patrick.net

.

$500,000 worth of iPhones stolen from Apple Store in Seattle

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/criminal-gang-cuts-hole-through-apple-store-wall-steals-500000-worth-iphones

Rampant crime like this from Apple Store to Target to Walmart ... declining math, writing and reading scores in public schools...

a corrupt and rogue one-party left wing authoritarian state which abuses power and uses FBI and DOJ as its enforcers...

ESG and DEI as the official cult religion of the state ....

,

'I'll get him': Sheriff vows to hunt down third killer as two boys, 12 and 17, are arrested in triple teen murders: Cop says shooters left messy crime scene as they hid bodies after 'turning on the victims'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11949349/Arrests-murder-three-Florida-teenagers-shot-dead-outside-tiny-town.html

casandra says

Oh, and for those that wonder why this country is attacking its own citizens. I think that easy. The people who run this country, I mean the ones that TRULY are calling the shots here using our elected leaders as stooges, DO NOT LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY AND DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CITIZENS HERE!

Finally, somebody around here states the reality. Its the crack in the dam that will finally open up minds instead of looking at the puppet show talk show host politicians and rubber masked avatars as if they are real and are in charge..

"Why The Restrict Act Is So Dangerous"

In a nutshell, the Restrict Act eliminates Freedom of Speech. Period.

This is Tulsi Gabbard explaining how - Less than 2 minutes.



original link

I foolishly used to think that legislators were supposed to be triage to make sure proposed laws were studied and screened whether they were Constitutional to begin with.
Clif High says that the average time for an unconstitutional law to be reversed by the courts is 18 months. That's 18 months that the psychopaths have to utilize an unconstitutional law to wreak havoc or destroy rights, with many lasting even longer.

Any legislator who knowingly votes for a law that is clearly unconstitutional on its face should be run out of office on a rail and hung. Yet, it is now embedded policy to pass unconstitutional laws and ride them for all they are worth.

Agreed Ceffer. That’s why I flatly ignore all such laws passed to restrict my freedoms enumerated in the Constitution.

If the U. S. Constitution was strictly followed and obeyed on a Federal level, probably 90%+ of all Government programs and policies would have to be done away with.

America's only hope is that Grey Haired Men get on their motor or bicycles and become a Steppe Horde from the Midwest that reconquers America when the paper loses it's value.

Getcher Motor Runnin'!

Repealing the 19th would fix a lot of issues.

Fiddling America Away

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/09/fiddling-america-away/

We fixate only on the irrelevant that we think we can address while ignoring the existential we know we no longer can solve.

By Victor Davis Hanson

The last few weeks, the world had been writing off the United States as either crazy or irrelevant as it watches America cannibalize itself.

Friends tremble at our sudden decline. Enemies rejoice. Neutrals make the necessary adjustments to join the ascendant non-American side.

The symptoms of our decline abroad appear everywhere. The more Joe Biden brags about the crippling oil sanctions on Russia, friends like India and allies like Japan ignore them. And why not, when Biden has no idea how long the war in Ukraine will last, or how much wherewithal the United States can, should, or will give Kyiv, or how its on-to-Red-Square blank check will finally end?

Big Biden talks about more solar and wind farms, and green new deals won’t fill the gas tanks in Munich or heat the homes of Kyoto, or lower the price of imported oil in the United Kingdom. Claiming the Afghanistan mess was a success fools no one.

Allies ask who are our leaders. An impaired Joe Biden who never is quite sure where he is, what he is doing, or whom he is with?

Kamala Harris, whose only interests appear to be demagoguing racial and social tensions with a shrinking vocabulary?

Senator John Fetterman (D-Penn.), who was elected on the argument it was unkind not to vote for a candidate who was physically and mentally impaired?

Energy Department kingpin Sam Brinton, the cross-dresser in lipstick, now charged with felonies for stealing women’s luggage at airport carousels?

Pete Buttigieg, our transportation secretary, who virtue signals melodramas of the past when he is clueless how to fix crises in the present?

Our Pentagon brass who fixate on saying the correct thing now to ensure the lucrative defense contractor billets later?

Allies fear that after abandoning billions of dollars in weaponry in Kabul to the terrorist Taliban, and pumping billions of dollars more of arms into the Ukrainian meat grinder, and failing to increase U.S. armaments production, Washington simply does not have the resources to match China in either a looming proxy or head-to-head war.

