Articles and papers from authors concerning Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) trade partnership.

Putin Tells Beijing Forum: The Future Belongs to Eurasia.

by RI Staff, Information Clearing House

Putin: "Greater Eurasia is not an abstract geopolitical arrangement but, without exaggeration, a truly civilisation-wide project looking toward the future"

By RI Staff

May 16, 2017 "Information Clearing House" -   Russia's President Vladimir Putin spoke at the opening of the One Belt, One Road international forum in Beijing on Sunday. The two-day summit will focus on China's Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. 

In his address, Putin welcomed China’s One Belt, One Road initiative and stressed that Russia is committed to working with its regional partners to forge a new "political and economic landscape of the continent and bring peace, stability, prosperity and a new quality of life to Eurasia ...  Greater Eurasia is not an abstract geopolitical arrangement but, without exaggeration, a truly civilisation-wide project looking toward the future".

Highlights from his speech:

Let us not forget about those threats that stem from regional conflicts. Areas of smouldering disagreements still exist across Eurasia. In order to eliminate those conflicts, first of all, we need to abandon hostile rhetoric, mutual accusations and rebukes that only aggravate the situation. Altogether, none of the old approaches to conflict resolution should be used to solve modern problems. We need fresh and stereotype-free ideas.

I believe Eurasia can work out and propose a constructive and positive agenda on issues relating to security, improving relations between states, economic development, social change, better administration and the search for new forces capable of driving growth.

For the global community, we must be an example of a collective, innovative and constructive future based on justice, equality and respect for national sovereignty, international law and the unwavering principles of the United Nations.

However, desire and will alone are not enough to follow through on this agenda. Efficient tools for this type of cooperation are required. These can be created through integration. Today there are many thriving integration projects in Eurasia. We support them and are vested in their further development.

Many are aware of the fact that Russia and its partners are building the Eurasian Economic Union. The parties of the EAEU have similar views on Eurasian integration and it is very important to us that the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are participating in this forum.

We welcome China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. By proposing this initiative, President Xi Jinping has demonstrated an example of a creative approach toward fostering integration in energy, infrastructure, transport, industry and humanitarian collaboration, about which I have just talked at length.

I believe that by adding together the potential of all the integration formats like the EAEU, the OBOR, the SCO and the ASEAN, we can build the foundation for a larger Eurasian partnership. This is the approach that, we believe, should be applied to the agenda proposed today by the People’s Republic of China.

We would welcome the involvement of our European colleagues from the EU states in this partnership. This would make it truly concordant, balanced and all encompassing, and will allow us to realise a unique opportunity to create a common cooperation framework from the Atlantic to the Pacific – for the first time in history.

It is necessary that already today, we start acting upon the development strategy of the large Eurasian partnership. Thus, we can set an ambitious goal of making the flow of goods across as expedient, convenient and unhindered as possible. Just now, in his address, President Xi Jinping spoke about lifting bureaucratic barriers for trade flows between China and Kazakhstan. We can see it happening along other routes.

Additionally, I would like to stress that Russia is not only willing to be a reliable trading partner but also seeks to invest in the creation of joint ventures and new production capacities in partnering states, to invest in industrial facilities, sales and services.

Furthermore, it is necessary to eliminate infrastructure restrictions for integration – mainly by creating a system of modern and well-connected transport corridors. Russia with its unique geographic location is willing to engage in this joint activity.

We are consistently upgrading our maritime, railway and road infrastructure, expanding the capacity of the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the Trans-Siberian Railway, investing significant resources into improvements to the Northeast Passage in order for it to become a global competitive transport artery.

If we look at the bigger picture, the infrastructure projects within the EAEU and the One Belt, One Road initiative in conjunction with the Northeast Passage can completely reconfigure transportation on the Eurasian continent, which is the key to exploring new territory and intensifying economic and investment activity. Let us pave these roads to development and prosperity together.

We expect newly established financial institutions like New Development Bank (BRICS Development Bank) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to offer a supporting hand to private investors. And of course, quality integration is only possible with the support of strong human capital, qualified professionals, advanced technology and research.

