Showing posts with label Geopolitics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geopolitics. Show all posts

Finally, SOUTH AFRICA comes out of the closet as a BRICS nation in direction, not just in name.



GEOPOLITICS

Preface: It is vital to note that BRICS has emerged principally as a consequence of geopolitical maneuvering.
It is the emergence of great power's in the east that has altered the balance of power. That means ending the post WW2 hegemonic dominance of the Anglo American Western Empire (The US and its Capital Finance Petrodollar establishment of former colonial powers turned Western vassals).
To put it another way, United States and its reserve currency (USD) unipolar world is today already widely recognised as a multipolar world.  While it has been former cold war rival of the US, the then Soviet Union, todays Russian Federation, that has made the boldest and most sensational geostrategic and military advances, most notably the strategic defeat of the entirety of NATO through their proxy, Ukraine, the real momentum has actually been more gradually building quietly through China and India. In this way, many of the former Western vassals, the Petrodollar gulf monarchies and Iran, Brazil, Egypt and others have redefined global powers from OPEC, the G7 and The United Nations system and SWIFT financial instrument, to one taking shape and only recently finding actual implrmentation, around a BRICS structure.
Russia and China have sought to urgently diversify from their US Treasury holdings and found great success using gold and their own currency.   Russias oil for gold and oil for Rubles program's along with outstanding diplomacy have allowed them to defy weaponising of propaganda and such through the post Bretton Woods USD institution's.  This includes sanctions and measures by the US Departments of State and Pentagon, The UN, WEF, World Bank, EU, NATO to weaken their global standing.  Moreover, it has only resulted in stronger alliance's in BRICS as the emerging great powers know that they are stronger together and that each needs the other.
South Africa has been a slow starter and has only recently been making bold gestures of overt inclination towards the East as its economic destiny.
While SA's Manufacturing base has not been as supercharged as other BRICS nations and its trade balance is a deficit with BRICS partners, meaning it is still an import heavy nation, opportunities exist with commodities, energy and certain local niches such as the Rooibos tea grown only near the table mountain part of the globe. These are  products whose success in BRICS  is already ordained and only the absence of a gobal marketing  apperatus has left them unrealised.
This is what is missing from SA, and is the next step to take now that SA has been bolder it admitting publicly its BRICS aspirations and  in some cases even openly defied the US  attempts to them  to  heel.
Watch this space!
TRADE
There is no single formal "BRICS trade agreement," but rather a framework for economic cooperation with agreements on specific areas like customs and energy efficiency, supported by institutions like the New Development BankSouth Africa's trade with other BRICS nations is growing significantly, but it also faces a persistent trade deficit. The BRICS Business Council serves as a platform for the private sector to facilitate trade and investment, with a goal to create a more business-friendly environment. 
What is the BRICS Framework?
  • An informal association: 
    BRICS began as an informal alliance of economic powers and has evolved into an association that supports economic cooperation and the Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership. 
  • Key institutions: 
    The group has established the New Development Bank (NDB) for financing infrastructure projects and the BRICS Business Council to connect the business communities of member nation
  • No single trade bloc: 
    While focused on trade and investment, BRICS is not a formal trade bloc with a comprehensive, legally binding agreement. 
South Africa's Trade with BRICS Nations 
  • Growing importance: 
    BRICS nations are significant trading partners for South Africa, with substantial growth in both exports and imports since 2016.
  • Trade deficit: 
    South Africa has continuously recorded a growing deficit in its balance of trade with other BRICS economies, which has more than quadrupled since 2010, according to Business Tech.
  • Key beneficiaries: 
    Significant growth in South African exports to China has been a primary contributor to the overall trade increase.
Opportunities for Trade and Investment
  • Market access: 
    The BRICS framework aims to develop market access opportunities and inter-linkages between member countries. 
  • Agribusiness interest: 
    The South African agricultural sector is particularly interested in leveraging BRICS to boost exports of products like fruits, wine, wool, and beef to China and India. 
  • Conduit to Africa: 
    South Africa's developed infrastructure, including ports, railways, and logistics networks, positions it to act as a conduit for trade and investment into the wider African continent. 

