"US Reimposes Illegal and Inhumane Oil Sanctions on Venezuela" by Roger D. Harris

 

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US Reimposes Illegal and Inhumane Oil Sanctions on Venezuela

The New York Times Runs Cover

by Roger D. Harris / April 20th, 2024

A minute after midnight on April 18, the US reimposed coercive economic measures designed to cripple Venezuela’s oil industry. Later that day, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a new sanctions bill on Nicaragua. Meanwhile, Cuba protested the US’s six-decade blockade as talks resumed between the two countries on migration.

At a time of challenged US dollar hegemony and questioning of the neoliberal order, the three countries striving to build socialist societies in the Americas pose a “threat of a good example.”

Also on April 18,  Biden announced new sanctions on Iran. Globally, Washington has imposed sanctions on some forty countries. Because these unilateral coercive measures are a form of collective punishment, they are considered illegal under international law.

Even the US Congressional Research Service recognizes sanctions have “failed” to achieve their regime-change goals. Yet the empire’s perverse response is to do more of the same rather than reverse course. “Once they are imposed, they become politically impossible to lift without getting something in return,” observed The New York Times.

 Times runs cover for US sanctions on Venezuela

The empire’s “newspaper of record” bewailed that Uncle Sam had “no choice” but to reign more misery on the people of Venezuela even though sanctions do not achieve their purported purpose.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, according to the Times, had “promised to take steps toward holding free elections… with the lifting of some American sanctions as an incentive. But the ink was hardly dry before his government upheld a ban on running for office that had been placed on María Corina Machado.”

In fact, the Barbados agreement, negotiated last October, said nothing about Ms. Machado, who had been proscribed from holding public office for fifteen years back in 2015 for financial and treasonous misconduct. There was little chance that the notorious politico would have her conviction reversed by Venezuela’s supreme court which, as in the US, is an independent branch of government not under the dictates of the president.

The US knew this when the agreement was signed, but has subsequently used it as an excuse to delegitimize the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election. Why? One reason may be that the US Intelligence Community’s Annal Threat Assessment anticipates that Maduro will win the contest on July 28.

The article correctly reports that Machado was the “overwhelming victor” of a primary, but omits that her incredulous 93% margin in a crowded and highly contested field raised doubts about its credibility. Another leading opposition figure in the primary accused the process of being a fraud.

The primary was held privately, not by the official election authority as other primaries were. Machado’s own NGO, one that had received funds from the CIA front group, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), had administered the primary. And after Machado was declared the winner, the ballots were destroyed. This news, apparently, was not “fit to print” in the Times.

 Times laments the downsides of US sanctions…to the US

The article raises a concern dear to the Times, which is that the “immigration crisis,” precipitated by the US sanctions, pose “a major political problem for Mr. Biden during an election year.” In addition, the Times noted, the sanctions “pushed Venezuela further into the arms of Russia and China.”

The article, concluding with a hackneyed observation that “dictators do dictatorship,” gripes that “US sanctions can do great harm but rarely delivers the political results that American officials seek.”

However, the US didn’t completely close the door on Venezuelan oil industry for select corporations in the US and abroad. The new policy, while revoking the general license, will allow companies to seek individual licenses. The change, the Wall Street Journal noted, “is likely to benefit large oil companies with lobbying power in Washington.”

More distortions

A second Times editorial on Venezuela appeared the next day, this time masquerading as a news story. “One opposition party was allowed to officially register” in the presidential race, the article reads, inferring that there is only one opposition candidate on the ballot, when Reuters reports there are eleven others.

“Many Venezuelans living abroad,” carps the Times, “have been unable to register to vote because of expensive and cumbersome requirements.” Unreported is the biggest barrier for Venezuelans living in the US to vote remotely in their country’s election. Washington does not recognize the legitimate Venezuelan government, which means no functioning consular services and, therefore, no way to vote.

The Times reporter also complained that deportation of Venezuelan migrants were suspended “without explanation.” While the newspaper’s articles are protected behind a paywall, one would think that staff would have access to a February Times report that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez warned that the flights would be discontinued in response to the US’s reimposition of sanctions on Venezuelan gold sales.

