David Craig, on September 1st, 2023Friday/weekend blog
In this blog I wanted to focus on two key developments in our world:
- the rejection of Western liberal democracy by an increasing number of countries
- the abandonment of Western liberal democracy by Western elites
The rise and rise of the BRICS++++++
We’ve all seen the rise of the unpronounceable acronym in the West culminating in the increasingly ludicrous LGBTQ++++. An acronym which will become increasingly important is BRICS. BRICS is a grouping of the world economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa formed by the 2010 addition of South Africa to the predecessor BRIC. In January 2024, BRICS — originally established in 2009 to represent the world’s strongest emerging market economies — will add Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to its ranks. Though I doubt the acronym BRICSDAEEISU will be commonly used.
As BRICSDAEEISU grows this alliance will eventually rival the Group of Seven (G7) large industrial economies of the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Italy, and Canada, which together are home to 16 percent of the world’s population and account for 62 percent of the global economy.
Welcoming the new members in Johannesburg last week, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva said their addition would mean BRICS would represent 46 percent of the global population and 37 percent of the world GDP. The expansion means BRICS now consists of some of the globe’s largest oil producers: Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt. Nigeria, another major oil exporter, is set to join when the bloc gets even bigger, probably at its next summit in Russia in 2024. That will make any acronym even more complicated.
The expansion of BRICS will have at least three results:
- De-dollarization: the strength of the U.S. dollar is also partially based on the currency as underpinning oil trade—the so-called petrodollar—and members of OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) settle their accounts in U.S. dollars. Therefore, enlarging BRICS to also include the oil producers and persuading them to use a new BRICS currency, rather than the U.S. dollar, to settle their accounts, will be a game-changer.It is likely to accelerate the de-dollarization of the world
- Emasculating sanctions: the economically-dominant West has in the past had the ability to punish countries by imposing economic sanctions. AS BRICS++++++ get more powerful, any sanctions imposed by the West will become less meaningful
- Rejection of the West’s liberal democratic values: there is a lot of ill-feeling in developing countries against the West’s perceived misuse of its power – attacking Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan etc. Few of the BRICS++++ are democracies and most reject Western liberal democracy seeing it as a failing system which is tearing itself apart.
The West’s abandonment of democracy
Most Western governments have abandoned free market policies for redistributive welfarism – the state owns everything and you own nothing except what the state deigns to give you. Hence the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Western leaders have proved incapable of pivoting to a model anchored in freedom of conscience and human innovation. Instead they blather about the dangers of the disinformation age and “adjusting” to secular stagnation. All the while they have come to deeply fear a populace that is losing patience.
It is not unthinkable then, that with a little bit of persuasion from Big Tech, the West’s impotent, terrified, self-serving, exhausted and spiritually-corrupt elites could be persuaded that the only way for them to maintain control over us and prevent populist uprising against their economically- and socially-suicidal policies is to further hollow out any semblance of Democracy and drive our countries further towards becoming surveillance states where governments own everything, only approved opinions are allowed and dissenting voices are debanked, persecuted and destroyed.
I think I have used a version of this image on a previous blog. Though here I have changed it slightly to put the Globalists, the WEF Davos crowd, the Big Tech billionaires and the multi-national bureaucratic organisations such as the UN and the WHO at the top:
(left-click then left-click again to see the image in glorious widescreen technicolour)
As I have suggested in several previous blogs, I suspect that the relative freedom and democracy of the 1950s to 2010s, the years during which we have lived most of our lives, was an historical aberration – a brief period during which wealth was distributed more evenly between the ruling elites and ordinary people. That period seems to be ending as the elites consolidate ever more wealth and power under their control leaving us with ever less freedom and living ever more restricted, poorer lives:
- Want to buy a cheap, efficient petrol car? Soon to be banned
- Want to buy a cheap and efficient gas boiler? Soon to be banned
- Want to take holidays? Soon to be discouraged using ever-increasing taxes on flights
- Want to eat meat and dairy products? Soon to be increasingly expensive as farmers are restricted from producing food or even driven off their land as is happening in the Netherlands
- Want to drive your car in a city? You’ll have to pay congestion charges and ULEZ charges or even face complete bans on car usage in many places
- Want to express an opinion about mass illegal immigration or the biological differences between men and women or whether human activities are causing catastrophic climate change or the benefits of multi-culturalism or the peaceful nature of the world’s most peaceful religion? Expect the police to come knocking at your door
In fact, can you think of any way at all in which our elites are intent on making our lives better?
