Global South

1. Cultura e Resistenza: BRICS

BRICS Ministers of Culture adopted a joint declaration in St. Petersburg

The document reflects the BRICS countries' commitment to strengthening cultural cooperation and exchanging experiences in the field of culture. It also emphasizes the need to preserve and promote the unique cultural heritage of each BRICS member country.

The declaration outlines the following initiatives::
promoting cultural exchange programs;
facilitating artistic collaborations;
organizing joint cultural events.

The signing took place at the 9th Meeting of BRICS Ministers of Culture, which brought together representatives from BRICS countries and honorary guests. Participants highlighted the importance of cultural events in shaping a shared cultural space within BRICS.

I thought: Do we have a BRICS song?  To my surprise there is a big contest going on, for specifically a BRICS song and this contest is and has been running from March 15 – December 20, 2024.

Calls are out for a BRICS People's Anthem with the theme

BRICS People Choosing Life

The participants of the contest are to create a common Anthem representing a wide range of ideas and values that they themselves, in general, as well as their country, in particular, intend to demonstrate to the world.

Aims of the Project:

– Bringing together BRICS artistic youth to create a common Anthem as a musical and poetic missive to the world, reflecting the desire of the BRICS countries youth for unity and containing a wide spectrum of ideas, thoughts, and values which the youth seeks to show to the world on behalf of the union's peoples;
– eliciting and developing creative abilities of young people of BRICS states for the sake of moral and patriotic education of the young generation;
– popularising cultural, educational, historical and other peculiarities and traditions of the BRICS countries;

We also have, and I bet you did not know, an official song for the BRICS games described as pop, dance or electronic genre. "Champion 1" by Filatov & Karas became the official song of the BRICS Games 2024 in Kazan.  The track chorus was sung by Lev Leshchenko, People's Artist of the RSFSR.

The search was on and I had to choose my block.  The internet is breaking into a BRICS block and a Youtube and Spotify block and on the one rendition, it stated:

Total YouTube Views – 0

Total Spotify Streams – 0

I had to choose my block, and it was to Rutube.ru and searching in Russian and I found it!  I hope this plays for you as I've never done this – choosing to embed in Russian.

https://rutube.ru/video/55f499c717dbe4324405c6bf155e4ae4/?t=20&r=plwd

2. Russia’s response to long-range weapons supplies to Kiev will be brutal — MFA

"The opponents in Washington, London, and other places clearly underestimate the degree of danger of the game they continue to play," Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Ryabkov said

MOSCOW, September 14. /TASS/. The United States has given Kiev all the carte blanche to strike with long-range weapons deep into the Russian territory, Moscow's response to it will be brutal, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Ryabkov told reporters.

"The Russian President has said everything on this topic. The decision [to allow Kiev to strike] is there, all the carte blanche, indulgences have been issued to Kiev's clients. Therefore, we will respond in a brutal way. There is an element of serious risk here, because the opponents in Washington, London, and other places clearly underestimate the degree of danger of the game they continue to play," Ryabkov said.

As the Deputy Minister told TASS earlier on the sidelines of the BRICS Media Summit, Russia knows that the West has already made decisions on strikes deep into Russian territory and has transmitted the corresponding signals to Kiev.

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously stated that Ukraine is not capable of striking deep into Russian territory without the help of the West, since it needs intelligence from satellites and flight missions to do so. The Russian leader also noted that NATO countries are not simply discussing Kiev's possible use of Western long-range weapons, but are essentially deciding whether to directly engage in the Ukrainian conflict. He indicated that Moscow will make decisions based on the threats that will arise for the Russian Federation.

Moscow hosts the BRICS Media Summit on September 13-17. The event brings together the heads of leading media outlets from the group's member states and the countries that have applied to join BRICS. TASS is the organizer of the summit.

3. Unconnectable dots

The western dots and the RoW cannot be connected any longer.  The last hope of a world that could have united on one aspect or another, is gone, poof.  There is no more hope because the condition of the western insanity is now chronic and will not heal.  We cannot expect a changed and new view from these ex-Roman savagely cruel barbaric beserkers.  The Chinese are still trying on the level of ecology and planetary climate change, and allowing a military senior to have a chat to a military senior from the west to keep face, but nothing more.  The west positively and absolutely cannot survive productively and cooperatively.  All they know is war and competition and that is now last century fashion.

The rest have realized that if we want a world to live on, we're going to have to cooperate.

The initial Donald Trump trade war has kicked in again, just at a higher level.  