Browse through any media account of the U.S. military, and the storyline is one of racial, gender, gay, or transgendered wokeism, or a looming manpower shortage—not a new lethal weapon, a new division of veteran soldiers, or a new program to up the level of training, physical prowess, and mental attitude among the ranks.

The men and women, whom Russia and China most fear, feel that they are unwelcome in the U.S. military and so no longer join. Those whom our enemies hope do enlist, sign up to the delight of their quota-driven, identify politics recruitment officers—and our enemies as well.

NATO member Turkey is calling for an ecumenical Islamic effort combining Shiites and Sunnis, Persians and the Arabs, Middle Easterners and all Muslims—to unite against Israel. And why not when Biden had gratuitously insulted and yet begged Saudi Arabia and the Gulf exporting states, ignored the Abraham Accords, ostracized Israel, radically cut back on U.S. energy production capability, and groveled to Iran to reenter the Iran Nuclear Deal?

China now openly talks of war with the United States. Beijing claims the Taiwan Strait as its own de facto territorial waters. It partners with Russia to add to a growing alliance of Iran, and North Korea, and beckons Turkey, ostensibly a NATO ally.

After refusing to come clean about its birthing in Wuhan of the gain-in-function, engineered COVID-19 virus that killed 1 million Americans, China is unapologetically defiant about sending a spy balloon over key classified sites throughout the continental United States—part of the continual, humiliating follow-up to its inaugural smack down of Biden’s diplomats at the Anchorage mini-summit.

Oil producers, China, hostiles like Russia and Iran, and opportunists like Turkey and India all foresee the end of the dollar as the international currency. After the American humiliation in Afghanistan, the Islamic world, particularly on the West Bank and in Syria, all see the United States as increasingly weak.

The Biden Administration brags that it has saved NATO by pouring weapons into European Ukraine. But Europe is starving for fossil-fuel energy, about exhausted with emptying its arsenals in aid to Ukraine, and terrified that Biden is just enough a multilateralist to lead the alliance into a confrontation with Russia, but also so incompetent as to ensure either an economic depression or nuclear standoff.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador basks in the publicity of helping an ailing Biden mount stairs, as he brags that 40 million Mexican nationals have entered the United States—the majority of them illegally. He prods Mexican expatriates to vote for Democrats to ensure the border is wide open and a perpetual vehicle for Mexican, not U.S. interests, in ensuring billions of dollars in remittances, defusing social tensions at home, and encouraging them abroad in the United States. Do we help defend the borders of Ukraine because we cannot defend our own? Are 100,000 dead Americans due to imported fentanyl mere collateral damage from open borders?

The more our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of defense tour the world, sound off on contemporary strategic issues, or weigh in on domestic politics, the more apprehensive our allies become, wondering how the once-vaunted U.S. Armed Forces have descended into some bizarre woke commissariat.

The international financial community is terrified of $33 trillion in aggregate U.S. debt, a record 130 percent of annual American GDP. It was aghast as the Biden Administration blundered ahead printing money to encourage labor non-participation during a supply chain crisis, inciting inflation, inviting high interest rates, and all but ensuring bank collapses.

The world abroad will tolerate no more lectures from American grandees about the evils of tribal hatred or the benefits of democracy—not when race relations in America are regressing to Balkan-like venom. Anti-democratic rogue regimes indict their former presidents; they put on trial their current political rivals; and they let criminals go free if they serve ideological ends. Now the United States does the same, driven by the Left’s paranoid and irrational hatred of Donald Trump, and its eagerness to destroy all customs and traditions to vent its antipathy to all things Trump.

Foreigners assume that downtown Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, Memphis, San Francisco, or Washington are medieval—filthy, unsafe, vacant, and malodorous. Western civilization discovered 2,500 years ago how to remove excrement from its city cores; now it has either lost or forgotten that ability along with the knowledge that crime and disease thrive amid sewage and garbage.

The U.S. media was once the world’s gold standard. The New York Times claimed it was the paper of record. Network news was liberally slanted but often fair. Crusading independent journalists often kept government honest. But all that has now become a global laughingstock: ridiculously wrong about “Russian collusion,” predictably partisan about “Russian disinformation” and Hunter Biden’s laptop, egging on Alvin Bragg’s pathetic indictment of candidate and former president Trump, and giddy when an ex-president’s home is raided by FBI, or he is tried as a private citizen by a partisan Senate.