The Real Reason The West Hates Putin Will Surprise Most People


During the 20th Century the Soviet Union produced many significant social and technological achievements and many innovations. Soviet military technology in some areas, particularly defense systems like the Soviet S300 (which STILL outperform the latest U.S. Patriot ground to air system by some margin) were coveted worldwide.  It also had the world's second-largest economy, By 1970, the Soviet economy had reached its zenith and was estimated at 60 percent of the size of the United States in terms of the estimated commodities (like steel and coal). Its oil and gas reserves were, and still are, vast, with certain sectors unmatched globally.


The Soviet Armed Forces comprised the largest standing military in the world. An NPT designated state, it possessed the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, a statistical title that Russia still holds today. 

The period from the 1970's onwards marked a consistent decline for the U.S.S.R. The reasons for it are mired in an unsatisfactory narrative which prevents any real understanding of affairs, and that same propagandistic narrative persists to this day, even the "red scare" component despite the fact that todays Russian Federation has abandon communism.  With that in mind, I would make the case that it has actually gotten worse despite manifesting once more in a flavour that reminds me of the Cold War despite a few small cosmetic changes. That narrative is stuck. It's the "Capitalism VS Communism" distraction. A polar one-or-the-other fantasy method of summing up a situation typically has about as much nuance as a "Good VS Evil" children's cartoon, the type that insists on finishing every episode with a moral lesson for kids delivered by the hero.  

Cast your mind back to any Cold War era TV montage, with clips of President Reagan yelling "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!".  This was not so much an organic pop culture dynamic as our sense of nostalgia will try to persuade us.  It was a repeated meme, early memetic engineering in the days where social engineering was used sparingly. It is, nonetheless? A form of "Divide and Rule". 
Here is my detailed history of the evolution of this fascinating tactic, and trust me, it's a lot more interesting than you think. 

In the 1990's things reached rock bottom in the former Soviet Union. Gangsterism and suicide were on the rise as Western Capital Finance vultures descended onto (and into) the newly available carcass. By that I mean the reduced remains of the former U.S.S.R. The new "Free Market Economy" simply did not have the maturity to evolve any internal oversight structures able to function as defense mechanisms from the external economic hitmen.  
More problems were found to emerge internally since the new open economy only benefitted a handful of oligarchs. Well, a few oligarchs along with the Russian mob who rose to international notoriety pushing out more settled international outfits with previously unseen levels of violence. The results on the economy any society were severely traumatic and to this day Russians are motivated by political participation shaped by the single and overpowering need to never again have their fate at the disposal of special interests whom they do not understand or trust.

NA.T.O. was at this point defunct.  The fall of the Soviet Union should have seen it retired, since the official reason for its existence was no more.  The real (unofficial) purpose of the Trans-Atlantic arms manufacturers club was to expand the MIC grift from the U.S. tax base to the entire Western tax base. It follows logically. The more people, the more taxation available to be plundered.  You still need an enemy to justify a threat response, but that need was only apparent to me in the shorter term since they were cooking up the "War on Terror" for that and it was decided to rather feed on the Soviet corpse and make sure it did not re-emerge as a legitimate threat. After all, perceived threats could be more safely sold to the public. N.A.T.O. saw its chance in the 1990's for acting on its secret expansionist agenda, all the while refusing the new Russian Federation even so much as an option to join, which not many people even know about. For the largest arms dealers in the West, selling maximum arms requires maximum enemies, and terror threat being cooked up from the Middle East wasn't quite ready. 

So the situation in the new Russian Federation was not looking good.  Whichever way you slice it there were serious problems, and greedy, calculating forces had put into action a series of events that were supposed to balkanize the territory, leaving its economy plundered.  It was to become a Western vassal in every possible sense. Without being overly dramatic, the once great nation stood on the precipice of doom.

Enter Putin.


For the sake of brevity let's look at the highlights reel only. Russian annual household income increased from an average of $800.00 p/a to over $30 000.00 during the course of Putin's leadership. During the same period, the West (while asleep at the wheel) found itself suddenly and depressingly involved in corporate state capture and economic plunder, with random woke agendas shoved down their throats for good measure.

