The Birth of Eurasia — Godfree Roberts

Backgrounder. Longish. Maybe weekend reading. But this is what's happening and will be happening over the rest of this century, along with the rise of the Global South. The Global North's preeminence is waning. This doesn't mean decline. Rather, the Global North and West will cease being "exceptional" relative to the rest of the world. This, of course, is a good thing overall.

The Unz Review
The Birth of Eurasia

Godfree Roberts

Pepe Escobar — From the Caucasus to the Balkans, China’s Silk Roads are rising

 With its focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as fulfilling a strategy of challenging the West that can be traced back to Mao….

In the midst of this frenzy of connectivity, it’s easy to overlook a significant historical point: that it was all anticipated by Mao Zedong.

Scholar Chen Gang has stressed how most BRI-participating nations are not as developed, economically, as China. And they are “not just limited to the Eurasian continent, but will eventually cover all the ‘middle zone’ and ‘third world’ put forward by Mao in his ‘Three Worlds Theory.’”

Flashback to 1974. That’s when Mao described the world as being divided between superpowers (the US and USSR); intermediate powers (Japan, Europe, Canada); and exploited nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, which Mao praised as constituting the forces against First World hegemony. Mao placed China in the third world – as Deng Xiaoping told the UN.

What’s fascinating is how Chen Gang interprets BRI not only as a sequel to China’s historical ties with the Third World, but also as opening a “new era of China’s Third World strategy.” He correctly states that US and EU elites worry that BRI will bring about “the erosion of their global influence and overseas interests.”

Chen Gang’s analysis touches on what, by now, is obvious: “The international game around BRI has just begun.” And it goes almost without saying that Beijing’s BRI-driven foreign policy strategy, by turbo-charging China’s cooperation with the ‘Global South,’ is leaving the US, at best, marginalized.

Of course, the Atlanticists are not going to just sit by and watch this happen to them.

It's game on.

Asia Times
From the Caucasus to the Balkans, China’s Silk Roads are rising
Pepe Escobar

The Global Industrial Working Class — Alejandro Reuss interviews Immanuel Ness

Alejandro Reuss: You’ve written that there are more industrial workers in the world today than ever before. Can you explain how that growth has occurred and how it has reshaped the world’s industrial working class in recent decades?

Immanuel Ness: Yes, there are two major factors. The first is the deindustrialization of the traditional industries in North America and Western Europe—garment manufacturing, electronics, automobiles and other heavy industry—and the relocation of those industries in the global South—Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia, as well as to some extent Latin America. As a consequence, the latter regions have become major centers of production and export. And as part of that, the number of manufacturing workers there has grown dramatically.

The second factor is that, within industrializing countries like India, China, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, there has been a dramatic urbanization forced by the end of productive farming in rural areas. Many of the working peasants have been moving into urban centers where there are concentrations of industry. So while many in North America and Western Europe would say “the industrial working classes is virtually dead,” I would make the case that there are in fact more industrial workers on the planet today than anytime in human history.

Roughly speaking, the industrial working class has grown over the last 50 years from somewhere around 200 million to nearly a billion people. Of course, that doesn’t include other workers outside of manufacturing. The process has been unrelenting, and is bringing a number of Marxist arguments about capitalist globalization to fruition: Workers are engaged in very significant industrial struggles in places like New Delhi, Shenzhen, Cairo, and beyond....

I would argue that there are leading imperialist powers—the United States, especially—that engage in economic forms of imperialism and ensure that it takes place through military expansion and financialization.…

There is a form of financialization that starts from the early 20th century, when German banks were investing in Russia, and now we have this taking place on a global scale. And in many ways, it is contributing to a politicization of working-class people around the world.…

Worth reading in full. Is capitalism entering its final phase in Marxian terms as the world industrializes?

Triple Crisis
The Global Industrial Working Class

Alejandro Reuss interviews Immanuel Ness, professor of political science at Brooklyn College the City University of New York and the author of Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class (Pluto Press, 2015)

C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh — And Now, Price Deflation in India and China?

