The Western Media are unanimous: Ukraine are very close to total victory!

 Tucker Carlson says he does not like Russia, he thinks it was wrong for Russia to invade the Ukraine, but thinks the news should have some semblance to the truth. He interviewed Colonel Douglas MacGregor who said the Ukraine are losing badly, a lot of the weapons NATO gave them have been destroyed, and their burn rate of NATO weapons far exceeds the NATO replacement rate, much of their army have been killed or wounded so badly they cannot continue fighting, while Russia have a massive defence industry that can replace materiel faster than the Russians are burning it, and Russia have a much larger population, all of whom figure Putin is doing a good job and hate the Nazis for killing 27 million Soviets during WWII, and see the Ukraine Army with Nazi emblems on their uniforms and tanks and artillery and strongly support eradicating those Nazis.

Tucker also interviewed the Prime Minister of Hungary who said about the same thing. He said NATO could easily defeat Russia, but not the Ukrainians with nothing from NATO but a few weapons.

But then Afshin Rattansi interviewed Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former Commanding General of the US Army Europe and Senior Mentor for Logistics at NATO, and Lt. Gen. Hodges said everything MacGregor said was completely wrong from beginning to end, not one word was correct, MacGregor was just a propagandist for Putin and a big liar.

 All the Western media reiterate that the Ukrainians, with advanced NATO weapons, destroyed the Russian invasion force. More than 300,000 Russians killed, compared to about 15,000 Ukrainians, 90% of Russian "outmoded and inept" (as the New York Times wrote) tanks and artillery destroyed, the few Russians still alive are deserting, and the complete Ukrainin victory, while coming a bit slower than originally anticipated, remains absolutely certain, with regime change in Russia and agreement by Russia to be split up into a bunch of small, unarmed states.

Meanwhile, those actually reporting from the Ukraine report that at least 400,000 Ukrainians have been killed and that NATO's replacement rate for materiel is far, far less than the Ukrainian burn rate.

But you'll never see that in any of the Western media, who all reiterate General Hodges version of what is happening, and that anyone who, like Col. MacGregor, says anything else is just a big liar and a Putin propagandist.

So, as Tucker keeps saying, almost 100% of the Western people believe that Ukrainian victory and total defeat of Russia are very close. A little slower than hoped, but almost there now, we just need to give the Ukraine a few more weapons. And besides which, Putin's goal is World Conquest, so letting the Ukrainians defeat the Russians mean no Western lives lost. What could possibly be better???

Shaken or stirred?

 A true martini is a very different drink from the other drinks one gets in a bar. 

Walk into a bar and order a whiskey. In England before they went metric (one of Orwell's great fears), the bartender would pour exactly 1/6 gill of the house Scotch into a glass. One could drink the Scotch neat, or order a mixer and add it to the glass (that would hold the 1/6 gill and an English bottle of mixer (English bottles of mixer are rather small). Most alcohol authorities specify exactly how much of a spirit to serve, and tax that quantity. Since the metric system hit the British pub, an order of whiskey is either 25 ml or 35 ml (depending on the pub). In the US, which have more than 50 different alcohol authorities, an order of whiskey might be 1 ounce, 1.25 ounce, or 1.5 ounce by law. Maybe with the option of a small, medium, or large whiskey, or maybe not, depending on the alcohol authority. So, order a whiskey in the US and get exactly 1, 1.25, or 1.5 ounce of the house Bourbon poured into a large glass into which one normally adds ice and a mixer.

Order a cocktail, and the bartender mixes the appropriate spirit and liqueurs in the prescribed quantities and pours the chilled mixture into a glass that is larger than the amount of the cocktail (so the bartender has room for an umbrella or other froufrou).

But a martini is a mixture of gin and French-style vermouth that must be poured into a martini glass up to the brim. If the bartender has more martini left over, it is thrown away or sold to someone else. One martini glass filled to the brim is what one gets when one orders a martini. Martini glasses vary in sizes, and how much of what is in the glass varies from bar to bar.

