Posted on 08/23/2023 9:42:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The BRICS summit is taking place in South Africa this week. BRICS started out as BRIC for Brazil, Russia, India and China but has since added South Africa. The group of nations doesn’t have much in common except a generalized sense of grievance over the US being the most powerful country in the world.
The other BRICS nations have offered little to no protest of the Kremlin’s decision to rush to war. China and India stepped up purchases from Russia as Western sanctions started to bite. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva suggested that the West was at least partially to blame for the conflict and has offered a vague proposal to help forge a truce between Kyiv and Moscow. South Africa’s government equivocated, too, refusing to outright condemn Putin’s regime while bemoaning the war’s ripple effects on supply chains critical to African societies.
In Johannesburg, a big topic of conversation will be the outsize influence of the U.S. dollar in the global economy. Talk of “de-dollarization” is rife among exponents of the BRICS, even though not formally on the summit’s agenda. Some have floated a rival BRICS-backed currency to challenge the greenback’s supremacy. But the invention of a new BRICS currency is wildly ambitious — and probably unfeasible — and the summit is expected to focus instead on options to expand the use of local currencies in trade between bloc members. Dollar-strapped countries like Argentina have already started dealing in the Chinese yuan in certain transactions.
“Why does Brazil need the dollar to trade with China or Argentina? We can trade in our currency,” Lula told reporters recently<, before casting the BRICS bank as a more just potential actor on the world stage than U.S.-led institutions like the International Monetary Fund.
So the general idea of this conference is for these countries to get together as a kind of vague rival to the G7 or the G20. What you don’t want at a meeting like this is signs of confusion or possible problems behind the scenes. But this week China is experiencing both. First, there was this incident in which a Chinese aide seen running after Xi Jinping was stopped by security who, it seems, didn’t know who he was. As you can see in this clip, Xi seems confused and stops and looks back.
At BRICS summit, South African security officers stop Chinese President Xi Jinping's officials who were trying to make their in. Literally had to close the doors prompting the Chinese President to look back several times. pic.twitter.com/EHhsd6IKEH
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) August 23, 2023
It turns out the man who got body slammed into a door was Xi’s translator. You can see the same small guy with glasses in this earlier video shot upon Xi’s arrival.
Chinese President Xi Jinping attending the BRICS summit in South Africa
If you're wondering what small talk between national leaders sounds like:
Props to President Xi pulling out an appropriate ancient proverb, responding to President Ramaphosa's apartheid story at the end. pic.twitter.com/4H0PerqSEm
— Zhao DaShuai 无条件爱国🇨🇳 (@zhao_dashuai) August 23, 2023
But that was a relatively minor incident compared to what happened yesterday. Xi Jinping failed to show up for a planned speech.
Chinese President Xi Jinping failed to show up at the Brics Business Forum on Tuesday in South Africa, where he was expected to deliver a speech alongside his counterparts. In his place, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao read the speech that criticised the US over its tendency toward “hegemony”.
Xi, in the speech read by Wang at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, said the US tended to fight countries that threaten its dominance in global affairs and financial markets.
The speech said that every country has a right to development and that people should have the freedom to pursue a happy life. But one country, he said in a thinly veiled swipe at the US, is “obsessed with maintaining hegemony, has gone out of its way to cripple the emerging markets and developing countries”…
“This should be ‘stop the presses’ news!” Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China, said in response to Glaser’s post. “An unannounced absence, especially in a multilateral forum (which the PRC seldom misses), after all the ground work with India, is truly newsworthy. If true, something is certainly amiss.”
Again, the anti-US tone is standard fare for this event but the fact that Xi didn’t deliver his own speech is odd. Close watchers of China say this simply never happens without some extraordinary reason.
Xi later attended the summit dinner, but no reason was given for missing the speech. It appeared to be a last-minute decision, as state media articles and social media posts from China’s foreign ministry spokesperson were published as though he had delivered it himself…
The China Global South Project noted this was the second unexplained absence by a Chinese official after former foreign minister Qin Gang – who has not been seen in public for months – also missed last month’s foreign ministers Brics meeting.
“To say [Xi’s absence] is extraordinary is an understatement as Chinese leaders never miss highly choreographed events like this,” it said.