By the time the 2008 economic crises was being resolved by Obama blatantly robbing taxpayers to bail out the banks, Russians were instead witnessing state crackdowns on corrupt oligarchs, multinational corporations who were known to disregard public health were ejected from the country.  Globalist financial interests and foreign meddling were no longer just causing financial disaster, they had collaborated with intel agencies and were involved with actual psyops.  Case in point is whereby sewing discontent in Georgia they had been funding a separatist movement that at one point was a major threat.  Well, this type of thing needed to be nipped in the bud, and it was. It was ruthlessly crushed by the new Russian leader who it appeared did not get the script.

This upstart had gotten it into his head that his policies would be shaped in the national interest. 
Under Putin jobs, law and order, culture, identity and pride were slowly restored. Efforts to destabilize the territories bordering the Russian Federation from within and externally were managed, less notorious but still corrupt oligarchs and the mob were brought to heel. Syria was basically rescued from Western and Saudi supported terrorists by Russia, forming a bond and affinity between the two nations.  The Russian President has obtained a cult like status in some sectors for resuscitation of the nation's economy under the most hostile conditions unimaginable.

This is no small feat. I picked up long before there was any traction for it in alternative media discourse that any plan for Russia to succeed would involve neutralizing threats that were actively seeking to cause it harm.  It was not Russia that was naive and too trusting of the West by this point, it was the Western leaders who were surely thinking that this one was in the bag naively believing the naivety of Putin, of this I am certain even though Putin to this day will not admit it for reasons of political expediency.  If you don't believe me then take a look at my reasoning at the time and consider how it played out.  There is only one scenario that makes sense, and it makes a lot of sense.  I have elaborated in quite a bit of detail exactly what the plan was and also regularly reported on its success as well as regularly pointed out the failure of the Western leaders to come to terms with strategy that appeared, at least to me, to understand that success would not be possible unless key strategic Western hegemonies were disarmed of the financial and military weapons it possessed, so long as there was intent to do harm to Russia. Select the "Russia "or "Putin" labels below this post or follow the links I have embedded in this post, the important recent ones being here, here and here.

To this day the plan is still not grasped, even by the alternative media, judging by what I am hearing about "War of Attrition" as if it were only a battle tactic in the recent Ukraine vs Russia conflict which is really a proxy war Russia is waging against N.A.T.O.  Reasons for the slow Russian advance are analyzed in depth, they discuss how hard the ground is and the winter freeze, waiting for Ukraine's counter-offensives to run out of steam, the fact that they are focused on the Donbass for humanitarian reasons or the belief that Putin is secretly holding out for a peace deal.

All he is doing is demilitarizing NATO!

Let's be serious for a second here, Putin couldn't care a flying stuff about any peace agreement with any of these snakes in the grass, even if he ultimately enters into one, it will be against a background where Russia controls the variables that decide whether Ukraine ever become a threat again.  Trust, viewed as unrealistic by Putin, would not be required, so why would that be important?  Part of the reason for the invasion was to eliminate the need for trust and rather be in control of outcomes viewed by Russia as an existential threat. It's noteworthy that Putin does take seriously any pressure exerted by its allies, particularly BRICS nations, that is something to be mindful of, especially since the architecture of the new global payments system is something Putin spends far more time on than the war. Russia has the BRICS presidency this year and at the end of October in Kazan a summit is being held where vital technical discussions around global payments and security are to be ironed out.

Regarding the lead up to war, Putin observed the outsourcing of Western manufacturing to China and elsewhere, and he modernized the Russian MIC to ensure they were prepared to win in output of artillery in a race for escalatory dominance knowing Western stocks run on a "just in time" logistics and stockholding policy since their MIC is purely bottom line in structure.   He also has a very clear grasp of the political appetite for expensive wars on the voting public and know in Russia the population does not see defense at  war profiteering and support would only grow when engaging on military spending if it is to fortify Russia against her enemies.  His calculus of political damage, expense, threat posed by advanced N.A.T.O. weapons systems and the logistics/industry of war being able to produce and sustain

This was happening the whole time that Russia was trying work with his "partners" in the West, and it upset Russians he was using such terms for those trying to destroy him.  In the background do you not think the move to establish BRICS, stockpile gold, dump US Treasuries, corner the oil and gas markets by planning output with OPEC Nations like the Saudis, destroy the Petrodollar, provide support to Iran/ Africa/Syria/The Houti's etc. Make no mistake about it, survival meant disarming the aggressor.