US hikes tariffs on Chinese goods  (The information here is from RT and we will use them as well as other English source Russian and China information, as much as possible!  The reason will become clear a little later).

The levies on some products will go up to 100% by month's end, according to the trade representative's office

Washington has finalized tariff hikes on billions of dollars' worth of Chinese imports, US trade representative Katherine Tai announced on Friday. The new levies will notably affect goods such as electric vehicles and semiconductors.

The tariff hikes were first announced by the White House in May of this year, but the administration of President Joe Biden said that it has since been working on finalizing the rates and setting the dates for the measures to take effect based on feedback from the American public.

According to the final document, which is dated September 12, the duties will rise to 100% on electric vehicles, 50% on solar cells, and 25% on electric vehicle batteries, steel, aluminum, face masks and some other products beginning September 27. A 50% tariff hike on semiconductors is set to take effect starting next year. The levies on a number of other products, such as non-electrical vehicle batteries, medical gloves, and permanent magnets, will be raised gradually over the next two years.

"Today's finalized tariff increases will target the harmful policies and practices of the People's Republic of China that continue to impact American workers and businesses," Tai said in the press release. She reiterated that the measures are aimed at defending "American workers and businesses in the face of unfair trade practices."

US officials have repeatedly labeled China as America's top "competitor," and have been tightening economic restrictions against the country since 2018, courtesy of then-President Donald Trump. Biden has continued in this vein, despite Beijing's repeated warnings that China will respond in kind.

Former Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin previously said that the US actions "violate global trade rules." Foreign Minister Wang Yi slammed them as "the most typical form of bullying," and accused officials in Washington of "losing their minds in order to maintain their unipolar hegemony."

China was not alone in its criticism of the tariff hikes. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in May that the measures were aimed at suppressing competition, especially in the EV market, where the Chinese "have gotten better." Tesla owner Elon Musk denounced the tariffs on Chinese EVs as "not good," saying that they "inhibit freedom of exchange" and "distort the market."

No Ride and Keep the Dollar

Russia is assessing whether to stop exporting enriched uranium for US NPPs & heavy crude oil. Imagine, 25% of US electricity is gone & no trucks delivering or ships sailing. Boeing is struggling without Russian titanium. The US is getting to a collective space where we actually do not want to trade with the Dollar for all kinds of structural reasons, but the reason that is beginning to stand out, is the one of disgust!  It is just not good enough any longer, like bad moldy cheese beyond its consumption limits.

Media – west is losing the narrative

Blinken started making all kinds of accusations to Russian English media, and inadvertently laying bare to the world the western media methodology.  His accusations speak of their own western actions.

RT is undermining our elections, Blinken declared. Everyone else is being undermined as well.

• The US has called on all allies and partners to restrict RT's activities, as well as any Russian activities outside its borders
• RT should no longer spread "Russian propaganda", it undermines American "democracy and elections"
• US, Britain, and Canada launched or will launch a "diplomatic campaign" against RT and call for the channel's actions to be treated as intelligence.  (I kid you not.  RT is what they call 'intelligence'. )
• RT employees are allegedly involved in various assistance to intelligence services and are linked to them
• The US imposes sanctions against three entities and two employees of RT, including for work in Moldova, which the US calls "election interference"

RT hit back, because this is hilarious.  The palpable fear in this layer of US functionaries is now visible.  Their narrative has stopped working.   Everyone is laughing and the media group is mocking Blinken, his country, and the horse he rode in on:  https://www.rt.com/russia/603993-rt-reveals-secret-behind-operations/

The White House said it was not amused by RT's response to the sanctions, which had earlier ironically stated that it had been broadcasting "straight from KGB headquarters" the entire time.  "The Departments of Justice, Treasury, and State have taken action to disrupt covert information operations to undermine our democratic institutions at home. We are not laughing at this. This is very serious and we take it very seriously," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Never will the two dots meet, as the one side still has a sense of humor and the other side needs something like 'Calmettes' and a good enema with their straight-jackets.   Yes, we are laughing at the beginnings of the visible loss of the narrative and building a new narrative.   In fact, we are ROTFLOAOF!

What is the real reason for the suppression of alternative voices and organizations over the past months.

It turns out that:

the seventh BRICS Media Summit involving media leaders from 45 countries kicks kick off in Moscow on Saturday.

Learning a little more, the summit is themed on the role of the media in a multipolar world and will be hosted by Russian state news agency TASS

The event will be attended by the heads of leading media institutions from BRICS, as well as media outlets from countries that have expressed their interest in expanding cooperation with the grouping. Panel discussions will cover the role of the BRICS media community in bolstering stability in a multipolar world, as well as technological aspects of interaction between BRICS countries in the information sphere.