 Obviously other factors must also be at play in the ongoing producer price deflation in both countries. It may be that the features that have operated to cause price deflation in the advanced economies – inadequate effective demand because of suppression of wage incomes and continuing emphasis on fiscal consolidation, with very loose monetary policies no longer working as stimulus – are also operated to at least some degree in these economies. 

Clearly, the lack of “decoupling” of these economies from the advanced economies goes beyond GDP and extends also to the behaviour of producer prices. This can only add to the concerns for policy makers in both countries, especially in India where debt default is already putting major strains on bank balance sheets.

TripleCrisis
And Now, Price Deflation in India and China?
C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh

Zero Hedge — Europe Goes "All In": Will Sanction Rosneft, Gazprom Neft And Transneft

Raising the stakes in what's beginning to look like a winner takes all game with the Global North facing off against the Global South. Has a decision been taking to go for permanent dominance now instead of letting the opponents get stronger, which many Western strategist think was the mistake after WWII in not confronting the USSR and China when the Allies were still dominant militarily and the US had "the bomb." It's pretty certain that this is the way that some geostrategists are going to be thinking about it.

Zero Hedge
Europe Goes "All In": Will Sanction Rosneft, Gazprom Neft And Transneft
Tyler Durden

RT — Australian PM hints Putin may dropped from G20 summit over MH17 crash

The push is on to isolate and marginalize Vladimir Putin in order to effect regime change in Russia to a pro-Western regime.

Bad strategy. This puts the Global South on notice that it has no choice but to cooperate in organizing against the Global North and continued dominance of neoliberalism, neoconservatism, neo-imperialism, and neocolonialism. 

Demographically, the Global North cannot win this in the long run. Worse, it pits Caucasians against the rest of the races. Talk about a recipe for disaster.

RT

Australian PM hints Putin may dropped from G20 summit over MH17 crash

Zachary Keck — Why Did BRICS Back Russia on Crimea?

The BRICS’s support for Russia shows the Western-dominated post-Cold War order is eroding....

The BRICS and other non-Western powers’ support for Russia also suggests that forging anything like an international order will be extremely difficult, given the lack of shared principles to act as a foundation. Although the West generally celebrated the fact that the UN General Assembly approved the resolution condemning the Crimea referendum, the fact that 69 countries either abstained or voted against it should be a wake-up call. It increasingly appears that the Western dominated post-Cold War era is over. But as of yet, no new order exists to replace it.

The Diplomat

Why Did BRICS Back Russia on Crimea?
Zachary Keck

Tim Johnson — Latin America becoming fertile ground for online university courses

The world of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, is roiling academia at universities in the United States, where they are labeled either the future or the downfall of higher education.

A few superstar professors pull in upward of 10,000 students around the globe into free, or nearly free, courses. But others perceive the courses as a dangerous fad that will shrink faculties, turn existing professors into glorified teaching assistants and replace meaningful classroom discussion with message boards and student-led forums.

Lost in the debate about online learning, however, is its impact in far-flung regions of the globe, places like the electrical engineering department at the University of El Salvador and the modest walk-up apartment of the Palacios family, above the medical clinic of Dr. Roberto Palacios Navarro, Roosemberth’s father.

“At school, he hardly studies. He just shows up and takes the exams,” Palacios said of his son. But it isn’t for lack of ambition. “He wants to learn,” he said.
Added the son: “I don’t like simple things.”

McClatchyDC
Latin America becoming fertile ground for online university courses
Tim Johnson — McClatchy Foreign Staff

Hunter Stuart — Evo Morales, President Of Bolivia, Says He Will Sue The U.S. For 'Crimes Against Humanity'

US losing Latin America and the Global South? Morales won't win his case, but it is going to get global publicity, especially in the Global South. If the US loses the Global South, there will be huge political and economic consequences for Americans and the West in the 21st century as the Pax Americana ends and American Empire winds down with America no longer considered the beacon of freedom and democracy, upon which US soft power depends. The US cannot continue to exercise global hegemony with hard power alone.