So as the military, political, financial, economic, and cultural status of the United States reaches a nadir, what is the reaction of a blinkered America?

What remedies are Americans preparing, as they totter on the abyss of disasters comparable to the U.S. Civil War, Great Depression, World War II, or 1960s-style cultural madness?

Marshall Plans to balance budgets? A 600-ship navy? Two more crack army divisions? A continental missile-defense system? A restoration of the cores of American cities? Plans to secure the border? To ratchet up oil and gas production? To drop the racial and sexual tribalism and restore a meritocracy? To reform higher education? To begin charging criminals with the felonies they have committed? A cleaning of the FBI, CIA, Justice Department, and IRS?

Hardly.

Instead Americans are wondering why a local prosecutor has charged with felonies the first president in history, and currently the leading 2024 presidential candidate, for having a purported liaison 16 years prior and concluding a non-disclosure agreement supposedly to hide it.

A man pretending to be a woman is cashing in on his media-created persona, winning million-dollar advertising contracts from woke corporations for hawking their beer and sports bras. Do these corporations believe that America’s women are so un-endowed that CEOs must hire a man without bosoms to become their national spokesperson for best accommodating cleavage he doesn’t have in a competition he doesn’t enter?

America’s downtowns are reaching a breaking point of vacancy, vagrancy, and violence that makes life there unsustainable, while the country argues over gender pronouns. As violent crime soars, especially hate crimes, interracial crimes, and inner-city crime, a mostly black woman’s championship basketball team stages a media psychodrama of pouting and hurt feelings—as it claims it was “disrespected” by left-wing First Lady Jill Biden and will not go to the White House but prefers instead to be hosted at one of the Obamas’ three mansion estates—a duo not heretofore known for welcoming in strangers, especially of the poorer sort.

What else rises to America’s fiddling attention as the world burns up abroad?

Students in American universities, whether at Stanford Law School or San Francisco State University, shout obscenities at federal judges or seek to beat up invited speakers. Their disruptions are encouraged by their own deans’ silence or active encouragement. The common denominator in both cases is that the disrupters and attackers freely admit they violate university rules and/or the law, and yet assume their ideology and their claims on victimhood exempt them from any consequences for their atrocious conduct. And they are proven right on both counts.

All know that a few expulsions of the elite and pampered lawbreakers would restore sanity to lectures; all know that administrators either side with the culprits or fear their own careers would suffer should they enforce the rules they are charged to uphold

As transgenderism sweeps the country and wins the attention of the White House, the media do their best to hide the facts that the transgendered mass murderer in Nashville wrote a blueprint of how and why she would soon be killing 9-year-olds, that another would-be transgendered mass killer was stopped just in time in Colorado, that another transgender would-be assassin traveled to the home of Supreme Court Justice Kavanagh to murder him.

To speak the truth that men not just in cross-dress perform sexualized dance skits for audiences that include children, but remain both exempt from legal ramifications and are in hot demand is nearly felonious. Best-selling novelist J. K. Rowling, tennis great Martina Navratilova, and All-American swimmer Riley Gaines—they all cannot go out in public alone without assuming they will be physically attacked by the “peaceful” transgendered community. Their sin? The mere suggestion that those born as biological men cannot declare themselves women and thus assume thereby they are.

So America suffers the sins of omission—squabbling over the nonessential—and commission—losing wars, going broke, ruining its economy, flirting with civil war. We know these are all self-inflicted wounds. But apparently, we believe their remedies are worse than the original maladies. And so we fixate only on the irrelevant that we think we can address while ignoring the existential we know we no longer can solve.

The world is terrified and stunned at the result—and increasingly looking elsewhere to non-American solutions.

There is blood in the water. Now Macron may be turning on Birdbrain Biden with his meeting with Chinese's President.

Brazil and Mexico already have turned on Birdbrain Biden recently.

Wonder why the son of George Soros has been frequenting the White House a lot recently.

Maybe its to make a quick or short term major gain in the futures market or stock market due to Birdbrain Biden policies.

Find out if Soros is shorting the US dollar, for example.

.

I bring up about Soros shorting the dollar just like I want to know who may be shorting Starbucks stock and if they are behind the unionization effort at Starbucks.

Such as it is Robert Reich or some left wing activist and multi millionaire who is funding Robert Reich or the unionization effort.

.

ad says

Brazil and Mexico already have turned on Birdbrain Biden recently.

