DNA-testing company 23andMe soared in the early cash session in New York on news that Anne Wojcicki, the CEO, plans to take the struggling company private after three years on the public markets. The company once sported a $6 billion valuation and has since collapsed to $235 million. 

Wojcicki’s big announcement was made in a public filing late Wednesday. The filing stated that she “is considering making a proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of 23andMe.” 

The filing noted that she would reject any other buyer taking over the company. Her ownership stake is around 20% of the total outstanding shares. This means she controls 49.99% of the company’s voting power, making it impossible for anyone to purchase the human genetics and biopharmaceutical company. 

Around 1030 ET, shares of 23andMe jumped 48% to 53 cents a share. On Wednesday, they were at a record low of $0.36. 

Bloomberg data shows 32 million shares, or 10.77% of the float, is short. This leaves room for squeezes. 

In 2021, 23andMe went public through a special-purpose acquisition company sponsored by Virgin Group founder Richard Branson. At the time, the company’s value jumped to $5.8 billion. By 2022, the valuation plunged to as low as $1 billion. 

“As sales of its DNA testing kits have slowed in recent years, 23andMe has pivoted to offering subscription products in hopes of creating repeat customers for its consumer business,” Bloomberg pointed out. 

There were fears earlier this year that 23andMe would be sold to an overseas PE firm. Thankfully, this has not happened because it would be a national security risk. 

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

Those who involved themselves in Bitcoin markets after 2017 encountered a different operation and ideal than those who came before. Today, no one much cares about what came before, speaking of 2010-2016. They are only watching the upward price momentum and are thrilled for the increase in the asset valuation of their portfolio. 

Gone is the talk of separating money and state, of a market-based means of exchange, of genuine revolution that would extend from money to the whole of politics the world over. And gone is the talk of changing the operation of money as a means of changing the prospects for freedom itself. The enthusiasts around Bitcoin have different goals in mind. 

And during this entire period, the exact time when this digital asset might have protected multitudes of users and businesses from rapacious inflation growing out of the worst and most globalized experience of corporatist statism in modern history, made possible due to the money monopoly of central banks that funded the operation, the original asset that carries the symbol BTC was systematically diverted from its original purpose. 

The ideal was nicely articulated by F.A. Hayek in 1974. Much of his career as an economist was spent arguing for sound monetary policies. At every important turning point, he faced the same problem: governments and the institutions they serve did not want sound money. They wanted to manipulate the currency system to benefit elites, not the public. Finally, he refined his argument. He concluded that the only real answer was a complete divorce of money and power. 

“Nothing can be more welcome than depriving government of its power over money and so stopping the apparently irresistible trend towards an accelerating increase of the share of the national income it is able to claim,” he wrote in 1976 (two years after his Nobel Prize).

“If allowed to continue, this trend would in a few years bring us to a state in which governments would claim 100 per cent of all resources—and would in consequence become literally ‘totalitarian’.”

“It may turn out that cutting off government from the tap which supplies it with additional money for its use may prove as important in order to stop the inherent tendency of unlimited government to grow indefinitely, which is becoming as menacing a danger to the future of civilisation as the badness of the money it has supplied.”

The problem in achieving this ideal was technical and institutional. So long as state money worked, there was no real drive to change it. Certainly the push would never come from the ruling classes who benefit from the present system, which is precisely where every old argument for the gold standard faltered. How to get around this problem?

In 2009, a pseudonymous developer or group released a white paper, written in language for computer scientists and not economists, for a peer-to-peer system of digital cash. For most economists at the time, its functioning was opaque and not quite believable. The proof came in the functioning itself which unfolded over the course of 2010. To summarize, it deployed a distributed ledger, double-key cryptography, and a protocol of fixed quantity to release a new form of money that operationally tied together money itself and a settlement system in one. 

In other words, Bitcoin achieved the ideal about which Hayek could only dream. The key to making it all possible was the distributed ledger itself, which relied on the internet to globalize the nodes of operation, bringing a new form of accountability we had never seen in operation before. The notion of melding together the means of payment plus the mechanisms of settlement on this scale was something that had previously not been possible. And yet there it was, earning its way into the market with ever increasing valuations made possible by the distributed ledger. 

So, yes, I became an early enthusiast, writing hundreds of articles, even publishing a book in 2015 called Bit By Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.

I could not have known it at the time, but those were in fact the last days of the ideal and just before the protocol came to be controlled by a consolidated group of developers who jettisoned entirely the idea of peer-to-peer cash to turn it into a high-earning digital security, not a competitor with state-based money but rather an asset designed not to use but hold with third-party intermediaries controlling access. 

We saw all this unfold in real time and many of us were aghast. All that is left to us is to tell the story, which has not been done in a complete form until now. Roger Ver’s new book Hijacking Bitcoin does the job. It is a book for the ages simply because it lays out all the facts of the case and lets readers come to their own conclusion.

I was honored to write the foreword, which follows:

The story you will read here is of tragedy, the chronicle of an emancipationist monetary technology subverted to other ends. It’s a painful read, to be sure, and the first time this story has been told with this much detail and sophistication. We had the chance to free the world. That chance was missed, likely hijacked and subverted.

Those of us who watched Bitcoin from the earliest days saw with fascination how it gained traction and seemed to offer a viable alternative path for the future of money. At long last, after thousands of years of government corruption of money, we finally had a technology that was untouchable, sound, stable, democratic, incorruptible, and a fulfillment of the vision of the great champions of freedom from all history. At last, money could be liberated from state control and thus achieve economic rather than political goals—prosperity for everyone versus war, inflation, and state expansion.