Among other guests, the summit will be attended by Xinhua President and Executive Chairman of the BRICS Media Forum Fu Hua General, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs, as well as Mohammed bin Abdul Rabbo Al-Yami, Director General of the Union of News Agencies of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Countries (UNA OIC).

TASS Director General Andrey Kondrashov will deliver opening remarks, and the plenary session will be moderated by the news agency's First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman.

Maria Zakharova has already commented on Blinken's message of utter incompetence where the beserkers are out beating on the average journalist:

"In addition to the monstrous, completely unjustified political statements made yesterday by Washington regarding the media, parallel to this, there is also physical aggression against journalists," the spokeswoman said.

The west is seeing its narrative slipping through its fingers and in desperation trying to get it back.

Watch this trend. It will be a winner! This time the beserkers are losing. 

Kabuki Long Range Weapons (do they even have them?)

The other major dot is the one of Russian response to the latest ladder of escalation step, i.e., the kabuki theater that the US and the UK are running now, titled:  "Will we allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons or will we not or maybe so and will discuss it with whoever is the President of the US now or we will not."  Literally this is the theatrical message flowing across our screens.  And all the pundits are into that theater.  The decision has been taken, and the US & UK and poodles in Europe are trying to find a missile or two, as they do not have many.

Russia asked for an emergency meeting in the UNSC yesterday.  Do listen to one of those and you will soon determine who is a real dot in our firmament and who is the leftovers of an insanity dot floating helplessly in space with no narrative.

4. Dmitry Medvedev

https://t.me/medvedev_telegramE/25

Here is how the thinking goes about Russia's response to possible missile strikes 'deeper inside Russian territory' among Western commanders and their war-happy political establishment. The Russians, they argue, have been talking a lot about retaliating with weapons of mass destruction, but they've done nothing. These are just verbal interventions. The Russians won't dare cross the line. They're just trying to scare us. They don't need a nuclear conflict because they may lose the support of the Global South. And who needs an apocalypse anyway?' And more stuff like that.

What can we say? Nobody needs a nuclear conflict, it's true. It's a terrible thing which would have grave consequences. That is why a decision to use nuclear weapons (non-strategic, let alone strategic ones) has not been taken, yet. Even though, frankly speaking, there are formal grounds for such a decision, which would make sense to the international community and be in line with our doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Take Kursk, for instance. Yet, Russia has been patient. It is obvious that a nuclear response is a hugely complex decision with irreversible consequences.

What arrogant Anglo-Saxon dimwits fail to admit, though, is that you can only test someone's patience for so long. It will turn out in the end that certain moderate Western analysts were right when they warned: 'True, the Russians are not likely to use this response, although… it's still a possibility. Besides, they may use new delivery vehicles with conventional payloads.'

And then – it's over. A giant blot of molten-grey mass in the place where 'the mother of Russian cities' [historical name of Kiev] once stood. Holy shit, it's impossible, but it happened…

5. 9.11 to 10.7: The Fake ‘War on Terror’ Collapses

For years, the US executed Israel's regional destabilization program using phantom terrorists as justification for the 'War on Terror.' But 7 October 2023 killed Washington's never-ending war project – with a flip of the switch, US adversaries have now turned the 'Long War' on Israel.

By Pepe Escobar at The Cradle.

"Colonization … is the best affair of business in which the capital of an old and wealthy country can engage … the same rules of international morality do not apply … between civilized nations and barbarians."

– John Stuart Mill, quoted by Eileen Sullivan in "Liberalism and Imperialism: JS Mill's Defense of the British Empire," Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 44, 1983.

The events of 11 September 2001 were intended to impose and enshrine a new Exceptionalist paradigm on the young 21st century. History, though, ruled otherwise.

Cast as an attack on the US Homeland, 11 September 2001, immediately generated the Global War on Terror (GWOT), launched at 11 pm on the same day. Initially christened "The Long War" by the Pentagon, the term was later sanitized by the administration of Barack Obama as "Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO)."

The US-manufactured War on Terror spent a notoriously un-trackable eight trillion dollars defeating a phantom enemy, killed over half a million people – overwhelmingly Muslims – and branched out into illegal wars against seven Muslim-majority states. All of this was relentlessly justified on "humanitarian grounds" and allegedly supported by the "international community" – before that term, too, was renamed as the "rules-based international order."

