patrick.net

anuary 26, 2024 2:26 PM UTC
Exclusive: Russia struggles to sell Pacific oil, 14 tankers stuck - sources, data

More than a dozen tankers loaded with 10 million barrels of Russia's Sokol grade crude oil have been stranded off the coast of South Korea for weeks, so far unsold due to U.S. sanctions and payment issues, according to two traders and ship tracking data.
The volumes, equating to 1.3 million metric tons, represent more than a month's production of the Sakhalin-1 project, once a flagship venture of U.S. major Exxon Mobil, which exited Russia after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Difficulties in selling Sokol pose one of the most significant challenges Moscow has faced since the West imposed sanctions and one of the most serious disruptions to Russian oil exports in two years.
Washington has said it wants sanctions to reduce revenues for President Vladimir Putin and his war machine in Ukraine but not to disrupt the flows of Russian energy to global markets.
Last year, the United States imposed sanctions on several vessels and companies involved in transporting Sokol.
As of Friday, 14 vessels with Sokol were stuck around South Korea's port of Yosu, including 11 Aframax vessels and three very large crude carriers (VLCCs), according to LSEG, Kpler data and traders.
The volume stored in tankers represent 45 days of production from Sakhalin-1, which averages output of 220,000 barrels per day (bpd).
Shipments of Sokol to the Indian Oil Corp (IOC.NS) have been delayed by payment problems, forcing India's biggest refiner to draw from its inventories and buy more oil from the Middle East.
A source close to IOC said the company did not expect to receive any Sokol shipments soon due to a disagreement over which currency would be used to pay for it.
IOC is the only state refiner that has an annual deal to buy a variety of Russian grades, including Sokol, from Russian oil major Rosneft (ROSN.MM).
IOC and Rosneft did not reply to Reuters requests for comment.

Midair Fires and Malfunctions Surge on Russia’s Planes as Sanctions Bite
Story by Benjamin Katz  •  1d

When Ural Airlines Flight 1383 to the Siberian city of Omsk suffered a technical fault with its hydraulics last September, the pilots decided to divert to a different airport. Then they discovered the defect meant the aircraft was rapidly running out of fuel and needed to land quickly.

The aircraft, with 165 people onboard, eventually made a successful emergency landing in a stretch of farmland in southern Russia. The Airbus A320 jet remains there, fenced in and under 24-hour security, with its operator having recently agreed to pay rent to the land’s owner.
The episode is among a surge in aviation-safety incidents recorded in Russia last year, and an indication of how Western sanctions are hindering the country’s ability to source spare parts and conduct proper maintenance.

Some 74 safety incidents were logged among local operators in Russia last year, up from 36 in 2022, according to Jacdec, a German aviation database that tracks safety incidents across all aircraft with 19 seats or more.
The data show a safety incident occurred about 9.9 times in every 100,000 departures in 2023, compared with five in 2022 and 4.5 in 2019, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis based on scheduled flight records from aviation-data company Cirium.

While most of the incidents avoided serious injuries or catastrophes, safety specialists warn that persistent mechanical issues represent a major risk to passenger safety and increase pressure on pilots in a way that could lead to more severe events.

The aviation industry has been closely watching Russia’s skies amid expectations that safety conditions could deteriorate. Sanctions imposed after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine have cut off Russia’s access to Western aircraft manufacturers, banning the provision of spare parts, maintenance support, critical software updates and more.

“The sanctions imposed on Russian airlines have significantly impeded the maintenance of aircraft airworthiness and their technical condition,” said Oleksandr Laneckij, chief executive of Lithuania-based aviation consulting firm Friendly Avia Support. “The accumulating challenges are posing safety concerns.”

Russia’s aviation regulator has repeatedly insisted that the safety of its skies hasn’t been compromised by Western sanctions. Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Moscow has introduced new laws that allow Russian companies to perform heavy maintenance on their aircraft, manufacture their own components and cannibalize parked aircraft for replacement parts. Regular maintenance intervals have also been prolonged or deferred.

Those measures haven’t been approved by Western manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus, or by the Federal Aviation Administration and European Union Aviation Safety Agency.