Vermouth was invented by the Italians, who created a very sweet, red liqueur. They were followed by the French who created a yellow, dry liqueur. Today, the Italian Martini company makes about 5 different kinds of vermouth, some Italian style, some French style (I haven't found any French companies that make Italian style vermouth).

Because the martini glass must be filled to the brim, one wants it filled with the best ingredients. In the US, the tax on gin is about 10 times the tax on vermouth, so the gin is the most expensive ingredient, and vermouth is the 2nd. The gin and vermouth must be put into a cocktail mixer with ice. The more French vermouth, the more yellow the martini, and they buyer could see it had a lot of the cheaper vermouth. So Martini came out with a clear, dry vermouth, so French style, but clear, so a martini with 50% clear Martini vermouth (or 75% Martini vermouth) looks like it is almost all gin, which is why many bars switched to the clear Martini dry vermouth so they could make a cheap martini that looked expensive.

But, of course, the cheapest ingredient is water. The bar could use bar freezer ice, 0°F (-17.8°C) which barely melts, or ordinary freezer ice, 30°F (-1°C) that melts. A lot. And makes the drink watery. And one can stir, which minimises the melting of the ice, or shake, which maximises the melting.

It is said that one martini drinker demanded they pour a bit of French vermouth into the martini glass, then pour it all out, then fill the glass with gin chilled with bar freezer ice for a very short time, and barely stirred, never shaken. So his martini glass had just about all gin (and the requisite olive).

Most martini drinkers want a martini that is almost clear (so almost all gin) and stirred, not shaken, so they get as much gin and as little water as possible in their martini glasses.

In the first Bond novel, he calls for a drink he calls a martini. It consists of gin, vodka, and a kind of French vermouth that was discontinued in 1986 (that vermouth contained quinine, useful if one had malaria before they came out with more modern drugs to treat the disease). The mixture was well shaken with lots of ice, then poured into a large goblet. So not a real martini at all. Sounds like it was once a very nice drink, but it was never a real martini.

Where is the war in the Ukraine going???

The ISW, Institute for the Study of War, is one of the most reliable sources for information about what is going on in the world. Written in Langley, VA, by that news source the CIA, they always give the best intelligence about what is happening, and so they are the main source for the Western Media.

If one reads the Western Media, the war has been going very badly for Russia. More than 300,000 Russians dead. Most men of the age of military service are in hiding in Russia, or have left Russia, since the only alternative is certain death. The Russian Army is all elderly men and young boys, since the Russians have no men of military age available anymore. 90% of all Russian armour and artillery have been destroyed by the Ukrainians with their advanced NATO weapons against the primitive Russian weapons from the USSR or the Czars. The Russians are being rapidly driven out of the Ukraine by the counteroffensive, not as rapidly as any decent person would like, having surreptitiously mined much of the Ukraine, and this has slowed the rapid Ukrainian advance that was driving all the Russians out of the Ukraine. This has been a horrible war, and the Ukraine have lost 70,000 troops, many, but a tiny fraction of the Russian losses, and the Ukrainian military is staffed with dedicated patriots of military age. One reads this in the New York Times, Washington Post, or watches it on CNN, BBC, France24, etc. Russia are very close to complete defeat and unconditional surrender.

For some reason, not everyone accepts as irrefutably true the information provided by the CIA, in spite of their being the best Intelligence Agency in the world (just ask them).

Airman Teixeira released a Top Secret document that said the Ukrainian military have lost 7 to 10 times as many troops as the Russians, and it is the Ukrainian military, not the Russian military, that is now staffed with elderly men and young boys.

 But the ISW note that the Ukraine have no air force, and once they have F-16s, they will very rapidly destroy the entire Russian invasion force. Difficult, since they have already totally destroyed it, but with the F-16 that will arrive very soon, the Ukrainians will quickly remove the last Russians from the Ukraine, and all those Naval Bases on which the Russian Navy have been squatting will be returned to their rightful owners, NATO.