Times acknowledges the purpose of US sanctions

 The Times at least no longer blames the “economic free fall” of the Venezuelan economy on the socialist government but fully admits the economic sanctions have “crippled the country’s crucial oil industry.” Further, the Times acknowledges that the Biden administration’s action, “could carry significant consequences for the future of Venezuela’s democracy, for its economy, and for migration in the region.”

In short, the Times reported that US sanctions, “intensified…the single largest peacetime collapse of any country in at least 45 years.”

Finally, the Times implicitly acknowledged that the sanctions were never to promote democracy, but were “meant to force the Maduro government from power.” An earlier 2019 Times opinion piece included the suggestion that while sanctions “may make the humanitarian crisis worse” they are still desirable as a “source of leverage to remove Maduro.”

Venezuela’s response

The week before the oil sanctions were reimposed, Venezuelans celebrated the anniversary of the defeat of the 2002 unsuccessful 48-hour US-backed coup. Neither the tactics – the continuing coup attempts – nor the US policy of regime-change have changed.  The Venezuelan president’s response: “We are going to keep moving forward with a license or without a license…we are not your colony.”

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Roger D. Harris is with the human rights group Task Force on the Americas founded in 1985. Read other articles by Roger D..

"US Sanctions Are Drowning Syrians" by Steven Sahiounie

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U.S. Sanctions Are Drowning Syrians

Steven Sahiounie

June 18, 2023

The days of U.S. dictating to the Arab world, and U.S.-engineered wars for regime change in the Middle East are over, Steven Sahiounie writes.

Hundreds of Syrian men, women and children have drowned early Wednesday in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Greece after the sinking of an Egyptian trawler headed for Italy. It is being called one of the deadliest migrant ship disasters in the Mediterranean Sea. As many as 750 persons were packed into the boat, with women and children under the deck, which may be why the 104 survivors were all young men. 78 bodies were recovered 75 kilometers offshore Kalamata, Greece.

Nine Egyptian human traffickers have been arrested in Greece and blamed as part of a smuggling network which advertised on Facebook. The ads promised a better life in Europe and charged between $5,000 to $6,000 per person. But, Greece is also being blamed for their part as they were monitoring the ship but never took steps to stop the ship and off-load passengers. The Greeks say they were communicating with the ship, and the ship requested to be allowed to continue sailing toward Italy. After the engine stopped, the passengers panicked, and their sudden movements caused the ship to roll over and sink.

The U.S. and EU sanctions on Syria are to blame. There is no war in Syria. The battlefields are long silent across Syria, but there is no recovery or rebuilding allowed in Syria, because the U.S. and EU sanctions prevent any rebuilding or foreign investments in rebuilding projects.

Infrastructure, hospitals, homes, schools, factories and businesses are all left waiting for the sanctions to be lifted to orders parts and supplies from abroad to begin the long process of recovery from the U.S.-NATO attack on Syria for regime change, which ended in failure.

Western media lies when they repeatedly tell their western audiences that a violent civil war is raging in Syria, and people are leaving in fear for their lives, and this is the cause of the migrant crisis. This is untrue. From Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, and Latakia the roads are clear and open, the streets are free of soldiers and check points, and there are even tourists arriving to visit religious and historical sites. The western media must convince their audiences that the western foreign policies designed to create desperation in Syria are not to blame. It is the western sanctions, put in place by democracies, who keep the Syrian unemployed and without any welfare safety net, people are forced to risk their lives to feed their families back home.

The tiny province of Idlib, an olive growing area in the northwest, is under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Al Qaeda terrorist group supported by UN, U.S., EU and western humanitarian aid, but there are only 3 million civilians there, while the rest of the country holds 15 million. The people who left Syria on the ships were not from Idlib, because they have all their needs met there, and even have business opportunities there because Turkey and the U.S. and EU support that population. On Thursday, the EU hosted a donors conference for Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. $2.1 Billion was pledged, but only those Syrians living in the terrorist enclave of Idlib, or those living in camps in neighboring countries will benefit. The EU will not send 1 Euro to Damascus for the 15 million Syrians who are suffering from the sanctions, and are contemplating a journey which may end in drowning.