Category: 
It has often struck me how, after the fall of the Soviet Bloc, there were hardly any legal trials of the many thousands of Soviet and Soviet-trained apparatchiks who kept the blood-stained regimes in power for so long. With a very few exceptions, they were all allowed to disappear into the woodwork. And we are left to believe that all the training, indoctrination, contacts, access to information, and funds that they commanded just vanished into the ether.
Hmm.
I’m reminded of one Kristalina Georgieva, at various points in her career an EU Commissioner, Vice-president of the World Bank, and currently Managing Director of the IMF as successor to the notorious Christine Lagarde.
Georgieva holds a PhD in Economics and an MA in Political Economy and Sociology from, er, the Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Her other activities include –
World Economic Forum (WEF), Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2020).
Global Commission on Adaptation, co-chair (since 2018).
Generation Unlimited, member of the board (since 2018).
Paris Peace Forum, member of the steering committee (since 2018).
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), member of the council.
University of National and World Economy, member of the board of trustees.
Women Political Leaders Global Forum (WPL), member of the global advisory board.
China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), honorary member (2012).
Institute for Sustainable Communities, member of the board of trustees (2003–2005).
Not bad going for an apparatchik of a regime that was supposedly defeated and abolished over thirty years ago.
How many others on wonders, similarly trained and qualified but less public and less visible, have risen to positions of power and influence within the ever-burgeoning Western governmental bureaucracies? It would explain a great deal about what has been going on, ever since the supposed fall of Soviet Communism.
I think the ideas here are what we all need to focus on. I agree overall but not with some of the interpretation.
Firstly, I think that democracy is a delusion. It did not exist in ancient Greece and has never existed anywhere. Universal suffrage has not put us in charge. The fundamental problem in my view is that we need to be free to run our own lives and politicians think that they know better. All we have been doing is voting for more and more socialism and control. But it is also obvious that most people in the west do not want to take responsibility for their own lives. That has become about because increasing socialism has allowed the state to take over more of our lives. So far it has worked for many people but it cannot be maintained. As Anal Schwab says – you will have nothing. He doesn’t say that the elites will have everything, just like medieval feudalism in the pyramid chart.
Look at the results of the democratic elections for the London Mayor. Khan was elected with 24% of the registered electorate voting for him. The Tories were elected with 30% of the registered electorate voting for them. Neither have a mandate to govern. What democracy?
Diversity, inclusion and equality are the problems which to many people seem to be the way forward. We need diversity, but diversity of ideas but free speech is being closed down. We need each country to have an identifiable culture and inclusion is destroying the UK culture. Equality is the last thing we need. It is inequality that has resulted in the progress we have seen and it is also related to free speech. Look how the church tried to silence scientists. We will have equality – equally poor.
I have just watched the repeat of Mary Beard on the Roman Empire. They were successful partly because they established a Roman culture and Roman citizenship meant something. But also importantly there was no religious conflict. The Romans identified the same pagan Greek Gods and it was the same through the empire and so there was no religious conflict. This only came with Christianity and we have had religious conflict ever since.
I think you are right to focus on the economy and this goes back a long way. It was a problem for the Romans because they did the modern equivalent of printing money with coin clipping. It was easy to see the value of coins falling and Roman’s lost confidence and returned to exchange of goods. Coin clipping was used by the Emperors because they ran out of money for wars and food. It happened in Europe when the banking system collapsed because an English king (I think Edward II, but too lazy to look it up) defaulted on a payment for wars. The European economy collapsed at the same time as bad weather resulted in food shortages, plus disease and we had the Dark Ages. A reminder that it is several things that cause major problems. Henry VIII also clipped coins to finance wars but Elizabeth I restored the economy.
