BRICS: Laying the Foundations of the Next Empire?

Perhaps something is up? Funny that In the last month or so three top US security/intelligence officials either had meetings with top Chinese officials, or have actively reached out looking for one: US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, CIA director Bill Burns and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have had meetings with the Chinese or were disspointed they didn't have one. The latter being the case of Austin.
 
Perhaps something is up? Funny that In the last month or so three top US security/intelligence officials either had meetings with top Chinese officials, or have actively reached out looking for one: US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, CIA director Bill Burns and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have had meetings with the Chinese or were disspointed they didn't have one. The latter being the case of Austin.
Indeed! China is going to be US "neighbor".

8 Jun, 2023
 
Perhaps something is up? Funny that In the last month or so three top US security/intelligence officials either had meetings with top Chinese officials, or have actively reached out looking for one: US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, CIA director Bill Burns and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have had meetings with the Chinese or were disspointed they didn't have one. The latter being the case of Austin.
I wouldn't want to talk to the US if I were China either, what would they propose? "oh, hey can you help us contain Russia and commit energy suicide like the EU did?" or something just as preposterous.
 
Also, you know that everything they say is a lie and everything they agree to will be broken whenever they want.
Right, " and we promise to perhaps completely abandon our designs on Taiwan and the South China Sea, maybe"

Which I suppose has its own set of signs to be read, ten years ago no one would dare "ghost" the US... but now the curtain has fallen and no one really wants to play ball with Washington, and in their desperate attempts to make it happen, the US only continues make it clear why no one should play with them.
 
And I just caught this during my nightly news round up. India kind of let the US down easy but emphatically.

"This model is not applicable": India refuses to join NATO+ format

The U.S. House Select Committee on China had proposed accelerating Delhi's accession to the military bloc.

Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has categorically ruled out the possibility of his country becoming a member of NATO.

Commenting on the US Congressmen's move to make the country a new member of the NATO+ format, the Indian foreign minister said last week that the bloc's approach to international security policy was not applicable to Delhi.

Earlier, the media had reported that the U.S. House Select Committee on China had proposed to fast-track India's accession to the NATO+ format. This format brings together member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance and five allies from other regions - New Zealand, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Israel.

"One of the challenges of a changing world is to get people to accept these changes and adapt to them. And even today, and not just in the case of this commission, I see it in various analyses. Many Americans still have the NATO treaty model in their heads. That seems to be the only model through which they look at the world. In reality, that model is not applicable to India," Jaishankar told a briefing.

The senior official added that Washington, for its part, is aware of India's stance, being sympathetic and accommodating. "They [U.S. Congressmen] mean well, they are sending the message of 'let's cooperate more with India.' They are just using the terms they are used to," he said. "I won't get into the terminology, I'll just point out that I appreciate that the congressional committee wants to cooperate more with India. I think it's a positive thing," he stressed.
 
Indeed! China is going to be US "neighbor".

8 Jun, 2023
'Where there's smoke, there's fire.'

19 JUN, 2023
 
Quite a change of the rhetoric.

Blinken admits post-Cold War era is over, and hopes the US will still be in the “room” with the big guys, maybe even at the adults’ table while, nostalgically alluding to a time when the US used to be at “head of the table” (00:20).

 
Just came across this from Gallup on my nightly news round, which is very telling of the G7 vs the BRICS. In summary, the US and the UK have the lowest confidence in the G7.

Not sure what China is doing, or if it's possible to measure it objectively, but Russia's government seems to have a rather high approval from its population, and China, well.. they keep on singing treaties the world over, so confidence in what they're offering is high.

Just today I read about China beginning negotiations with Honduras on a FTA, which could include an interoceanic railway, which if properly executed, could rival the Panama Canal.

So, the leaders of the main rival to the BRICS have no confidence from their own population, while. China and Russia seem to have way more than enough.

Confidence in U.S., U.K. Governments Lowest in G7​

A few excerpts from the article
For decades, much has been made of the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. But in 2022, the national governments of both nations shared a somewhat less special accomplishment: earning the least confidence from their constituents of any G7 member country.