Syrians leaving on desperate and dangerous sea journeys toward Europe are economic migrants. They are fleeing from poverty imposed upon them by the U.S. and EU. They are seeking an income, because their former jobs were taken from them by terrorists who entered from Turkey and dismantled the factories machinery and took it to Turkey where agents close to Turkish President Erdogan rebuilt the factories there, and have employed Syrian refugees there at wages far below the Turkish workers’ union limit.

The Syrian economy is collapsed and the currency devalued. What used to cost 100 Syrian Lira (SL) in 2011, now costs 10,000. $1 used to equate to 50 SL, and now fluctuates between 8,000 to 9,000 SL. Syrian merchants are prevented from ordering even the most basic of items such as factory materials and building products because of the sanctions. At one point, chemotherapy drugs were impossible to order due to foreign manufacturers in fear of U.S. sanctions. Due to U.S. and EU banking sanctions on Syria, merchants are prohibited from sending payments from Syria to firms abroad. The Port in Latakia sits idle instead of bustling with activity to rebuild lives.

The Astana Peace talks will soon convene in Kazakhstan on June 20-21. Deputy Foreign Ministers from Syria, Iran, Russia and Turkey will discuss plans for a normalization between Turkey and Syria and also for a roadmap for a political solution for the Syrian crisis. However, Damascus insists normalization is not possible while Turkey is militarily occupying area along the northern border. On May 10, the Defense Ministers of all four countries met in Moscow and were tasked with developing a roadmap, which will be discussed at the upcoming meeting.

On June 14, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said the roadmap for normalizing relations between Ankara and Damascus is now ready to be discussed at Astana.

The Geneva Peace process for Syria has met numerous times, but has never achieved success. Experts point to the fact that the Geneva meetings are dictated by Washington’s demands, which are keen to keep Syria destroyed and unrecovered by the U.S. sanctions in place. However, Geir Pedersen, UN special envoy for Syria, has expressed optimism in the Astana meeting, but the U.S. may prevent him from implementing any progress that comes from Astana. U.S. President Joe Biden was part of the 2011 U.S. attack on Syria engineered by President Obama, while Biden was Vice President.

When Syria and Turkey were hit with a 7.8 earthquake on February 6, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was quick to rush with humanitarian aid deliveries to Damascus for victims in Latakia and Aleppo, the two hardest hit areas in Syria. The U.S., EU and other western humanitarian groups chose to strictly send aid to the 3 million under terrorist control in Idlib, by passing the 15 million Syrian who never received even a loaf of bread from the U.S..

On March 10, Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a normalization agreement brokered by China. This was a political earthquake felt throughout the Middle East, as the two former foes put their hands together to work toward peace and prosperity for the region. In the wake of the new§found cooperation, Saudi Arabia reached out to Syria and meeting took place which saw the Syrian President back at the Arab League, and embassy functions between both countries established.

The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has a Vision 2030 project which is built upon peace and stability in the region, and he has called for foreign interference and instigated proxy wars to cease. Saudi Arabia has firmly taken the lead to find a peaceful political solution for the Syrian crisis, and is willing to work with China, Russia and Iran to fulfil his goals.

The days of U.S. dictating to the Arab world, and U.S.-engineered wars for regime change in the Middle East are over. Saudi Arabia is chartering a new course and they demand smooth sailing over calm waters.

"Video Roundup - 4/24/23" by Simplicius the Thinker

 

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Video Roundup - 4/24/23

SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER APR 25

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Today’s videos of interest:

The first is a very revealing look at just how panicked the elites are becoming vis a vis the global dedollarization movement. They are beginning to verbalize their fears, which necessarily results in their verbalizing some dark unspoken truths about the devious mechanisms of their global control. In this case, Rubio whines that poor America will soon be prevented from ‘sanctioning’ anyone it chooses, due to the fact that the Resistance Axis is creating an entirely ‘parallel economy’ with their own national currencies.

This puts into perspective, and confirms once and for all, the idea—once dismissed as ‘conspiracy theory’—that the U.S. in fact seeks to actively destroy any nation or entity which challenges the dollar supremacy of its ‘privilege exorbitante’. We saw in the Wikileaks how Hillary Clinton’s aide, Sidney Blumenthal wrote:

Blumenthal pointed out the purpose of Qaddafi's precious metal: "This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA)."