On a final note, I would like to stress that Russia does not simply view the future of the Eurasian partnership as the mere establishment of new ties between states and economies. This partnership must shift the political and economic landscape of the continent and bring peace, stability, prosperity and a new quality of life to Eurasia.

Understandably our citizens need security, confidence in the future and the opportunity to be productive and improve the wealth and well-being of their families. It is our common duty and responsibility to ensure they have these opportunities.

In this respect, the greater Eurasia is not an abstract geopolitical arrangement but, without exaggeration, a truly civilisation-wide project looking toward the future.

I believe that by maintaining the spirit of cooperation, we can achieve that future.

This article was first published by RI

China Widens its Silk Road to the World

by Pepe Escobar, Information ClearingHouse

Why Washington is Terrified of Russia, China

by Pepe Escobar, Information ClearingHouse

Challenging the Dollar: China and Russia's Plan from Petroyuan to Gold.

by Federico Pieraccini, Information Clearing House

BRICS – Potential and Future in an Emerging New World Economy.

by Peter Koenig, Information Clearing House

Based on an interview with Tashreeq Truebody, Radio 786, South Africa

Questions

1. Global economy and Brics

   Peter Koenig
   Let’s put the BRICS in perspective: The BRICS are of course Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Together they make up for almost 50% of the world population and close to one third of the world’s economic output, or GDP.

This alone would make them fully independent from the western economy, from the western, what I call, fraudulent dollar-based monetary system. And it will happen – it will happen sooner than the world believes. However, with the current political structure of the BRICS, the relative lack of political and economic coherence, safe for Russia and China, this for the moment is just theory.

If you allow me, let’s backtrack a bit in history, to where the term BRIC came from, and who coined it. At the beginning, South Africa was not yet member of the association. In 2001, shortly after the 9/11, in 2001, the chief economist of Goldman Sachs, Jim O’Neill, invented the term BRIC – as he was forecasting that these emerging economies, spread throughout the world, Brazil, Russia, India and China – would overtake the so-called western economy by 2041. The forecast was later revised several times, all the way to 2032 – and now, there is, I believe no formal forecast, but it could easily happen by 2025, or earlier, especially with the new Oil-for-yuan and gold exchange market soon to be opened in Shanghai. Many predict this to be the end of the petro-dollar, and the end of the dollar hegemony.

Then strangely and formidably the four BRIC countries realized their potential and took things in their own hands. That’s how dynamics work – often totally unpredictably. For sure, Goldman Sachs and their Chief economist had no clue that this would create the western monetary and economic system’s most daunting adversary.

The first BRIC summit was held in Russia in June 2009. That was the formal conference to create the BRICS.

By 2011, the five countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China – plus South Africa were the five fastest growing emerging markets, and in April 2013, South Africa was added to the BRIC group – to make it formally the BRICS.

This just as a little historic introduction – to show that the impetus for the BRIC(S) came actually form a most unlikely western source – Goldman Sachs.

In the meantime, the BRICS are struggling with another reality. For the BRICS to be an effective alternative to the western economy, or the western monetary system, they need a unified political vision, as well as a coherent and unified economic development approach, one that distances itself from the western dollar-euro based system. Unfortunately, today this is not so. But that doesn’t mean it will not happen. Personally, I believe it will. It may just take longer than the majority of the world may have liked.

Both Brazil and India are totally in the hands of Wall Street, the World Bank and the IMF. In the case of India, you will recall last fall’s deadly monetary fiasco, when PM Narendra Modi decided to cancel more than 80% of the countries circulating cash currency, and as an interim step to replace it with other bills and eventually digitalize the Indian economy.

It is not known how many poor Indians perished, those with no access to bank accounts, those who have no alternative means to pay for food. Uncountable small businesses failed – an important impact on the Indian economy. More, much more inhuman was the impact on the poor average Indians. But – Modi followed the dictate of the west, of Wall Street and the IMF – with a program to test digitalization in a large emerging economy, implemented by USAID. – How much trust does India under Modi as a BRICS member deserve?

