Scott Ritter is no stranger to speaking truth to power. Here is a video of him staring down then Senator Joe Biden over US WMD in Iraq claims. History would prove Ritter right and Biden wrong.

The first freight train from Iran has departed to China, as well as one from China to Iran.

• Right now, there’ll be 1 train per week, this will increase to 1 train per day.

• The transit time of cargo and goods in a container train is 1/3 of the time of the ship.

• With the launch of this train route, the 1st phase of the China-Iran-Europe east-west corridor was implemented. We can soon expect Iran to become a major railway hub connecting the east with the west.

In early 1991, Soviet citizens voted on the New Union Treaty which proposed to reform-rather than dissolve-the USSR. 76% of Soviet voters ultimately supported maintaining the federal system of the Soviet Union, including a majority in nine of the 15 republics. A year later, however, the USSR didn’t exist.

In 2021, an astonishing 66% of Southern Republicans and 50% of independents were in favor of secession. The West Coast also showed strong support for secession but of a different political flavor, this time being mostly supported by Democrats.

In this sense, the U.S. is already in more of a precarious situation than the USSR was in early 1991…

‘Don’t expect any miracles, even stability, necessarily, from the United States. The US is going to be unstable and unpredictable after November, no matter what happens.’

– Prof. Jeffrey Sachs warns the world on Going Underground

FULL INTERVIEW: https://rumble.com/v51mee5-prof.-jeffrey-sachs-on-ukraine-gaza-and-taiwan-the-us-is-risking-all-out-wa.html

Russia intends to fight for a “new polycentric world,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said at SPIEF

The concepts of hegemony and global dominance, which the Collective West clings to, have no place in the multipolar world order – which is already becoming a reality, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday.

Speaking at a panel discussion on new norms of international relations at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Zakharova slammed Western governments for resisting the structural changes which have already started with regard to the self-organization of nations and their interactions with other states.

“We are talking about polycentrism, a departure from previous norms, and we see the desperate resistance of the Collective West… They see the norm differently – as their own dominance, as a world order based on one rule – that they must dominate as before, and everyone must do only what the dominant allows them to do,” she stated, adding that the drive for dominance has only ever “led humanity to monstrous tragedies,” including colonialism and Nazism.

“Today it is hegemonism, an obsession with domination, a painful pseudo-messianic idea of [the West’s] global mission… But neither people nor states can declare themselves as missionaries, only history can prove whether their mission was good or based on unhealthy ideas,” Zakharova said.

She added that the ideas of global dominance, of the exceptionalism of some nations amid the destruction of ethnic and cultural identities of others have repeatedly been expressed by Western leaders. She went on to say that these ideas are not shared by the global majority, which has already embraced the concept of multipolarity.

“We should not forget, they are a minority – the Collective West… their worldview is shared by no one except for them,” she said, citing memorandums adopted by multinational blocs as the Russian-led BRICS group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, African Union, and others, in which member states commit to forming a multipolar world order.

“The SCO… covers 3 billion people – half of humanity… BRICS covers over 30% of the Earth’s land mass, 45% of the world population – some 3.5 billion people, and 33% of global GDP… 3% more than the GDP of the G7,” she stated.

Zakharova noted that even in the West, some analysts claim that “the US has not been a world hegemon for a long time,” while “its actions in the international arena have led to the destabilization of world politics.” However, until there are significant changes in policy and ideology, Russia and its global allies have “a long struggle ahead” to form a truly polycentric world order, she said.

“While our cause is not simple, it is worthy and noble. And we will walk this path as a global majority. We don’t call it a mission, though, we call it our goal and objective.”

via ZeroHedge

Last September, we told readers that the US national debt was skyrocketing at a staggering $1 trillion every three months—roughly every 100 days.

Total US Debt surpasses $33 trillion for the first time.

For those keeping tabs, the US added $1 trillion in debt in three (3) months. pic.twitter.com/9eJVnX1YnZ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 18, 2023

Since then, the debt spending has gotten worse.

