Connexion
This article was originally published by Cassie B. at Natural News. Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently discussed how AI could fight climate change on his...
Bill Gates Wants To Use AI For Genetically Modifying Beef Cows To “Save The Planet”
.. enter the ‘Cuban’ missile crisis, only this time it’s on steroids
With thanks to our own Colin Maxwell of New Zealand.
Please see: Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3 ; Part 4
NB – AN EXPLANATION OF ACRONYMS/TERMS/ETC used in the article are listed at the end of this discussion piece.
1. Introduction
My sincere apologies for this delay in my sequel. I picked up a very nasty bug and at the same time experienced some major computer glitches.
In the mean time it is my grim conclusion that the Western world won’t escape this gigantic financial hole it has dug for itself without going through a major systemic financial meltdown. Only with a tragic event will the critical mass of society actually rise up to demand the massive reform that is required to have any hope of recovering functional and sustainable economies.
I see no political escape from of the U$ train wreck (described earlier in eCONomics Part I) because the various components of the uni-party have almost identical financial and foreign policies. None of the POTUS candidates even bother to address the financial situation, let alone offer up any remotely workable solutions.
So too, history is massively against any hope of a successful independent POTUS, and the fact that RFK Jr is going to take votes from both sides of the ‘aisle’ means that IF the election actually takes place, Trump will be almost certainly be the winner.
This is despite the fact that he is a proven compulsive liar who still brags about his godfather role in the development of the experimental mRNA killer toxins. He also showed his true colours when he backstabbed Assange – whose published revelations paved the way for Trump to beat the truely dreadful and dangerous Hillary Clinton in 2016. What a truly sad commentary when a truly inept braggart like this is the only option available that would avoid a second term by the appalling ‘Crash Test Dummy’.
However, as the old cliche states – “seven days is a long time in politics” – however seven months is practically an eternity – especially given the dire financial situation and the multiple global military flash points.
Also, how soon could the pitchforks and riots manifest in the streets, and subsequently give the Biden camp the excuse they crave to declare Martial Law, in doing so creating the perfect opportunity to further tighten the noose on society’s freedom, by implementing a retail CBDC and it’s associated social credit controls?
The other possible titles I considered were…
KEEP PRINTING OR CRASH – nope, it’s keep printing and crash anyway.
IMMINENT GOLD REVALUATION – a worthy title too, as arguably this is the most significant single factor in a perfect storm of events that will be the end of the reign of the Western hegemon.
2. A Collision Of No Less Than Twelve Events In A Perfect Storm
#1 The Ukraine debacle exposing how utterly demented the U$ and NATOstan are in their hegemonic lust for control of resources, perpetual war and general mayhem. The comprehensive loss of yet another war is bad enough, but their attempts to hide this loss and extend the blood bath, makes NATOstan’s actions even more reprehensible.
#2 The Palestinian debacle – and Israel and the U$’s desire to genocide their population. The U$ and Israel play good cop, bad cop, whilst they carry on deliberate and overt genocide. Both countries have effectively torched the tiny skerrick of diplomatic capital they had left.
Many Palestians are already at level 5 starvation and yet this is being used as a weapon – even using aerial food drops as bait with Israeli troops stationed nearby with machine guns to gun them down as they try to retrieve food for their starving families.
#3 The build up in the tensions in the South China Sea and Warshington’s brazen prediction of a full scale war.
#4 The general weaponisation of the dollar and Western based payment systems.
#5 The idiotic 16,000 sanctions wrought on Russia – a reminder to the entire planet that this strategy doesn’t work – it only succeeds in providing a huge extra helping of bad karma for the voracious Western Hegemon.
#6 An announcement of a revaluation of gold by BRICS+ is imminent – as soon as this happens the Western fiat currencies will begin to implode – this as a corollary, with a return to hard backed currencies, may well turn out to be the single most crippling factor of all.
#7 The stability of the BRICS+ multiple commodity trade-only instrument will be
extremely compelling – not only will it be hard backed by gold, more than likely silver, and a host of other commodities (perhaps, as many as 20), but the smoothing effects of this system will come into effect and give countries the confidence to use it.
#8 The cooperative nature of the member nation’s currencies will encourage their use and an increasing percentage of trade will be done using swaps and bartering of goods for goods.
#9 Gresham’s Law will kick in – countries/people will liquidate their weak money and hold as reserves money which is regarded as strong and stable. This is when the exponential ramp up in hurt for the West will begin.
#10 The fact that it is almost impossible to miss the fact that Uncle $laughter has deliberately set about trying to destroy Europe – this gradual realisation by Mainstreet Europe, as the reality finally bites in, will never be lived down. Kissinger’s prophetic words should ring in the ears of the entire RoW.
#11 The absolutely disgraceful treatment of LatAm and the explicit Monroe Doctrine of raping this entire continent – and no more shocking example of the last century of atrocities than the sellout of the immensely resource rich Argentina by the utterly feckless Milei to Western imperial plutocrats. Refer – General Richardson’s recent visit to Buenos Aires – I just hope that our friend Jorges is travelling OK amongst all of this madness.
Second from left: the new Argentinian President ‘Mad Dog Javier Milei standing next to the archetypical neocon U$ Four Star General Richardson
#12 The highlighting of the centuries of the raping of the African Continent by Western Imperialism – the most recent and habitual protagonist being, you guessed it – Uncle $laughter.
3. Gold Stacking By The Global South
this constitutes the twilight of the fiat currency system
The World Bank reports that central banks bought 1037 tons of gold bullion in 2023, which is only slightly below the all time record set in 2022.
The astute entities, particularly in the ME and Asia are realising that keeping funds in U$ dollars is becoming too much of a liability.
Foreigners who own $14 trillion in stocks in the U$ and a further ~$8 triilion in treasuries are slowly waking up to the fact that they are not even the legal owners of this paper…. see eCONomics Part (I), section (iii) ‘The Great Taking’.
This stacking of bullion is enabled by the U$’s vain obsession of trying to protect the value of its currency. The Global South will continue to stack as the U$ facilitates the suppression of the real price with the COMEX.
It seems incredible, but the MSM has only just managed to figure out that the strength in gold is due to massive central bank buying. Apparently the casino house didn’t see these macro trends either – they were all to far too busy chart-painting and gambling to even look at the underlying fundamentals of why gold and silver were about to break out and head for the hills.
This subject was extensively covered in eCONomics Part (I) and so I won’t regurgitate it here.
Paraphrased from the one and only Alasdair Macleod…
“Money is the back stop of credit, which is why gold is so important. The dollar is not money, it is credit – it relies on the faith we have in the U$ Govt (oh dear!).
This is what is likely to come unstuck, as the entire colossal credit system begins to fall down around our ears.
Insurance has to be money in this event – not BitCoin, but gold. Silver has been demonetised, remaining very much an industrial metal controlled by industrial interests, particularly within China.
However, this control may well be slipping with the Indians buying so much silver, with deliveries on the COMEX this year over 1200 tons. As China loses control of the silver price its monetary characteristics will return.
When credit really does fall apart, people will go for anything tangible – obviously this does not include financial securities – in them there is no protection against inflation because they are in themselves credit which will get swept up in the collapse.”
Into the Maelström
4. Gold, Silver, or Bitcoin — which one(s) will Dah Fed concentrate on manipulating now?
Recently, the ‘cost to borrow’, meaning the cost to short sell GLD shares began to rise sharply from just under 40 BPS (0.4%) by almost 3x to a mind-numbing 1.06%.
Remember too that these borrowed shares ultimately have to be paid back as the price rises further the borrower is left in a ever deepening hole -who on earth would take this risk? – So who is the ‘who’ then? – it has to be dah Fed itself because no TBTF first tier bank compliance team would allow these huge high risk naked short bets to be made.