Not all of the safety incidents recorded last year can be linked to sanctions. The Jacdec data include the downing of the jet that carried Yevgeny Prigozhin, the then-leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, for example. The data also capture bird strikes and an incident when an aircraft abandoned its approach because a dog found its way onto the runway.

But the data include many incidents that experts say are likely linked to sanctions. Those include repeated instances of engines catching fire or otherwise becoming inoperative during a flight, rubber landing-gear tires bursting during landings, and malfunctioning flaps leading to diversions.

In December, a Boeing 737 operated by S7 Airlines returned to an airport in Siberia after both of its engines, manufactured by CFM International, emitted flames and a series of bangs were heard from inside the cabin. In July, pilots landed an Embraer jet in Moscow without its front landing gear after being unable to lower the wheels under the aircraft’s nose.

“They do not have access to the parts, there’s only so much they can do,” said Henry Gourdji, director of safety strategy and policy for the Flight Safety Foundation, an advocacy group. “They’re doing what they can, but it’s starting to have a major impact.”

Russia is particularly exposed to shortages of landing gear and brakes, and has had to send aircraft to Iran for maintenance, according to experts tracking the impact of sanctions. They also say a lack of technological know-how in welding tires when repairing wheels and separate issues with low-quality deicing chemicals have led to safety incidents. Meanwhile, a shortage of parts for simulators has raised concerns about Russia’s ability to train new pilots and run required refresher courses.

After losing access to Western manuals needed to conduct inspections, some Russian airline engineers have developed their own repair and maintenance programs, Laneckij said.
“These improvised approaches raise concerns about potential consequences and safety implications,” Laneckij said.
The deterioration of Russia’s aviation safety record is undoing decades of work by Russia’s airlines to modernize their fleets after the end of the Cold War and turn around a reputation for questionable safety.
That effort started in force in the early 2000s, when Russian airlines, including flag carrier Aeroflot, spent billions of dollars buying brand-new Boeing and Airbus jets to replace aging and less-reliable Soviet-era commercial aircraft.
The splurge left Russia with one of the biggest aircraft fleets in the world. A total of 1,031 aircraft with 19 seats or more are currently registered in Russia, almost two-thirds of which are built by foreign manufacturers including Airbus and Boeing, according to Cirium data.

The remainder of Russia’s fleet is made up of aircraft manufactured by legacy Soviet-era aerospace firms. The Sukhoi Superjet, a new Russian-built regional jet, makes up the majority of the country’s homemade aircraft. That jet, though, uses engines built by a Russian-French joint venture that withdrew its support after sanctions started.

“One solution is to move away from Western-built aircraft to domestic ones, but when will we see that? Probably not until 2030,” said Karl Steeves, chief executive of TrustFlight, a specialist firm in aircraft maintenance.

Russia’s total operational fleet is forecast to more than halve by 2026, according to consultants at Oliver Wyman, a blow for the world’s largest country by territory, where air travel is crucial to keep the economy ticking.
S7, Russia’s largest private airline, plans to reduce its presence in Moscow. Local business media recently reported the carrier was struggling to maintain its services with about 20% of its aircraft grounded. The company said it was downsizing because of route changes.

Already this year, the industry has contended with a string of new safety incidents. Within the space of seven days last month, three separate aircraft skidded or rolled off the runway during landing, including a Kosmos Airlines three-engined jet that ended up in the snow.

Meanwhile, about five months after landing in a field with 159 passengers and six crew aboard, the Ural Airlines jet isn’t going anywhere soon.
Ural Airlines has said part of the plane’s hydraulic system failed, and that it has paid compensation of 100,000 rubles a passenger, or around $1,100. The airline said it can’t provide further comment as the investigation of the incident by Russian authorities continues.

The airline initially intended to attempt a takeoff when the ground had frozen, providing a solid enough surface to recover the aircraft. Those hopes have dimmed, with a local official telling Russian media that the airline had agreed to lease the land for a year—and reports the jet could be harvested for parts.

Write to Benjamin Katz at ben.katz@wsj.com and Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com

Flying is overrated. They have that 7-day sleep train from Moscow to Hǎishēnwǎi (temporarily known as Vladivostok), don't they?

RWSGFY says

The aircraft, with 165 people onboard, eventually made a successful emergency landing in a stretch of farmland in southern Russia.