Did anything extraordinary happen yesterday that might have unavoidably pulled Xi away from his duties? Maybe?
Reports circulating online have claimed that one of China’s Type 093, or “Shang-class,” nuclear submarines had crashed in unknown circumstances at some point in the past few days. Some of the reports claimed the entire crew onboard the vessel had been killed…
There has been no official confirmation of a Chinese submarine running into difficulty in the contentious strait, and experts have been hesitant to speculate. The topic was not mentioned in a press briefing from China’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday and has not appeared in any state news agencies’ reports.
Two points about this. First, if a Chinese nuclear sub did sink in the Taiwan straight that would be a huge story. Second, this definitely seems like the kind of news China would deny and lie about because that’s just what they do anytime their prestige is on the line.
On the other hand, no one seems convinced this happened yet. Taiwan’s MOD put out a statement yesterday saying they hadn’t heard anything beyond the rumors.
“As per my understanding, this information is circulating on social media but I haven't received any official confirmation”- Spokesperson of Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense on the rumours regarding the Chinese submarine accident in the Taiwan Strait
pic.twitter.com/adlPZlphW4— Sana Hashmi | 胡莎娜 (@sanahashmi1) August 22, 2023
Also there’s this:
Taiwan Atomic Energy Council spokesman Wang Chongde said that if a nuclear submarine sinks nuclear fuel could leak However, none of Taiwan's 63 radiation monitoring stations detected a change in bg radiation after reports of a Chinese submarine accident in the Taiwan Strait. pic.twitter.com/F3YhaYenWU
— JohneidpyM01 (@johneidpyM01) August 22, 2023
So at least for now this looks like a rumor with no confirmation at all. It probably didn’t happen. That still leaves the mystery of why Xi Jinping was suddenly unavailable for a scheduled speech yesterday without any notice. Something happened, we just don’t know what it was yet.
The PRC is our real threat, but neither Republicans nor Democrats will call that elephant in the room out.
The PRC donates a lot to political campaigns and parties through their US based subsidiaries. The PRC has lobbying firms (some of the most influential like the Podesta Group). They have vast influence on the US media through direct engagement, some ownership, their own state run media being available in the US and advertising revenue. There is a huge expat population in the US. Very important, much of US manufacturing is based in the PRC (Cisco, HP, Apple, Dell, GM or >75% of what is sold on Amazon) and US based companies do not like anything which interferes with that, nor do they like to have access to one of the worlds largest markets interrupted.
Bottom line: when it comes to the PRC, the US policy makers and bureaucrats hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys#/media/File%3AGandhiji‘s_Three_Monkeys.JPG
The PRC can drive tanks over pro democracy students on Tienamin Square, and that same year the US will give them most favored trade status under George H. They can have questionable organ harvesting policies, make dissidents disappear, oppress religion, have forced abortions, literal internment camps, and we won’t say much. The PRC is a single party communist regime, they execute more people than any other country on this planet, occupy Tibet and in a show of force recently conducted a naval blockade of Taiwan. What do we do? We tell our #1 trade partner not to worry and things will return back to normal soon.
Our foreign policy is guided by making money, and that’s it.
If you’re important enough to us, you can disembowel and dismember a US resident and journalist while he’s still alive, in a fellow NATO country, at the order of the prince, and we won’t do anything, i.e. Kashoggi. We’ll sell you $200 billion worth of arms the next year and roll the red carpet out. Where’s a warrant? What investigation was there, really? Who in the US government is pushing for those responsible to be “brought to justice?” Hahahaha
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45812399
We once were special. We once had a constitutional republic, a free press, our policies reflected certain societal values.
We expected our leaders to display certain values, and they were present in our literature, movies, plays, paintings, music, sculpture, even architecture. All that is history. That is not who we are today. Today you “literally” have a US President go on a tour and claiming the US is not a Christian nation, repeatedly.
You tell me, what do we really represent today? Your Norman Rockwell, apple pie and American flag world is gone. Today when you go on a US military installation, you’ll buy clothes made in Vietnam, where the owners of the sweatshops there are communist party members, some are the same folks we fought against. You can buy your peace, democracy, sovereignty and human rights Ukraine flag (Ukraine isn’t any of those) on Amazon made in China: https://a.co/d/cD3bR4L
.