As the brilliant Andy Maguire recently stated – (paraphrased)…
“Why – because they are attempting to swamp the gold rally by adding borrowed supply in the hope that officials can repay these borrowed supply bets at a lower price. Yes we know that the Fed can print as much as they like, but this is all set to backfire spectacularly.
The Fed is the only remaining CB betting against a higher gold price and they are reduced to deploying the only tool in the tool box, which is using leveraged paper gold to try to chart paint the top of the rally.
Meanwhile, almost every other CB is swapping their excess dollars for physical gold and capitalising on being able to convert the COMEX synthetically driven supply prices into deliverable NSFR compliant bullion through the EFT mechanism. The Fed is now severely limited as to how many CTAs they can suck into puking up their long term bets to repay these GLD shares.”
The Fed is the only remaining global CB (dumb enough) to bet against a higher gold price and to use leveraged paper gold to continue to manipulate the price. Meanwhile any other CB, with half a brain, is swapping their excess dollars for physical gold.
Basically, available gold stocks have contracted ~50% in 4 years and many CTA positions are no longer rinse-able. The ringleaders now appear to be shifting their attention to injecting instability into Bitcoin, and phasing out gold and silver price fixing, as they become more and more badly burnt whilst the organic price discovery process advances.
Clearly, it is far more profitable to play around with cryptos than to have to eventually cough up gold bullion, which is ultimately NSFR compliant, and physically deliverable, leaving them in a deeper and deeper hole.
It is much easier just to print cash to bale themselves out, as their ability to print cash is virtually limitless – as opposed to eventually having to cough up physical gold that they don’t hold anyway.
5. Silver — massive extra demand for silver, notably in India and China.
We now witness an explosion in silver demand for use in the solar industry particularly in India, but it is strong in China too. India’s solar module production demand is likely to grow by ~60% by 2025.
This market requires thousands of extra tons, but the demand is also ramped up even further by the relatively higher price of gold – another perfect storm leading to unprecedented physical demand.
The extra thousands of tons of demand for silver will inevitably force the price much higher during 2024 – this cannot be contained by the bankster’s usual playbook of tricks.
Since the 1930s the gold to silver mining production ratio has stayed remarkably close to 8:1.
The Exeter Pyramid helps us to gain a perspective on how massively undervalued gold and silver bullion is relative to other financial assets and real estate.
When you look at the risk arrows which clearly indicate that there should be movement into gold and silver bullion, at the very least as an insurance hedge, it reveals just how huge the natural impending price discovery process could be.
Ownership of precious metals in the U$ are really only the equivalent of a pimple on an elephants arse – it represents the equivalent of a pitifull 0.5% of their assets.
As Andy Schectman points out – what happens when the population finally flicks up as to the extent of the great taking and if they advance their PM holdings to even a lowly 5%? – that alone would amount to a 10x increase in demand.
This is much like the COMEX debacle where the open interest is 1750% higher than the amount of bars held in their vaults. The dirty word is rehypothecation – meaning that most entities will have no access to physical gold, just as they won’t with silver.
The planned Moscow Metal Exchange could at any time set a relatively modest price for gold at $3000, and silver at say $50-$100. Just like that all of the Western markets could arbitrage straight to the East setting a real price – this would break the COMEX and the London Metal Exchange, and immediately break the dominance and the manipulation by the Western players.
6. Unsustainable Levels of Public Debt – the Destruction of the Middle Class
Daniel Lacalle wrote an excellent piece which was published on ZH April 9, 2024…
“When the fiscal position is unsustainable, the only way for the state to force the acceptance of its debt—newly created currency—is through coercion and repression.
A state’s debt is only an asset when the private sector values its solvency and uses it as a reserve. When the state imposes its insolvency on the economy, its bankruptcy manifests in the destruction of the purchasing power of the currency through inflation and the weakening of real wage purchasing capacity.
The state basically conducts a process of slow default on the economy through rising taxes and weakening the purchasing power of the currency, which leads to weaker growth and erosion of the middle class, the captive hostages of the currency issuer.
Of course, as the currency issuer, the state never acknowledges its imbalances and always blames inflation and weak growth on the private sector, exporters, other nations, and markets. Independent institutions must impose fiscal prudence to prevent a state from destroying the real economy. The state, through the monopoly of currency issuance and the imposition of law and regulation, will always pass on its imbalances to consumers and businesses, thinking it is for their own good.
The government deficit is not creating savings for the private economy. Savings in the real economy accept public debt as an asset when they perceive the currency issuer’s solvency to be reliable. When the government imposes it and disregards the functioning of the productive economy, positioning itself as the source of wealth, it undermines the very foundation it purports to protect: the standard of living for the average citizen.
Governments do not create reserves; their debt becomes a reserve only when the productive private sector economy within their political boundaries thrives and the public finances remain under control.
The state does show its insolvency, like any issuer, in the price of the I.O.U. it distributes, i.e., in the purchasing power of the currency. Public debt is artificial currency creation because the state does not create anything; it only administers the money it collects from the same productive private sector it is choking via taxes and inflation.
The United States debt started to become unsustainable when the Federal Reserve stopped defending the currency and paying attention to monetary aggregates to implement policies designed to disguise the rising cost of indebtedness from unbridled deficit spending.
Artificial currency creation is never neutral. It disproportionately benefits the first recipient of new currency, the government, and massively hurts the last recipients, real wages and deposit savings. It is a massive transfer of wealth from the productive economy and savers to the bureaucratic administration.
More units of public debt mean weaker productive growth, higher taxes, and more inflation in the future. All three are manifestations of a slow burn default.
So, if the state can impose its fiscal imbalances on us, how do we know if the debt it issues is unsustainable?
First, because of the units of GDP created, adding new units of public debt diminishes rapidly.
Second, the erosion of the currency’s purchasing power persists and accelerates.
Third, because productive investment and capital expenditure decline, employment may remain acceptable in the headlines, but real wages, productivity, and the ability of workers to make ends meet deteriorate rapidly.
Today’s narrative tries to tell us that nothing has happened when a lot has. This includes the destruction of the middle class and the deterioration of the small and medium enterprise fabric in favour of a rising bureaucratic administration that consumes higher taxes but still generates more debt and deficits. It does end badly. And all empires end the same way, with the assumption that nothing will happen.
The currency’s acceptance as a reserve does come to an end. The persistent erosion of purchasing power and declining confidence in the legally imposed “lowest risk asset” are some of the red flags some are willing to ignore, maybe because they live off other people’s taxes, or because they benefit from the destruction of the currency through asset inflation. Either way, it is profoundly anti-social and destructive, even if it is a slow detonation.
The fact that there are informed and intelligent investors who willingly ignore the red flags of weakening the middle class, declining purchasing power of the currency and deteriorating solvency and productivity shows why it is so dangerous to allow governments to maintain fiscal imprudence.
The reason why government money creation is so dangerous is because the government is always happy to increase its power over citizens and blame them for the problems its policies create, presenting itself as the solution.”
The CPI – what Rick Rule refers to as the CP LIE – doesn’t include food or fuel which makes it an utterly contrived index. Worse still, it does not even include taxes and yet this is the biggest expense of all – for many it is larger than food, shelter, energy and transportation combined.
Rick notes that for people like himself and the basket of goods he buys, and adding in taxes, it means he is losing around 7% per year on his money.
On a ten year treasury with a coupon value of say 4.1%, which sounds like one hell of a lot better than the 2.0% of days gone by, you are being scammed. If you work out the true rate, it is a disgraceful and debilitating negative 3.9% every year for 10 years compounded on your original investment.