And, of course, the ISW reiterate that one must trust their version of what is happening, not the stuff released by Airman Teixeira.

In the news (mid-August update)

As the senior leadership of the EU said in February 2022, they would do everything they could to block everyone in the EU from seeing anything from the Russian media. 

Russia rented a channel directly from the Hotbird satellite, so much of the world could see the Russian news channel, provided in English, French, Spanish, German, and Arabic for non-Russians to see the Russian version of the news. Russia started this in 2005 with an English-language channel anyone who used Hotbird and understood English could watch, then added the other languages over the next 15 years.

So, the day the Russians invaded the Ukraine, Hotbird cut off Russia completely.

Hotbird rented channels to providers who then provided subleases on pieces of their bandwidth, and only knew these sublessors by their business names, they had no idea to whom they were subleasing pieces of their bandwidth. It turns out Qatar's al-Jazeera news, Iran's PressTV, and the PRC CGTN each subleased from one of the sublessor companies using Hotbird. Until 12 December 2022, when the EU decided no one in the EU should be allowed to see the PRC, Iranian, or Qatari versions of the news, so they shut down Hotbird.

PressTV was run by people with some technical skills. They rented the name, PressTV.com , but the US does not want anyone to see the Iranian version of the news, so the US seized the name PressTV.com

The US owns the .com domain. Also the .gov and .net and .us domains, so they could and did seize PressTV.com

But the Iranians have some technical skills, and the next day PressTV.ir was up and running (and still allows anyone with Internet to see the Persian version of the news in French and English).

Today, the Russian internet channel for news, rt.com is down. rt.ru is all in Russian, and seems to be selling something, probably a Russian ISP selling bandwidth on which to build your website.

The US and EU are doing all they can to make sure no one can see the Russian version of the news.

What is a Nazi, and what is a Fascist?

Strictly speaking, a Nazi was a signed-up member of the political party led by Der Führer and a Fascist was a signed-up member of the political party led by Il Duce. Of course, British newspapers had their own definitions of Fascist and Nazi meaning dictatorial, despotic, and incompetent, and some of these still appear in dictionaries where the editorial board has some people who give political, technically incorrect definitions of words that have technically correct definitions. Of course, some dictionaries try to give words as actually used, and any decent English-speaker has been taught that Fascists and Nazis are evil, so just ‘equivalent to evil’ is one way the words are used by some ordinary English speakers.

For those who read history, the Nazis killed a lot of Europeans. The Fascists did not. For someone living in Italy under the Fascists, life was fairly normal for being in Italy before the Nazis took over. As Evelyn Waugh wrote, the Nazis were evil, the Fascists were not, but the Fascists were as demonised as the Nazis in the UK newspapers. 

 But the actual Nazis were not all that similar to the official Western portrait of the Nazis.

If one goes back to the book, My Struggle written in the ‘20s by the person who would become Chancellor in ’33, the author wanted a Judenfrei Europe, to be achieved by deporting all the Jews. When the UK said the Royal Navy would not allow a single Jew to be deported, that idea had to be abandoned. Starting Krystalnacht, 9-10 November 1938, it was no longer illegal to kill Jews or to destroy Synagogues. And the Nazis gradually went from there to a policy of trying to exterminate every Jew in Europe.

Based on this, the Western definition of Nazis is anti-Semites who want to exterminate either all the Jews, or at least all the Jews in their area of residence.

But, while the book My Struggle originally called for the deportation of all Jews from Europe, it also called for the extermination of all Slavs for Lebensraum.

The Nazis divided the inhabitants of Europe into three ethnicities: Aryans, Slavs, and Jews.

There is a story, supposedly from WWII. A young SS officer said, ‘How can we tell Aryans from Slavs from Jews? They all look alike; and they all speak multiple languages, usually including German.’

His senior said, ‘Follow me and I’ll show you.’

