So I ran into something new yesterday...Is BRICS a trap?
I'm wondering if anyone around here is familiar with this fellow and his rap:
https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/wtf-happened-in-1971?triedRedirect=...
This starts out as something we're fairly familiar with here - the damning effects of abandoning Bretton Woods and the gold standard - but eventually it pivots toward the future, and dashes something I admit I'd been leaning on for hope:
From that point in 1971, we have seen the rise of China as an economic power, a geopolitical power, a military power, and, if recent events continue on their current path, a monetary power. Along the way, China’s “Eight Immortals“* and their offspring have:
forged ties with the US deep state
created financial linkages with the major Western banks
opened their doors to foreign corporations
received the West’s transplanted industrial capacity
built a suspiciously American arsenal
* = there's a hyperlink there too, but it doesn't seem to work
So far, so unsurprising (might be some news in the first and last, though) - but then he brings the Karate Kid crane-kick:
and spearheaded a (phoney) “Axis of Resistance” through the BRICS alliance, complete with (phoney) counter-institutions
As I have been at pains to point out in my work over the years, the fact that China has been offered a seat at the table for the New Multipolar World Order is not a good thing.
But you know what? It’s about to get even worse. That’s because, as bad as those charts documenting the post-1971 decline are, what’s coming next might make all of them pale in comparison.
I've been saying for years now that I never thought I'd be looking to Russia and China to give me hope for the future - if this guy's right, it's because I indeed never should've!
He's not ALL Doomer, mind you; he ends thusly (I'll dispense with the personal tedium of patching in the hyperlinks this time, just go to the source):
Of course, the answer to these problems is the same as it has always been. We have to stop relying on the banksters and their international monetary system. As I have explained in numerous reports over the years, there are many, many options on the table for us to construct a truly agoristic alternative economic system, one based not on government-issued fiat but on alternative currencies, on complementary currencies, on LETS-based and other timebank systems, on self-issued credit, on precious metals, on trade and barter in communities of interest and on all the other survival currencies that will help us transact outside the purview of our increasingly authoritarian governments.
In the meantime, it seems 1971 is catching up to us and we’re on the verge of 1971 Part 2. The difference is that this time, we know what’s coming. The question is: are we prepared?
Local verdict?
Comments
I have been a subscriber to Corbett's substack
for a few years. Fascinating stuff, well-sourced.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Maybe I'm missing something...
... but it doesn't appear from some of Corbett's graphs -- not all of them, but some of them -- as if the critical year was 1971.
Rather, the critical year for many of those graphs was 1973. What happened in 1973?
!) the beginning of the Trilateral Commission
2) the overthrow of Allende in Chile by their army with the aid of the CIA and ITT corporation, and the installation of the neoliberal incubator regime of Augusto Pinochet and his junta -- this was the original September 11th, and its importance is discussed at length in Kees van der Pijl's book
3) the point at which the world was forced to accept the faith-based dollar -- see Michael Hudson's book Super Imperialism for further details
4) the adjudication of Vietnam by Nixon and Kissinger
This is a simpler story than Corbett's.
"Kamala Harris would probably have been elected president if she had less time, not more” -- Yasmin Nair
Maybe so...
...but the 'hotter button' for me is his arguing that BRICS is just another "Obama".
What's your appraisal there?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Not sure of definition or narrative text of
"Obama" since he is not mentioned in the article. He did decline to have US become an original member of BRICS. The I is for India.
The author appears to have a bias regarding The Peoples Republic of China. It may have influenced his interpretation of the timeline. The 1973 timeline is more relevant.
Corbett does highlight a fact most historical accounts ignore. Mao made the outreach to the Nixon administrations as he had several previous administrations.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
I know what the "I" stands for; why did you mention that?
Regarding 'Obama', I was addressing Cassiodorus at the time and I didn't want to risk insulting it by preemptively explaining, as I imagine it would've been able to deduce that one.
ANYWAY, my meaning of that epithet (for that is how it was meant) was as a byword for an entity promising hope and change - I'm sorry, I mean HOPE! and CHANGE! - but truly a trap assuring continuity down an ever-more-infernal Primrose Path.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
This is a good perspective
.
The whole Nixon / Mao meet is important in an historical
context. The later failures of US embracing the potential
of a BRICS association is typical western hubris. As Bush Jr.
so eloquently stated - 'my way or highway'. Sorry, but you can't
run the world the way you want. This is proven.
Zionism is a social disease
That WAS the point of embracing Mao though, wasn't it?
Nixon and Kissinger DID foresee an Asian superbloc, and went out of their way to try to cockblock it.
One wonders exactly where D.C. went wrong after that, and who (if not Kissinger) would be to blame. I can guess, of course, but specifics would be nice.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
the establishment hated Kissinger's On China
I thought the book was surprisingly good. Chinese overtures came soon after the border conflict with the USSR. I regarded it as common sense triangulating in terms of the kind of realistic or pragmatic politics Mearsheimer always describes. But when it comes to China, a lot more insightful.
Some of the books critics claimed K was naive or "taken in by the communists," if you can believe that. One difficulty with the Asian area experts in the US, particularly at that time (although it continues) is that most had their first encounter with East Asia in Japan, post WWII. So they imbibed the political outlook shared by the LDP and the PACCOM community there. There is always an almost overwhelming romantic cultural influence with the first Asian culture one is immersed in. The anti-China/anti-communist perspective of Japan and hence the US, once acquired is difficult to shed. What emerges is an orientalist perspective that a "good Asian," is one that accepts my western view of the world.
When Kissinger compared US-Chinese relations potentially to that of the UK and Germany prior to WWII, (I'm guessing because I can't remember due to oldtimers affliction) it is suggested that taking a hardline, punitive approach, leads to stimulating the very animus one should seek to avoid.
There is a picture over at wikipedia on the Russia China border conflict I find fascinating-
Ussuri River 6 May 1969 Russian firehose, Chinese fisherman. Next step border battles.
己所不欲，勿施于人。