Even the lower echelon within the Fed admit to Rick that the real inflation rate is far higher than what the public is led to believe – this means that there is absolutely no way that they could cut rates, because this would cause even more dramatic loses for depositors and bond holders.
Clearly, the institutional view within the Fed is to not reduce the rate, but within Congress there is a bipartisan desire to reduce rates and particularly within the Biden admin who desperately want to win the next election.
7. BRICS+10 — BRICS+16
onwards and upwards – this subject was discussed extensively back in eCONomics Part (III) of the sequel
Sergei Glazyev’s white paper has received the green light from the Kremlin’s Yuri Ushakov (Putin’s Assistant for Foreign policy) and will be presented to the Kazan summit May 14-19. I will try to do a proper update shortly after we hear the outcome of this important summit.
In the meantime the BRICS+ progress remains relentless, especially given that the BRICS+10 control the lion’s share of the global energy complex – the scale of the de-dollarisation process is poised to reach a completely new level. This is an utterly terrifying and self- inflicted situation that the Western hegemon finds itself in – they dug their own hole and are still digging.
We are now witnessing the creation of an immense socioeconomic-security bloc that will have more than 90% of global wealth and resources to back it up.
8. Don’t Blame COVID for the Looming Meltdown
— in fact the u$ economy was on the rocks well before any of us had even heard of covid – see the implosion of repo market in August 2019 on Trump’s watch.
Suffice to say the repo market that completely imploded on Trump’s watch when none of the banks trusted one another’s collateral any longer – even treasuries were not trusted any longer, as it became known that there could be multiple claims on them too. The repo market never recovered, and now sits at around $2 trillion as reverse repo – obviously the banks don’t want money on the street, and would rather hand it over to the Fed overnight.
Some of the big players see what is coming down the pipeline now too, and they are sucking PMs out of the exchanges.
NB – the U$ dollar is worth only 3 cents now compared to its value when the ‘Creature from Jekyll Island’ was incorporated. The next step is the road to a big fat ZERO cents worth, which is where all fiat ends up sooner or later.
There is also the opportunity for the PBS and FTT models to be deployed in sovereign countries where they can be introduced without hegemonic retribution and intimidation.
Within the BRICS+ block, it will be a case of letting 190 flowers bloom with the sharing of the success stories within so that the models that work in a particular set of circumstances can be embraced by other regions/countries with the confidence of them being already proven working models.
This would be an ongoing organic process that involves continued decentralisation and bottom up governance in a mix of cooperative endeavour that works to develop the real economy and to create permanent wealth for all of society, rather than just permanently feathering the nests of the parasitic financial casino economy.
I’m not going to label the new paradigm with any of the existing ism’s because this will be something completely novel. There should really be only one central maxim necessary – ‘treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself’ – that’s it!
The ongoing transition should be be a gradual orderly and organic evolution as new models prove their worth in the real world leading to a renaissance of the true human spirit.
9. The Hegemon’s Rapidly Deteriorating Financial State
On current trends the Biden Admin looks set to increase the existing debt of $34.5 trillion by $7.3 T to a mind-numbing $41.8 trillion.
If they could foist a retail CBDC on the country, then there are effectively no limits as to how low they can push interest rates. Negative rates could be invoked to eat up principle. Imagine that, when they have already destroyed 97% of the purchasing power of the dollar.
Using the existing commercial banks for the retail account doesn’t make CBDCs any more palatable as they would simply be using the commercial banks to distribute their policy, whilst achieving much the same effect as every man and his dog having a personal bank account at the Fed.
It is impossible for me to imagine any scenario where a retail CBDC is desirable
… but the absolute worst case is if it was administered as a retail account at the central bank in the case of the farcical Fed model, where that entity is 100% owned by a cartel of thieving and parasitic private banksters.
Even in a highly developed and extensive public utility banking system retail CBDCs would be a completely unworkable disaster. They would by definition, completely preclude a highly competitive banking system where a multitude of banks and models all compete with the result being beneficial interest rates and a high standard of customer services for society at large.
Retail CBDCs would be tantamount to the Soviet era Gosbank model where for ~70 years there was only one banking entity in the entire country. The result was as disastrous as it was predictable.
Even more alarming is the fact that the U$ FDIC is essentially trying to guarantee ~$20 trillion of deposits with a fund of a minuscule $121.8 billion – that amounts to a truly farcical 0.5 cents insurance on the dollar.
Even Bloomberg admits the fact that with $929 billion of CRE debt becoming due in the next 9.5 months, this could potentially topple hundreds of U$ banks.
10. BITCOIN — A Trojan Horse? — rolled out in during the Lehman debacle
QE started then – TPTB endeavoured to have everything looking as normal as possible so that the public was oblivious to what was going on.
As a rule people who go for gold, silver, and cryptos have the same wish – ie, to operate outside the main system, but does bitcoin really belong in that category?
Surely bringing in a Bitcoin ETF is rendering it into the casino system anyway. Initially they were very appealing to the libertarian who sees the debasement of fiat and is looking for an alternative – but aren’t crypto currencies technically fiat anyway? This is made even more precarious when there are ~10,000 different crypto currencies.
Perhaps we all need to consider the fact that this might have been a cunning plan to get digital currencies out and about in the public domain and normalised in the minds of society at large.
Who was Satoshi Nakamoto anyway, the so-called author of the original white paper and who devised the first blockchain database? Supposedly the work began in the second quarter of 2007, and the domain name bitcoin.org was registered in August 2008.
He allegedly continued in the development of the software until mid-2010 before handing over control of the source code depository and domains to various entities, ending his recognised personal involvement in the project.
According to Wiki, Nakamoto had some $73 billion worth of Bitcoin in 2021, making him the 15th richest person on the planet.
Given that the Japanese term ‘satoshi’ can mean ‘intelligent’ and ‘nakamoto’, ‘central’ was there a playful suggestion behind the name as to who was really behind the scene – ‘Central Intelligence’? – what a horrible thought.
Is this just another ploy to keep money from going into gold and silver and exposing yet another dying fiat currency.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lBo_mVV81n8
11. mRNA Toxins — Another Extremely Bearish Factor
The massive rate of toxic mRNA jabs deployed in Western counties is an extremely depressing subject, but it would be remiss to not mention this as another giant debacle that will help seal the hegemon’s fate and virtually guarantee a debilitating debt death spiral for much of the West
Ed Dowd’s numbers suggest that globally ~ 2.2 billion people have been either killed or are permanently disabled by the toxic jab roll-out – that’s the same one that Trump still brags about.
97% of the US military were jabbed and their own data shows cancer rates are up ~1000%. Heart disease is up 970% in the US military.
In the UK, 18-39 year olds, jabbed 4 times are 318% more likely to die than their unjabbed contemporary control group.
The German Govt recently admitted that there was no pandemic and that figures demonstrate that the fully jabbed on average surrender 25 years of their life.
In the U$, CDC data revealed that each jab increased mortality by 7%.
Highly jabbed regions showed ~15% higher mortality than 2021.
2 doses and 3 boosted were 35% more likely to die in 2022 than 2021.
By contrast, the unjabbed were no more likely to die in 2022 than 2021.
This will have a disastrous effect on productivity, as not only is the fully productive work force dramatically depleted, but the care of the seriously jab injured will soak up even more labour resources and other expenses.