They went into a shop in Poland and the senior SS officer asked, ‘Do you have a left-handed teapot?’

The shopkeeper said, ‘There is no such thing as a left-handed teapot.’

The senior SS officer said, ‘He is a Slav.’

They went into a second shop in the same city and the senior SS officer asked the same question.

The shopkeeper said, ‘Dumbkopf. If you take a right-handed teapot and turn it one hundred eighty degrees, you have a left-handed teapot.’

The senior officer said, ‘He is an Aryan.’

They went to a third shop and the senior SS officer again asked the exact same question.

The shopkeeper whispered, ‘Yes, I have a few, but they are very rare and very expensive.’

The senior officer said, ‘He is a Jew.’

The anecdote tells us nothing about Aryans, Slavs, or Jews living in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, only about how the Nazis perceived Aryans, Slavs, and Jews.

 The Soviet Union did not recognize ethnic types. One was a Soviet citizen and a good Communist, or a capitalist who must be given a chance to reform or be killed. The Nazis killed many, many Soviet citizens for Lebensraum, but the USSR didn’t care if they were Slav or Jew (it was, of course, illegal to practice any religion and Orthodox Slavs and observant Jews could be executed for practicing religion, but that was for committing what the USSR considered a criminal act, it had nothing to do with ethnicity).

In any case, the Russians consider a Nazi to be someone who wants to kill ethnic Russians for Lebensraum. Using the same symbols the German Nazis used is another clue for the Russians.

For the West, killing Slavs for Lebensraum was just a good, patriotic act on the part of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, nothing criminal about it, nothing Nazi about it. And all those symbols used by the Nazis were around long before the Nazis. Where I am, many of my neighbours have a Swastika on their door, and I think it means ‘peace’ (since I can’t speak their language, I have no idea what it really means). I was told the Nazi Swastika is subtly different, but I got old Nazi pictures and compared them, and I can’t see any difference. Plus, of course, the Ukrainians who consider themselves Aryans and who want to kill ethnic Russians for Lebensraum had a Ukrainian Jew appointed by the US as their president, and no Nazi could ever agree to live under a Jewish president, so they can’t possibly be Nazis, they are not anti-Semitic, they are not killing Jews, so they are as anti-Nazi as one can get, as far as the West are concerned.

But to the Russians, the Aryans running the Ukraine and exterminating ethnic Russians for Lebensraum are as Nazi as one can get.

This, the West say, just shows how little the ethnic Russians know, and why eliminating all of them for Lebensraum will make the world a much better place.

What the heck are Russia doing in the Ukraine???

 According to the Western Media, in February 2022, Putin made a horrible mistake. He ordered the disorganized Russian military to attack the Ukraine for absolutely no reason, a totally unprovoked attack. Russia was a cold Saudi Arabia: they sold energy to the West and used the money to buy everything they need from the West, so the Russian military had only “inept and obsolete” Soviet and Czarist weapons, according to the always reliable Western media, and the entire Russian military were completely wiped out by the Ukrainian military armed with the most advanced Western (i.e., US) weapons while the Russian economy was completely wiped out by the International Sanctio

 Things have only gone downhill for Putin since then: millions of Russians fled Russia to avoid the draft, and more than 300,000 Russian soldiers have been killed by the Ukrainian military.

 The Western media can’t quite keep their story straight: other versions say that 200,000 have died in the war, 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 100,000 Russian soldiers.

 And, of course, Tucker Carlson was fired for reporting that Top Secret US documents leaked by an airman said that the Ukrainians have lost 7 to 10 times as many soldiers as the Russians.

 There is, of course, a Russian version, a version that it is illegal to print or broadcast in the West (as Tucker Carlson found out). Russia were promised, when they said East Germany could leave the Warsaw Pact and join NATO, that NATO would not move one inch east of Germany. This promise, made by Bush, Sr., lasted until the next US election when Clinton became US President and NATO began annexing all of the Warsaw Pact and then started the annexation of all the former USSR states except for Russia. Of course, NATO say they never gave the USSR any such promise, as the USSR and the Warsaw Pact collapsed, they all wanted to join NATO as protection from Russia reconquering them as the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union had done before. (Actually, Russia also asked to join, but, since the primary purpose of NATO was to stop Russia, letting Russia in made no sense to anyone in NATO.)