And Brazil under neoliberal Temer, who is under accusation of corruption; he has literally handed his country’s economy to the sharks of Wall Street, the IMF and the WB. So, when Temer and Modi stood there holding hands with the other three BRICS members in Xiamen, China on 4^th and 5^th September – it looked to me like a club that was united only by name.

Yet, the theme of this 9^th BRICS Conference was “BRICS: Stronger Partnership for a Brighter Future”. – I truly hope this objective will be achieved. And it very well may – over time. It is important to approach such an event in a positive and forward-looking spirit.

Perhaps it was along the same philosophy, that ahead of the September summit in Xiamen, President Putin said something crucial, but highly political and highly diplomatic: “It is important that our group’s activities are based on the principles of equality, respect for one another’s opinions and consensus. Within BRICS, nothing is ever forced on anyone. When the approaches of its members do not coincide, we work patiently and carefully to coordinate them. This open and trust-based atmosphere is conducive to the successful implementation of our tasks.”

1. Understanding Industrialization / development and the Brics Bank.

   PK
   Let’s start with the BRICS development bank, now called New Development Bank (NDB). It emerged as an idea from the Durban BRICS summit in March 2013 and was formally created in 2014, and signed as a Treaty in July 2015.

Under the Agreement the BRICS Development Bank, as it was first called – now the NDB, they set up a “reserve currency pool” of US$ 100 billion. Each of the five-member countries was to allocate an equal share of the US$ 50 billion start-up capital, to be expanded later to the US$ 100 billion.

Contributions per country were, Brazil, $18 billion, Russia $18 billion, India $18 billion, China $41 billion and South Africa $5 billion. The problem is that the initial capital and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) of US$ 100 billion was set up in US dollars.

How can they break loose from the western dollar-based monetary system, if their contribution is dollar based?

Also, South Africa and Brazil are heavily indebted – in US dollars. South Africa’s current debt is today above 50% (US$ 153 billion) of GDP which stands just below 300 billion.

To comply with their contribution to the dollar-denominated CRA, Brazil and SA may have to borrow from where? – Wall Street, or the IMF, as the CRA is a dollar reserve fund. This puts these countries even more into a dollar bondage, in the hands of the FED and the Bretton Woods Organizations – instead of freeing them from this predicament.
——

As a parenthesis, South Africa’s interest on foreign debt of $153 billion was about US$ 5 billion (2016). Foreign debt is almost 52% of SA’s GDP of close to US$ 300 billion. The US$ 5 billion debt payments are higher than the country’s spending on tertiary education (about R60 billion / US$ 4.6 billion equivalent). This is also a good reason to detach from a debt-based monetary system – and, as originally was planned by the BRICS – migrate towards a BRICS own monetary and international payment system – similar to the one already introduced to the world by China – the Chinese International Payment System (CIPS).
———–

On Industrialization – the NDB will certainly help boost industrialization within each of the BRICS countries, but also among the BRICS countries – and even outside the BRICS nations, as trade will increase.

At present the NDB has approved seven investment projects in the BRICS countries, worth around $1.5 billion. This year, the NDB is to approve a second package of investment projects worth $2.5 to $3 billion in total.

Although it is not clear what precisely these projects entail, the original idea for the NDB was to support infrastructure and energy projects within the BRICS countries. There is a big need for infrastructure and independent energy production. Of course, infrastructure and energy development, means also industrialization and trade.

1. Economic diversification 

PK
A solid BRICS cooperation, as well as an own development bank, will most likely attract – and through the NDB leverage – new investments. This was one of the goals discussed during the Xiamen summit. The amount of which is difficult to predict, but Indian PM Modi has talked about an expected 40% increase over the next few years. But even if India or any BRICS country receives foreign investments, it will be difficult to discern which investments are directly related to the new BRICS strength, as so fervently expressed in Xiamen.

More important is the diversification of investments, as well as the related trade. There are currently several countries on a – what shall I call it – “wait list” – to become members of the BRICS. For example, South Korea and Mexico (both are OECD members), Indonesia, Turkey, Argentina, have been mentioned.