The Hufffington Post
Evo Morales, President Of Bolivia, Says He Will Sue The U.S. For 'Crimes Against Humanity'
Hunter Stuart

Al Jazeera — BRICS nations fail to launch new bank

Leaders from the so-called BRICS group of emerging nations have failed to launch a much-anticipated new development bank to rival Western-dominated institutions like the World Bank.
After holding talks in the South African port city of Durban on Wednesday, leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and host South Africa agreed in principle to create a joint infrastructure lender but said further talks were necessary to finalise the plan.

Al Jazeera
BRICS nations fail to launch new bank

Interesting headline. Talk about prejudicing the case. The first meeting is a "failure" when the parties agree in principle but details need to be hammered out, like where the institution will be based and what the contributions to capital will be? The institution doesn't even have a name yet.

The real new world order emerging — from the global south

Reports on the premature death of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been greatly exaggerated. Western corporate media is flooded with such nonsense, perpetrated in this particular case by the head of Morgan Stanley Investment Management. 

Reality spells otherwise. The BRICS meet in Durban, South Africa, this Tuesday to, among other steps, create their own credit rating agency, sidelining the dictatorship - or at least "biased agendas", in New Delhi's diplomatic take - of the Moody's/Standard & Poor's variety. They will also further advance the idea of the BRICS Development Bank, with a seed capital of US$50 billion (only structural details need to be finalized), helping infrastructure and sustainable development projects.
Crucially, the US and the European Union won't have stakes in this Bank of the South - a concrete alternative, pushed especially by India and Brazil, to the Western-dominated World Bank and the Bretton Woods system....

The huge political and economic differences among BRICS members are self-evident. But as they evolve as a group, the point is not whether they should be protecting the global economy from the now non-stop crisis of advanced casino capitalism.

The point is that, beyond measures to facilitate mutual trade, their actions are indeed becoming increasingly political - as the BRICS not only deploy their economic clout but also take concrete steps leading towards a multipolar world. Brazil is particularly active in this regard.
Inevitably, the usual Atlanticist, Washington consensus fanatics - myopically - can see nothing else besides the BRICS "demanding more recognition from Western powers"....

According to the report, "for the first time in 150 years, the combined output of the developing world's three leading economies - Brazil, China and India - is about equal to the combined GDP of the long-standing industrial powers of the North".
The obvious conclusion is that, "the rise of the South is radically reshaping the world of the 21st century, with developing nations driving economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty, and propelling billions more into a new global middle class."

And bang in the middle of this process, we find an Eurasian epic; the development of the Russia-China strategic relationship....

When Putin stressed that he does not see the BRICS as a "geopolitical competitor" to the West, it was the clincher; the official denial that confirms it's true....

It goes without saying that Western elites - even mired in stagnation and bankruptcy - won't let any of their privileges go without a fierce fight.

Asia Times Online
BRICS go over the wall
Pepe Escobar

Peter Sutherland and Cecilia Malmstrom — Europe’s Immigration Challenge

It is ironic – and dangerous – that Europe’s anti-immigrant sentiment is peaking just when global structural changes are fundamentally shifting migration flows. The most important transformation is the emergence of new poles of attraction. Entrepreneurs, migrants with Ph.Ds, and those simply with a desire to improve their lives are flocking to places like Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, China, and India. In the coming decade, most of the growth in migration will take place in the global south. The West is no longer the Promised Land, placing at risk Europe’s ability to compete globally.

Read it at Project Syndicate
Europe’s Immigration Challenge
by Peter Sutherland, former Director General of the GATT and the WTO, and Cecilia Malmstrom is EU Commissioner for Home Affairs and former Swedish Minister for Europe.