 In 2021, Putin wrote the US and NATO that Russia could never allow the Ukraine to join NATO. The US and NATO responded that NATO could add the Ukraine if they wanted, and Russia had absolutely no say in the matter. Russia, for reasons that escape us all, found this unacceptable.

 Then the Aryan Ukrainians, who had been given money and weapons by Undersecretary Nuland in 2014 to evict the elected government and take over, with the goal of exterminating all the ethnic Russians for Lebensraum, were preparing in February 2022 to march into the Donbass and exterminate all the ethnic Russians in the Donbass, something they had every right, and many would say duty, to perform.

 Since International Law says that exterminating Russians for Lebensraum is perfectly legal, and resistance is illegal, Putin’s attack on the Ukraine to stop the planned extermination of all the ethnic Russians in the Donbass was a totally unprovoked war crime, for which Putin must be tried, convicted, and punished in the Hague.

 The Law is the Law, and the Law follows the book, My Struggle written by a former Chancellor of Germany, that says all Russians must be exterminated for Lebensraum, something the US have been saying since 1919.

Little Black Sambo

The children’s book Little Black Sambo was written and illustrated by a Scottish lady in 1899, and it was published in the US a few years later with a US illustrator.

The book was a very popular children’s book, but a few years ago it was condemned for portraying African-Americans in an inappropriate manner. We know Sambo was African because he was black and because the story involves four tigers, and we know that tigers are indigenous to Africa. Most have heard of Siberian tigers. It’s hard to keep all the different African countries straight, but since the word ‘Siberia’ is close to ‘Nigeria’ the two words must be from the same language family and the two countries must be adjacent.

Today, the book is mostly banned in the US.

One notes that many British writers who wrote about foreign lands from the comfort of the UK, a land from which they had never actually stepped out, wrote about tigers in Africa. I believe it was Monkhouse who wrote

There was a young lady of Niger,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

 Most Brits and yanks have no trouble rhyming Niger and tiger.

 The recent troubles in Niger made me think of that tiger from Niger.

 And that tiger from Niger made me think of Little Black Sambo.

The original British illustrations in the UK edition of Little Black Sambo had him looking South Asian, but the US publishers figured those illustrations were not appropriate for the US. The US editions (of which there were many) always had Little Black Sambo with distinctly African features. One edition has his father playing a banjo, so Little Black Sambo was from an African-American family in the Old South, where, I suppose, there were also plenty of tigers running around chasing young African-American boys.

 After all, if you were a tiger in the Old South, what else was there to do?

 And now Niger had a coup and a new president, and the US, who elected and installed the former president, are furious, and all the US puppet states around Niger have promised to march in, reverse the coup, and restore the president the US want, while Mali and Burkina Faso say Niger can choose their own president, and they will support Niger against any military efforts to reverse the coup that removed an unpopular president. So I guess we'll see what happens next. And I hope all the tigers in Niger have fun.

New Top 5???

 Looking up the top economies by PPP GDP, I got two versions of the Top 5.

The most common version is:

1) The PRC;

2) The US;

3) India;

4) Japan; and

5) Germany.

That's the Wikipedia and IMF Top 5.

But the World Bank has a slightly different Top 5:

1) The PRC;

2) The US;

3) India;

4) Japan; and

5) Russia.

So 3 of the top 5 economies in the world are all in BRICS. It was in 2001 that Goldman Sachs said one must watch the 4 economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, or BRIC. A lot has happened since then. The BRIC added South Africa and formed an organisation of 5 countries that have regular meetings, even though two of them (India and the PRC) are at war with each other. The PRC were also at war with the USSR. It seems the Western Europeans drew all the world's official boundaries and expect everyone to accept them. In the case of the PRC and India, there has been a boundary dispute since 1949, with a low-level war where most weapons are banned, but it's high in the mountains so they fight with fists standing on the edge of cliffs, and about 20 soldiers a year get killed.