Out of respect for birds, I resent referring to Biden as a Birdbrain. If given a pile of twigs, is there anyone that honestly believes Joe Biden could build a bird's nest?

RayAmerica says

Great Britain continued to 'survive' after its Empire collapsed after WW I, and was further exacerbated by WW II. Today, the Empire in which the 'sun never set' is only a shadow of what it once was. Throughout history, numerous empires and civilizations have collapsed and simply disappeared, with, like Great Britain, only a remnant that survives. Is this America's fate?

I have my own thoughts, but I'd be really curious to hear what others have to say.

If we EndTheFED.world then America and most of the world would begin recovery rapidly. Narrative economics is powerful. We must use it. FactCheck.lol

RayAmerica says

Out of respect for birds, I resent referring to Biden as a Birdbrain. If given a pile of twigs, is there anyone that honestly believes Joe Biden could build a bird's nest?

I am sure Biden could shit in a nest.

This is what is being exalted as 'normal' in America.

Clown World: Burly Transvestite "Squeaky Saint Francis" Addresses Commiefornia School Board
https://rumble.com/v2ihj12-clown-world-burly-transvestite-squeaky-saint-francis-addresses-commiefornia.html

Ceffer says

I foolishly used to think that legislators were supposed to be triage to make sure proposed laws were studied and screened whether they were Constitutional to begin with.
Clif High says that the average time for an unconstitutional law to be reversed by the courts is 18 months. That's 18 months that the psychopaths have to utilize an unconstitutional law to wreak havoc or destroy rights, with many lasting even longer.

Any legislator who knowingly votes for a law that is clearly unconstitutional on its face should be run out of office on a rail and hung. Yet, it is now embedded policy to pass unconstitutional laws and ride them for all they are worth.

I have thought this exact thought but never bothered to write it out. You did it much better than I would have. Excellent observation.

GNL says

Ceffer says

I foolishly used to think that legislators were supposed to be triage to make sure proposed laws were studied and screened whether they were Constitutional to begin with.
Clif High says that the average time for an unconstitutional law to be reversed by the courts is 18 months. That's 18 months that the psychopaths have to utilize an unconstitutional law to wreak havoc or destroy rights, with many lasting even longer.

Any legislator who knowingly votes for a law that is clearly unconstitutional on its face should be run out of office on a rail and hung. Yet, it is now embedded policy to pass unconstitutional laws and ride them for all they are worth.

I have thought this exact thought but never bothered to write it out. You did it much better than I would have. Excellent observation.

I think people who pass unconstitutional laws, should be executed. Their job is to fucking know, and they do know. Execute them.

The moral rot of America continues ...

Preacher Ordered Not to Post Bible Verses Offending LGBTQ Crowd on Social Media for Five Years

A Tennessee street preacher is challenging an Oklahoma court order threatening him with arrest and potential prison time if, over the next five years, he posts Bible verses condemning homosexuality on social media.

Rich Penkoski is the leader of Warriors for Christ, an organization of street preachers that, among other things, attempts to combat the LGBTQ agenda. Its home page, for example, displays a map of the United States indicating “all establishments that have had events that target children for grooming.” One of those establishments is, of all things, a church in Oklahoma, and taking note of it is what has Penkoski in hot water.
https://thenewamerican.com/preacher-ordered-not-to-post-bible-verses-offending-lgbtq-crowd-on-social-media-for-five-years/

RayAmerica says

A Tennessee street preacher is challenging an Oklahoma court order threatening him with arrest and potential prison time if, over the next five years, he posts Bible verses condemning homosexuality on social media.

1A violation through and through. Once upon a time, I'd say guaranteed overturn. The fact that I can't say so is troubling.

Can America survive this type of ongoing, ever increase in lawlessness?

Thug Who Shot 6yo Girl And Family in North Carolina Was Freed on Bond in Sledgehammer Attack


https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2023/04/21/man-accused-shooting-6-year-old-over-basketball-arrested-florida/

Everybody is losing their patience.

Frankly, even if we did the time is damned short.

2024 is the last chance I can see, and 2025 better be a shitstorm of prosecutions AND convictions.

AmericanKulak says

Everybody is losing their patience.

Frankly, even if we did the time is damned short.

2024 is the last chance I can see, and 2025 better be a shitstorm of prosecutions AND convictions.

2008 was our last chance. I don't believe at this point it can be turned around.

George W. Bush and most of his administration should have been executed, the fact they weren't shows that the US will engage in endless wars of aggression that have nothing to do with the security of the United States. A mafia rules us.

