Home » Geopolitics

Category Archives: Geopolitics

The dollar is finally being dethroned

Let’s start with the basics. Roughly 5% of the human race currently live in the United States of America. That very small fraction of humanity, until quite recently, enjoyed about a third of the world’s energy resources and manufactured products and about a quarter of its raw materials. This didn’t happen because nobody else wanted these things, or because the US manufactured and sold something so enticing that the rest of the world eagerly handed over its wealth in exchange. It happened because, as the dominant nation, the US imposed unbalanced patterns of exchange on the rest of the world, and these funnelled a disproportionate share of the planet’s wealth to itself.

There’s nothing new about this sort of arrangement. In its day, the British Empire controlled an even larger share of the planet’s wealth, and the Spanish Empire played a comparable role further back. Before then, there were other empires, though limits to transport technologies meant that their reach wasn’t as large. Nor, by the way, was any of this an invention of people with light-coloured skin. Mighty empires flourished in Asia and Africa when the peoples of Europe lived in thatched-roofed mud huts. Empires rise whenever a nation becomes powerful enough to dominate other nations and drain them of wealth. They’ve thrived as far back as records go and they’ll doubtless thrive for as long as human civilisations exist.

America’s empire came into being in the wake of the collapse of the British Empire, during the fratricidal European wars of the early 20th century. Throughout those bitter years, the role of global hegemon was up for grabs, and by 1930 or so it was pretty clear that Germany, the Soviet Union or the US would end up taking the prize…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

World War Three Chronicles, Part 2

April 23, 2023

World War Three Chronicles, Part 2

As World War Three progresses with the proxy war in Ukraine grinding the nation and its war weary people into dust, we need to pay close attention to the second front. The systematic demolition of US Dollar Hegemony.

Part one of this series is embedded here: World War Three Chronicles, Part1

We are witnessing epochal changes in the global economy with the independent states, centred around the BRIC’s nations, now trading oil in their own currencies.
This development represents an existential threat not ‘just’ for US Dollar hegemony but for US military and industrial hegemony in what has rapidly become a multi-polar world.
China and to a lesser extent Russia are masters of “Soft Power”. The controlled demolition of US dollar hegemony is clearly underway.

Let’s take a field trip to the frontlines. Batton down the hatches, it’s going to be one hell of a transition, let’s hope we survive it! I would rate our chances as slim because of the mendacity existing in the USA and the impossibility of it meeting it’s debt obligations once the Greenback is no longer the worlds reserve currency.

“Brian Berletic and Danny Haiphong discuss the HUGE implications of Saudi Arabia taking steps to join China in forging peace in the Middle East.”

“The BRICS collective, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is working on a common currency in an attempt to ditch the US dollar and push back against America’s dominance. The move comes as Moscow and Beijing call for de-dollarisation in the face of Western sanctions”.
Dumping the Dollar: Will a new BRICS currency replace the US currency for trade?

“As the United States combats a recent flood of countries ‘de-dollarizing‘ – trading commodities in other currencies, the last thing that was needed was French President Emanuel Macron amplifying this message.“

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Facebook Censors Seymour Hersh’s Article About US Involvement in Nord Stream Pipeline Attack

April 21, 2023

Facebook Censors Seymour Hersh’s Article About US Involvement in Nord Stream Pipeline Attack

Using a biased ‘fact check’ with direct links to the Norwegian government.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Facebook is censoring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s story about US involvement in the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines using a ‘fact checker’ with links to the Norwegian government in what represents a clear conflict of interest.

Earlier this year, Hersh published a report asserting that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation which was organized with the aid of the Norwegian government, Norwegian Secret Service and Navy.

Journalist Michael Shellenberger first noticed the issue when he tried to post Hersh’s article to Facebook, but saw the social media giant had slapped a warning label on the link stating, “False information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.”

Except the ‘fact-checkers’ in question aren’t independent at all.

As Shellenberger notes, “Hersh is infinitely more independent than Facebook’s Norwegian fact-checker. The fact-checking organization is a partnership with a Norwegian government-owned media company, NRK, which has a direct self-interest in censoring the story.”

By censoring the article with a dubious ‘fact check’, Facebook is preventing it from reaching a much wider audience, relegating it in the algorithm.

This is yet another example of how the ‘fact-checker industrial complex’ serves to censor legitimate information at the behest of governments by posing as an independent, non-bias actor when in reality it is merely a front for state control.

Facebook’s claim, made a few years ago, that it cannot act as “the arbiter of the truth” for any contentious issue, has been proven dishonest once again.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Time to trash Triffin

April 12, 2023

Time to trash Triffin

The dollar-based credit bubble is imploding, and emerging economies are seeking protection by accepting trade settlement in other currencies. The US policy of threatening regime change, currency destabilisation, or other means of ensuring nations remain in its sphere of influence are now failing.