In the case of the PRC and the USSR, there is no more USSR, and Russia seem to know that Russia is the 3rd and weakest Great Power, militarily minuscule in comparison to both the US and to the PRC. So Russia accepted the PRC boundary at all 8,000 of the two countries' boundary disputes, so all are now resolved. Meanwhile, Russia wanted to be part of Europe for 300 years, but Europe hates all things Russian and said they would not trade with Russia, so Russia sells almost all their vast energy production to India and the PRC.

Meanwhile, Germany used to have access to limitless, cheap Russian energy, almost of that gone now, so Germany are now paying four times as much for energy and their economy is struggling.

Meanwhile, Russia are selling to India and the PRC and getting as much revenue as before, and the PRC and India are very happy at the terms Russia give them. Not to mention that, before, they had to pay for energy with US$ and now Russia accept the rupee and the RMB (or yuan or kuai if you prefer), so now Saudi accept the rupee and the RMB, just to stay competitive.

So it's looking real that three of the top five economies in the world, at least at PPP, are in the BRICS. And Brazil are rising rapidly. Heck, the way things are going, the BRICS might end up the top 5.

And the G7 will be the I7, the Irrrelevant 7.

Decline of the G7

 I decided to look it up. 

 In 1980, the GDP of the G7 was 61% of the World GDP, so more than half of all the money. But times change. Back then, the US had the largest GDP by far.

But now, the PRC are the largest economy at PPP, and India are now #3 (the US has fallen from the #1 economy to 2nd place). 

 So where are the G7 now? Using nominal GDP, the combined GDP of the G7 is just 43.5%, so less than half, but at PPP, the combined GDP of the G7 is just 30% of world GDP. Which means one is not stuck with the G7 as potential customers: they have fallen from 61% of world GDP to just 30%. Which means one can sell to the 70% of world GDP if the G7 decide to sanction all your products.

It gets even more interesting. PPP, as I wrote before, is not obvious. How, exactly, does one measure the equivalent value of one economy in terms of another economy? Which means that there are at least two major rankings, and one of them puts Russia as the 5th largest economy in the world at PPP, while the other puts Russia in 6th place behind Germany. Based on what I've seen, I'm guessing Russia as the 5th largest GDP in the world at PPP is probably correct.

The US are now a net exporter of oil, so the Saudis no longer see the US as a major market. So Saudi says they'll now accept payment in other currencies.

Weaponising Money

In the days of emperors, they had the habit of telling the mint to use less gold in coins, so everyone owed money by the empire got paid less than they expected, but the power of most empires meant creditors of the empire had no choice but to accept the coins.

 Going to the 19^th century, there were several major currencies, called reserve currencies since major banks had to keep them in reserve. The UK empire had about a quarter of the world as colonies, and each colony had their own currency, but when paying for international trade between two colonies or the colony and the UK, they had to pay in £ sterling, so the £ was a reserve currency. The French had a smaller empire, but, again, when French colonies had to pay for international trade between two French colonies or with France, they had to pay in ₣, so the ₣ was the #2 reserve currency. Those are the two best known of the old reserve currencies. There were more European empires, and some of their imperial currencies were also reserve currencies.

 Then came World War II that left the UK and France broke. The US and the USSR told them they had to liberate all their colonies, and they had already spent far too much on the war (plus France had been a German colony for 4 years) and the ₣ had collapsed. The UK £ had always been at least $5, and Churchill had tried to keep it there, but, right after the war, it had dropped to $4.80 (and kept dropping) and it took ₣1,000 to equal £1.