Just two weeks before Blumenthal sent the Gaddafi-gold memo, Clinton met with Sarkozy in France, where the president pressed her to back an air campaign in Libya. At the time, in justifying his enthusiasm for military intervention, Sarkozy said publicly that France had "decided to assume its role before history" to ward off a "killing spree." The French military, he said, was determined to defend any Libyans who wanted "liberate themselves from servitude."

It’s very eye-opening how these things are now being plainly stated. I’ve said multiple times recently how in the terminal end times of the regime, desperation and sheer urgency mandates them to throw caution to the wind and speak things out in the open which previously would have been consigned exclusively to top secret clearance documents.

Rubio spells it out very clearly and explicitly: the coming global confrontations are all about the U.S. Empire’s desperate last-haul measure to protect its dollar hegemony, which is the only remaining reason that U.S. has any power left in the world at all. As a flagging military power, entrenched on its own faraway world-island, U.S. no longer has the ability to project its might in a way that could deter Great Powers, or even regional ones. The dollar remains the sole instrument of the U.S.’s global dominance, but it is a privilege the American ruling class has abused to such a flagrant extent as to have extinguished its carrying power. Now, they are panicking, and openly admitting it.

“They’re going to trade in their own currencies, get right around the dollar,” cries bat-eared boy Rubio. “They’re creating a secondary economy in the world, totally independent of the United States,” he stammers. And the kicker: “We won’t have to talk about sanctions in five years, because there’ll be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them!”

Cue the horror! Dread the day that the benevolent, altruistic U.S. loses its ability to sanction half the world!

It’s interesting that Rubio gives it five years, as an article just from yesterday similarly saw the five year mark as the limit of the dollar’s reign:

The US dollar has only five years left as the principal currency for the global economy, according to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. He claims the greenback’s superiority has for way too long been used as a weapon of vengeance against all dissenters, and often without prior legal evaluation.

This follows yesterday’s ghastly revelation that the U.S. is currently sanctioning 30% of the entire free world:

The second video is a brief rewind and poignant look at Zelensky’s rise to power. I merely wanted to use the video as opportunity to recall the outrageous fact that Zelensky, at the funding of oligarch Kolomoisky, founded a production company (Kvartal 95) which produced a show titled Servant of the People, in which he played lead role as…the president of Ukraine.

But then, reality being more twisted than fiction, he launched his own political party called ‘Servant of the People’, riding on the wave of the show’s popularity. And with this party, he won the presidency of Ukraine, on a platform of pacifism, ending the war in Donbass, measured rapprochement with Russia (at least in regards to openness to talks with Putin, etc.), amongst other things (a cruel joke in hindsight).

I still can’t wrap my head around it: it’s everything of the holographic, illusory ‘simulacra-simulation’ level stagecraft which has long haunted our worst expectations about politics, particularly of the Ukrainian variety. To blur the lines even further, Zelensky even ran billboards of ‘Servant of the People’ throughout the country, bypassing certain legal-political loopholes, and covertly funding them with his production company rather than campaign donations, which he claimed were actually ‘advertisements for the show’, but were in fact ingeniously playing double for political ads. It allowed him to basically combine the show and political campaign’s advertising into one and the same mirror campaign.

It’s just another axiomatic testament to the fine knife’s edge that power and illusion occupy together in this world, and how gullible, impressionable, and hypnotically suggestible the garden variety masses can be. The entire Ukrainian presidency is a TV Truman Show spectacle and hoax in one, funded by unctuous billionaires and CIA dark money.

In truth, there are even more surreal parallels between Zelensky’s ‘Servant of the People’ show and his ‘Servant of the People’ political party and later presidential life. But it’s point enough to bring a general attention to the lurid charade without getting lost in the weeds.

The last two videos I’ll leave you with are of the self-explanatory variety. Two candidly raw takes of life behind the lines for Ukrainian soldiers; one tragic, the other a revealing interview with an AFU POW.

"The Big Stiff: Russia-Iran dump the dollar and bust US sanctions" by Pepe Escobar

 

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Source: The Cradle

The Big Stiff: Russia-Iran dump the dollar and bust US sanctions

News of Russian banks connecting to Iran’s financial messaging system strengthens the resistance against US-imposed sanctions on both countries and accelerates global de-dollarization.  