The Iraq War didn't help this nation at all, it killed around 800,000 Iraqis. We did nothing about it, so now, we're complicit in the crime. The last bits of our morality as a nation died with that asshole, and he fully knows it:


original link

Listen carefully at 00:28 - "Iraq too" - he knows exactly what he's done. He knows he's a mass murderer, he knows he lied us into Iraq, he knows his decision and moral weakness killed 800,000 people.

And he will die peacefully in his sleep and he was replaced by the same fucking thing. He should have been executed, along with most of his administration, and a good portion of our "news" media. I'm sick of the carnage.

Welcome To The Great Spiritual War Of Our Time

A pagan cult of communists, perverts & pedophiles is trying to replace the dominant religion of the West

If you’ve been paying even the slightest attention to the rapid decline of the United States in the last three years then you know that what you are witnessing is not just a political battle — not just a cultural conflict between conservatives and liberals if you prefer those terms — but a great spiritual war that now threatens the continued existence of western civilization itself.

The side of evil should now be obvious to everyone. The perverts, pedophiles, abortion fanatics, and Chinese communist party officials are all on the same grotesque side. It’s the side of the woke and the queer theorists.

It’s the side of the Democrat Party in America and the communist Left all around the world.

This is the axis of evil that I call the Rainbow Jihad.

The Rainbow Jihad is not trying to purify or improve Christianity. It’s a pagan cult that’s trying to replace the dominant religion of the West.

If this interests you, read more here:
https://www.emerald.tv/p/welcome-to-the-great-spiritual-war

I don't agree with everything, but, a lot of valid points are made ...

Doom Loop Will Cause Total Societal Meltdown – Michael Snyder (video interview)
https://usawatchdog.com/doom-loop-will-cause-total-societal-meltdown-michael-snyder/

RayAmerica says

Can America survive this type of ongoing, ever increase in lawlessness

I'm not sure that i understand what you mean by "survive".

GNL says

I foolishly used to think that legislators were supposed to be triage to make sure proposed laws were studied and screened whether they were Constitutional to begin with.

I think they taught that in high school...along with the stock market was created to fund companies to increase production, employment and increase innovation. The also taught that a prosecutors job was to try and put criminals in jail. Also that the supreme court was not political and followed the letter of the law.

komputodo says

I'm not sure that i understand what you mean by "survive".

Apparently, I should have made it clearer when I posted this because this question has been asked before. I'll try to explain:

With all of the upheaval, economically, politically, socially, will America "survive" in a manner that is independent and vibrant. An illustration; a person has a severe stroke and yet he "survives." Is he the same person that he was prior to the debilitating stroke? Of course not, yet his survival in a sense is somewhat questionable.

America faces issues that, IMO, are insurmountable, making this nation far weaker than most people recognize. Just ONE example; our reserve currency status is being seriously challenged. If we lose that status, life in America is going to change dramatically for the worse. Obtaining credit will be far more difficult, and, expensive, and the Federal Government will no longer be able to provide handouts to the millions that are accustomed to living on free handouts. The result will be violence and chaos the like of which this nation has never seen.

With the millions of illegal immigrants crossing the border every year, will this challenge our survival as an orderly nation? Violent crime is increasing at an alarming rate, making it literally dangerous to venture into some of America's formerly 'great' cities. Is this the America that we know, or has it already changed into something that we don't even recognize ... similar to that stroke victim?

RayAmerica says

Will America Survive?

America did survive a Civil War, the gangster 1920s where Tommy Guns were routine, and then a Great Depression where 24% were unemployed.

RayAmerica says

Is this the America that we know, or has it already changed into something that we don't even recognize ... similar to that stroke victim?

I believe it will stay in the same state as the stroke victim. As long as they keep shoveling money to the poor folk, it will never get better

HeadSet says

RayAmerica says

Will America Survive?

America did survive a Civil War, the gangster 1920s where Tommy Guns were routine, and then a Great Depression where 24% were unemployed.

Of course....where is it going to go?

komputodo says

Of course....where is it going to go?

Just a wild guess; the Communists are in charge and they are working towards creating a crisis that will provide the excuse for the Communist Great Reset.

I think America will decline in an alternation of sudden drops and slow malaise, kind of how Britain lost its dominance.

Biden is definitely one of the sudden drops.

Patrick says

Biden is definitely one of the sudden drops.