Trade between emerging and developing markets has already been increasing more rapidly than “globalized average trade” for which WTO imposes the rules. I could imagine that trade – and, thus, diversification – between BRICS countries, or better even, an enlarged BRICS block, could really boom. It would be a sort of ‘globalization’ with most trade barriers removed, of a peace-oriented economy, one that strives for the well-being of the people, rather than an elite – and of course, an economy that does not work for the war industry, as does the western dollar-based economy.

For that reason, it will be important that the BRICS detach themselves from the western dollar-based economy and eventually have their own currency. At the Xiamen summit, this was discussed in some ways.

The five members have agreed to “promote and develop BRICS Local Currency Bond Markets and jointly establish a BRICS Local Currency Bond Fund, as a means of contribution to the capital sustainability of financing in BRICS countries, boosting the development of BRICS domestic and regional bond markets.”

This comes pretty close to what the Euro was before it became Fiat money, i.e. it was the European Currency Unit (ECU) that then converted into the virtual Euro, before in January 2002, the Euro became paper and dollar like Fiat money.

By now we know that the US drove this European currency effort – establishing the euro as the foster child of the US dollar – totally unsustainable as a unitary currency of a group of countries that have no common political interests and goals, that have no common Constitution. Their only common denominator is NATO, their permanent drive for war. It was clear from the beginning that such a project will be doomed to fail.

Hopefully – and I trust, the BRICS will learn a lesson from this failed exercise, and only with a strong bond that includes political, economic and defense long-term goals, a common currency can flourish.

In Xiamen, the BRICS also established the Strategy for “BRICS Economic Partnership and initiatives related to its priority areas such as trade and investment, manufacturing and minerals processing, infrastructure connectivity, financial integration, science, technology and innovation, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) cooperation, among others.” All this for sustainable, balanced and inclusive global growth.

This Strategy already is indicative for a different development and monetary approach than was the one that laid the cornerstone for the European Union.

1. Trade between Brics and the dollar

PK
This will be interesting to see emerging. In the medium term, I see a full integration between the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS. Several countries are already today members of both associations; for example, Russia and China, recently also India joined the SCO. The SCO also comprises most of central Asia, the former Soviet Republics, and also new Iran and Pakistan. The SCO has already a common long-term objective, in economic development, political vision, as well as defense strategy.

During the recent Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok, President Putin and President Xi announced cementing of the fusion between the Eurasian Economic Union (EUAU) and the new ‘Silk Road’, also called “One Belt One Road” (OBOR), or for short “OBI” – the One Belt Initiative.

Since OBI is largely driven by SCO, i.e. by China, this also means that the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union are part of SCO. Imagine, the economic power of the entire group SCO, EAEU and BRICS…. Western supremacy will be a thing of the past.

This means worldwide trading – but without the dollar hegemony, without an economic and monetary systems that allows Washington to impose “sanctions” – outrageous and illegal punishments on countries that refuse to follow their dictate. Its high time that this high crime stops. And that we reinstate international law – which today is completely ‘bought’ by Washington.

Today it is clear to most progressive and forward-looking economists that the future is the east; the west has practically committed suicide with its constant wars for greed and dominance and disrespect for the very peoples that foot the western empire’s war bills.

1. Brics development bank vs. World Bank

PK
Yes, the original idea was – and I hope still is – that the BRICS New Development Bank will be able to compete with the WB and the IMF. In other words, by applying non-neoliberal economic policies and with loans that do not impose austerity – which, as we know, is devastating for economic development – but will promote peoples’ based development – aiming at a more just income and wealth distribution.

This is not yet the case.

As mentioned before, the problem is that the BRICS bank’s initial capital and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) of US$ 100 billion was set up in US dollars.

Also, as said before, South Africa and Brazil are heavily indebted – in US dollars, an existing bondage that is difficult to break. But not impossible!

The same is true for the Chinese Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), whose capital of currently also US$ 100 billion is also dollar denominated, and of which about US$ 18 billion is paid in.