Cui Bono? (who stands to gain) remains the paramount question related to all matters related to 11 September 2001. A tight network of fervently Israel-first neocons strategically positioned across the defense and national security establishments by Vice President Dick Cheney – who had served as secretary of defense in the administration of George W Bush's father – sprang into action to impose the long-planned agenda of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). That far-reaching agenda had waited in the wings for the right trigger – a "new Pearl Harbor" – to justify a slew of regime-change operations and wars across much of West Asia and other Muslim states, reshaping global geopolitics for the benefit of Israel.

US General Wesley Clark's notorious revelation of a secret Cheney regime plot to destroy seven major Islamic countries over five years, from Iraq, Syria, and Libya all the way to Iran, showed us that the planning had already been done in advance.

These targeted nations had one thing in common: they were resolute enemies of the occupation state and firm supporters of Palestinian rights.

The sweet deal, from Tel Aviv's perspective, was that the War on Terror would have the US and its western allies fighting all these serial Israeli-profiting wars on behalf of "civilization" and against the "barbarians." The Israelis couldn't have been more happy or smug about the direction this was going.

It's no wonder that 7 October 2023 is a mirror image of 11 September 2001. The occupation state itself advertised this as Israel's own "11 September." Parallels abound in more ways than one, but certainly not in the way Israel-firsters and the cabal of extremists leading Tel Aviv expected.

Syria: the turning point

The western Hegemon excels in constructing narratives and is currently wallowing in the Russophobia, Iranophobia, and Sinophobia swamps of its own creation. Discrediting official, immutable narratives, such as the one about 11 September, remains the ultimate taboo.

But a false narrative construct cannot hold out forever. Three years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the Twin Towers collapsing and the onset of the War on Terror, we witnessed a great unraveling in the intersection of Central and South Asia: the Taliban were back in power, celebrating their victory over the Hegemon in a discombobulated Forever War.

By then, the "seven countries in five years" obsession – aiming to forge a "New Middle East" – was being derailed across the spectrum. Syria was the turning point, though some would argue that the tea leaves were already cast when the Lebanese resistance defeated Israel in 2000, then again in 2006.

But smashing independent Syria would have paved the way for the Hegemon – and Israel's – Holy Grail: regime change in Iran.

US occupation forces entered Syria in late 2014 under the pretext of fighting "terror." That was Obama's OCO in action. In reality, though, Washington was using two key terror outfits – Daesh, aka ISIL, aka ISIS, and Al Qaeda, aka Jabhat al-Nusra, aka Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – to try to destroy Damascus.

That was conclusively proved by a declassified 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document, later confirmed by General Michael Flynn, the DIA's chief when the assessment was written: "I think it was a willful decision [by the Obama administration]" when it comes to helping, not fighting, terror.

ISIS was conceived to fight both the Iraqi and Syrian armies. The terror group was an offspring of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), then renamed Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), then rebranded as ISIL, and finally ISIS, after it crossed the Syrian border in 2012.

The crucial point is that both ISIS and Nusra Front (later Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) were hardcore Salafi-jihadi Al-Qaeda offshoots.

Russia entering the Syrian theater at Damascus' invitation in September 2015 was the real game-changer. Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to actually engage in a real war on terror in Syrian territory before that terror reached the Russian Federation's borders. This was captured by the standard formulation in Moscow at the time: the distance from Aleppo to Grozny is only 900 kilometers.

The Russians, after all, had already been subjected to the same brand and modus operandi of terror in Chechnya in the 1990s. Afterward, many Chechen jihadis escaped, only to end up joining dodgy outfits in Syria financed by the Saudis.

The late, great Lebanese analyst Anis Naqqash later confirmed that it was the legendary Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani who convinced Putin, in person, to enter the Syrian theater of war and help defeat the terrorism. This strategic masterplan, it transpires, was to fatally debilitate the US in West Asia.

The US security establishment, of course, would never forgive Putin, and especially Soleimani, for defeating their handy jihadist foot soldiers. On the orders of President Donald Trump, the anti-ISIS Iranian general was assassinated in Baghdad in January 2020, alongside Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, deputy leader of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), a broad spectrum of Iraqi fighters who had coalesced to defeat ISIS in Iraq.

PE: "A VERY rare pic, sent by friends in Tehran years ago. Commander [Ahmad Shah] Massoud at the center. To his left, a young Qassem Soleimani."