And we’re off: US debt rises by $89BN on the last day of February, to $34.471 trillion, a new record high

Debt has increased by $280BN in February and by $470BN in the first two months of the year.

At this pace debt will hit $37 trillion by year-end and $40 trillion by the end… https://t.co/eETiO355MG pic.twitter.com/GFbkzkY7oE

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 2, 2024

Lesson 1: how to increase total debt by $1 trillion every 100 days pic.twitter.com/rzANo8e7Ro

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 8, 2024

And by “strong economic performance” you mean $1 trillion in debt every 100 days https://t.co/HamDPdS7tx

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 23, 2024

Out-of-control spending has delayed the US economy’s day of reckoning in this year’s presidential election cycle. But it has become very evident an economic crisis looms in the years ahead.

One River Asset Management CIO, Eric Peters, recently said, “I have a growing conviction that in the coming 2-5 years, we’re going to face a US debt sustainability crisis, sparking a major global market event.”

BofA CIO Michael Hartnett recently noted what we said previously about the unsustainable debt explosion…

And now, fresh comments from Andrey Kostin, CEO of Russia’s second-largest bank, have emerged—comments that Western mainstream media dare not share with their audiences. Why is that? … Well, the Washington censorship blob wouldn’t allow it.

Russian state-owned news agency TASS cited Kostin’s interview with the Fontanka publication, who warned if it wasn’t for the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, a sovereign debt crisis would’ve already been underway in the US. No matter what, he warned the US economy is on the verge of an economic crisis.

“I am thoroughly convinced that America is inevitably headed for a serious economic crisis. The amount of debt currently held by the US today has reached inconceivable, astronomical levels. And the dollar’s monopoly on the global stage is the only thing enabling the Americans to maintain such a level of debt. If the Chinese or the Arabs took their money out of the US, a complete collapse would ensue for the financial sector and the government,” he said.

Kostin added:

“If the West fails to revise its policy I think that the move toward the collapse of the colonial system will only accelerate.”

Kostin noted that China has been disposing of US government debt. Last month, we asked: “Is China’s ‘Dumping’ Driving US Treasury Yields Higher?”

China’s Treasury holdings are back to levels not seen since June 2009.

It’s not just China. Treasury holdings are ‘relatively’ flat (based on Fed custody data), while according to The IMF, the world’s sovereign nations have been panic-buying gold.

It’s not just Kostin sounding the alarm about a looming US debt crisis — Wall Street analysts have echoed the same dire warnings.

Here’s a question: What ever happened to the economic collapse of Russia via endless Western sanctions?

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

In an event that was barely covered in the western media last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a 2-day visit to China to meet with his counterpart, Chinese President Xi Jinping.

A lot of the western media coverage seemed to be infatuated with the fact that the two of them hugged each other in public, which was allegedly unprecedented, and that spawned dozens of articles of corporate media conspiracy theories about what it was that made them so happy with each other.

But details of the meeting are now beginning to emerge, especially as some sources have begun translating Russian and Chinese versions of descriptions of what happened during the meetings into English.

And if these English reports are accurate, it is no wonder as to why the two were so happy, as it appears that the U.S. Dollar’s supremacy as the world’s reserve currency is on the way out as the rest of the non-western world is rapidly abandoning the U.S. Dollar, which spells doom for the United States, and the ultimate end of the U.S. Empire as the world’s most powerful nation.

And now add to that the news of the suspicious death of Iran’s President that happened this weekend after I started to write this article, and perhaps we now can see clearer into the future to understand what is about to happen next.

It’s not a pretty picture, at least not for Americans.

Putin’s Visit to China

Image Source.

Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management, wrote the following today on an article published on ZeroHedge News:

The Chinese/Russian joint statement reads like a playbook for how to create a fully independent political and economic zone.