This is the issue at hand. We have one of the worst leaders this country has ever seen. Might be the worst ever given the current global climate. And I know there were some bad ones in the 1800's and recent ones like Ford. And the second in line, Harris, is a complete imbecile. We look weak.

The next 18 months or so cannot happen fast enough. This chapter needs to be finished. Not promoting this, but I'd take Mitt Romney at this point over Joe Biden. That's how bad this is.

WookieMan says

The next 18 months or so cannot happen fast enough. This chapter needs to be finished. Not promoting this, but I'd take Mitt Romney at this point over Joe Biden. That's how bad this is.

They're both puppets. Nothing will change with Mitt Romney. You might as well elect Hillary Clinton of John McCain, and I know McCain is dead - what difference does that make?

There wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Obama and Bush Jr, and there isn't a dimes worth of difference between Joe Biden and Obama. All that's difference is the presentation and the puppet on the screen. None of them set any policy at all. They sign bills shoved in front of them, and then provide excuses for what they signed by reading a teleprompter. George W. Bush, and Hillary Clinton were both accused of having earpieces during the debates - they did.

WookieMan says

Not promoting this

richwicks says

They're both puppets. Nothing will change with Mitt Romney.

Jesus dude, read. Romney is for sure better than Biden. Trump is better than Romney. Etc.... Anything is better than Biden. My stoned neighbor is better. Clearly my point went over your head.

WookieMan says

Jesus dude, read. Romney is for sure better than Biden.

He will be a puppet. There aren't two sides to "the establishment". There's one. If wouldn't make a damned bit of difference if Al Gore, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Liz Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, Dan Crenshaw, Mike Pence, etc were president right now.

They are puppets. They make ZERO decisions. That's why competence doesn't matter, because competence doesn't matter.

I know Joe Biden ABSOLUTELY sucks

You know why we all these incompetent freaks in the Biden administration? It's because it doesn't matter a bit who is in the administration. They have no power, whatsoever. They make no decisions.

WookieMan says

Anything is better than Biden. My stoned neighbor is better.

Oh I believe that. He couldn't be worse, maybe he would be the same, because the CIA would come over and say "we killed Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and JFK Jr, we can kill you and your family too if you don't play ball and you better keep your mouth shut if you don't want a family member to have... an accident."

That's what is going on. If Al Gore was president in 2000, we'd still have gone to war with Iraq, it would have just been a different excuse "Oh, Saddam Hussein is about to cause a humanitarian crisis!". Haven't you noticed, when a democrat is president all wars are for "humanitarian reasons", when a republican is president all wars are "for national security". Both are complete lies.

(full article below)

On March 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. In his article in the Russian media preceding the meeting, XI enthused that “China-Russia trade exceeded 190 billion U.S. dollars last year, up by 116 percent from ten years ago.” Though it has reached 190 billion US dollars, it is no longer all being traded in US dollars. In his article in the Chinese media, Putin said that “the share of settlements in national currencies” of all that trade “is growing.” 65% of that massive China-Russia trade is now being conducting in their Russian and Chinese currencies.

Though the US sees Russia and China as the largest threats to its position in the world, it is not just America’s enemies that are fleeing the dollar. Its closest friends have hinted at it too. Following his meetings with XI in China, French President Emmanuel Macron likely stunned and angered the US by calling for Europe to reduce its dependency on the “extraterritoriality of the US dollar.”

These calls for a flight from the US dollar are not merely economic, they are geopolitical. They are calls to reshape the world order by challenging US hegemony and advocating multipolarity. The monopoly of the dollar has not just assured US wealth: it has assured US power. Most international trade is conducted in dollars, and most foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars. That dollar dominance has often allowed the US to dictate ideological alignment or to impose economic and political structural adjustments on other countries. It has also allowed the US to become the only country in the world that can effectively sanction its opponents. Emancipation from the hegemony of the dollar is emancipation from US hegemony. The flight from the US dollar is a mechanism for replacing the US led unipolar world with a multipolar world.

As the US has recently demonstrated in Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia, the monopoly of the dollar allows it to be very powerfully and quickly weaponized. Countries’ funds can be held hostage, and countries can be coerced and starved into falling in line by sanctions. Recent demonstrations of that power have awoken many countries to their own vulnerability.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said that “There is a risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar that over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar.” She explained that “Of course, it does create a desire on the part of China, of Russia, of Iran to find an alternative.”