12. Wrap Up
Oh, and I just located some good news, albeit though, very much confined to the Global South realm. There is a much lower level of debt in the RoW and developing economies, compared to the ravenous NATOstan – it is completely self evident even within the figures released by that dreadful IMF creature…
2022 IMF DATA – % of debt to GDP
World 238%
Advanced’ economies 277%
Euro Area 254%
UK 252%
U$ 273%
Emerging market economies 191%
Others 124%
Low income developing countries 88%
In fact this debt could become almost negligible if the BRICS+ in unison, gave the economic Western hitmen the middle finger salute in all cases where they have made deliberately cynical, unpayable, and predatory loans in the first place.
The new socio-economic paradigm will be premised on cooperative goodwill and mutual progress for all participating countries. In this blueprint a minimum of resources will be spent on killing one another, and member nations will enjoy the security provided by an immense bloc that has more than 90% of global wealth and resources to back it up.
There is also the opportunity for the PBS and FTT models to be deployed in sovereign countries where they can be introduced without retribution from the hegemon – the fiscal and monetary aspects of this model were covered in eCONomics Part II.
Within the block it could be a case of letting 190 flowers bloom with the sharing of the success stories within the group, so that the models that work in a particular set of circumstances can be embraced by other regions/countries with the confidence of them being already proven working models.
This would be an ongoing organic process that involves continued decentralisation and bottom up governance in a mix of cooperative endeavour that works to develop the real economy in order to create permanent wealth for all of society – rather than just permanently feathering the nests of the shadowy figures ensconced behind the parasitic financial casino economy.
I’m not going to label the new paradigm with any of the existing ism’s because it will be something completely novel. There should be only one central maxim necessary – ‘treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself’ – that’s it!
Fingers and toes all crossed, the ongoing transition should be be a gradual orderly and organic evolution, as new models prove their worth in the real world in a monumental transition and a complete renaissance of the very essence of the true human spirit.
And how prophetic were the words of the great Leonard Cohen (my all time favourite Canadian, my friend Emerson) in his epic song ‘Anthem’ which took him some 10 years to complete.
Verse 5 nails what is happening right now, as a torrent of countries clamour join the BRICS+ juggernaut…
You can add up the parts
You won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart
Every heart to love will come
But like a refugee
Such a tragedy that this great man passed and never got to see this massive event beginning to unfold.
— strap on a good quality headset, crank up the volume, and accompany Cohen on an incredible journey.
Colin Maxwell – April 11, 2024
EXPLANATION OF ACRONYMS/TERMS/JARGON used in the article…
AKA = Also Known As
CB = Central Bank
CTA = Commodity Trade Advisor
COMEX = The Commodity Exchange Inc. = the world’s leading derivatives marketplace for trading metals – formed 50 years ago specifically to rig gold and silver prices, to try to protect Western fiat currencies
CPI = Consumer Price Index
CTA = Commodity Trade Advisor
ETF = Exchange Traded Funds
EFP = Exchange of Futures for Physical
Global South = all countries apart from NATOstan = AKA RoW
GLD = the SPDR EFT gold share Nasdaq ticker/symbol
NSFR = Net Stable Funding Ratio
NATO = North Atlantic ‘Terror’ Organisation
NATOstan = NATO plus its yapping lapdogs and sundry hangers on – sadly this group includes both NZ and Australia
Repo = Repurchase Agreement – a form of short term (often overnight) form of borrowing for dealers in government securities
Reverse Repos = the reverse of a Repo – it is the party originally buying the security
Rinse-able = this term refers to investors that can be lured out of their long positions
RoW = Rest of the World
SPDR = one of the family of ETFs managed by State Street, the TBTF largest asset manager on the planet with around $44 trillion in assets under management, custody and administration – it tracks the price of gold bullion in the over-the counter market – the SPDR gold share ETF is known as GLD
TPTB = The Powers That Be
Palestinians defeat Israeli armored vehicles
War Update with Jon Elmer at The Electronic Intifada
In this part: Interest rates manipulation as a way of tackling inflation — one of the most shocking financial scams of all time; plus an update on de-dollarisation and No Plan B for Uncle $laughter
With thanks to our own Colin Maxwell of New Zealand.
Please see: Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3
The duck shooter’s clubhouse on Jekyll Island, Georgia, United States of America
Introduction
It should be of no shock to any of us by now as to the reason WW1 began a very short time after the U$ Fed was incorporated, and this set the tragic pattern for the next 111 years. This tiny group of bankster plutocrats were handed on a plate by Congress a giant counterfeit printing press – a privilege that these thieves would deploy to progressively impoverish the working classes of most of the planet.
I won’t go into this too deeply here as I covered the background of the Frankenstein-like creature from Jekyll Island in the link below – my April 2022 expose’, and the debilitating effect this dreadful bankster construct has had on the global financial scene ever since:
It remains my life’s mission to expose the fact that the Western central banking industry, and its plutocratic owners operating in the shadows, are the head of the human food chain and the underwriters of more than 90% of humanity’s wars, terrorism, and financial impoverishment.
The great news though is that humanity is being thrown a lifeline by the BRICS+/BRI blocs and their related initiatives. Indeed all we have to do is to summon up the presence of mind to recognise this new reality and to reach out and grab the opportunity with both hands. The background of this new global paradigm was explored in Part III of this sequel –
The solution will be multi-faceted as it will involve a new global paradigm – never again will a single national currency have dominance – the new system will include a novel trade-only settlement instrument which will be stable, hard backed, and yet still able to provide adequate liquidity for the participating members’ productive economies.
In reality, WW1 never ended – WW2 was a follow-on with a brief respite of barely one generation in between, paving the way for the future hybrid financial, and techno, forever-wars. These, including the COVID debacle and the great poisoning with chemicals and pharmaceutical toxins, are simply a continuation of the same families pulling the strings from the shadows.
This is the business of human butchery and their intentions are becoming more explicit and outrageous as each decade passes by. In every sense of the word, this plutocratic network is a blatant terrorist organisation and needs to be dealt with accordingly. The rules of engagement should be the same and history reminds us that the only sure-fire way to deal with organisations like this is to permanently cut off their funding.
Because the New York Fed is the most outrageous model ever devised and has become the number one money spigot of the globe, this is precisely the place to start. This has never been more urgent as it is painfully obvious that there is a push for another bank run crisis which the owners of the banking cartel think will give them the crisis excuse to usher in a new retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) system where every man and his dog can have an account within the “Federal Reserve” system. This is their grand plan, which if successful would give the commercial banking cartel total control of every aspect of our lives through a social credit control and tracking system of all retail account holders.
Prof Richard A. Werner of the University of Winchester
1. Professor Richard Werner
“empirical evidence is that interest rates are a lagging indicator and a farcically ineffective monetary tool”
paraphrased/quoted from… https://soranomics.com/#content_20_fancybox-8
As Werner points out, it is not interest rates, but bank credit that determines economic growth, simply because ~97% of the money supply in our Western fiat currencies is created out of thin air by privately owned commercial banks.
There is zero basis for the official narrative that higher interest rates lead to lower growth and that low interest rates lead to high growth.
As with most aspects of eCONomics the quickest way to get straight to the truth is to simply assume the 180˚ polar opposite of the official narratives. Interest rates are simply not useful as a monetary policy tool – PERIOD! (23:30)
Interest rates actually follow growth – so where on earth did this idea come from that interest rates are this key variable? – it is not based on empirical evidence but on the concept of equilibrium which is based on no less than 8 assumptions none of which hold up in the real world…
(29:00) The methodology in Economics is the Deductive Method – reverse engineering AKA Charlatanism.