• For Industry – develop civil aircraft construction, shipbuilding, carmakers, machine tool industry, electronics industry, metallurgy, iron ore mining, chemical industry, and forestry.
• For Agriculture – expand mutual access of agricultural products, increase the volume of trade in soybeans, pig breeding, water production, grain, fat and oil, fruits and vegetables, nuts, and other products.
• For Energy – strive for the stability and sustainability of the global energy market, strengthening value chains in the fuel and energy complex. Develop market-based cooperation in the field of oil, natural gas, LNG, coal, and electricity, ensure the stable operation of relevant cross-border infrastructure and the creation conditions for unimpeded transportation of energy resources.
• For Nuclear Energy – deepen partnership in peaceful nuclear energy. Including thermonuclear fusion, fast neutron reactors and the closed nuclear fuel cycle.
• For Taiwan – Russia reaffirms its commitment to the principle of ‘One China’, recognizes that Taiwan is an integral part of China, opposes the independence of Taiwan in any form, and firmly supports the actions of the Chinese side to protect its own sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as to unify the country.
• For Ukraine – The Russian side positively assesses China’s objective and unbiased position on the Ukrainian issue. China supports the efforts of the Russian side to ensure security and stability, national development and prosperity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and opposes outside interference in Russia’s internal affairs.
• For Technology – develop cooperation in information and communication technologies, including artificial intelligence, communications, software, Internet of things, open source, network and data security, video games, radio frequency coordination, specialized education, and industry research activity.
• For Markets – increase the share of national currencies in bilateral trade; encourage debt issuance in both markets; develop insurance and financial markets. This process is clearly already underway. And so is their retreat from US markets.

Disentanglement:

The West froze over $300bln of Russian reserves following the Ukraine invasion.

Moscow will not be buying our bonds again. 

China has been reducing its US Treasury and agency bond holdings since 2022.

It sold another $53.3bln worth in Q1. 

Holdings are down to $767bln, a level last seen in 2009.

Indeed, ever since the U.S. cut Russia out of the western-backed SWIFT banking system after the war in Ukraine broke out, and then seized their U.S. dollar assets more recently, what did they think the rest of the world would do?

Non-western countries in the rest of the world are rushing as fast as they can to reduce and eliminate their dependency on the U.S. dollar.

And this has not happened in a reactionary way that has surprised the Globalists in the U.S., of whom some foreign powers are now referring to as “America’s Oligarchs“, as at least one American economist who has worked for Joe Biden since his days as vice-President under Obama has been predicting this flight from the dollar for years, and trying to spin it in a positive direction.

Putting More Pressure On The Dollar

Over the weekend, the U.S. State Department posted about seizing Russia’s sovereign assets in the U.S. and encouraging other G-7 members to do the same.

The downsides of the United States doing this when it has persistently large fiscal and trade deficits would seem obvious, but apparently they’re not.

Other countries that aren’t allied/subservient to the U.S. will be less comfortable holding U.S. dollar assets, out of fear that their assets might be summarily seized as well at some point.

In fact, that already seems to be happening, as China just sold a record amount of U.S. Treasury bonds.

Vladimir Putin Envisions De-Dollarization

Near the end of President Putin’s state visit to China, he fielded questions from Russian media in Harbin.

In response to one question about an issue with the settlement of payments between Russia and China, Putin spoke about the extraordinary benefits America has gained from issuing the world’s reserve currency, and how recent American policy had undermined confidence in the dollar.

He concluded that the process of countries moving away from dollar settlements had begun and could not be stopped (text via the Kremlin, translated by Google):

All countries of the world trust the American economy, its power and its stability and take these pieces of paper.

But this gives a huge, seemingly inexplicable advantage to the American economy and financial system. They can also be assessed directly, in certain numbers.

According to our experts, this is over 10 trillion dollars, simply unearned money that fell from the sky due to the use of the dollar as a reserve world currency.

In general, the obligations of the American monetary system to the rest of the world are approximately $53.4 trillion.