Mainstream economists in the West insist the dollar is irreplaceable, and that as a trade settlement medium China’s yuan is strictly limited. Referring to Triffin’s dilemma, China would have to run deficits to provide the necessary currency liquidity. But they ignore the role of bank credit, which can be expanded at will to meet trade settlement demand.

Furthermore, China’s exchanges offer hedging facilities into physical gold, attracting Middle Eastern energy exporters away from petrodollars, until the new trade settlement currency planned by Sergey Glazyev comes into existence.

For evidence of Russia’s intentions to reintroduce gold into trade settlement, a translation of the semi-official position penned by Glazyev jointly with his deputy is appended to this article.

Increasing systemic risk in US, European, and Japanese banking systems is accelerating the movement of international trade settlement away from fiat dollars into safer havens. These are or will be ultimately backed by physical gold.

The world is changing before our eyes…

Quietly, informed opinion is beginning to accept that America has lost its global influence. Even Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico are openly planning for a future where their international trade will turn away from North America and Western Europe to an Asia firmly bound into the rules of China and Russia — rules that insist on evolving payments away from the dollar to their own currencies or into trade settlement currencies being planned.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Role Reversal: The Collapse of the Dollar-Enforced Empire

April 10, 2023

Role Reversal: The Collapse of the Dollar-Enforced Empire

The Soviet empire started to crumble around 1989. The time period between the forming of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the late 1940s and the retreat of Russia from Eastern Europe with the eventual collapse of communism in Russia is known as the Cold War. There was a great power confrontation in Europe that did not result in war.

Essentially, US-led NATO stood its ground to prevent further Soviet expansion from the territory it occupied at the end of World War II and waited for the inevitable collapse. Now, perhaps not everyone saw the collapse of the Soviet empire as inevitable. But all one had to do was view the Soviet empire for oneself, up close and personal, which is what I did in the early 1970s as a young Air Force officer.

The State of the Communist Economy

The Russian economy at that time is painful to describe. Moscow and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), the so-called jewels of the Soviet Union, were depressing. Everything was shoddily built. There were very few cars on the streets. There were no retail shops deserving of the name. Lines formed in the middle of the night awaiting the opening of the few bakeries. I saw this for myself from my hotel window on the Nevsky Prospekt in Leningrad. GUM, the “world’s largest department store” near Moscow’s Red Square, sold nothing that was equal to what could be found in any garage sale in the West.

Actually, that should not be a surprise since at one time all those garage-sale goods were marketable. I did not visit Berlin, but those who did say that crossing the Brandenburg Gate from West Berlin to East Berlin was shocking…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

“The Last War We Can Afford To Fight”: Tucker Carlson Sounds Alarm Over De-Dollarization, Slams Biden Admin For Pissing Off World

April 6, 2023

“The Last War We Can Afford To Fight”: Tucker Carlson Sounds Alarm Over De-Dollarization, Slams Biden Admin For Pissing Off World

As we’ve noted several times of late, a growing number of countries are threatening the US dollar’s status as the global reserve currency by conducting global trade without it – you know, the thing Saddam and Gaddafi threatened to do before they were ‘liberated’ from their mortal coils for other stated reasons.

Some recent headlines;

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has picked up on this, big time, noting that the process began after the Biden administration started wielding the dollar as a political weapon by freezing US dollars held by Russians.

Carlson cites an article from the Daily Caller, in which authors E.J. Antoni and Peter St. Onge write:

A second critical feature of a reserve currency is its apolitical nature. Which Biden is now gutting. After both parties in Washington destroyed the dollar’s stability with inflation, now the Biden administration has chosen to wield the dollar as a weapon. Together, the message to foreigners they should get out while they still can.

In response to Russia’s war with the Ukraine, the US froze the dollar reserves of Russia’s central bank. To be clear, these were not American assets, but were dollars owned by the Russian central bank and the Russian people. The seizure was intended to cause bank runs and collapse Russia’s credit system. It didn’t work.

Instead, it exposed the Biden administration’s willingness to violate the trillions of dollars foreigners rightfully own. The danger of this precedent is difficult to overstate.