We have been doing the equivalent of coin clipping for more than 100 years with printing worthless money. The bankers saw this as an opportunity to make huge profits from interest on money they did not have. I think you are wrong to change the top of the pyramid – it should be as the original – the banking families – Rothschilds etc. But in addition we now have more production capacity than needed and so products have been made unreliable to ensure that factories operate fully but we have to spend on replacing goods. We have also many unnecessary products and services that need replacing through planned obsolesce. We are distracted by meaningless and costly entertainment and holidays. It is all part of a planned money transfer system from the poorest to the richest, with of course the cooperation of our “democratically” elected politicians.
But what we need to recognise is that the money printing has a limit and that has now been reached. I think you are right to draw attention to BRICS. They know that the dollar will collapse and are preparing for it.
On top of all this we seem to be going through one of the most insane periods in our history. I thought the belief in witchcraft and the events around it were bad and that science would prevent this. Now we have a belief that we can control the climate, that there was a dangerous virus (that probably does not exist) and certainly dangerous vaccines that many rushed to take. Now the most insane belief of all that we can change sex. I question whether it is better for the human race to die out.
If we (the masses) are to do anything about it we have to recognise exactly what the problems are, and that is not easy. But then we have to know what to do about them and I suggest that is impossible. I suspect the elites don’t know what to do either.
After posting the above I read Jeffery Palmer’s comment and it reminded me of something else to do with bankers. I am doubtful about a lot of the standard narratives that have been fed to us, especially about both world wars. There are views that the US bankers financed both Germany and Russia/USSR in both wars to create US dominance of the world. How do we find the truth?
Around late 1980s the Historical writer Gore Vidal wrote an article that the central fact of the 21st Century would be the restoration of the Chinese Empire.
America and probably the entire west seem to be in decline
Are the events the Spengler set out in Decline Of The West now becoming real. He suggested that a civilisation had a life span so maybe western dominance is moving naturally to its close.
Just to add to the Jeffrey Palmer post. There is also Siim Kallas from Estonia who was a soviet politburo member who later reinvented himself and became EU Transport Commissar. His wiki has now been edited to remove details of his soviet era service.
Around the time HS2 was being forced through due to EU requirements for high speed rail the UK policy was effectively overseen by this good old commie. Although given who was in charge in Britain during the covid scamdemic he probably felt at home.
As an aside his daughter is now PM of Estonia and that country is one of the leaders implementing a digital society and electronic ID. The apple not fallen far from the tree.
There is very little scrutiny on these people. Positions often filled with failed politicians like Kinnock. So its not really democracy dying its just that we have allowed too much to be made unaccountable. The solution is a smaller state and more direct democracy.
I hope you saw Neil Oliver last night. You got to the C40 cities before him. The economic policies he was discussing are those promoted by the Mises Institute and I believe they are correct. What we have is Keynesian economics started around the time the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. This is the date our problems started and it is why dealing with it is going to be impossible. Oliver was right about the money printing. That is inflation that reduces the value of our assets. Price increases are the result and are called inflation by the government to make us think they can deal with the problem but they can’t because the money printing continues. As Oliver said the dollar has reduced in value by maybe up 98% since 1913. It is a Ponzi scheme and they all fail.
The bankers know that they cannot deal with this and I believe that Keynes saw the money printing as a temporary solution. I recall when it became quantitative easing to bail out the banks that they were talking about reversing it and taking the money out of circulation. It never happened.
If the worthless money is taken out of circulation our assets will drop in value but our debts will stay the same. Anybody with mortgage debt will see their homes taken. Savings will vanish and I assume the entire economy will grind to a halt. Oliver did not discuss this.
The discussion after did not come to any conclusions, except for the idea that people might wake up when they really start to face problems and we would have demonstrations, probably turning to major riots I suspect. This will change nothing because it is too late to correct over 100 years of going down this path.
Of all the civilisations that have failed, none saw it coming and dealt with it. But there we’re usually several factors and it took time. The Venetian trading empire failed because the Doges decided to control who could trade and took a proportion of the profit and they did not see the mistake and the decline. I’m not sure whether dear Emma Thompson was on a yacht in Venice, but the photo shown of her supposedly on it certainly did not have Venice in the background. She sums up all of us, we are enjoying the money if we have it.