But as, for political reasons, the United States authorities undermine confidence in the dollar, they weaken their main, main, most important instrument of their power – the dollar itself.

They cause irreparable damage to themselves. That is, to put it trivially in our well-known sayings, they are simply sawing off the branch on which they themselves are sitting.

This is terrible stupidity. But they can’t stop.

There are disadvantages for us in that we are forced to look for other opportunities.

But there are also advantages, because a situation in which one side dictates its will to the rest of the world, including in the political sphere, using financial and economic instruments, is unacceptable.

And all the countries of the world, I assure you, you only need to look at the volume of reserves and how they decrease in dollars.

The whole world is reacting to this. I think this process is inevitable.

We are, of course, transitioning, and this is the right process.

It is associated with certain costs and difficulties, but on the whole it is correct when we talk about switching to national currencies in settlements or creating some other settlement instruments with other countries.

This process is underway, it has begun, it can no longer be stopped. 

Maybe The Biden Administration Wants This To Happen

On Sunday, Balaji Srinivasan, the Stanford PhD engineer-turned-entrepreneur (in genetics and crypto) shared a post on X that included a GIF of screen captures of Jared Bernstein’s op/eds over the last ten years calling for dethroning King Dollar.

Jared Bernstein was then-Vice President Biden’s chief economist and is currently the head of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors. Here’s the full text of Srinivasan’s post:

DEDOLLARIZATION → REINDUSTRIALIZATION?

In theory, dedollarization enables reindustrialization. Because if you can export dollars, why build anything else? You make 99.99+ cents on the dollar for a new dollar. It’s a very high margin good, made with zero effort and zero pollution. Why make screws or bolts or planes or trains if you can literally print money? Let someone do that overseas.

That was the logic of the ~1971-2021 era. But the problem arises when people at home and abroad start realizing they’re getting diluted to prop up the dollar. Or when you’re in a military standoff with China, and fiat currencies are suddenly less valuable than actual factories.

In that case, if you want to build things in America, you need to stop printing things in America. And that’s why everyone from sober financial analysts like Luke Gromen to Biden advisors like Jared Bernstein have talked about dethroning the dollar, as per the gif below.

The problem is that it’s much easier to launch currencies than to build factories.

China spent the last 45 years shaping their economy into an industrial powerhouse, while the US spent those decades de-industrializing, regulating, and offshoring.

Like the US, China does have a high-tech culture, but they also have a low-tech and medium-tech culture — a culture of skilled laborers and factory workers.

It is very nontrivial to bring that back to the US. The best case outcome might actually be to leapfrog with robotics. So you better pray for @elonmusk and @adcock_brett and @kvogt to get humanoid robots working. Of course, Washington DC has fought AI and self-driving every step of the way, so they’ll probably fight robots too.

And if that doesn’t happen — if the robotic leapfrog hits a roadblock, such as the fact that many pieces of the robotics supply chain are still made in China — we’re headed for a tough situation.

It’s one where DC loses first its physical power and then its financial might, maybe overnight. Because you don’t just instantly get back the factories when the world dethrones the reserve currency.

Source.

As I have written numerous times since the 4th quarter of 2022, the technology in the U.S. is CRASHING and is still bleeding jobs, while they continue to invest $billions in technology that PRODUCES NOTHING, like AI, which just allows access to data at a faster speed, but produces nothing new.

ALL of the investments into the current technology are based on hype and mis-guided faith, like the myth that robots can replace humans.

The U.S. economy will crash, and it will not be a “soft landing.”

Once the U.S. dollar is dethroned as the world’s economic currency, life in the United States will never be the same.

Look around you at the people and things you cherish, and be prepared to lose them, because the U.S. is living on borrowed time right now.

via Moon of Alabama

The magazine for and by multi-millionaires and billionaires, The Economist, warns that the end is imminent:

The liberal international order is slowly coming apart – (archived)
Its collapse could be sudden and irreversible

For years the order that has governed the global economy since the second world war has been eroded. Today it is close to collapse. A worrying number of triggers could set off a descent into anarchy, where might is right and war is once again the resort of great powers. Even if it never comes to conflict, the effect on the economy of a breakdown in norms could be fast and brutal.

