Y&J: 3 Years, Smooth and a Dimwit
A walk by the river of geopolitics.
Published: 2024-06-12
Previous episode.
Yes and Jock meet up on a river bank with Jock's dog.
Yes: Hey, Jock. Smooth seems energetic today.
Jock: She's been house bound for a couple of days with some lurgy. What's news?
Yes: You heard about WW3, I presume.
Jock: Yeah, God save us. Isn't it the 3 year anniversary for your newsletter? Did you issue an article?
Y: Yes and no.
J: What's up? Why the one word answers?
Y: Musing. The 3 years has gone quickly. Lots of drama and nothing seems to have changed.
J: How so?
Y: I looked at the first article.
I'd forgotten that I'd started by stating the Mackinderian basis for my analysis. Its turned out to be a useful foundation. The article gets to the BRI project after a lengthy beginning.
M.K.B. just put out an article citing a US dimwit doing the usual narrative rubbish who described the BRI project as "a nuisance graveyard initiativeā. China just announced a railway project with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan which will be an extremely important connectivity project for central Asia. Then there's the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) which Escobar has been highlighting for a while.
The dimwit was Biden.
J: Head in the sand?
Y: With Biden? Who knows. And he's a leader with nuclear codes.
The US empire loyalists are appropriately worried. Recall Blinkenlights and Yellen yellin' at the Chinese about "over production".
J: Okay, so three years. What have you learned from the project?
Y: Having an audience is a gift. It is useful to stay connected with this truth. With it comes encouragement and a sense of freedom. It is precious.
J: How about yourself, your development?
Y: Perhaps better analysis. One community member is looking forward to me learning how to use a spell checker, so improvements on proof-reading have been interminably slow in coming.
J: You said nothing has changed. Give it.
Y: Okay. 3 years. One major new war, Ukraine, which is turning into WW3. A genocide, which the West is supporting and so, has completely undermined any remaining authority it possessed. On top of that, BRICS and the SCO have doubled in size and the economic war against Russia failed, which are related facts. This new group ushering in the multipolar world are about to announce a new currency for international trade within their group, The Unit. The group is more powerful economically and conventional militarily than the entire West, aka G7/NATO.
Western media is still dominated by vested interests and the intelligence agencies and most of what they publish is intended to deceive. I treat NYT/WaPo etc. like I treat Wikipedia; good for names and dates and fuck all else. Interestingly, the Wire Services are both better and worse, depending where your look in their coverage. See the Mediasphere article.
The diversity and number of media sources in the independent media continues to grow. There's plenty of absolute crap there too. But, the good stuff is getting better and weaving itself into a fabric. On the social media front, China really pissed the western intel peeps off with TikTok because they can't suppress the commentary, mine the data or pump their own propaganda as effectively with their troll armies as they can on Western platforms.
In summary, the hegemon is failing and doing what failing empires do; trying to re-establish dominance by running stupid wars based on a complete lack of realistic analysis, instead of contracting and consolidating. Lets just hope none of that stupidity goes nuclear.
J: Best moment or moments?
Y: Every new day.
Sources
The Three Key Messages from St. Petersburg to the Global Majority, Pepe Escobar, The Unz Reivew, 2024-06-10
It was agreed there will be a special conference at the NDB in Shanghai on The Unit in September.
This means the new payment system has every chance to be at the table during the BRICS summit in October in Kazan, and be adopted by the current BRICS 10 and the near future, expanded BRICS+."
"It was confirmed in St. Petersburg that no less than 59 nations ā and counting ā plan to join not only BRICS but also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).
De-Dollarization Bombshell: The Coming of BRICS+ Decentralized Monetary Ecosystem, Pepe Escobar, Sputnik International, 2024-05-13
The perils and promise of the emerging multipolar world, Jeffrey Sachs, Pearls and Irritations (originally Common Dreams), 2024-06-09 (2024-06-06)
China springs a BRI surprise on US, M. K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, 2024-06-10
Niall Ferguson on why the end of Americaās empire wonāt be peaceful, Niall Ferguson, The Economist, 2021-08-20 (before the Ukraine war went international)
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