Bet the pilot was no diversity hire, and that saved lives.

What ???? - They bought a Boeing ????

https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/how-much-delicious-sanctioned-russian

Sanctions just mean that Russia sells its oil to India, which then turns around and sells it to the West:

Patrick says

Sanctions just mean that Russia sells its oil to India, which then turns around and sells it to the West

True, but it also means that oil prices in the West don't go even higher while depriving Russia with a lot of the profits.

zzyzzx says

True, but it also means that oil prices in the West don't go even higher while depriving Russia with a lot of the profits.

Russia is doing just fine. That's the problem ppl can't wrap their heads around.

The sanctions hurt NATO countries other than Canada and the US more than anyone else.

UkraineIsTotallyFucked says

zzyzzx says

True, but it also means that oil prices in the West don't go even higher while depriving Russia with a lot of the profits.

Russia is doing just fine. That's the problem ppl can't wrap their heads around.

The sanctions hurt NATO countries other than Canada and the US more than anyone else.

Aaaannnnndddd whaddya know!

https://patrick.net/post/1343769/2022-02-24-greeted-like-liberators-ukraine?start=3610#comment-2045851

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/radio-free-america-wednesday-april

Speaking of things heating up, the BBC ran an article yesterday that surprised no one except the entire Biden Administration. It bore the unfortunate headline, “Russia to grow faster than all advanced economies, says IMF.” The sub-headline added, “An influential global body has forecast Russia's economy will grow faster this year than all of the world's advanced economies, including the US.”

The headline should have read, “Joe Biden loses World War III.”

That wasn’t all yesterday. Bloomberg ran a similar story, this one headlined, “Russian Crude Shipments Surge to the Highest in Almost a Year.” It is now undeniable that the Biden Administration’s highly-publicized sanctions war against Russia has catastrophically failed. The U.S.’s faltering economy was well described yesterday in a Barrons article headlined, “Inflation Could Stick Around Much Longer. What to Do About It.”

A financial analyst quoted for the Barron’s story explained, “The backdrop of continued geopolitical stress is contributing to more persistent inflation and more caution.”

Who caused all this geopolitical stress? It did not exist four years ago.

As a core plank of its neocon foreign policy, Team Biden deliberately provoked Russia into invading Ukraine, and then set out to leverage the Proxy War to remove Putin, destroy Russia’s economy, and eradicate Russia as a potentially competitive superpower. Even if you somehow disbelieve NATO provoked Russia, the rest is undeniable. Without Congressional authorization, Biden undertook a Fifth Generation world war against Russia, a war via proxy, a war via economics, a war via propaganda and destabilization, and a war via thinly-disguised infrastructure sabotage, like blowing up Russia’s Nordstream pipeline.

It sort of snuck up on us, but it is evident Biden’s gamble failed. Sure, the clock is still running, the players are still going through the motions, but the crowd can see it’s over. There are six minutes left in the fourth quarter and the home team is down by three touchdowns. Might as well head for the parking lot.

From the current state of the world, it looks more and more like Biden’s disastrous defeat has been carefully scripted from Day One by the meritocratic Russian team, which outplayed our cross-dressing, diverse, inclusive neocon nitwits. Let us count the ways:

Biden has lost the economic war (see above). Instead of harming Russia’s economy, sanctions have only improved it, boomeranging on the U.S., which is paying an incalculable price.

Most informed commenters think the Proxy War in Ukraine is now just a matter of time before a politically-catastrophic surrender becomes necessary. Options for NATO to directly intervene in Ukraine evaporated when Iran launched its drone swarm against Israel, because the U.S. is now pinned. We can no longer commit to a major effort to save Ukraine, because we must now keep our military free for deployment to the Middle East in case a broader war breaks out. The rest of NATO must enter Ukraine without the United States. They won’t.

Russia has quietly forged alliances with all the U.S.’s most mortal enemies, and has armed them with paradigm-busting, air-defense-defeating hypersonic technology. Specifically, the Russia-Iran-China-North Korea axis now shares the ability to sink U.S. aircraft carriers, which is how the United States projects force around the world. By arming Iran and North Korea, the Russians have created other problems of regional instability for which the U.S. must now plan and must feebly attempt to contain, further distracting from our faltering Proxy War in Ukraine.