2. eCONomics
eCONomics — the pioneer pseudo-science that paved the way for other disciplines to follow as a tool of central planning and globalist agendas
Karl Popper
Karl Popper called this the ‘immunising stratagem’ which scientists fancied could guard their theories from being challenged by the use of reverse engineering in what became known as the ‘deductive approach.’ This is my interpretation of the process…
3. How high would hikes need to go to arrest inflation?
High enough that they cripple the real economy before there is any ‘measurable effect’ (sic) on what they labelled ‘inflation’
Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti asked… “whether man must burn down his house to roast his pig…”
The current Western neo-classical monetary policy used to tackle inflation is precisely that scenario.
Worse still, history illustrates that interest rate hikes have to be so utterly brutal that they need to be at the very least at the level of the true inflation rate, or higher – Paul Volker did this in the 1980s when the rates were pushed above 20%. This was construed as successful from the point of view that it appeared to halt inflation when all it had done was destroy enough of the economy and liquidity to make sure ‘inflation’ was halted.
Ronny Raygun with Paul Volcker – confirmed in 1979 by the Senate as Fed Chair
In 1979 the federal funds rate had averaged 11.2% and Volker took them to a peak of 20% in March 1980. The prime rate topped out at 21.5% in 1981, which heralded (surprise, surprise, NOT) a rise in unemployment to over 10% and the 1980-1982 depression.
“Volcker’s Federal Reserve board elicited the strongest political attacks and most widespread protests in the history of the Federal Reserve (unlike any protests experienced since 1922), due to the effects of high-interest rates on the construction, farming, and industrial sectors, culminating in indebted farmers driving their tractors into Washington, D.C. and blockading the Eccles Building.
US monetary policy eased in 1982, helping lead to a resumption of economic growth.”… Wiki quote.
Although I am a great admirer of Ron Paul – IMO the quote below reveals that even he was not aware of the utter falsehood of attempting to use rate hikes as a constructive monetary tool to address inflation.
“Being in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s and serving on the House Banking Committee, I met and got to question several Federal Reserve chairmen: Arthur Burns, G. William Miller, and Paul Volcker. Of the three, I had the most interaction with Volcker. He was more personable and smarter than the others, including the more recent board chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.”
Volcker may well have been smartest, but in my opinion all three wreaked havoc on Mainstreet and massively rewarded the financial economy at the expense of families, SMEs, and the productive economy. As Volcker aged, he became more critical of the banking industry but that was long after he had spent his career indulging and implementing most of the destructive hoaxes of neo-classical eCONomics.
Other features of Volcker’s career…
SUMMARY: interest rate hikes are not an effective monetary tool to address inflation – on the contrary, they instantly feed inflation just as hikes in energy prices do – you do not even require the most basic economic nouse to understand this principle – it should be self-evident to anyone with an IQ even approaching room temperature.
4. Safe Havens in times of financial strife – where are they now?
In the 1980s the level of total debt was so much less than it is now that the entire financial meltdown was at a totally different level. Today just the Govt debt alone is a death spiral in itself, with an extra $1 trillion added every 100 days.
In 2024 the U$ will have to issue $10 Trillion in Treasury paper to finance more deficits and to roll over old paper at much higher interest rates. The revised cost of this debt will rise from ~$1 Trillion to $1.5 Trillion. This is a debt spiral where more and more money has to be borrowed just to pay the interest back – paying down debt is not even on the radar.
All of the big 5 Western fiat currencies have this problem including the three sometimes referred to as ‘default currencies’ – the dollar, the Yen, and the Swiss Franc – these used to be seen as safe havens to hide when the financial/geopolitical shite hit the fan. Now none of these are safe any longer, and so the pressure will really come onto these currencies as there are now viable alternatives that countries can use in their accelerating de-dollarisation strategies – these include…
To me the Western safe havens no longer exist, as the main Western fiat currency economies now face a very unpleasant binary choice between either…
A. Severe hyper-inflationary depression, or
B. Severe and extended debt liquidating depression
5. A tribute to Pepe Escobar’s recent work in Russia
What a privilege for us all to have such direct access to Pepe’s insights. I regard him as the undisputed global high priest in terms of geopolitical analysis and journalism. I am most certainly not alone in this view, judging by the audiences he pulls in terms of readers and interviews with people of note in this fight for multi-polarity and who are involved in developing the architecture of a new paradigm in global socio-economic methods and relations.
His audience with Glazyev, whom I have enormous respect for as an honest and courageous economist, was particularly intriguing, and not the least because some of the revelations were done off the record. My own personal hypothesis is that the entire development of the new trade instrument is making great progress, but that there is no point in rushing the announcement of the final details, as long as there is still ample opportunity for BRICS+ countries to gold stack… see above chapter (4) first bullet point.
Of course, this opportunity is entirely courtesy of the U$ obsession with massively shorting gold in this pathetic attempt to hide the plummeting purchasing power of their currency. It could be any day now when an entity insists on a large physical tonnage and the physically driven price discovery process begins. When that happens the gold price will break out and it will be time for the various player’s hands to finally be revealed.
In the meantime, the RoW carries on carefully checking out further de-dollarisation strategies and putting the finishing touches on the new trade instrument. As I said previously, the BRICS+ bloc has an enormously strong hand, whilst all the West has is the grim reality of an impending debt spiral.
Glazyev sees the next stage as detaching commodity prices from the dollar and quoting them in other units. This involves the new model based on two different baskets – a basket of currencies of member countries, and also a basket of exchange commodities. The fact that this currency will be so inherently stable will make it more attractive than the dollar, the pound or the euro.
Technically the trade currency instrument is almost ready, and the process only requires the political will and acceptance by India and China. In the meantime, the transition to settlements in national currencies is well underway.
The trade instrument will be backed not only by the national currencies but by the huge reserves of the nominated commodities that combine to back up the new international settlement currency. This new currency is not a substitute for national currencies.
Once all of the technical issues are finalised, they will prepare an international treaty that will be open to accession by all other countries wanting to join. Glazyev is clearly in no hurry and has put a time frame of within 2 years from when he made these announcements back in late October 2023.
Gazyev listed these advantages…
5. SUMMARY – The long and the short – literally!
None of this reality is being addressed by Uncle Slaughter and clearly, they have no plan B. A giveaway is the fact that actual military spending for 2022 ended up at a mind-boggling $1.537 Trillion – more than twice the publicly acknowledged level. If nominal GDP is around that $20 trillion then that military budget is a truly obscene 7% of GDP, and equal to more than the next 40 biggest spenders combined.
In fact, the next 40 countries spending totalled $1.431 trillion – some $100 billion short of the U$’s $1.537T and with Romania coming in at #39 in the list at $5.2 billion, it could well be the equivalent of the combined 60 or more highest military spenders.
I eventually got sick of adding and gave it up – besides, I was in dire need of a wee dram.
Colin Maxwell
( March 12, 2024)
L’Inde, qui termine sa présidence du Groupe des Vingt, a organisé le dernier sommet du G20 dans un format virtuel.
L’article L’agenda du G20 empêtré dans le conflit israélo-palestinien est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le 26 octobre, les autorités qataries ont condamné à mort huit citoyens indiens accusés d’espionnage au profit d’Israël. Selon les médias, les accusés étaient d’anciens cadres indiens et travaillaient pour une société privée, Al Dahra Global Technologies and Consultancy Services. Ils ont été arrêtés par les services de sécurité qataris en août 2022, mais la publication du verdict a coïncidé avec l’escalade dans la bande de Gaza. Cela a donné lieu à des spéculations selon lesquelles le verdict a été rendu en raison de la position pro-israélienne de l’Inde.
Pour profiter pleinement de l'ensemble de nos contenus, nous vous proposons de découvrir nos offres d'abonnement.
By Michel Chossudovsky “The term “environmental modification techniques” refers to any technique for changing – through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics,...
