The coordinated BRICS transition
It’s impossible to not recognize the orchestrated shift taking place. Not just the Ukraine war and the Russian sanctions; but, I mean, with that issue, you should notice that overwhelmingly, the isolation of Russia from the Western economies was not actually the result of legal sanctions imposed by the US and European governments; it was by private sector choice. Most of the companies that exited Russia, and have cut ties with Russia in one way or another, did not do so by state coercion, but by their own initiative. And companies do not, and most legally cannot, make choices that predictably negatively impact profits. They have obligations to shareholders, if they severed ties with Russia without being forced to do so by sanctions, then it was a business decision, which, by necessity, has to be in the interests of the company. Are profits down? No, they are at record highs. One result of the break from Russia has been to move Russia more towards BRICS and developing economies.
But again, you can look at other policies, like for instance the Green New Deal, and all the propaganda around climate change. The obvious and already existing solution for carbon-free energy is just ignored, or deliberately shoved to the side; which is nuclear energy. And instead a whole new business and financial sector has been created by the hype. From carbon credits to electric vehicles and so on. It has also become a powerful pretext for the imposition of severe Austerity. I mean, why does no one seem to see the contradiction between reducing energy consumption and also promoting automation and robotics, for example? Human workers are certainly more energy efficient than machines powered by electricity. So, you are urgently trying to reduce energy consumption, or desperately trying to find alternative sources of energy, while simultaneously promoting measures that will drastically increase energy consumption. That tells you it is a false pretext. It is just a way of imposing deprivation on Western populations, Austerity measures, to condition them for a bleak future. It is a way to de-industrialize Europe, and change the center of gravity of the global economy.
The EU wants to make solar power a major source of energy, for instance, over the next decade. They want 20% of their energy to be derived from solar power by 2040. OK. Already from now, 2023, they are importing solar energy from Africa, from Morocco. The UK is going to build a transmission cable going from Morocco to Devon, for $80 million, connecting the UK to the Ourzazate solar farm. All of the solar panels at Ourzazate were manufactured and provided by China. China controls about 80% of global market share in the production of solar panels. Going solar directs economic ties towards the Global South, and to China. You are literally shifting energy dependence, instead of going nuclear and having energy independence; because energy is just a lever for steering economic activity this way or that way. Look further into it. Creating solar panels is highly, highly energy intensive. Fossil fuel energy is used to create solar panels, so, the demand for more solar energy means China uses more fossil fuels, boosts their industrial consumption, creating more demand by China for oil and gas from the GCC, which increases THEIR revenues. So, energy deprivation in Europe, under the pretext of the climate crisis, is a bonanza for BRICS nations and would-be BRICS nations. Because, again, the actual obvious solution for carbon-free energy already exists. No new technology is needed. Nuclear energy. Meanwhile, Germany closes all of its nuclear facilities; and forces energy austerity on the population for literally no reason whatsoever. You can usually deduce the reasons for a policy by looking at the policy’s outcome; well, the outcome of things like the Ukraine war, Russian sanctions, and the Green New Deal, are the degradation, destabilisation, de-industrialisation of Europe, and the movement of economic activity, dependence, and benefit to the BRICS nations and the Global South. It certainly has not been democracy and freedom in Ukraine, the financial collapse of Russia, or solving the climate crisis. So you tell me, are all the tangible and predictable outcomes supposed to be regarded as accidental? Maybe, but it seems unlikely.
But, the important thing for the OCGFC, the Western OCGFC, is that they get to determine how economic activity in the Global South proceeds. How prosperity is distributed. Remember, most Western societies experienced very lopsided prosperity from Neoliberalism. They created very wealthy nations on paper, by GDP, but they also created enormous wealth gaps. The income pyramid became an obelisk, with a tiny fraction of the population owning the vast majority of the wealth in their countries; with wage stagnation or decline; the complete obliteration of meaningful organised labor unions, and tremendous misery for millions upon millions of their citizens. They will want this same development model in the Global South. I mean, neoliberalism has been imposed internationally for decades, but the US and the Global North, the West, have been the beneficiaries of that, and the real beneficiaries have been a select few. Well, now, there will be something like that in the Global South, in BRICS, if they get to direct the transition. So, in BRICS nations, there will be increased GDP, and the creation of more billionaires, general standards of living will improve, but so will the cost of living. They would like to see local OCGFC partner with western OCGFC, as junior partners, and the solidification of a, basically collaborator class in the BRICS nations.
The coordinated global response to Covid, the lockdowns and so forth, taking a sledgehammer to small and medium sized businesses, with the IMF encouraging Global South countries to spend and spend and spend in relief packages far beyond what they could afford, to force them to appeal for loans and financial assistance, to pummel their economies and their budgets, so that they would be in no position to resist privatization and foreign takeover of vital sectors, with only the largest local companies able to survive; all of this, it seems to me, was also connected to the global economic transition, the pivot south; and the OCGFC trying to ensure optimal conditions for securing their desired terms for that transition.
Because look, with Covid, with Ukraine, with the climate; rational and effective responses were possible and obvious, but in each scenario, other options were taken, all of which have disproportionately economic outcomes, and all of which economic outcomes move the global economy in the same trajectory, and none of which actually address the problems they were formally implemented to resolve. It is a massive PR misdirection. Because the OCGFC cannot exactly come out and say explicitly, “We have decided that the West is in an irreversible state of decay, and your societies, your people, your nations, are not as important as our shareholders, so we are moving elsewhere” But that is what is happening, under the cover of preserving public health, democracy in Ukraine, and saving the earth from global warming.