Bulletins and News Discussion from September 2nd to September 8th, 2024 - We Love Our Trans Comrades - Chemicals of the Week: Estrogen and Testosterone

This is why @shipwreck@hexbear.net (or whatever alt they use nowadays) talks about American control over Europe so much, and why they say that the real purpose of the Ukraine War was to weaken Europe. Somebody who is well-versed in Cold War history might see this as a ridiculous conclusion - Europe and America have been allies for decades! For at least a century, even! Europe had been accepting American military aid to combat a potential Soviet invasion for more-or-less the whole Cold War! The thing is that being allies is insufficient for American aims.

They can say that but it doesn't mean its a compelling argument.

Not only we know the US thought Russia would fold due to the sanctions, there were key events and circunstances pre-'22 that were not particularly under US control. For example the German Green party are largely responsible for Germany moving away from nuclear power, but this policy started in the 2000s even. Germany was supposed to become a green energy monster, there was so much propaganda about how wholesome Germany got so many solar panels or something.

The anti-nuclear movement didn't care, back in the 2000s everyone also thought the cold war was over and Russia was going to be integrated into the west as this was what both sides wanted. Some people were still scared about Russia but it was not worth taking Russia as an enemy compared to the relatively cheap energy.

Key events like Fukushima played a huge role too.

But also the EU was the only export market for American corporations and high tech. Europeans were the ones rich enough to buy shit from American industry. It would serve no purpose for the US to "weaken" Europe if it means no secondary market for US exports.

Remember the 08 crisis and the fallout over the EU? Remember how Spain, Italy, Ireland and Greece got fucked? The only reason the EU survived was German imperialism over this periphery. If Germany falls, so would the EU back then.

By the mid 2010's we're barely out of the '08 crisis, certainly any major geopolitical event could be an unsustainable setback for the global economy. I can't imagine anyone would be thinking about a NATO proxy war in Europe as a good thing for a global economy just barely recovering from 2008.

So to look at that and arrive at some conspiracy theory that 14 years later Russia would actual pull the trigger over retaliating against Ukraine(and we have to skip 2014 and Crimea issue too) was actualy a grand plan everyone knew all along this is what would happen?

But we have even more evidence during the war, for example the attempts at putting an oil price cap remember? The US/EU thought, no they demanded to be handed over energy for the price they felt entitled to. No they went further, they practically made Russian tankers illegal by removing their insurance from England.

They literaly, actualy realy thought Russia would fold one way or the other, they tried almost everything. Why? Because they recognized the EU was in serious trouble and the US wanted to eat their cake and have it i.e remove Putin but also ensure Russian energy remains in the global market.

If they didn't think this would work then who was leading who here? Was the US playing dumb telling the EU "hey we'll put some more sanctions on Russia, maybe even force them to send you oil because they have no alternative and it will all be fine just trust me bro"

Their ideal solution was a coup led by a population suffering from sanctions, it always works until it doesn't.

A lot of this, especially about BRICS not being willing to commit to de-dollarisation during the window of opportunity for it, was pointed out by Patrick Bond last year in his piece titled Samir Amin’s diagnosis of worst-case racial capitalism, centred on South Africa and BRICS. It is well worth reading. I'll provide some excerpts.

In a 2015 Monthly Review essay, Amin (2015) confirmed his negative impression:

“The ongoing offensive of United States-Europe-Japan collective imperialism against all the peoples of the South walks on two legs: the economic leg – globalised neoliberalism forced as the exclusive possible economic policy; and the political leg — continuous interventions including pre-emptive wars against those who reject imperialist interventions. In response, some countries of the South, such as the BRICS, at best walk on only one leg: they reject the geopolitics of imperialism but accept economic neoliberalism.”

In a follow-up, he critiqued the BRICS because economically, “success is primarily defined in terms of the neoliberal ideology, as an example of the success of ‘happy globalisation’” (Amin 2016c, 138).

As we can see, this is very much the case, countries of the global south reject try to the geopolitical interventions of imperialism, such as opposing the Israeli genocide of Gaza, and opposing NATO in the Russia - Ukraine war, yet they accept neoliberal economics, globalisation and dollarisation. Thus, they cannot truely reject the former.

The overarching concern of Washington has been the potential for a major geopolitical bloc to emerge around Xi and especially Vladimir Putin, including BRICS allies South Africa and Brazil, yet the Johannesburg summit did not push that agenda in any obvious way, and Putin was compelled to stay in Moscow because of the International Criminal Court warrant. The BRICS (2023) Johannesburg Declaration did indeed confirm the location of BRICS squarely within imperialism’s multilateral institutions, with explicitly-stated support for the:

“rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at its core... a market-oriented agricultural trading system... a robust Global Financial Safety Net with a quota-based and adequately resourced IMF at its center… [with] increases in the quota shares of emerging markets and developing economies (EMDCs)… including in leadership positions in the Bretton Woods institutions… global consensus on economic policies… the importance of the G20 to continue playing the role of the premier multilateral forum in the field of international economic and financial cooperation… We note the opportunities to build sustained momentum for change by India, Brazil and South Africa presiding over the G20 from 2023 to 2025.”

The simple message here, is that instead of overturning the high table of Western economic power, the bloc is intent on stabilizing and relegitimizing that ‘rules-based order’ – in spite of a glaring contradiction, namely that its underlying ideology, the Washington Consensus, has caused so much suffering in so many low-income BRICS communities.

... As for the BRICS Bank, the main 2023 controversy surrounded the need to increase local-currency lending – because its President Dilma Rousseff confirmed a rise from 22 to 30 percent of its asset base in non-dollar or euro currencies by 2030, a revealingly unambitious objective. The BRICS Bank agreed to Western financial sanctions against Russia (a 19 percent owner) in 2022 due to its fear of the New York credit ratings agencies’ downgrade, bragging that Moscow loans represented less than 7 percent of the bank’s assets.

Russia literally had to suspend trade with India after selling a huge amount of cheap oil to India because they have accumulated record amount of Indian rupees with no ways of spending them. Everyone is just starting to realize how powerful the US dollar is, and how much more inconvenient it can be when you refuse to use them.

I don't think they suspended trade? Discussions on a rupee rouble mechanism were reported to have broken down (reported in the western media) but bilateral trade has actually grown.

It's also difficult for Russians to spend rupees because they are only partially convertible and indian firms might be hit with US sanctions for some exports.

how much more inconvenient it can be when you refuse to use them

I don't think Russia has much choice in the matter?

Great I’m glad there’s no hope again