The BRICS meeting kicked off yesterday in South Africa with great expectations on what’s gonna be achieved. No less than seizing global leadership from the US – if some are to be believed!! Now, your Eyewitness has been around the block – and some!! So, he knows nothing lasts forever, and the American hegemony that started after WWII’s gonna come to an end sooner or later. After all, didn’t England rule the roost for over a hundred years, and then had to step aside??
But the thing is, no great power willingly gives up all the perks of being numero uno in the world!! England uniquely handed over the baton to the US, and assumed a “special relationship” that persists to this day. And from what we’re seeing right now, the US ain’t passing no baton to any of the contenders – whether singly as in China, or collectively as, say, BRICS!! The last challenger was the USSR, and look what happened to them – split like Humpty Dumpy into pieces, and nothing’s gonna bring them together again!! As we’re seeing with Russia trying to claw back parts of Ukraine!! Just shows you how far the US will go to maintain its role as top dog!!
But that doesn’t mean challengers will roll over and play dead. They know – as we said – that change is inevitable. So how exactly will BRICS try to seize power?? Well, in this modern dispensation, everything is financialized, and money is even more powerful than guns. The US greenback is the world’s reserve currency, and as such, they simply have to keep their money presses rolling to buy whatever they want – from every country in the world!! That’s POWER, baby!!
So BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – will try to agree on using their own currencies to pay each other, rather than the US greenback. But right away we can see the problem: trading isn’t gonna be perfectly evened out between them. The question is, who’s gonna be shipping the most goods – and will it be willing to accept those countries’ currencies, which will then in effect become IOUs?!! So, is any of the BRICS countries willing – as the US has been since WWII – to run a deficit with, say, China or India, which can then use their currencies to buy up their countries?? Like China can do with the US right now with the US$3 trillion it has piled up by becoming the US factory??
Frankly, only the two heavyweights – China and India – are possible candidates for a new world currency, but Your Eyewitness doesn’t see either of them willing to take on debt to their necks – as the US has been willing!!
…sugar demands
It wasn’t for nothing it’s been said that, for something so sweet, sugar can also be most bitter!! Sugar workers in Berbice are experiencing this right now. To outsiders, it might seem paradoxical that Rose Hall workers who’d been transferred to Albion when Rose Hall was shuttered by the PNC are now up in arms because they’re being brought back to the reopened Rose Hall. The logic is they should be happy to return “home”, no??
Well, no!! What irks the workers is: since they’re being “severed” from Albion, shouldn’t they be collecting “severance” pay – as their mates who’d stayed fired (severed) had done?? The latter – who’re also being rehired – had also collected $250,000 in relief and several rounds of hampers!! Seems to the Albion redeployed they’d been left holding the short end of the stick in that round!! Even though things have been really “brown” in the Berbice sugar belt, the workers know that they have a Herculean task ahead to get Rose Hall going successfully.
Management should give them something.
…of minds
When is a strike not a strike? The airline union said the CAL pilots and crews were on a “sickout”, and not a strike. Tell that to the stranded passengers!!