Weather Warfare: “Beware the US Military’s Experiments with Climatic Warfare”
By Marie Hawthorne We’ve all heard about lab-grown meat. But have you heard about lab-grown fruit? In 2018, Finnish scientists discovered they could create plant...
Le sommet des dirigeants du G20 s’est terminé par la signature d’une déclaration finale sans condamnation des actions militaires russes
L’article La déclaration finale du G20 évite de parler directement de l’Ukraine est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le Premier ministre indien Narendra Modi a refusé de participer en personne au sommet des BRICS du fait de la
L’article Modi n’ira pas au sommet des BRICS du fait de l’absence de Poutine, selon RIA Novosti est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le Premier ministre indien a été invité en grande pompe à la cérémonie du 14 juillet, réveillant un intérêt pour ce grand pays qui a toujours intrigué une partie des Français, et fondant un « partenariat » ambitieux.
Les Indes fascinent les Occidentaux depuis la plus haute Antiquité.
Même Alexandre le Grand s’y est risqué. Un symbole de l’importance culturelle de l’Inde est à mon avis l’invention du chiffre zéro pendant le Moyen Âge européen, qui ringardisera les chiffres romains et permettra les calculs qui sont à la base des connaissances scientifiques d’aujourd’hui. Ceux qui ont essayé de faire une division en utilisant des nombres romains me comprendront.
L’arrivée des Européens
Puis l’Empire Ottoman a coupé les routes terrestres jusqu’à ce que les progrès de la navigation permettent aux Portugais d’y arriver au XVIe siècle en faisant le tour de l’Afrique.
La faiblesse militaire indienne par rapport aux armées occidentales n’a fait que s’accentuer par la suite, et le XVIIIe siècle y voit la rivalité entre Français et Anglais pour le contrôle de cet immense pays.
C’est l’aventure de la Compagnie française des Indes orientales, pâle copie de son homologue britannique, puis la tentative de protectorat du sous-continent par Dupleix entre 1742 et 1750, qui tenta de rallier sous la bannière française les mahradjahs face aux Anglais.
La défaite française
En 1763, la « Guerre de 7 ans » perdue par Louis XV nous coûte les plus grandes de nos colonies, dont l’Inde et la plus grande partie de l’Amérique du Nord, à la demande des Anglais. Aux demandes de secours d’Outre-mer, Versailles répond par la bouche de Nicolas-René Berryer, ministre de la Marine : « quand il y a le feu à la maison, on ne s’occupe pas des écuries ».
Finalement, il n’est resté à la France en Inde que les cinq comptoirs que chantait Guy Béart, les fameux et très fantasmés par les poètes, Pondichéry, avec le palais de Dupleix et le lycée français, ainsi que Karikal, Yanaon, Mahé et Chandernagor.
Nous avons rendu à l’Inde ces implantations minuscules lorsqu’elle est devenue indépendante en 1947, mais une poignée de fidèles y fêtent toujours le 14 juillet, apprennent le français et s’installent en France.
Beaucoup d’Occidentaux ont toujours eu confusément l’idée que l’Inde et l’Europe étaient des civilisations cousines.
Le centre et le nord de l’Inde d’une part, l’Iran et l’Europe d’autre part, se partagent (avec quelques autres) les langues indo-européennes, et les spécialistes trouvent mille autres éléments civilisationnels communs.
Reprenant une idée répandue, Voltaire y voit une source de notre culture, et notamment des connaissances scientifiques transmises par les Grecs, puis les Arabes : « tout nous vient des bords du Gange, astronomie, astrologie, métempsycose » (Lettre de Voltaire à Jean-Sylvain Bailly du 15 décembre 1775).
La curiosité continue au XIXe siècle avec le développement des études indiennes dans l’enseignement supérieur, notamment du sanskrit, qui est un peu l’équivalent du latin pour les Indiens, en tant que langue d’origine et support de la religion.
Une partie des Français est restée admirative de certains aspects de la religion hindoue, de sa réputation de sagesse, de sa maîtrise du corps. J’ai un proche qui a ainsi appris à contrôler les mouvements de son cœur et de son estomac, un autre qui s’est plongé dans les textes en sanskrit toute sa vie.
Mais une autre partie des Français est restée sceptique, relevant notamment la saleté et le manque d’hygiène du pays (confirmée par mon expérience personnelle et de nombreux journalistes) ainsi que les ravages des castes en Inde et autres interdits religieux : on peut ainsi noter l’action de la Fondation Bill Gates contre l’un de ces interdits, avec le lancement d’une action sur la nécessité hygiénique des toilettes, action qui a été enfin promue par les autorités indiennes.
Un autre facteur de proximité avec la France et l’Occident est le fait que l’Inde soit réputée être la première démocratie du monde.
Ainsi, dans ses pires périodes de pauvreté, l’Inde a connu des disettes, mais pas de famine. En effet, l’information est toujours restée possible et les secours ont pu être envoyés, contrairement à la Chine où l’opacité du régime a généré des dizaines de millions de morts de faim : « Pas de journalistes, pas de famine » disait Mao.
Est-ce toujours vrai ?
Il y a actuellement de nombreuses atteintes aux droits humains et à la liberté d’expression, qui visent les musulmans et les chrétiens, mais aussi les partis d’opposition, dont Rahul Gandhi, chef du plus important, le parti laïque du Congrès, alors que le parti au pouvoir est expressément national–hindou.
Toutefois, la comparaison avec la Chine et d’autres régimes autoritaires reste massivement à l’avantage de l’Inde.
Longtemps sous-estimée par l’élite économique et géopolitique mondiale, l’Inde lui parait aujourd’hui incontournable.
Avec un taux de croissance d’environ 7 % d’après la Banque Mondiale, et des prévisions autour de 6,5%, elle peut grignoter son retard sur la Chine. Cette dernière est encore cinq à six fois plus importante qu’elle, mais la croissance chinoise devrait descendre à 5 %, voire beaucoup moins à mon avis.
L’Inde est maintenant le pays le plus peuplé du monde, avec 1,4 milliard d’habitants, soit un sixième de l’humanité, et est plus jeune qu’une Chine maintenant vieillissante.
L’Inde n’a pas pour autant une démographie galopante, puisque le taux de fécondité est tombé à deux enfants par femme, et elle était déjà depuis longtemps largement en dessous dans les parties les plus développées au sud du pays.
Il est souvent exposé que l’Inde pourrait prendre un raccourci lui permettant de se développer plus rapidement du fait de son appétence pour le numérique.
On cite alors Bengalore, un des centres mondiaux des nouvelles technologies. Guy Sorman, dans son ouvrage très documenté Le génie de l’Inde (Fayard 2000), en donne une explication simple que je résume par « ce n’est pas parce que les Indiens auraient ethniquement des dispositions à l’informatique que s’explique leur succès, mais simplement parce que la caste des brahmanes, dont les informaticiens sont souvent issus, a une bonne formation en mathématiques. Comme ils sont très nombreux, la sélection professionnelle a fait le reste. ».
Remarquons que cette appétence est plus que jamais valable aujourd’hui, et pas seulement à Bengalore, mais aussi dans la Silicon Valley américaine.
Sur le plan de la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique, la situation est ambivalente : l’Inde a très fortement développé ses énergies renouvelables (100 gigawatts de solaire, éolien et biomasse, et 50 d’hydraulique en 2022), tout en étant de plus en plus polluante, notamment du fait de la multiplication de ses centrales électriques au charbon.
L’Inde n’est pas ressentie comme une rivale de l’Occident, et balance entre une fière indépendance, et une parenté intellectuelle, doublée de la nécessité stratégique de faire contrepoids à la Chine. Cette dernière maintient la pression pour récupérer les territoires himalayens indiens de peuplement tibétain, et en a déjà récupéré une partie par la force en 1962. Il y a encore eu récemment des escarmouches.