It is very likely that the NDB and the AIIB will work together in the future – and jointly break the stranglehold of the WB and the IMF.

In order to do so, they both need to totally break loose from the dollar economy – which is about to happen, perhaps soon, with the enactment of the Chinese Petrol exchange in Shanghai, where trading will NOT be in US dollars but in gold-convertible Yuan.

A possible solution is an SCO-BRICS currency basket, similar to the IMFs Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket which currently consist of 5 currencies – the US-dollar, British Pound, Euro, Yen and since October 2016 also the Chinese Yuan. This may start out as a virtual currency for external trade, while each country preserves her own monetary system.

It looks like a brighter future is ahead.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

 

The Real BRICS Bombshell.

by Pepe Escobar, Information Clearing House,

Putin reveals 'fair multipolar world' concept in which oil contracts could bypass the US dollar and be traded with oil, yuan and gold

By Pepe Escobar

September 07, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - The annual BRICS summit in Xiamen – where President Xi Jinping was once mayor – could not intervene in a more incandescent geopolitical context.

Once again, it’s essential to keep in mind that the current core of BRICS is “RC”; the Russia-China strategic partnership. So in the Korean peninsula chessboard, RC context – with both nations sharing borders with the DPRK – is primordial.

Beijing has imposed a definitive veto on war – of which the Pentagon is very much aware.

Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test, although planned way in advance, happened only three days after two nuclear-capable US B-1B strategic bombers conducted their own “test” alongside four F-35Bs and a few Japanese F-15s.

Everyone familiar with the Korean peninsula chessboard knew there would be a DPRK response to these barely disguised “decapitation” tests.

So it’s back to the only sound proposition on the table: the RC “double freeze”. Freeze on US/Japan/South Korea military drills; freeze on North Korea’s nuclear program; diplomacy takes over.

The White House, instead, has evoked ominous “nuclear capabilities” as a conflict resolution mechanism.

Gold mining in the Amazon, anyone?

On the Doklam plateau front, at least New Delhi and Beijing decided, after two tense months, on “expeditious disengagement” of their border troops. This decision was directly linked to the approaching BRICS summit – where both India and China were set to lose face big time.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had already tried a similar disruption gambit prior to the BRICS Goa summit last year. Then, he was adamant that Pakistan should be declared a “terrorist state”. The RC duly vetoed it.

Modi also ostensively boycotted the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) summit in Hangzhou last May, essentially because of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

India and Japan are dreaming of countering BRI with a semblance of connectivity project; the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC). To believe that the AAGC – with a fraction of the reach, breath, scope and funds available to BRI – may steal its thunder, is to enter prime wishful-thinking territory.

Still, Modi emitted some positive signs in Xiamen; “We are in mission-mode to eradicate poverty; to ensure health, sanitation, skills, food security, gender equality, energy, education.” Without this mammoth effort, India’s lofty geopolitical dreams are D.O.A.

Brazil, for its part, is immersed in a larger-than-life socio-political tragedy, “led” by a Dracula-esque, corrupt non-entity; Temer The Usurper. Brazil’s President, Michel Temer, hit Xiamen eager to peddle “his” 57 major, ongoing privatizations to Chinese investors – complete with corporate gold mining in an Amazon nature reserve the size of Denmark. Add to it massive social spending austerity and hardcore anti-labor legislation, and one’s got the picture of Brazil currently being run by Wall Street. The name of the game is to profit from the loot, fast.

The BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB) – a counterpart to the World Bank – is predictably derided all across the Beltway. Xiamen showed how the NDB is only starting to finance BRICS projects. It’s misguided to compare it with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). They will be investing in different types of projects – with the AIIB more focused on BRI. Their aim is complementary.

‘BRICS Plus’ or bust

On the global stage, the BRICS are already a major nuisance to the unipolar order. Xi politely put it in Xiamen as “we five countries [should] play a more active part in global governance”.

And right on cue Xiamen introduced “dialogues” with Mexico, Egypt, Thailand, Guinea and Tajikistan; that’s part of the road map for  “BRICS Plus” – Beijing’s conceptualization, proposed last March by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, for expanding partnership/cooperation.