ByPepe Escobar

February 09 2023

Photo credit: The Cradle

The agreement between the Central Banks of Russia and Iran formally signed on 29 January connecting their interbank transfer systems is a game-changer in more ways than one.

Technically, from now on 52 Iranian banks already using SEPAM, Iran’s interbank telecom system, are connecting with 106 banks using SPFS, Russia’s equivalent to the western banking messaging system SWIFT.

Less than a week before the deal, State Duma Chairman Vyachslav Volodin was in Tehran overseeing the last-minute details, part of a meeting of the Russia-Iran Inter-Parliamentary Commission on Cooperation: he was adamant both nations should quickly increase trade in their own currencies.

Ruble-rial trade

Confirming that the share of ruble and rial in mutual settlements already exceeds 60 percent, Volodin ratified the success of “joint use of the Mir and Shetab national payment systems.” Not only does this bypass western sanctions, but it is able to “solve issues related to mutually beneficial cooperation, and increasing trade.”

It is quite possible that the ruble will eventually become the main currency in bilateral trade, according to Iran’s ambassador in Moscow, Kazem Jalali: “Now more than 40 percent of trade between our countries is in rubles.”

Jalali also confirmed, crucially, that Tehran is in favor of the ruble as the main currency in all regional integration mechanisms. He was referring particularly to the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), with which Iran is clinching a free trade deal.

The SEPAM-SPFS agreement starts with a pilot program supervised by Iran’s Shahr Bank and Russia’s VTB Bank. Other lenders will step in once the pilot program gets rid of any possible bugs.

The key advantage is that SEPAM and SPFS are immune to the US and western sanctions ruthlessly imposed on Tehran and Moscow. Once the full deal is up and running, all Iranian and Russian banks can be interconnected.

It is no wonder the Global South is paying very close attention. This is likely to become a landmark case in bypassing Belgium-based SWIFT – which is essentially controlled by Washington, and on a minor scale, the EU. The success of SEPAM-SPFS will certainly encourage other bilateral or even multilateral deals between states.

It’s all about the INSTC

The Central Banks of Iran and Russia are also working to establish a stable coin for foreign trade, replacing the US dollar, the ruble, and the rial. This would be a digital currency backed by gold, to be used mostly in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Astrakhan, in the Caspian Sea, already very busy moving plenty of Iranian cargo.

Astrakhan happens to be the key Russian hub of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), a vast network of ship, rail, and road routes which will drastically increase trade from Russia – but also parts of Europe – across Iran to West Asia and South Asia, and vice-versa.

And that reflects the full geoconomic dimension of the SEPAM-SPFS deal. The Russian Central Bank moved early to set up SPFS in 2014, when Washington began threatening Moscow with expulsion from SWIFT. Merging it with the Iranian SEPAM opens up a whole new horizon, especially given Iran’s ratification as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and now a leading candidate to join the extended BRICS+ club.

Already three months before the SEPAM-SPFS agreement, the Russian Trade Representative in Iran, Rustam Zhiganshin, was hinting that the decision “to create an analog of the SWIFT system” was a done deal.

Tehran had been preparing the infrastructure to join Russia’s Mir payment system since last summer. But after Moscow was hit with extremely harsh western sanctions and Russian banks were cut off from SWIFT, Tehran and Moscow decided, strategically, to focus on creating their own non-SWIFT for cross-border payments.

All that relates to the immensely strategic geoeconomic role of the INSTC, which is a much cheaper and faster trade corridor than the old Suez Canal route.

Russia is Iran’s largest foreign investor

Moreover, Russia has become Iran’s largest foreign investor, according to Iranian Deputy Finance Minister Ali Fekri: this includes “$2.7 billion worth of investment to two petroleum projects in Iran’s western province of Ilam in the past 15 months.” That’s about 45 percent of the total foreign investment in Iran over the October 2021 – January 2023 period.

Of course the whole process is in its initial stages – as Russia-Iran bilateral trade amounts to only US$3 billion annually. But a boom is inevitable, due to the accumulated effect of SEPAM-SPFS, INSTC, and EAEU interactions, and especially further moves to develop Iran’s energy capacity, logistics, and transport networks, via the INSTC.