When Gallup first measured national confidence in governments around the world nearly two decades ago, both President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were well into their terms in office. The governments they led retained extensive confidence domestically -- far more so than for almost all the rest of the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Italy).


Fast forward to 2022, and the tables have turned. Roughly one in three adults in the U.K. (33%) and U.S. (31%) say they have confidence in their national governments: putting them at the bottom of the G7 countries.

As governments on both sides of the Atlantic have struggled, other administrations in G7 nations have solidified their positions among their electorates. In Europe, confidence in Italy’s government has almost doubled since 2019 (from 22% to 41% in 2022). Similarly, confidence in the French government has increased steadily since French President Emmanuel Macron came to power: rising from 37% in 2017 to 46% in 2022. In Olaf Scholz’s first full year as chancellor of Germany, he has continued Angela Merkel’s trend of high German confidence (61%) in government -- the highest confidence level in the G7.

Even though confidence in the Canadian government has slipped from its highs under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a majority (51%) nevertheless retain faith in it. In Japan, which ranked last among G7 countries between 2007 and 2012, confidence in government has since more than doubled to 43% in 2022.

Confidence in U.S. Government Continues Free Fall

The U.S. has seen a sharp decline in the public’s confidence in the national government over the past couple of years. In 2020, almost half (46%) of U.S. adults expressed faith in their government, likely boosted by the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But after President Joe Biden took office, confidence in government slipped to 40% in 2021 and again to 31% in 2022. This is on par with the lowest rates of confidence measured in the U.S. government since Gallup started tracking it globally in 2006 -- with the other lows measured in 2013, 2016 and 2018 under former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.


Declining domestic confidence in the U.S. government has occurred alongside declining approval ratings on the world stage. Median global approval of U.S. leadership slipped to 41% in 2022, down from 45% in 2021 during Biden’s first year in office.

Turmoil in Westminster May Be Blurring the Lines

Across the Atlantic, Britons’ confidence in their national government has been relatively low since 2019. But as is true for the U.S., confidence in the U.K. also reached a near-record low in 2022, on par with its level in 2008 during the financial crash (32%).

The U.K. political system has been rocked by several major events in recent years, including Brexit, the “Partygate” scandal and frequent turnover among its prime ministers. Since 2019, the U.K. has had four prime ministers in as many years.

For countries across the globe, leadership approval and confidence in government are highly related.
 

I don't know if Dugin is just doing his philosopher thing or if Russia is actually planning to do away with 'interest capital'. It would make for quite the show-down with the oligarchs.

Edit: text for those without twitter

Islamic banking (IB) in Russia is a great idea, sovereign and multipolar, highly patriotic. Usury is an absolute evil.

The American poet Ezra Pound, who dedicated his magnum opus Cantos to the destruction of interest capital as an idea, reasoned as follows: God is eternity and time is the devil; profiting from time is the devil's business. Therefore, financial capitalism is economic Satanism.

The Muslim theorists of Islamic Banking reason differently: everything belongs to God (Allah) and especially time. He who introduces interest on a loan appropriates what belongs to God for himself. This is Luciferian rebellion.

From the two different chains of inferences, we come to the overall conclusion: usury must be prohibited, the yoke of interest slavery must be removed. This is what IB is all about. It is called Islamic, but in other contexts it goes by other names: Douglas's 'social credit', Gesell's 'free money', etc. In our case, IB can be called the Russian monetary system, because Orthodoxy - and to a certain extent Christianity in general - categorically rejected usury. Werner Sombart traces when, how and where this prohibition began to be lifted and what it led to.

Islami Banking thus simply reminds us of what we had, but lost at some point. Contemporary Russian economist Alexander Galushka's idea of a two-cycle issue fits perfectly in this context.Let us not forget that liberalism is the bane of humanity, even in economics.

In this case, the terms 'Islamic' and 'Russian' coincide in meaning.
 

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