This part is a must-hear from Carlson in response to the above (starts at 7:15 in the video below):

…click on the above link to read the rest…

“Don’t Talk About Nord Stream”: WaPo Report Further Demolishes Official Narrative

April 4, 2023

“Don’t Talk About Nord Stream”: WaPo Report Further Demolishes Official Narrative

German investigators are now expressing severe doubts about the official Nord Stream sabotage narrative that was pushed hard in the aftermath the bombshell Seymour Hersh report which pointed the finger at a joint CIA-US Navy covert operation, with help from Norway. Last month, Hersh published an article on Substack that said the CIA planted a cover story for the Nord Stream bombings that was fed to The New York Times and the German newspaper Die Zeit. Likely this was in direct reaction to Hersh’s findings. A source within the US intelligence community told the famed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, “It was a total fabrication by American intelligence that was passed along to the Germans, and aimed at discrediting your story.”

The favored narrative became one that said pro-Ukraine partisans did it in a rogue op. Hersh has maintained this was by design concocted in order to shield the US and Biden administration for ordering the operation. The Die Zeit report cited German officials to assert that the pipeline sabotage bombings were carried out by six people using a yacht rented in Poland that was owned by two Ukrainians. In the days that followed, several Western media outlets seized on that narrative and published similar articles reinforcing the cover story.

But now a fresh, lengthy investigative Washington Post story published Monday is actually confirming many of Hersh’s conclusions. Indeed the ‘cover story’ is already fast unraveling. What’s more is that the WaPo article bluntly states Western officials are not at all eager to talk about the Nord Stream sabotage, suggesting a continued cover-up in progress, or in effect a limited hangout. Also very telling is that Western accusations directed at Russia have long ago quieted down.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

World Bank Warns Of ‘Lost Economic Decade’ As Turmoil Spreads

March 29, 2023

World Bank Warns Of ‘Lost Economic Decade’ As Turmoil Spreads

The world is in a precarious situation, with the potential for nuclear conflict. Central banks are taking aggressive measures to address decades-high inflation by raising interest rates, which in turn is causing a banking crisis in the Western world. As recession risks surge worldwide and international trade fractures, the future of the global economy appears to be heading down a dark path.

“A lost decade could be in the making for the global economy,” Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, warned in a new report.

The report “Falling Long-Term Growth Prospects: Trends, Expectations, and Policies” reveals new forecasts that show global long-term potential output in growth rates are expected to slide:

Nearly all the economic forces that powered progress and prosperity over the last three decades are fading. As a result, between 2022 and 2030, average global potential GDP growth is expected to decline by roughly a third from the rate that prevailed in the first decade of this century—to 2.2% a year.

For developing economies, the decline will be equally steep: from 6% a year between 2000 and 2010 to 4% a year over the remainder of this decade. These declines would be much steeper in the event of a global financial crisis or a recession.

World Bank’s chief economist continued:

“The ongoing decline in potential growth has serious implications for the world’s ability to tackle the expanding array of challenges unique to our times—stubborn poverty, diverging incomes, and climate change.”

However, he said:

“But this decline is reversible. The global economy’s speed limit can be raised—through policies that incentivize work, increase productivity, and accelerate investment.”

Ayhan Kose, director of the World Bank’s forecasting group, said the fracturing of the global economy implies “the golden era of development appears to be coming to an end.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Iran-Saudi Rapprochement Will Deal A Deathblow To The Dollar

March 18, 2023

Iran-Saudi Rapprochement Will Deal A Deathblow To The Dollar

Jacob Lawrence Struggle: From the History of the American People, Panel 8 1954Eurasia’s geo-economic integration took a great leap forward as a result of the Iranian–Saudi rapprochement, which unlocks the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) trade potential with Russia and China. Its wealthy members can now tap into two series of Iranian-transiting megaprojects in one fell swoop through this deal, with the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) connecting them to Russia while the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor (CCAWAEC) will do the same vis-à-vis China.

The bloc’s de facto Saudi leader has been prioritizing a comprehensive economic reform policy known as “Vision 2030” that was introduced by Crown Prince and first-ever Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) upon his rise to power in 2015. It regrettably stumbled as a result of the disastrous Yemeni War that he’s been waging since that same year, but everything is now back on track and more promising than ever after securing $50 billion worth of investments from China last December.

The People’s Republic regards Vision 2030 as complementary to its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) due to MBS’ focus on real-sector investments for preemptively diversifying the Saudi economy away from its presently disproportionate dependence on oil exports. His country’s location at the crossroads of Afro-Eurasia also makes investments there extremely attractive from the perspective of China’s logistical interests, hence its massive commitment to his comprehensive economic reform policy.

Without last week’s Beijing-brokered deal, China would have had to rely on maritime routes under the control of the powerful US Navy to facilitate the forthcoming explosion in bilateral real-sector trade, but now everything can be conducted much more securely via the Iranian-transiting CCAWAEC. Looking forward, there’s also a theoretical possibility of Chinese energy investments in Iran connecting the Gulf to Central Asia and thenceforth to the People’s Republic, thus fully securing its strategic interests.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The 10 Rules of Propaganda

March 12, 2023

The 10 Rules of Propaganda

Lord Arthur Ponsonby was a British diplomat and politician, dates 1871–1946.