Russia’s lead in hypersonic weapons technology removes the option of nuclear war from the table, even if Biden’s deranged neocons ever thought it was an option.

Intellectual, anticommunist, and conservative commenter James Lindsay persuasively argues that DEI, which like sewer water has now seeped into every nook and crevice of our public and private institutions, is actually a long-term socio-political military strategy by our enemies, principally China, to destabilize the United States. DEI is rendering impotent our military, our government, our universities, and even our strategically-critical corporations staffed by graduates of those undermined universities (think Boeing). If James is right, and I think he is, China’s destruction-by-DEI plan is working perfectly.

The world is noticing. Yesterday, BRICS announced this on its website: “Russian Federation Council: 40 countries want to join BRICS.” Russia’s fast-growing BRICS alliance has inflicted a potentially mortal blow to American hegemony. Economists will correctly argue the dollar cannot be easily displaced. But that’s beside the point. The real threat is that Russia has given hope, a home, and a place to rally to countries long-frustrated with America’s constant post-Cold War bullying. Apparently there are a lot of frustrated countries, thanks largely to Joe Biden.

The worst thing about all this is every single one of those developments was completely predictable. Joe Biden is a human wrecking ball. His advisors are over-promoted, under-qualified DEI hires who have no idea what they are doing and are completely unprepared to compete with the Russians, who are cleaning our clock.

Biden must go. And here are seven more suggestions for what we could do to get our country safe and back on track.

We must admit we’re in a hole and stop digging.

We have to acknowledge we’ve lost, abandon the Ukraine project, and close our borders up tight. Send illegals back where they came from, or anywhere but here. Let France have them.

Support historic allies like the British (and Israel) and also stop mucking about the rest of the world. We must focus on rebuilding our own country. Rebuild our economy. Rebuild our military.

Limit the government to only a hundred classified documents a year, and require secret classifications to expire in five years.

Restore merit as the lodestar of all organized effort in America, public and private, just as it used to be. Delete victim status and grievance politics.

Restore patriotism, morality, honor, and family as central values in American life.

Enforce it by shaming and driving out of public life (lovingly and compassionately) people who advocate for bat-guano crazy ideas like the implausible notion that men can transform into women with enough surgery and medicine.

Patrick says

Speaking of things heating up, the BBC ran an article yesterday that surprised no one except the entire Biden Administration. It bore the unfortunate headline, “Russia to grow faster than all advanced economies, says IMF.” The sub-headline added, “An influential global body has forecast Russia's economy will grow faster this year than all of the world's advanced economies, including the US.”

Should I bother to dig up @socal2 comments saying that the Russian economy was collapsing?

Patrick says

Intellectual, anticommunist, and conservative commenter James Lindsay persuasively argues that DEI, which like sewer water has now seeped into every nook and crevice of our public and private institutions, is actually a long-term socio-political military strategy by our enemies, principally China, to destabilize the United States. DEI is rendering impotent our military, our government, our universities, and even our strategically-critical corporations staffed by graduates of those undermined universities (think Boeing). If James is right, and I think he is, China’s destruction-by-DEI plan is working perfectly.

Actuallly, they are doing us a favor. By speeding up the Collapse, renewal of America can thus start sooner and be faster. Cloward-Piven for MAGA.

Too bad 20,000+ sailers on the Navy will have to die. (4 carriers with 5,000 crewmembers each)

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/stiff-opposition-wednesday-april

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is working diligently to ensure that Americans can enjoy an apocalyptic wasteland of economic woe. Forbes ran the story yesterday headlined, “U.S. Is Preparing To Sanction Chinese Banks Supporting Russia, Report Says.”

More sanctions! On China. Biden’s beef with the Orient ostensibly is a complaint that China keeps selling Russia ordinary, non-military commercial goods, which Russia has cleverly adapted to using in its war effort. And Biden wants it to stop. “Just don’t,” he mumbled, or unrecognizable words to that effect.

So, try to follow me here, the geniuses in Biden’s Administration have come up with a brilliant plan. Right as China and Russia are trying to get their own international financial system off the ground, Biden is threatening to cut off China’s banks from the U.S.’s international financial system.