It is, in my view, true that the ‘liberal international order’, which after World War II largely regulated world trade and politics is in demise.

But who’s fault is that?

The examples The Economist gives to support its central claim point to one culpable nation:

As we report, the disintegration of the old order is visible everywhere. Sanctions are used four times as much as they were during the 1990s; America has recently imposed “secondary” penalties on entities that support Russia’s armies. A subsidy war is under way, as countries seek to copy China’s and America’s vast state backing for green manufacturing. Although the dollar remains dominant and emerging economies are more resilient, global capital flows are starting to fragment, as our special report explains.The institutions that safeguarded the old system are either already defunct or fast losing credibility. The World Trade Organisation turns 30 next year, but will have spent more than five years in stasis, owing to American neglect. The IMF is gripped by an identity crisis, caught between a green agenda and ensuring financial stability. The un security council is paralysed. And, as we report, supranational courts like the International Court of Justice are increasingly weaponised by warring parties. Last month American politicians including Mitch McConnell, the leader of Republicans in the Senate, threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions if it issues arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel, which also stands accused of genocide by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.

It is the U.S., the country which arguably benefited the most from the liberal international order, which is actively destroying it.

Others, if they did not attract random U.S. rage and war against them, also saw some benefits from it. Those small to medium countries will most likely lose out should the current regime collapse.

That would not be unprecedented:

Unfortunately, history shows that deeper, more chaotic collapses are possible—and can strike suddenly once the decline sets in. The first world war killed off a golden age of globalisation that many at the time assumed would last for ever. In the early 1930s, following the onset of the Depression and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, America’s imports collapsed by 40% in just two years. In August 1971 Richard Nixon unexpectedly suspended the convertibility of dollars into gold; only 19 months later, the Bretton Woods system of fixed-exchange rates fell apart.

Similar ruptures, like the examples above again caused by the U.S., may happen soon.

Interestingly the Economist does not name a solution or way to avoid it. It sees a collapse coming, blames -more or less- the U.S. for causing it, but does not point to way out of it.

That is an uncharacteristically pessimistic view for writers who otherwise like to paint a positive picture for those with big money.

US hypocrisy …

Xi Jinping: When will he [Blinken] leave?

Assistant: He’s leaving this evening.

Blinken was very unhappy in China

Footage is circulating on social networks in which Xi Jinping, before a meeting with the US Secretary of State, asks an assistant:

 “When will he leave?”

The conversation did not help improve the relationship. After that no one from the Chinese authorities went to accompany Blinken to the airport. Only US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said goodbye to him.

Blinken appeared offended and told reporters after the trip that the US was ready to increase pressure on China.

That’s the next day: A deadly China tornado rips into power line. Coincidence? Direct Energy? Magnetic Pulse? 

A tornado has ripped through China’s Guangdong province, killing five people and injuring 33.

According to local authorities, 141 factory buildings were damaged and hail stones the size of golf balls were seen hitting the ground in the city of Guangzhou.

Elon Musk, the CEO of American electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, met with China’s Premier Li Qiang at the State Council in Beijing as the Tesla chief arrives in China for a surprise visit after canceling his visit to India.

Musk dashes to China begging for help with self-drive tech

The Tesla CEO has made a surprise visit to China to try and get permission to transfer data collected in the Asian country abroad to help improve the algorithms for his company’s autonomous driving systems, a source close to the trip said Sunday.

Chinese competitor Xpeng is currently looking to roll similar software to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving tech, which has  still not been made available to Chinese customers.

Last week Musk ditched plans to meet PM Narendra Modi because he had “very heavy Tesla obligations”.

Is Musk all of a sudden desperate for losing his Tesla business in case of China retaliation?