This keen and cagey fellow pinpointed 10 rules of propaganda. They are these:

1. We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves.

2. The other guy is solely responsible for this war.

3. Our adversary’s leader is evil and looks evil.

4. We are defending a noble purpose, not special interest.

5. The enemy is purposefully causing atrocities; we only commit mistakes.

6. The enemy is using unlawful weapons.

7. We have very little losses, the enemy is losing big.

8. Intellectuals and artists support our cause.

9. Our cause is sacred.

10. Those who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

Just Look at the News

A daily scan of the newswires calls to mind three or more of these propaganda rules. On some days, six or seven. On others still, all 10.

We refer specifically to the conflict presently arage in the eastern European nation of Ukraine.

Let us now consider these rules. We will not take up each of them since some rules relate closely to others. We will instead weld these together. To proceed…

1. We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves.

2. The other guy is solely responsible for this war.

On how many occasions have you read or heard condemnations of Mr. Putin’s “unprovoked” act of aggression?

To phrase it differently, when has it not been described as unprovoked?

Yet a man can argue very persuasively that Mr. Putin’s war was indeed provoked.

The Russian autocrat warned on several occasions that NATO expansion into Ukraine was a “red line.”

Russia would not abide the NATO dagger pressing against its vitals (parts of Ukraine actually lie east of Moscow).

Yet the NATO alliance had announced its intentions to incorporate Ukraine — despite Vladimir’s moans and grimaces.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The War for the Dollar is Over Part II: The Fly or the Windshield?

March 10, 2023

The War for the Dollar is Over Part II: The Fly or the Windshield?

Live images flashing by
Like windshields towards a fly
Frozen in that fatal climb
But the wheels of time, just pass you by
-RUSH, “Between the Wheels”

In part I of this series I told you the war over the US dollar was over because the bane of domestic monetary policy, Eurodollar futures, lost the battle with SOFR, the new standard for pricing dollars.

The ignominious end of the Eurodollar system is a study in the evolution of markets, as a new system replaces an old one. Old systems don’t die overnight. We don’t flip a switch and wake up in a new reality, unless we are protagonists in a Philip K. Dick novel.

More than a decade ago I looked at the responses to President Obama cutting Iran out of the SWIFT system as the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system. The goal was to take Iran out of the global oil markets by shutting Iran out from the dominant dollar payment system.

Out of necessity Iran opened up trade with its major export partners, most notably India, in something other than dollars. India and Iran started up a ‘goods for oil’ trade, or as Bloomberg called it at the time, “Junk for Oil.”

The stick of sanctions created a new market for pricing Iranian oil and a way around the monopoly of US dollar oil trading. India, struggling with massive current account deficits because of their high energy import bill, welcomed the trade as a way to lessen the pressure on the rupee.

Iran needed goods. They worked out some barter trade and the first shallow cuts into the petrodollar system were made.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The stage is set for Hybrid World War III

March 2, 2023

The stage is set for Hybrid World War III

A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you’re immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by selected stops and enlightening conversations, crystallizing disparate vectors one year after the start of the accelerated phase of the proxy war between US/NATO and Russia.

That’s how Moscow welcomes you: the undisputed capital of the 21st century multipolar world.

A long, walking meditation impregnates on us how President Putin’s address – rather, a civilizational speech – last week was a game-changer when it comes to the demarcation of the civilizational red lines we are all now facing. It acted like a powerful drill perforating the less than short, actually zero term memory of the Collective West. No wonder it exercised a somewhat sobering effect contrasting the non-stop Russophobia binge of the NATOstan space.

Alexey Dobrinin, Director of the Foreign Policy Planning Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia, has correctly described

Putin’s address as “a methodological basis for understanding, describing and constructing multipolarity.”

For years some of us have been showing how the emerging multipolar world is defined – but goes way beyond – high speed interconnectivity, physical and geoeconomic. Now, as we reach the next stage, it’s as if Putin and Xi Jinping, each in their own way, are conceptualizing the two key civilizational vectors of multipolarity. That’s the deeper meaning of the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership, invisible to the naked eye.

