a natural ally in the fight against Western neocolonialism. A growing number of countries seek cooperation with Russia,” asserts the video’s narrator.

A 'progressive' constitution

The Russian Constitution gets a whole “guide” to itself, where viewers are immediately informed that it guarantees “the absence of chaos and the preservation of unity,” and that every update to the Constitution (such as amendments) only makes it “more socially oriented” and “progressive.”

Stalin’s 1936 Constitution gave the USSR, among other things, “universally fair, direct, and secret-ballot elections” and “free religion.” The video makes no mention of Stalin’s Great Purge (including against clergy and believers).

The terms of Russia’s 1993 Constitution, however, are referred to as “colonial.” To footage of the first Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s speech saying the constitution provides “solid foundations for the construction of a democratic state,” the voiceover categorically states that “in fact, the firm foundations turned out to be a reflection of Western elites’ expectations toward Russia," adding that in the early 1990s, the country “had to give up some sovereignty in exchange” for funding reforms. “Now this situation has been overcome,” the voice reassures the viewer.

Heroism as Russia’s 'historical code'

The video devoted to “self-sacrifice,” supposedly one of the key Russian traits, will tell students about WWII soldiers who stopped enemy troops at the cost of their own lives, as well as about medical staff who worked in hospital red zones during the Covid pandemic. Denis Protsenko, a head physician who was one of the top five United Russia candidates in the 2021 Russian State Duma election yet turned down a position, gets special recognition.

The film offers no detailed accounts of Russians’ actions in the war against Ukraine. There is, however, a main conclusion, summarized as such: “Heroism, fearlessness before the last battle for the future of the country, lives in each of us. This is our nation’s historical code. And we will not allow anyone to erase or break it.”

[berniesrevolution]

Spectre Journal

As the late Samir Amin wrote in 2006, “the challenges with which the construction of a real multipolar world is confronted are more serious than many ‘alterglobalists’ think.” Sixteen years later, Amin’s call for nations to “delink” from the Western-led economic order appears more ignored by state elites in the global South now than ever before. Earlier this year in a speech at Davos, Xi Jinping reaffirmed that “China will continue to let the market play a decisive role in resource allocation,” while “uphold[ing] the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its center.” And Russia’s assaults on Syria and Ukraine, financially supported by its plunders in regions like Sudan, serve as a reminder that the rise of national powers supposedly challenging US hegemony provides no guarantee that conditions will be more favorable to the international left. Thus, as Aziz Rana recently noted, the left needs an internationalist framework that “universally and effectively joins anti-imperial and anti-authoritarian ethics,” and refuses both “an old, broken Pax Americana” and “a new multipolar order dictated by competing capitalist authoritarianisms.”

But praxis can only emerge from a precise theoretical understanding of the objective conditions of imperialism today. What characterizes this new multipolar order and the nature of inter-capitalist competition? As a whole, this emerging multipolar world of bourgeois states does not create better conditions to challenge global imperialism, but merely preserves and even heightens these capitalist dynamics. Martín Arboleda cautions against “fetishizing” the role of the state in facilitating imperialism today at the expense of accounting for the role of international actors, and so conversely, we must also not overstate the capacity of the state—even developmentalist ones—in resisting imperialism.1 The decline of US imperial power and the rise of multiple “poles” on the global stage only reshuffles which states are mediating the existing global relations of production, without reorganizing the latter differently, and without fundamentally empowering independent movements in each region. Identifying the most effective strategy for the global left to build power requires understanding how this new expression of imperialism works. Rather than seeing multipolarity as opening up space for revolutionary struggles against imperialism, I contend that contemporary multipolarity functions as a new stage of the global imperialist system, a departure from unipolar US hegemony without neatly falling back into the traditional mode of inter-imperialist rivalry as described by Vladimir Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin commenting on the last century.

Today’s multipolar imperialism represents an intensification of the world-system sketched out by Bukharin, which sees the internationalization of finance capital and the development of national capitalist groups as two aspects of the same process. While national economic blocs have been increasingly sidelined in favor of multinational institutions by neoliberal globalization, nonetheless we see the strengthening of the power of nation-states to help facilitate financial capital in further containing the working class. A Marxist theory of imperialism today must thus not overstate the dynamic of inter-imperialist rivalry without endorsing a perspective that capitalist states are now entering a stage of peaceful co-existence enabled by financial interdependence, or what Karl Kautsky called “ultra-imperialism.” This deeper intertwining of state and capital enables new and more complex dynamics between ruling elites. Even as value transfer from peripheries to core remains intact, we can now witness multiple geographies of inter-imperial relations, with different cycles and layers of collaboration and competition between different sectors of the ruling class. Now joined by an often invisible class of institutional investors, state elites draw from more sophisticated technologies of repression and control across geopolitical blocs, leading to an uneven development of global authoritarianisms to counter independent and popular movements. This widespread erosion of political democracy, as it takes diverse forms, is thus a central policy of imperialism today.

(Continue Reading)

[democracyatwrk]

Prof Wolff joins Rachel Blevins to discuss various aspects of U.S. foreign policy and economic challenges. He expresses skepticism about the Biden administration's handling of international conflicts, particularly the focus on foreign funding for conflicts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. He criticizes the administration's economic approach, highlighting its failure to explore alternative measures to address inflation, such as wage-price freezes and rationing. Wolff also touches on the declining influence of the U.S. in the global arena, emphasizing the emergence of China and other BRICS nations as significant competitors. Throughout the interview, Wolff urges for a more realistic assessment of the changing world order and its implications for the U.S. economy.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

The global gold rush imperils the Brazilian Amazon

Even before Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva assumed office on Jan. 1, he was steeling himself for a national emergency. From cratered riverbanks and escalating violence to deadly pathogens on Indigenous lands, wildcat gold prospectors had left their devastating mark on the Amazon basin. Waved on by former President Jair Bolsonaro between 2019 and 2022, they helped nudge Brazil closer to the status of global pariah.

Lula wasted no time, immediately revoking two of his predecessor's executive orders that had sped up irregular gold mining. He went on to dispatch security forces to evict the miners from besieged Yanomami territory, sanctioned a provisional decree to crack down on the purchase of illegal gold, and set aside more than 2,300 square miles as protected Indigenous land. In early May, he sent three ministers to the region to assess the damage.

Brazil's latest rhetorical pivot from plunder to preservation drew accolades at home and abroad. At the COP27 climate conference last year, Lula declared Brazil was back as a climate champion and would not tolerate any illegal deforestation. Whether the world's largest tropical forest can survive Lula's broader ambitions — to remake his country into a regional power broker, bolster the clout of developing countries and help ring in a new multipolar world order — is another matter.

Continue reading.

[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