The predictable result will be China accelerating its BRICS program. Is Biden trying to help BRICS replace the dollar? That’s an honest question.

Anyway, can somebody explain to me why, after sanctions worked so well with Russia, we’re looking to do the same thing to China?

Patrick says

The predictable result will be China accelerating its BRICS program. Is Biden trying to help BRICS replace the dollar? That’s an honest question.

Repeat after me:

BRICS IS BULLSHIT
BRICS IS BULLSHIT
BRICS IS BULLSHIT
BRICS IS BULLSHIT
BRICS IS BULLSHIT

Even SA, India and China formally declared at last year's BRICS confab in Johannesburg that they have no intention of replacing the USD.

Only Russia is really pushing the true BRICS mantra. As should be expected.

So anything you read that refers BRICS to sell you on a point is bullshit too.

Following the announcement about new US sanctions against Russia, one of Russian banks has changed its exchange rate drastically.

The bank will buy US dollars for 50 rubles/dollar and will sell them for 200 rubles per dollar.

https://sukwan.substack.com/p/friday-funnies-b7c

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/the-baddies-saturday-july-13-2024

Meanwhile, the rest of the world shocked geopolitical experts by responding to cratering U.S. leadership in entirely predictable ways. Bloomberg ran an irksome story Thursday headlined, “Modi’s Embrace of Putin Irks Biden Team Pushing Support for Kyiv.”



What irked, peeved, riled, and disgruntled Biden’s war planners was a photo destined to become one of those iconic pre-war images, like that happy sailor kissing a buxom nurse in Times Square after World War II. In this week’s photo, recently re-elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked happy and relieved while getting, not a kiss, but a full bear hug from the Russian Bear. In Moscow. Whew, Modi seemed to be thinking, I almost took a trip on the Hinden-Biden!

It looks like he doesn’t want to let go.

Now, as you know, I hate to criticize. But is “irked” a sufficiently strong sensation for Biden’s State Department to feel as one of the largest U.S. allies turns its back on us and embraces the RussoChinese axis? Are those State Department morons paying attention to current events? ...

China, historically unfriendly to Russia in the pre-Broccoli period, but now Russia’s closest ally, has 1.5 billion citizens. It sure looks like Biden’s neocon war experts have, through shrewd tactics and cunning strategeries, mostly by putting a guy in charge who calls the other NATO leaders “President Putin” by mistake, managed to create a Russia-India-China coalition accounting for nearly half the world’s population.

That’s a big army. But don’t worry. NATO’s arsenal of high-tech wonder weapons include more than just TikTok influencers. NATO generals, and I am not making this up, have announced record-shattering plans to someday build fabulously expensive hellscape swarms of AI drones that are infinitely more complicated and do less damage than cheap, dumb artillery shells, in which the Russians are swimming.

But listen. This is the main point. The AI drones will be built by transexual midgets with no fewer than three mixed minority parents. Check, check, check, check.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/sanctuarianism-wednesday-august-21

Two can play at the sanctuary state game. Late last week, President Putin issued a decree making Russia into a sanctuary country for people with traditional Christian values. You cannot make this stuff up; it could only happen in 2024.

In short, Putin’s decree waived certain Russian immigration requirements, such as demonstrating Russian language proficiency and passing a history test, for people applying for temporary residence permits. Applicants must come from countries “imposing destructive neoliberal ideological guidelines that contradict traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”

Traditional Russian spiritual and moral values are anti-LGBTQ+, orthodox Christian values.

Even more entertaining, Putin ordered the Russian government to compile a list of approved countries with “destructive neoliberal values.”

Who wants to bet the United States appears prominently at the top of that list?

In classic Putin fashion, the move was not just virtue signaling. The overheated Russian economy is thirsty for skilled workers. The category of only ‘neoliberal’ countries ensures temporary workers will come from preferred, higher-income areas. The ideological character of the test causes applicants to self-select for conservatism; liberals won’t bother applying.

I wish we could do the same thing for Florida residency.

Putin has thrown down the bearskin glove and challenged the West to vote with their feet. As for me, I plan to stay and fight to the bitter end. How about you?

Lol, the "sanctions" resulted in Russian self-reliance and a booming economy in Russia.