Metaphorically, it also speaks volumes that Russia’s pivot to the East, towards the rising sun, now irreversible, was the only logical path to follow as, to quote Dylan, darkness dawns at the break of noon across the West.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

China Report Excoriates ‘US Hegemony’, War Crimes, CIA Coups 400 Foreign Interventions

February 25, 2023

China Report Excoriates ‘US Hegemony’, War Crimes, CIA Coups 400 Foreign Interventions

China’s Foreign Ministry published a lengthy report condemning “US hegemony” and its crimes around the world, including wars with millions of victims, coups and “regime change” against elected leaders, and 400 foreign military interventions.

The Chinese government has published a lengthy report condemning “US hegemony” and its destructive effects on the world.

The document analyzed the ways in which the United States has “abused” its hegemony politically, militarily, economically, financially, technologically, and culturally.

China’s Foreign Ministry noted that Washington has roughly 800 foreign military bases all around the world and has launched 400 foreign military interventions.

The United States committed genocide against Indigenous nations, imposed its colonialist “Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, and annexed independent territories like Hawaii, Beijing pointed out.

China denounced the US for sponsoring coups, regime-change operations, and “color revolutions” in dozens of countries, while constantly spreading “misinformation” and propaganda to destabilize foreign adversaries.

Just since 2001, US wars have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, wounded millions, and created tens of millions of refugees, Beijing recalled.

Support our Independent Journalism — Donate Today!

SUBSCRIBE TO PATREON

DONATE ON PAYPAL

These devastating facts were laid out in the report “US Hegemony and Its Perils“, which China’s Foreign Ministry released on February 20. It was subsequently republished by major Chinese media outlets.

Beijing said the goal of the report was to “draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples”.

The Foreign Ministry wrote:

Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Russia Tells UN That Ukraine Crisis Is A “War With The West For Survival”

February 24, 2023

Russia Tells UN That Ukraine Crisis Is A “War With The West For Survival”

In two days of United Nations special sessions this week related to Ukraine as well as the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, Russia mounted a robust defense, arguing that it sees its ongoing military action in Ukraine is a matter of “survival”.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya voiced the stark perspective on Wednesday, casting the war as one against the collective West. “As for our country, we see all of this as a war with the West for survival, for the future of our country, for our children, for our identity,” he said.

He stated that “Ukraine is nothing but a bargaining chip in this plot” – part of a broader plan which was long in implementation, going back to 2014.

*Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Vasily Nebenzya, via AP*

The Russian diplomat’s words followed a surprise admission by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who in a Feb.14 press conference in Brussels described that “the war didn’t start in February last year. The war started in 2014.”

The day prior to Nebenzya’s remarks, the UN Security Council had convened at the urging of permanent member Russia to consider fresh allegations surrounding the Nord Stream sabotage. Nebenzia during that session called for establishing an independent investigation.

He specifically invoked Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report which said the pipelines were bombed as part of an elaborate covert CIA operation involving the US Navy and help from the Norwegians:

“This journalist is telling the truth,” Nebenzia said at the meeting. “This is more than just a smoking gun that detectives love in Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a basic principle of justice; everything is in your hands, and we can resolve this today.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Iraqi central bank to drop dollar for yuan in trade with China

February 22, 2023

Iraqi central bank to drop dollar for yuan in trade with China

Iraq is the latest nation in the Global South to move away from the US dollar in bilateral trade with China

https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Yuan.jpg

(Photo credit: AFP)

The Iraqi central bank announced on 22 February that, for the first time, it plans to allow trade from China to be settled directly in yuan instead of the US dollar to improve access to foreign currency.

“It is the first time imports would be financed from China in yuan, as Iraqi imports from China have been financed in (US) dollars only,” the government’s economic adviser, Mudhir Salih, told Reuters on 22 February.

According to a statement released by the Iraqi central bank, carrying out transactions in the Chinese currency would boost the balances of Iraqi banks with accounts with Chinese banks.

However, this option depends on the size of the central bank’s yuan reserves.

A second option to boost local banks’ yuan balances would involve converting US dollars held in the central bank’s accounts with JP Morgan and the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) to yuan before paying the final beneficiary in China.

The Iraqi central bank has been on a mad dash to compensate for a dollar shortage in local markets. This crisis prompted the cabinet to approve a currency revaluation earlier this month.

Last year, the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York began enforcing stricter controls on international transactions by Iraqi commercial banks, forcing them to comply with specific SWIFT global transfer system criteria to access their foreign reserves.

The move was allegedly meant to “curtail money laundering and the illegal siphoning of dollars to Iran and other heavily sanctioned [West Asian] countries.” However, the sudden rules change for Iraqi banks sent the economy reeling as 80 percent, or more of Iraq’s daily US dollar wire transfers could no longer be completed.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Category Archives: Geopolitics

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Just Look at the News

Support our Independent Journalism — Donate Today!

Post navigation

Latest Posts