Because once more the West is being played, it is the West that is STGILL BEING NEUTRALISED, disarmed of its weapons, artillery, its public appetite for war by Russia.  Putin knows the west has outsourced its manufacturing  

The perception among those paying attention is that with Putin at the helm the Russian Federation had done an about turn from the naive victim it was after the Cold War collapse. The Russians learned the hard way. Now they have outplayed the West in every arena. They outplayed the criminal plunder puppets who extort as much from their people as possible, eroding the manufacturing and industrial heart of the West with vulture capitalism fostered by the globalization of war, agriculture, syndicated media and finance. Putin has protected his economy from such vultures, invigorated its manufacturing base, tied its currency to energy and gold while ditching debt-based holdings of an increasingly suspect promise to pay, the USD treasury bonds. 

Russia has been a guiding light in the formation of BRICS providing the global South with a demonstration that resistance IS NOT futile and that we are stronger together. Militarily Russia is patient and has learned from the past. In the Ukraine proxy war, the entire NATO arsenal lies as a smoked ruin on the Ukraine countryside as the West turns its focus to aiding a genocide currently being committed by its ally Israel.  

Putin has not only defeated the West against all odds, but he has also done it while they tried to destroy him, somehow succeeding during that chaos to create the kind of trajectory the Western tax bandit globalist neoliberal cabal could only dream of.

They live in fear of being defeated despite holding all the cards only to have the man they demonized succeed at every aspect of their failure. There can be no defeat more comprehensive and no justice more in line with karmic sentiment than that.

And that backstory should allow the case to make itself.   The real reason the West hates Putin has nothing to do with freedom, democracy or prosperity because that is precisely what they have taken from the West, and no amount of projection will convince Russians otherwise, they believe their lying eyes and in a cultural quirk do not distinguish between projection and confession. All the data is transparent and clearly reflects my analysis as does everyday reality for every Russian I have spoken with. The demonizing of Putin is so far removed from reality, and it requires such overt and shameless lying that there was never any risk of it being taken seriously in Russia, and citizens were beginning to keep a keen eye the foreign affairs escapades of the US alphabet agencies and its department of state.
It was duly noted that the spy era rigor and excellence had vanished from the US intelligence community and armed forces.  The objectives of all discretionary spending on national budget issues was motivated by greed and corruption.  Without a peer competitor or threat, the vast resources dedicated to prevailing in the US/USSR contest of influence, all of those assets had to reassess their focus.  None were prepared to forfeit their funding and each would instead find new arenas to ply their covert strategy of classified operations.

What followed was an endless series of expensive, bloody insurgent or proxy wars or direct invasions.  They mainstream media at this point was also fully captured and persisted with its reporting of these wars as failures, ill thought out and executed with no apparent regard for any objectives, means to achieve them or exit strategies.  This is nonsense of course.  These wars were by far the most successful wars in history when seen through the lens of a criminal who has just removed all oversight, accountability and due process from the US Apparatus of state.  No short term victories, long and expensive, provide cover to covert black ops, enrich the MIC contractors, crush all free markets with sanctions, all democracy with globalization, all prosperity with austerity, all sovereign states with open border nightmares, all energy policies with IPCC pseudoscience, all health policies with mandates to make refusing state medication illegal and reclassifying your blood as the for-profit plaything of big pharma.  Russia by contrast has moved in the opposite direction.  Even Russian press have noticed this.

Despite the fact that there is no such thing as government money, only taxpayer money, civil servants in the US had transformed into a freshly emerged civil overclass.  Its former boss, the US taxpayer, was now but a minion and his money through a sense of megalomaniacal entitlement, would no longer be spent maintaining his roads or being invested in the future of national health or education.  Public spending policies would now be up for auction and each bill passed in Washington would be available to the highest bidder.  The polite term for such a system is a "lobby system" and in true Orwellian fashion conventional wisdom will explain how it is a system designed to give voice to the voiceless.  To make sure the little guy is heard.  In reality of course the opposite is true.