A further instance of “BRICS Plus” can be detected in the possible launch, before the end of 2017, of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – in the wake of the death of TPP.

Contrary to a torrent of Western spin, RCEP is not “led” by China. Japan is part of it – and so is India and Australia alongside the 10 ASEAN members. The burning question is what kind of games New Delhi may be playing to stall RCEP in parallel to boycotting BRI.

Patrick Bond in Johannesburg has developed an important critique, arguing that “centrifugal economic forces” are breaking up the BRICS, thanks to over-production, excessive debt and de-globalization. He interprets the process as “the failure of Xi’s desired centripetal capitalism.”

Beijing’s “Belt and Road” Initiative, Towards an Economy of Peace?

by Peter Koenig, Information Clearing House,

Why is the world one huge fireball of hostilities, conflicts, threats of economic sanctions, propaganda of lies and mind manipulations, fearmongering – killing – massive killing – 12-15 million people killed since 9/11? – Why is that? And all provoked and executed by ONE country, and her vassals in the form of NATO, stooges of Brussels and the Middle East, and their prostituted proxies, paid mercenary whores, Islamic State, by the one Rogue Nation the world is subjected to – the United States of America.

All that at the cost of trillions of dollars, tax-payers’ money – really? – More likely privately FED, Wall Street created fiat money, pyramid money, based on usury and debt, subjugating debt to be pillaged from the ordinary citizens; but government debt never to be repaid, as per Alan Greenspan (FED Chairman, 1987-2006) to an exasperated journalist who asks, when will the US ever pay back its huge debt? – “Never – we will just print new money”. – So, is it really ‘tax-payers’ money’? – Would tax-payers’ money be able to pay for these trillions and trillion spent on conflicts, wars and hostilities – hundreds of billions spent on propaganda of deception and lies to promote endless assassinations around the globe? Hardly.

Why is it that we live willingly and knowingly in a fraud and greed-economy? – Is living in deception the illusion that keeps ultra-capitalism alive? – That leads us to ever higher grounds of avarice – ending in all-destructive fascism? – Possibly in a globe-annihilating mushroom?

Why do we worship war, if at least 99.99% of the peoples of this globe want peace?

Why do we tolerate such atrocities imposed by one nation – no longer worthy of the term ‘nation’ – destructions of entire countries, civilizations, the cradle of western history? Obliteration of livelihoods for generations to come? – For nothing else but gluttony, for insane accumulation of material goods and power? For world hegemony of a few? Why do we tolerate Inhumanity as our ‘leadership’?

It is well-understood that such ‘leaders’ are put in place not by elections, but by fraud – why do we not throw them out? – Why do we bend over still believing in the lies of democracy – if in the back of our minds a little spark of conscience tells us exactly that we are being betrayed by our governments, not once, not twice – but ALL THE TIME?

And this refers to WE in the WEST.

We know that we are living a falsehood. Is falsehood tolerable for the comfort of not moving out of our armchairs, out of the cushioned blue-pilled matrix, where we would have to face our own reality – that of having lived a life of lies for most of our existence? – Wouldn’t that recognition be a first step to our freedom – FREEDOM – freedom from want, freedom of mind, like in liberty to love our fellow citizens – freedom to embrace Peace?

Why are we not finishing off this monster – which is itself only a hologram, directed by a deep dark state, invisible to the naked eye of common citizens and a shadow government of tyrants, torturers, killers, psychopaths – that direct our everyday lives? – They, these triangle-framed one-eyed underground beasts have to live in secrecy, in darkness. Why?

Are we afraid? – Why can we not shed that fear for a little bit of courage – and find back to human solidarity against this atrocious abuse – the worst ever since the Roman Empire and probably much longer, ever since our modern times of history, dating back to the ascent of monotheism, some 5000 years ago? When the Akkadians overthrew the Sumerian civilization, where women had their natural initiating roles and were equals to men. Monotheism changed all this.