Un éloignement progressif de Moscou
Rappelons que l’armée indienne se fournit en URSS, qui a poussé aux indépendances, pensant précipiter ainsi la chute de l’Occident. Aujourd’hui, la Russie est restée l’alliée (et donc le fournisseur d’armement) des pays naguère socialistes, comme l’Algérie et l’Inde, même s’ils sont devenus relativement libéraux à la fin du XXe siècle.
Mais voilà que la Russie a montré sa faiblesse face à la petite Ukraine, qui a révélé notamment le retard technique d’une partie de ses armements.
D’où l’effort actuel de diversification, illustré par l’achat à la France de 26 Rafales et trois sous-marins Scopène, proclamé le 14 juillet 2023. Et New Delhi et Paris pratiquent des exercices aéronavals communs dans l’océan Indien depuis plus de 23 ans.
Certes, New Delhi n’a jamais voulu condamner Moscou. L’Inde a même multiplié par dix ses importations de pétrole russe pour profiter des rabais importants que Moscou est obligé d’accorder. Elle semble même le revendre une fois raffiné à certains membres de l’UE. Mais ça n’implique pas pour autant une alliance avec la Russie.
D’autant que cette dernière est peut-être en train de devenir vassale de la Chine, et pourrait donc se retrouver en face de l’Inde.
Après l’indépendance indienne en 1947, la France ne peut se rapprocher de la nouvelle république, du fait de son statut de puissance coloniale, notamment en Indochine.
D’abord l’armement
Il a fallu attendre l’attaque brutale de la Chine en 1962, et la perte de territoire qui en est résulté, pour voir l’Inde se chercher des alliés autres que Moscou, et se fournir en armes auprès de Paris, évolution confirmée lors du second conflit indo-pakistanais de 1965.
Dans ce contexte, Thalès, anciennement Thomson-CSF, célébrait ses 70 ans de présence en Inde en 2023. Et j’ai recueilli des témoignages d’une multinationale française décrivant à quel point les contacts quotidiens avec les Chinois étaient difficiles du fait de la différence culturelle, alors qu’il n’y a pas de problème particulier avec les Indiens.
Vers un partenariat plus étendu
Sur le plan économique, la France, septième puissance mondiale, n’est aujourd’hui que le onzième investisseur en Inde.
Pour progresser, Paris propose un partenariat à New Delhi qui devrait être développé et étendu aux domaines scientifique, culturel, économique et commercial, pour notamment diminuer notre déficit commercial avec l’Inde.
Les principales entreprises concernées aujourd’hui sont de grands groupes industriels français et indiens.
Pour ce qui est des échanges universitaires, nous partons d’assez bas. Mais, lors de la visite de Narendra Modi le 14 juillet, il a été décidé de faciliter l’obtention de visas aux étudiants indiens.
De même, la présence des Français en Inde est faible, dépassant à peine les 7000 individus, ce qui est très peu comparé à la Chine, où résident plus de 24 000 Français.
Toutefois, le français est la première langue étrangère étudiée en Inde, avec plus de 700 000 apprenants, et le réseau de l’Institut français, Alliances françaises comprises, est le plus important d’Asie.
Aux entreprises françaises d’en profiter !
Le poids de l’anglais
Le Français est bien la « première langue étrangère » en Inde, car ce n’est pas le cas de l’anglais, qui a été décrété langue commune dans l’administration. Cela à la demande des 60 % de la population ne parlant pas hindi, qui craignait que l’adoption dans l’administration de cette langue la plus parlée ne leur donne moins de chance dans les concours.
Aujourd’hui, l’Inde est massivement anglophone à partir d’un certain niveau social, en langue seconde, voire familiale dans les couches supérieures. Et de toute façon comme langue commune ou de travail, situation assez analogue à celle du français en Afrique subsaharienne francophone.
Cette anglophonie fait que les entreprises indiennes, et particulièrement celles qui traitent avec le monde anglophone développé (centres d’appels, sous-traitance administrative et comptable, médecine meilleur marché qu’au nord…) ne sont pas tournées vers la France.
Et les échanges intellectuels se font eux aussi d’abord avec le monde anglophone.
Le rééquilibrage indien se fait avec l’Occident en général. Vue de New Dehli, la France n’est qu’une partie de l’Occident, loin derrière les États-Unis, ou encore de l’Angleterre, pour des raisons historiques.
Tout cela limite les relations entre la France et l’Inde, mais laisse néanmoins une grande marge d’amélioration par rapport au « pas grand-chose » actuel. La carte à jouer avec une Inde fière de son indépendance et de son nouveau poids géopolitique est celle de la diversification militaire, bien commencée, mais aussi industrielle, et peut-être culturelle.
Il faudrait notamment réfléchir à une plus grande implication de la diaspora indienne en terre francophone : France, mais aussi île Maurice et La Réunion.
L’État est bien maladroit dans ce domaine, aux entreprises de jouer !
—
Par Frédéric Charillon.
C’est une tradition qui, depuis plusieurs années, tend à se systématiser : la France invite officiellement un pays, représenté par son chef d’État, au défilé du 14 Juillet. Cet invité d’honneur assiste à la cérémonie du haut de la tribune, aux côtés du président français.
On se souvient de l’émotion du roi Hassan II, qui allait mourir neuf jours plus tard, voyant défiler trois compagnies de la garde royale marocaine sur les Champs-Élysées, en 1999 ; des troupes britanniques en 2004 ; de l’Allemagne dix ans plus tard ; ou encore des neuf pays d’Europe centrale et orientale en 2022. En 2017, Donald Trump, invité lui aussi, fut si impressionné, dit-on, qu’il avait envisagé un temps d’organiser les mêmes défilés aux États-Unis.
Associer une puissance étrangère à la parade militaire de cette fête nationale remplit plusieurs fonctions. Cela permet d’abord d’inscrire la geste militaire dans une atmosphère de coopération et d’ouverture au monde, et non de défi guerrier, de nationalisme bravache ou de démonstrations d’intimidation. Les défilés militaires russes (bien pâle cette année pour des raisons évidentes), chinois ou a fortiori nord-coréens sont, eux, assumés comme étant tout à la gloire d’un régime.
Cela permet, ensuite, de profiter d’un attribut français de rayonnement symbolique : le 14 Juillet et la Révolution sont des événements historiques ayant une grande portée mondiale, et inviter à l’occasion de leur célébration des personnalités étrangères met en valeur cet aspect souvent exalté de l’histoire française… même si les présidents français aiment également inviter leurs homologues dans le symbole de la monarchie qu’est Versailles.
Enfin, cela donne la possibilité de mettre l’accent sur une relation, une priorité politique, mais aussi de créer une attente : qui aura l’honneur d’être convié ? Des anniversaires peuvent justifier le choix : 72 pays en 2014 pour le centenaire de la Première Guerre mondiale, et l’Australie et la Nouvelle-Zélande en 2016, à l’occasion des 100 ans de la bataille de la Somme.
En 2023, c’est donc l’Inde, dirigée depuis huit ans par Narendra Modi, qui est à l’honneur. Un choix qui a suscité des réserves.
Les questions « Pourquoi l’Inde ? » et « Pourquoi Narendra Modi ? » ne présentent pas les mêmes enjeux. Il est possible de mettre un pays à l’honneur à travers des manifestations culturelles (des « années » culturelles se tiennent régulièrement et, exemple parmi d’autres, l’ambassade d’Inde à Paris vient d’organiser le festival Namasté France. Inviter des troupes à défiler présente une tout autre tonalité. Et inviter un chef d’État ou de gouvernement peut susciter des protestations au vu de son image et de sa pratique du pouvoir.