In short, despite the thirty years of reasoning I have given, in essence there is one major reason the West hates Putin: It is under his leadership that Russia has been on the opposite course of the West. That is what it comes down to. That is an almost scientifically rigorous way of cutting to the point.

Dramatic Shift in Global Power Balance

 


1) Turkey To Join BRICS

To understand the shifting sands of global power with regard to the rise of BRICS you can search this site or look for the tag "BRICS" going back several years.  The last post I made on this topic reflected some dramatic changes and is essential reading since the implications are tremendous and must be appreciated for what they are.

The inclusion of Turkey is just as significant, not for economic reasons but for geographical and military reasons.  Turkey has the second largest standing army in NATO after the US and houses some of the US nuclear weapons.  Turkey has been a NATO anchor and its trusted role regarding strategic weapons positioning has always been a factor since the drama of the Cuban missile crises where Turkey played a major role.   Since the defeat of NATO in the Ukraine proxy war in which the West has been waging against Russia, many have predicted the beginning of the end of the trans-Atlantic alliance, and this move surely signals that this is a reality that the next decade may present.  Furthermore, the potential for Turkey to host future Russian oil pipelines also gets a boost if European demand ever returns to Russia and soon the nation could be holding the EU hostage with its finger on both energy and refugee flow providing tremendous geopolitical leverage.

In terms of geopolitics there has been transformational change coming so quickly that it's difficult to assess the full implications, but once the dust settles, we will be very cognoscente of the fact that the Anglo-American dominated international climate is a totally different place where nothing is the way it used to be. The emerging powers of BRICS, lead by Russia, China, India and a host of new additions are determined to change the flavor of the "Rules Based Order"(a euphemism for US hegemony characterized by bullying, lies and a general lack of respect for the sovereignty of nations and the wellbeing of their citizens).  So far, the evidence shows that nations of the Global South and Middle East consider the diplomacy, basic manners and respects shown by the new power center to be a far more appealing option.

2) The Demise of the Petrodollar

In the next few days, the Petrodollar is up for renewal by the Saudis.  All signs point towards them not renewing it.  Here Here is a quick outline of the Petrodollar nuts and bolts along with a great little synopsis of its history. The reasons in their entirety are complex but simply put Saudi Arabia has moved into the BRICS sphere of influence and faced with the rise of other currencies being used for foreign trade it makes no sense to tie into one currency and only sell in USD.  Also, China has a 1.4 billion population, its growth prospects are tremendous, as are Indias.  Russia and Saudi Arabia can also work together to corner the global oil market, making OPEC somewhat redundant, and Russia has already stepped out of the dollar system, the nation has pioneered an oil for gold and oil for Rubles program using its own hydrocarbon reserves to protect its economy from US sanctions. For more on the Petrodollar you can click the "Petrodollar" tag or enter the word in the search bar. 

The drop in dollar demand is going to impact hugely on the US economy and affect the ability of the Anglo-American establishment to export inflation through the oil price in USD to the Global South.  Strap yourself in, we could be in for a bumpy ride!

The 25 Most Cited Think Tanks

 


Here is a resource for you to bookmark.  The links will take you to the pages of each organization on the little sis database where you can find out who their leadership are, their directors, board members, members, donors, who their benefactors are, who their members donate to, which publications they are behind and much more.  You can also see which members each has in common with the other and where their networks interlock with powerful banks, media and intelligence agencies.   A good working understanding of how relationships are connected in this way will give you a sense of the interests and agendas behind all political, geopolitical, economic, strategic and public policy events that appear in the news stories in the world today.  It is the secret weapon of any investigative journalist or informed citizen looking to get a step ahead of the game in current affairs and also serves as a means for any private person to be informed about the potential threats posed to the safeguarding of their personal liberties and constitutionally protected rights.  Most importantly I would propose that any activist looking to resist the undue concentration of power in the hands of the few first map out these relationships to best target their points of focus.

From Most cited (at the top) to position 25. Each organization on this list has considerable power and influence. This power is wielded principally in an "under the radar" fashion.


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