 But, before the war ended, a strange thing happened in 1944 at Bretton Woods. The US$ was declared the Key Currency. This was because the US$ and only the US$ was a major currency backed by 24K gold (the South African Rand was also backed by gold, and people were not so sensitive about Apartheid back then, but the Rand was too small a currency for the job). 1 US$ could be exchanged by anyone not an American citizen or permanent resident for about 889 mg of gold, the US had a huge amount of gold in Fort Knox, so there were lots of US$, enough to support world trade. So a US$ was the same as gold, and everyone agreed that the only real money was gold. For the first time in history, the world had a Key Currency, the standard currency for all international transactions. Sort of. Since, really, the US$ was the same as gold, it was just a very convenient form of gold to use for international transactions, and everyone agreed to use the US$, making the US$ the Key Currency. For historical reasons, the UK£ and the French₣ remained reserve currencies, as was the US$. Eventually, after they managed to recover economically, the GermanDM and the Japanese¥ became reserve currencies, and also the SwissCHF. But the US$ was the one and only Key Currency, something never seen before 1944.

 Then, in 1971, President Nixon announced that the US$ could no longer be exchanged for gold. A US$ was just a US$, a piece of paper worth whatever people thought it was worth. But, in the absence of any alternative, and with the huge growth in international trade after WWII, the US$ remained the Key Currency.

 If someone put US$ in a Swiss bank, their deposit was somewhat protected from scrutiny, and the depositor remained the owner of the currency unless a Swiss court ordered the depositor to pay for something like a fine that could be taken from the deposit, and the Swiss courts usually would not do that, which is why many people preferred Swiss banks.

 Next came SWIFT, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift), legally S.W.I.F.T. Many banks are on SWIFT, meaning all depositors have a SWIFT code, and money is easily transferred by computer or app or a visit to the bank from one SWIFT account to another. And since SWIFT was so easy to use, it became the standard for international transactions.

 But now that the world had a Key Currency and SWIFT for international transactions, the US suddenly realised what they could do.

The US can ban a country from using the US$ or SWIFT. Any tourist to a sanctioned country can only bring cash, since credit cards and traveller’s cheques don’t work and there is no way to make international payments. The first victims were Cuba and the DPRK, then Iran, then Venezuela. All their money in banks outside their own country was frozen. Switzerland, strictly neutral for 200 years, honours any US request to freeze US$ accounts in any Swiss bank.

 For more than 40 years, Iran has found all international trade and tourism very difficult. Venezuela didn’t have a problem until Chavez nationalised US oil property and spent the money on the Venezuelan people when, under US law, all that money belongs to US oiligarchs.

 With the G7 strongly supporting the US and holding most of the world’s money, US sanctions on nations cause massive problems, typically starvation and death from treatable injuries and illnesses.

 So, when the US put those sanctions on Russia, …

 The weaponised US$ proved to be a dud. The G7 honour the US sanctions. The G7 announced they would be leaving Russian energy at the end of their current contracts (after they get LNG terminals that can accept US LNG), and also that, when they paid in US$, all those US$ were frozen by the US, and none went to Russia.

 So Russia demanded payment in rubles ₽, which cannot be frozen by the US. And the Europeans who could not completely abandon Russian energy had to pay in ₽ or close their factories for lack of energy.

 Not only that, the GDP of the G7 is now less than the GDP of the BRICS at PPP, so Russia can sell all their oil and gas to India and the PRC and get paid in rupees ₹ and yuan 元.

 But there’s more. The US military said that oil can only be sold for US$, and when Saddam and Gaddafi said they’d accept payment in other currencies, the US military quickly got rid of both of them. Saudi never considered accepting payment in anything except the US$, since the US was their biggest customer, so the US and Saudi were locked in an economic embrace: the US had to have Saudi oil, and Saudi had to have US customers and protection.

 But that was then.

 Today, the US is a net exporter of oil, and Saudi’s biggest customer is the PRC, so now Saudi accepts the 元, and India is a big enough and important enough customer that Saudi accepts the ₹, and Saudi is desperate to join the BRICS.