En 2010, l’invitation de 13 pays africains et de leurs chefs d’État par Nicolas Sarkozy avait fait polémique. Si le continent africain mérite toujours l’attention (et Paris venait d’aligner les pensions militaires versées à des vétérans africains ayant combattu dans les armées françaises sur celles des Français), des associations se sont émues de l’accueil de « dictateurs » et d’armées accusées d’exactions.
Deux ans plus tôt, en 2008, alors qu’il s’agissait de lancer une nouvelle Union pour la Méditerranée, c’est la présence du président syrien Bachar Al-Assad qui indigna.
L’invitation faite cette même année à d’autres leaders peu connus pour leur attachement à la démocratie – le Tunisien Ben Ali, l’Égyptien Hosni Moubarak – a aussi choqué : « À la tribune officielle du 14 juillet, place de la Concorde, il y aura le carré des dictateurs », écrivait un quotidien peu avant les festivités. Quelques années plus tôt, le président syrien était encore boycotté par Jacques Chirac pour son rôle probable dans l’assassinat de l’ancien Premier ministre libanais Rafic Hariri en 2005.
Mais la realpolitik a ses raisons que le cœur ignore. Si Jacques Chirac boycotta Bachar Al-Assad après 2005, il avait été en 2000 l’un des seuls représentants occidentaux présents aux obsèques de son père Hafez Al-Assad (président de la Syrie de 1970 à sa mort), et croyait alors que le fils pourrait être un réformateur. Nicolas Sarkozy estimait pour sa part que son projet d’Union pour la Méditerranée nécessitait une invitation de l’ensemble des leaders de la région, même autoritaires. Les moments de recueillement ou de célébrations servent aussi à cette diplomatie.
Depuis son arrivée au poste de Premier ministre, Narendra Modi (qui avait déjà fait l’objet d’un véritable boycott de la part des Occidentaux auparavant, quand il était à la tête de l’État du Gujarat) est régulièrement critiqué par les ONG. Pour autant, il n’est pas Bachar Al-Assad.
D’abord, parce qu’il est à la tête d’une puissance nucléaire, pays le plus peuplé au monde et bientôt troisième économie de la planète. Ensuite parce qu’il n’a pas mené une guerre civile contre son propre peuple, avec le double soutien russe et iranien, et n’a pas été accusé de crimes de guerre par le représentant français aux Nations unies.
Il n’en reste pas moins qu’une dérive autoritaire est aujourd’hui imputée au leader indien, qui semble inamovible depuis qu’il est devenu Premier ministre en 2014, à la tête d’un parti nationaliste hindouiste (le BJP, pour Bharatiya Janata Party).
Une dérive nationale-religieuse aussi, dans un pays où l’on craint désormais pour les droits des musulmans (16 % de la population, environ 200 millions de personnes), et où l’identité hindouiste est désormais glorifiée.
L’arrestation du principal opposant, Rahul Gandhi, pour diffamation contre le Premier ministre, ainsi que différents scandales financiers liés au BJP, incitent de nombreux observateurs à affirmer qu’en Inde la démocratie est en recul. Des instituts comme V-Dem (Suède) ou Freedom House (États-Unis) ne veulent plus qualifier le pays de « plus grande démocratie du monde », soulignant les pratiques d’intimidation du pouvoir. L’inquiétude existe donc. Doit-elle prévaloir ? Quelle posture adopter face à ce type de situation ?
On peut écouter ceux qui, dans un souci de vigilance, préconisent de ne pas parler avec les régimes autoritaires. Lorsque Emmanuel Macron reçoit le président égyptien Sissi (janvier 2022) ou le prince héritier saoudien Mohammed ben Salmane (juin 2023), les mêmes arguments se font entendre.
On peut également entendre d’autres voix, qui estiment que la diplomatie ne consiste pas à discuter uniquement avec les pays avec lesquels nous serions d’accord sur tout. Elle serait même faite pour le contraire, c’est-à-dire pour aplanir les différends et maintenir le dialogue.
L’actuel président français n’a jamais caché que telle était sa conception, même lorsqu’il s’agissait de parler avec Vladimir Poutine au lendemain de l’invasion de l’Ukraine.
À cet égard, l’invitation lancée à Modi peut être perçue comme un moyen d’entretenir le partenariat stratégique initié avec l’Inde en 1998 par Jacques Chirac, dans un effort alors salué pour ouvrir des horizons asiatiques à la diplomatie française (un autre partenariat stratégique avait été signé avec Pékin l’année précédente).
Mais il y a plus. Face à la montée en puissance chinoise, et plus globalement du fait de son propre essor, l’Inde est devenue un acteur majeur du système international, diplomatique, économique et militaire. La visite d’État de Narendra Modi aux États-Unis en juin 2023 (soumise d’ailleurs aux mêmes critiques), et la qualité de l’accueil qui lui a été réservé par Joe Biden, ont montré que ce rôle indien n’avait pas échappé à Washington.
L’Inde fait partie du QUAD (dialogue quadrilatéral pour la sécurité), cette alliance informelle en Asie-Pacifique, aux côtés des États-Unis, du Japon et de l’Australie. Le pays, qui entretient également la diaspora la plus nombreuse du monde, est aujourd’hui courtisé. La France doit-elle s’extraire de ce jeu ? Bien entendu, répondre à cette question par la négative ne signifie pas qu’il faille souscrire à tout ce qui se passe en Inde.
Autres points : Paris défend le vocable de « région Indo-Pacifique » pour évoquer les questions asiatiques, notamment du fait de sa double présence dans l’océan Indien et l’océan Pacifique, avec ses territoires d’outre-mer.
New Delhi est également un client potentiel, notamment dans le domaine de l’armement (on évoque l’achat de 26 Rafale Marine). Emmanuel Macron souhaite par ailleurs être invité au prochain sommet des BRICS (Brésil, Russie, Inde, Chine, Afrique du Sud) qui se tiendra à l’automne en Afrique du Sud, pour relancer sa relation avec le Sud global. Autant de raisons de ne pas bouder le premier ministre indien.
L’aspiration de plusieurs géants du Sud à une nouvelle reconnaissance, leurs griefs contre un Occident jugé hégémonique qui voudrait maintenir un statu quo anachronique dans la hiérarchie des puissances internationales, sont des réalités qu’un boycott ne ferait pas disparaître. Cesser le dialogue serait même contreproductif.
Pour autant, n’attendons pas de miracles. Lorsque Modi parle avec Washington, Londres ou Paris, c’est pour être écouté et traité en égal. Pas pour se faire chapitrer, ni entraîner dans une guerre russo-ukrainienne vue depuis le Sud comme une affaire d’Européens et dont il estime qu’elle n’est pas la sienne.
Si l’invitation de Modi ne sert qu’à cautionner les dérives qu’on lui impute, alors le bilan sera négatif. Mais si derrière les images de la tribune officielle du 14 juillet un dialogue pouvait perdurer, permettant de contribuer à éviter en bonne intelligence des dérives politiques nuisibles, alors le protocole et la tradition auraient du bon.
Frédéric Charillon, professeur de science politique, Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA)
Cet article est republié à partir de The Conversation sous licence Creative Commons. Lire l’article original.
Le sommet de l’OCS, présidé par le Premier ministre indien Narendra Modi, a eu lieu deux semaines après sa visite
L’article Comment s’est déroulé le sommet de l’OCS est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Lateo.net - Flux RSS en pagaille (pour en ajouter : @ moi) 