Russian projects in Iran are multi-faceted: energy, railways, auto manufacturing, and agriculture. In parallel, Iran supplies Russia with food and automotive products.

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, is fond of reminding anyone that Russia and Iran “play complementary roles in global energy and cargo transit.” The Iran-EAEU free agreement (FTA) is nearly finalized – including zero tariffs for over 7,500 commodities.

In 2022, the EAEU traded more than $800 billion worth of goods. Iran’s full access to the EAEU will be inestimable in terms of providing a market gateway to large swathes of Eurasia – and bypassing US sanctions as a sweet perk. A realistic projection is that Tehran can expect $15 billion annual trade with the five members of the EAEU in five years, as soon as Iran becomes the sixth member.

The legacy of Samarkand

Everything we are tracking now is in many ways a direct consequence of the SCO summit in Samarkand last September, when Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, in person, placed their bet on strengthening the multipolar world as Iran signed a memorandum to join the SCO.

Putin’s private talks with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Samarkand were all about deep strategy.

The INSTC is absolutely crucial in this overall equation. Both Russia and Iran are investing at least $25 billion to boost its capabilities.

Ships sailing the Don and Volga Rivers have always traded energy and agricultural commodities. Now Iran’s Maritime News Agency has confirmed that Russia will grant their ships the right of passage along the inland waterways on the Don and Volga.

Meanwhile, Iran is already established as the third largest importer of Russian grain. From now on, trade on turbines, polymers, medical supplies, and automotive parts will be on a roll.

Tehran and Moscow have signed a contract to build a large cargo vessel for Iran to be used at the Caspian port of Solyanka. And RZD logistics, a subsidiary of Russian railway RZD, operates container cargo trains regularly from Moscow to Iran. The Russian Journal for Economics predicts that just the freight traffic on INTSC could reach 25 million tons by 2030 – no less than a 20-fold increase compared to 2022.

Inside Iran, new terminals are nearly ready for cargo to be rolled off ships to railroads crisscrossing the country from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf. Sergey Katrin, head of Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is confident that once the FTA with the EAEU is on, bilateral trade can soon reach $40 billion a year.

Tehran’s plans are extremely ambitious, inserted in an “Eastern Axis” framework that privileges regional states Russia, China, India, and Central Asia.

Geostrategically and geoeconomically, that implies a seamless interconnection of INSTC, EAEU, SCO, and BRICS+. And all of this is coordinated by the one Quad that really matters: Russia, China, India, and Iran.

Of course there will be problems. The intractable Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict might be able to derail the INSTC: but note that Russia-Iran connections via the Caspian can easily bypass Baku if the need arises.

BRICS+ will cement the dollar’s descent

Apart from Russia and Iran, Russia and China have also been trying to interface their banking messaging systems for years now. The Chinese CBIBPS (Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System) is considered top class. The problem is that Washington has directly threatened to expel Chinese banks from SWIFT if they interconnect with Russian banks.

The success of SEPAM-SPFS may allow Beijing to go for broke – especially now, after the extremely harsh semiconductor war and the appalling balloon farce. In terms of sovereignty, it is clear that China will not accept US restrictions on how to move its own funds.

In parallel, the BRICS in 2023 will delve deeper into developing their mutual financial payments system and their own reserve currency. There are no less than 13 confirmed candidates eager to join BRICS+ – including Asian middle powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.

All eyes will be on whether – and how – the $30 trillion-plus indebted US will threaten to expel BRICS+ from SWIFT.

It’s enlightening to remember that Russia’s debt to GDP ratio stands at only 17 percent. China’s is 77 percent. The current BRICS without Russia are at 78 percent. BRICS+ including Russia may average only 55 percent. Strong productivity ahead will come from a BRICS+ supported by a gold and/or commodities-backed currency and a different payment system that bypasses the US dollar. Strong productivity definitely will not come from the collective west whose economies are entering recessionary times.

Amid so many intertwined developments, and so many challenges, one thing is certain. The SEPAM-SPFS deal between Russia and Iran may be just the first sign of the tectonic plates movement in global banking and payment systems.

Welcome to one, two, one thousand payment messaging systems. And welcome to their unification in a global network. Of course that will take time. But this high-speed financial train has already left the station.