And that’s just what it’s done. But Yellen is still missing the larger effect of US dollar warfare. It is not just China, Russia and Iran that are now seeking to escape the pressure. America’s enemies, but also its friends and everything in between, are considering taking flight from the dollar.

China and Russia are doing it. NATO ally France is calling for it for Europe. Nonaligned countries are also either talking about it or already doing it.

India is a growing economic power. And, like China, India has massively increased its trade with Russia. India and Russia have now begun discussions on a free trade agreement between India and the Russian led Eurasian Economic Commission. The two countries are now engaged in “advanced negotiations” for a new bilateral investment treaty. Russia has expressed interest in using “national currencies and currencies of friendly countries” for trade. India, too, “has been keen on” moving toward leaving the dollar behind by “increasing the use of its rupee currency for trade with Russia.” And India has recently begun purchasing some Russian oil in Russian rubles.

US dollar hegemony has also been threatened right in America’s backyard. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has proposed escaping dollar control by “creat[ing] a Latin American currency.” While in China for meetings with XI, Lula asked, “Who decided the dollar would be the [world’s] currency?” He then answered his own question. In March, Brazil and China escaped the US dollar by each assigning one of its banks to conduct their bilateral trade in the Brazilian real and the Chinese yuan.

Pakistan is now also trading with China in its own currency. Iran and Russia have taken flight from the dollar and are now settling trade in rials and rubles. They recently announced that they have circumvented the US financial system by linking their banking systems as an alternative to SWIFT for trading with each other. Saudi Arabia has said that it sees “no issues” in trading oil in currencies other than the US dollar. Robert Rabil, Professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University, says that the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel have all made some movement away from the US dollar.

The Eurasian Economic Union has agreed on “a phased transition” from settling trade in “foreign currency” to “settlements in rubles.”

Perhaps more surprisingly for the US was the decision at the March 30-31 meeting of the finance ministers and central bank governors of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to reduce reliance on the US dollar. ASEAN is made up of Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Brunei. The meeting produced a joint statement to “reinforce financial resilience . . . through the use of local currency.” But what must have been most unsettling for the US was the explanation given for the decision by Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Widodo said that the move is necessary to protect from “possible geopolitical repercussions.” What did he mean by that? “Be very careful,” he explained. “We must remember the sanctions imposed by the US on Russia.”

Yellen was right. Widodo said that US sanctions on Russia exposed just how vulnerable countries are if they rely on US dollars and US foreign payment systems. He said that using ASEAN’s Local Currency Transaction system to trade in local currencies would help address the need for Indonesia to prepare itself for the possibility that the US could similarly sanction it.

The EEU and ASEAN are not the only organizations mapping their flight from the US dollar. BRICS is a massive international organization whose primary purpose is to balance US hegemony in a new multipolar world. Comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, it represents 41% of the world’s population. BRICS, too, is talking about conducting trade in the currencies of its members or even in a new BRICS’ currency.

Lula recently suggested that “the BRICS bank have a currency to finance trade between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other BRICS countries” so that countries are not compelled “to chase after dollars to export, when they could be exporting in their own currencies.” Russian State Duma Deputy Chairman Alexander Babakov also recently said that BRICS is working on creating its own currency.

A BRICS currency could challenge the dollar beyond the borders of BRICS. “Because each member of the BRICS grouping is an economic heavyweight in its own region, countries around the world would likely be willing to do business” in the currency, suggested a report in the Financial Post.

One such region is Africa. In July, the Russia-Africa summit will be held in St. Petersburg. Olayinka Ajala, senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Leeds Beckett University and the author of “The Case for Neutrality: Understanding African Stances on the Russia-Ukraine Conflict,” told me in a recent correspondence that a “main focus of Russia and China at the moment is to get African countries to support the proposed BRICS currency.” He says that “this will be a major topic in the upcoming conference.” Ajala explains that “Africa is a consuming continent, meaning they import lots of goods and services.” He says that “with a population of over 1.2 billion, if Russia and China are able to convince African countries on the need to ditch the dollar, it will be a huge blow to the US.”

From Africa to Southeast Asia and Latin America, from Russia and China to India, Iran and Saudi Arabia, countries are mapping their course for a flight from the US dollar.

As a mechanism for transition from US hegemony to a multipolar world, the economic effects would be great, but the geopolitical effects could be even greater.
https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/the-flight-from-the-us-dollar/