Burying the legacy of 11 September

Soleimani's strategic tour de force of setting up and coordinating the Axis of Resistance against Israel and the US was years in the making. In Iraq, for instance, the PMUs were propelled to the forefront of the resistance because the Iraqi military – US-trained and US-controlled – simply could not fight ISIS.

The PMUs were created after a fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Sistani in June 2014 – when ISIS began its Iraqi rampage – by imploring "all Iraqi citizens" to "defend the country, its people, the honor of its citizens and its sacred sites."

Several PMUs were backed by Soleimani's Quds Force – who, ironically, for the rest of the decade would be invariably branded by Washington as a master "terrorist." In parallel, crucially, the Iraqi government hosted an anti-ISIS intel center in Baghdad, led by Russia.

The credit for defeating ISIS in Iraq went mostly to the PMUs, complemented by its help to Damascus via the integration of PMU units into the Syrian Arab Army. That was what a real war on terror was all about, not that misnomered American construct called the "War on Terror."

Best yet, the indigenously West Asian response to terror was and remains non-sectarian. Tehran supports secular, pluralist Syria and Sunni Palestine; Lebanon features a Hezbollah–Christian alliance; Iraq's PMUs feature a Sunni–Shia–Christian alliance. Divide and Rule simply do not apply in a homegrown anti-terror strategy.

Then, what happened on 7 October 2023 propelled the regional resistance forces' ethos to a whole new level.

In one swift move, it destroyed the myth of Israeli military invincibility and its much-lauded surveillance and intelligence primacy. Even as the horrifying genocide across Gaza proceeds unabated (with possibly as many as 200,000 civilian deaths, according to The Lancet), the Israeli economy is being eviscerated.

Yemen's strategic blockade of the Bab al-Mandeb and the Red Sea to any Israel-linked or destined shipping vessel is a masterstroke of efficiency and simplicity. Not only has it already bankrupted Israel's strategic Eilat Port, but also, as a bonus, has offered a spectacular humiliation of the thalassocratic Hegemon, with the Yemenis de facto defeating the US Navy.

In less than a year, the concerted strategies of the Axis of Resistance have essentially buried six feet under the fake War on Terror and its multi-trillion-dollar gravy train.

As much as Israel profited from events after 11 September, Tel Aviv's actions after 7 October rapidly accelerated its unraveling.

Today, amidst massive Global Majority condemnation of Israel's Gaza genocide, the occupation state stands as a pariah – tainting its allies and exposing the Hegemon's hypocrisy with each passing day.

For the Hegemon, it gets even more alarming. Recall the 1997 warning of Dr Zbigniew "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski: "It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America."

In the end, all the combined sound and fury of 11 September, the War on Terror, Long War, Operation This-And-That over two decades, metastasized into exactly what "Zbig" feared. Not only has a mere "challenger" emerged, but a full-fledged Russia–China strategic partnership that is setting a new tone for Eurasia.

Suddenly, Washington has forgotten all about terrorism. This is the real "enemy" – now considered the top two US "strategic threats." Not Al-Qaeda and its many incarnations, a flimsy figment of the CIA's imagination, rehabilitated and sanitized in the previous decade as those mythical "moderate rebels" in Syria.

What's even more eerie is that the conceptually nonsensical War on Terror forged by the neocons immediately after 11 September is now morphing into a war of terror (italics mine), embodying the desperate Hail Mary pass by the CIA and MI6 to "confront Russian aggression" in Ukraine.

And that's bound to be metastasized into the Sinophobia swamp because those same western intelligence agencies consider the rise of China to be "the greatest geopolitical and intelligence challenge" of the 21st century.

The War on Terror has been debunked; it is now dead. But get ready for serial wars of terror by a Hegemon unaccustomed to not owning the narrative, the seas, and the ground.

6. Dimitri Lascaris with Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai: The United States sanctioned Europe, not Russia

On September 9, 2024, the European Commission issued a report on Europe's increasingly dire economy. The author of the report, which is titled "The Future of European Competitiveness", is Mario Draghi, the former President of the European Central Bank.

Draghi's report acknowledges that Europe's loss of access to Russian pipeline gas has resulted in "huge cost to Europe". Yet Draghi does not argue for the restoration of Europe's access to Russian gas. Rather, he recommends that Europe make massive and "unprecedented" investments in defence spending, decarbonization and the digitalization of Europe's economy.

On September 13, Dimitri Lascaris discussed the Draghi report with geopolitical economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson. They contend that the true victim of Western sanctions on Russia is not Russia itself, but Europe.

The Draghi report can be found here: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/strengthening-european-competitiveness/eu-competitiveness-looking-ahead_en