I have to admit that this decree is a brilliant move politically, but I'm not about to give up on America or to trust Russia yet. The Russian psychology is still mired in cynical corruption, justified by the idea that "everyone does it". And they also had death jab mandates, a different kind of corruption, far more dangerous.

The first country to publicly hang everyone who mandated the death jabs will get my vote for most honorable country on earth.

https://www.rt.com/news/603014-usmanov-interview-sanctions-backfired/

Western sanctions against Russia have yielded results that are the opposite of their stated goal, metals tycoon Alisher Usmanov has said.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera on Thursday, the Russian billionaire argued that the sanctions regime has so far done more harm to the European Union countries than to Russia.

“They wanted to harm the Russian economy, and here it is growing. They wanted to punish the business elite, and the Russians brought the money back home. The Russian economy is adapting to the sanctions, while neighboring markets are suffering. Europe rejects Russian energy resources and is forced to buy them at a much higher price,” he told the publication.

EU ‘part of the conflict’ in Ukraine – BorrellEU ‘part of the conflict’ in Ukraine – BorrellREAD MORE: EU ‘part of the conflict’ in Ukraine – Borrell
Russia’s economy expanded 3.6% in 2023 despite the economic sanctions imposed by the EU, the US and their allies since the start of the special operation in Ukraine in 2022. The EU’s economic powerhouse Germany went through a recession last year, while the bloc’s other large economies, France and Italy, posted growth of under 1%.

Following the sanctions and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022 that led to a dramatic drop in Russia’s gas supplies to the EU, the bloc started buying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US. According to estimates published by Russia's Energy Ministry, American LNG is 30-40% more expensive than Russian pipeline gas.

Patrick says

Russia’s economy expanded 3.6% in 2023 despite the economic sanctions imposed by the EU, the US and their allies since the start of the special operation in Ukraine in 2022.

Just like we adjusted the jobs report 800k here. All countries lie about their economics. I don't believe any of it. I go by what I see. 99.9% of Americans won't go to Russia, so they can't see it with their own eyes.

i literally don’t understand how did swamp elites got so many americans to care and hate russia out of nowhere. them 2 minutes hate rituals must have worked. monday we were thinking about work week, tuesday america transitioned into Russia hate. some like that.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/historic-wednesday-october-23-2024

If one thing has remained constant in the ever-shifting propaganda landscape of the Proxy War, beyond its kaleidoscopic narratives and chameleonic claims, it is the ever-present background refrain sung by the mockingbird media chorus that “Putin’s aggression has made Russia increasingly isolated.” I could show you at least a hundred headlines parroting that phrase, “increasingly isolated.” But if Russia gets any more isolated, Putin will be living in downtown Manhattan.

Yesterday, corporate media ran scads of quiet but unavoidable stories about what is surely one of the most, if not the most historic political meeting in our lifetimes. The New York Times’ article was originally headlined, “Putin Welcomes Xi and Other World Leaders to Russia for BRICS Summit.”

In a telling sign of how terrified the deep state blob is about this meeting, the Times stealth-edited its original headline, to smear Putin and to remove any reference to the BRICS. It now reads, “Seeking to Elude Sanctions, Putin and Xi Promise ‘A Just World Order.’” ...

Even the Times seems to recognize that the “increasingly isolated” canard is wearing thin. Consider this remarkable paragraph, wedged late in the story, rife with admissions of the failures both of Western sanctions and anti-Russia Proxy War propaganda:

"For Russia to have 22 leaders and representatives of over 30
countries coming to Kazan two and a half years into this war does
not only show that Putin is not isolated internationally and the
I.C.C. warrant is of limited utility, but also that the war in Ukraine
has become a new normal, something accepted as a feature of
international reality," said Hanna Notte of the James Martin Center
for Nonproliferation Studies in California."

... Ignoring BRICS is what got us here, morons. To be fair, they aren’t ignoring BRICS. Biden’s out-of-control neocons are deploying their entire bag of dirty tricks against the BRICS nations, including blowing up undersea pipelines, creating colorful color revolutions, and funding endless Proxy Wars. Biden’s neocons want us to ignore the BRICS, so we don’t realize that Biden is crashing the American dollar faster than that F-35 the Air Force lost over South Carolina. ...