Who?
China is an economic threat.
Is it a military threat? To Taiwan yes, but not to Japan, leave along parts of the USA.
They need to be encouraged to not make the leap to a military threat and at the same time to play by the same economic rules as the USA.
However, even if China turns into a democracy overnight and fully accepts the same economic rules as the USA, they are still going to rival the USA economically - they are large, have smart people and are growing internally as well.
you are talking about going back to the gold standard?
Right now there is roughly $2.26 trillion in US currency in circulation worldwide - physical (about 10%) and bank fiat currencies etc.
There isn’t enough gold in existence for the USA to go back to the gold standard.
If you have a gold standard, then the money supply can only expand in line with the gold supply. That means limited money, so money does indeed retain its value better (= less inflation). However, without the ability to create money, it’s hard for an economy to expand. Imagine going to the bank for a mortgage and being told, “sorry, we haven’t discovered any new gold mines this year so we don’t have any money to lend you.”
You can’t go back to a physical standard for currency any more than you can cancel all paper currency and keep it in specie
“You don’t think China and Russia aren’t doing the same bullying the US does?”
Actually, no, they won’t. They are not pushing other countries to use their currency to prop it up and give a federal reserve a cut of the action. The US does.
“Why was Finland desperate to join NATO”
For reason’s anti-Russian bigots like you cannot possibly understand. You are blinded by your job to push anti-Russian propaganda.
The West did help in a way, but what was important was that the countries themselves made the change -- compare Poland and Ukraine
Ukraine was hamstrung by sticking to the Russyski Mir, while Poland wasn't (I am simplifying yes)
That is one of the reasons why Ukraine did not want to stay with the Kremlin's plan in 2014 but wanted to be closer to the West.
anti-russian?
Nah, Finland and Sweden decided to join NATO now because Putin has shown that Russia is an aggressive state - returning to its state in the 1800s or during the pre-”Communism in one country” USSR state.
Nothing Russo-phobic about that.
“There isn’t enough gold in existence for the USA to go back to the gold standard.”
Sure, there is. There always has been. The problem you failed to understand is that the federal reserve system deflated the value of the dollar by 97% since 1913 when the federal reserve system was implemented.
If you took that $2.26 trillion and divided it by 3% it would only be worth $67 billion, as it should be before the massive federal reserve inflation.
Chinese and North Korean leaders do not like for their whereabouts to be known when they are out of the country.
We annex entire continents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
Ask a Mexican about New Mexico and Arizona and if the US invades and annexes land.
“In 1848, the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and allowed the New Mexico territory to be annexed to the United States.”
Wrong. They joined out of pressure the US, not pressure from Russia. Again, you are a bigot, not an educated person.
Where Ukraines economy today?
https://tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/full-year-gdp-growth
Using your reasoning, was following our lead a good idea?
The world bank anticipates that 30% of Ukraines population will be at or below the poverty level by the end of this year. Great success!
AND
Finland and Sweden have joined out of pressure from Putin's attempt to create a new Tsarist Empire.
Ukraine should have been allowed into NATO in 2008 when it applied.
If that had happened, then Ukraine would today not be under threat from Putin and would be on the path to prosperity.
Ukraine has been invaded by Russia - first in 2014 and on a larger scale since February 2022 —> so looking at their economic progress since 2021 is looking at a country under invasion.
Ukrainians do not want to be under the Kremlin’s thumb.
It is estimated that approx 200,000 tonnes of gold has been mined.
That is 7 billion ounces or 14 trillion dollars at current prices.
I’m not necessarily an advocate of the gold standard, but it appears doable. A partial like the Swiss is worth looking at.
Do they like being under our thumb?
https://www.ft.com/content/3d6041fb-5747-4564-9874-691742aa52a2
Who do you think hand picked most of the key people running Ukraine today?
When a US Vice President makes phone calls and demands folks get fired in Ukraine because he don’t like where they’re taking an investigation is that a “sovereign” nation not under someone’s thumb?
If you really cared about Ukraine and such concepts as sovereignty, you would have supported the Minsk agreement which basically strived to get foreign influence out of Ukraine, on both sides.
Things like that.
I'm sure there is plenty more.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.