Let’s be clear – nobody is to be wished death; not the murderers of the Pentagon, or of the CIA, NSA, FBI – not the slaughterers of the Military Industrial Complex – nor the financial assassins of the FED, Wall Street, nor the whores of the mainstream propaganda killer ‘fake news’. No – they will eventually face their own Karma. In the meantime, let them live and drown in their own self-made swamp, or rather their suffocating cesspool of sewer.

But we do have to get rid of them – get them out of our lives, get them isolated from our well-being, human well-being, not greed-well-being, as we live today. They must be marginalized. -How?

Economically.

There is a new economic paradigm waiting in the wings, offered by China and Russia, an Economy of Peace. An economy backed by labor, by construction, by research, education – by culture – and by gold. No fiat economy – an economy of Equal Rights and equal benefits for all participants; a non-war based economy, totally contrary of the western usury rent-seeking destructive economy. Who would not be attracted by this new model of Peace Economics?

The new Silk Road – also President Xi Jinping’s OBI – One Belt Initiative, formerly known as  “The One Belt One Road” (OBOR) – an economic development program spanning the entire super-Continent of Eurasia and North Africa, from Vladivostok to Lisbon, and from Shanghai to Hamburg. Every territory in between is invited to participate, in what is possibly the largest and most wide-ranging economic expansion initiative in modern history. It is a multi-trillion-dollar (equivalent) endeavor that could literally stretch out for centuries, creating infrastructure, work, trade, income, new technologies, education- the palette is almost endless – for many areas still largely deprived of human well-being.

The “Road” encompasses land route development from Central China to Central Asia, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Eastern Europe – construction of ports and coastal infrastructure from Southeast Asia to East Africa and the Mediterranean. In fact, OBI was initiated by President Xi in 2013 and is already well under way. China’s modernization of Greece’s Port of Piraeus, arguably the largest in the Mediterranean, is already part of it.

It keeps Brussels nervous. The hot-rock of mud and corruption is afraid it may ‘lose’ Greece – a NATO country – from their control. Greece diplomatically assures them ‘loyalty’ – nevertheless, thanks to Greek pressure – under these new circumstances – Brussels ‘vassalic’ human rights condemnation and new sanctions directed at China, in Washington’s latest efforts to pressure China on North Korea, were stopped thanks to Greek intervention on behalf of China. Quite a feat, for a small country – downtrodden into financial and abject purposeful economic misery by Germany and the nefarious troika. It shows not only the west’s bluff, but their fear from the East – where Brussels and Washington know very well – the world’s future lays.

This revival of the ancient Silk road with 21^st Century technology, as China calls it, also comes with financing to promote basic needs, such as urban planning, water supply, sanitation, food production and distribution. The old axiom of comparative production advantages will be applied in an open market of equals among equals, already begun under the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), signed by Presidents Putin and Xi in May 2015, and rapidly expanding westward.

The OBI is sometimes referred to as the Eastern Marshall Plan. But it should rather and more aptly be called the Xi Plan. It comes with the appropriate financial instruments, foremost the Beijing based Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB). The Xi Plan is destined for economic development and peoples’ well-being. Whereas the Marshall Plan was designed for deceit, exploitation and enslavement of Europe with its subservient Bretton Woods Institutions – and it succeeded.

The AIIB is a multilateral development bank. In June 2015, 57 countries signed the Bank’s Articles of Agreement which entered into force on December 25, 2015. The Bank started operations on January 16, 2016. As of March 31, 2017, the Bank’s membership has increased to 70 and new applicants are waiting. AIIB has an authorized capital of US$ 100 billion equivalent with US$ 18.4 billion paid in by 31 March 2017.

Among AIIB’s members are many western countries, conventional allies of the United States, like Germany, the UK, France, many Nordic countries, Australia and others.  Despite the objection of Washington, they have decided to join anyway. They realize the future is in Asia, in the East, much of it represented by this gigantic promising New Silk Road. After having lived through a fake and fraudulent privately run monetary economy for most of the last 200 years -even the staunchest ally and Washington vassal is becoming wary and ready for a new start.