What else can you call this except failure? How many billions were wasted, with that lackwit Lindsay Graham chortling all the way, calling it the best money America ever spent? Spent for what? To erect an anti-Western coalition of countries bent on creating a more competitive world currency than the dollar? ...

Regardless what you think of Putin, the fact is right now the United States offers the world nothing hopeful like this. Just the opposite. The U.S. has rabbited so far down the deep state’s dirty-tricks hole that our entire foreign policy is now just a vast secretive effort to undermine things other nations are doing, rather than building anything better ourselves.

The core problem is that our current crop of DEI-infused leaders lack the intellectual capacity to build anything. They can’t run a profitable lemonade stand without first regulating their competitors out of business. In other words, the only thing they are good at is breaking stuff.

My fanciful dream is that, if Trump is elected, we might shut down for good the deep-state’s dirty tricks division, and join the BRICS. Maybe we could work with other countries instead of trying to force them to swallow drag queens. Maybe, as a significant BRICS member, we could help build a new, better, more stable, less manipulated, gold-based world currency. Maybe we could finally replace the corrupt, ineffective, cronyist United Nations with something that actually works.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/trumps-october-surprise-friday-october

Yesteday BRICS released a comprehensive plan to which its members and applicant members agreed. BRICS is not, in fact, creating any new global currency. Instead, it’s creating an alternative international payments platform, for people buying and selling things across borders, or for when nations trade with each other (to buy weapons, grain, or oil, for three examples).

Right now, everyone must use a common payment settlement system called SWIFT. SWIFT is U.S. created and effectively controlled, even though it is ostensibly privately owned and supposedly located in Belgium. The thought that SWIFT is at all independent is a great gag that everyone at the State Department always guffaws about making them cough champagne up their noses.

For many countries, SWIFT has at least two huge problems. When I say the platform is effectively U.S.-controlled, you can imagine all the implications. Users’ data is supposed to be private, but for some reason everybody thinks the U.S. constantly snoops on where all the money is going to and coming from. (One possibility for why they think that is because Edward Snowden exposed it all in 2013, but I digress again.)

The second, even bigger problem is that the U.S. acts like the spoiled kid at his birthday party, refusing to let the kids he doesn’t like ride the rented pony. In other words, the U.S. forces countries to do things they hate, like teach their kids trans techniques, by threatening to cut them off from SWIFT, or snatching their money as it travels through the collected SWIFT system.

Russia, for example, is cut off from SWIFT under U.S. sanctions. And $300 billion of its money was seized while sitting in a SWIFT clearinghouse bank. The implacable Russians are great poker players, you can’t never tell if they’re at all mad about Biden snatching their $300 billion or exploding their undersea pipelines.

But you can imagine how mad the Russians must be.

The Russians are mad enough to spend their time and money leading a world movement to replace the G-7 and its captive SWIFT system. Which would be horrible for us.

Once BRICS has its own interbanking system, they won’t need to trade in dollars anymore, not unless they need something from the U.S. or from a G-7 country. For complicated reasons, the reduced demand for dollars just from those lost transfers will drastically worsen our debt problem. And maybe more important for BRICS countries, the U.S. won’t be able threaten sanctions to force them to swallow every lunatic social experiment that comes down the liberal U.S. pike.

The BRICS pitched their interbanking system yesterday as a non-threatening “alternative” to SWIFT, rather than any kind of direct competitor. Having choices, they stressed, just improves everyone’s outcomes. But that logic is like claiming that when you parked your taco truck right next to Jose’s taco truck, it is actually better for Jose’s taco trade since diners like different choices of tacos.

Jose is not likely to agree. Jose is likely to go loco. ...

The U.S. could shut this BRICS initiative down easily and immediately. All we need to do is reform SWIFT. If the U.S. stopped using SWIFT to sanction other countries, and SWIFT opened up its system transparently, and the U.S. stopped using SWIFT for spying, then BRICS would be unnecessary.

And everyone would keep trading in dollars.

In other words, we could rescue the dollar. We only need to give up the ‘dirty tricks’ tool we use to force other countries to make their kids sit through drag queen happy hours. But Biden’s neocons won’t try that simple remedy, will they? They’ll let the dollar be destroyed before they give up their economic wonder weapon.