That was the vision in any case. Alas, it did not happen. Bitcoin adoption is lower today than it was five years ago. It is not on a trajectory of final victory but on a different path to gradually increase in price for its earlier adopters. In short, the technology was betrayed by small changes that hardly anyone understood at the time.

I certainly did not. I had been playing with Bitcoin for a few years and was mainly astounded at the speed of settlement, the low cost of transactions, and the ability for anyone without a bank to send or receive it without financial mediation. That’s a miracle about which I wrote rhapsodically at the time. I held a CryptoCurrency Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in October 2013 that focused on the intellectual and technical side of things. It was among the first national conferences on the topic, but even at this event, I noticed two sides coalescing: those who believed in monetary competition and those whose sole commitment was to one protocol.

My first clue that something had gone wrong came two years later, when for the first time I saw that the network had been seriously clogged. Transaction fees soared, settlement slowed to a crawl, and vast numbers of on-ramps and off-ramps were closing due to high compliance costs. I did not understand. I reached out to a number of experts who explained to me about a quiet civil war that had developed within the crypto world. The so-called “maximalists” had turned against widespread adoption. They liked the high fees. They did not mind the slow settlements. And many were involving themselves in the dwindling number of crypto exchanges that were still in operation thanks to a government crackdown. 

At the same time, new technologies were becoming available that vastly improved the efficiency and availability of exchange in fiat dollars. They included Venmo, Zelle, CashApp, FB payments, and many others besides, in addition to smartphone attachments and iPads that enabled any merchant of any size to process credit cards. These technologies were completely different from Bitcoin because they were permission-based and mediated by financial companies. But to users, they seemed great and their presence in the marketplace crowded out the use case of Bitcoin at the very time that my beloved technology had become an unrecognizable version of itself. 

The forking of Bitcoin into Bitcoin Cash occurred two years later, in 2017, and it was accompanied by great cries and screams as if something horrible was happening. In fact, all that was happening was a mere restoration of the original vision of the founder Satoshi Nakamoto. He believed with the monetary historians of the past that the key to turning any commodity into widespread money was adoption and use. It’s impossible to even imagine conditions under which any commodity could take on the form of money without a viable and marketable use case. Bitcoin Cash was an attempt to restore that. 

The time to ramp up adoption of this new technology was 2013-2016, but that moment was squeezed in two directions: the deliberate throttling of the ability of the technology to scale and the push of new payment systems to crowd out the use case. As this book demonstrates, by late 2013, Bitcoin had already been targeted for capture. By the time Bitcoin Cash came to the rescue, the network had changed its entire focus from use to holding what we have and building second-layer technologies to deal with the scaling issues. Here we are in 2024 with an industry struggling to find its way within a niche while the dreams of a “to-the-moon” price are fading into memory.

This is the book that had to be written. It is a story of a missed opportunity to change the world, a tragic tale of subversion and betrayal. But it is also a hopeful story of efforts we can make to ensure that the hijacking of Bitcoin is not the final chapter. There is still the chance for this great innovation to liberate the world but the path from here to there turns out to be more circuitous than any of us ever imagined. 

Roger Ver does not blow his own trumpet in this book, but he truly is a hero of this saga, not only deeply knowledgeable of the technologies but also a man who has clung to an emancipatory vision of Bitcoin from the earliest days through the present. I share his commitment to the idea of peer-to-peer currency for the masses, alongside a competitive marketplace for free-enterprise monies. This is a hugely important documentary history, and the polemic alone will challenge anyone who believes himself to be on the other side. Regardless, this book had to exist, however painful. It’s a gift to the world.

Does this story seem familiar? Indeed it does. We’ve seen this trajectory in sector after sector. Institutions born and built by ideals are later converted by various forces of power, access, and nefarious intent into something else entirely. We’ve seen this happen to digital tech in particular and the Internet generally, not to mention medicine, public health, science, liberalism, and so much else. The story of Bitcoin follows the same trajectory, a seemingly immaculate conception turned toward a different purpose, and serving again as a reminder that on this side of heaven, there will never be an institution or idea immune to compromise and corruption. 

While we’re sure social media sites are busy moderating “misinformation” once again ahead of the all-important 2024 election, one influencer is using Instagram to give his followers tips on sneaking into Britain and making £6,000 a month working illegally in the drug trade.

‘You know there are a lot of brothers and sisters in hardship. Can you show how to go there unnoticed, without being detected? How do they do it?’ he says in one of his video clips. 

Kozak Braci, an Albanian social media influencer with over 500,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, has hosted live tours of cannabis farms and offered insights into profiting from criminal activities in the UK during his streams, according to a new profile from the Daily Mail. 

The Daily Mail reported that one image captures Braci standing beside a man in a black SUV, with a house displaying the Union flag in the background. In another photo, the influencer, whose chest and right arm are adorned with tattoos of AK-47s, sports a Chelsea shirt in front of a red Audi.

Braci, who boasts that he earns £25,000 a month from his social media platforms, frequently posts pictures of himself with luxury cars and designer items.

“It’s great to stay in the cannabis house. I can live there without a problem,” he tells his followers. 

Graham Wettone, an ex-Met Police officer, reacted to the videos shown to him by characterizing them as glorifying drug production in the UK and enticing would-be criminals to come to Britain.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that the Home Office intends to pay Albanian influencers £100,000 to discourage their followers from entering Britain illegally. This modern twist on the public information film aims to reach groups susceptible to traffickers’ falsehoods. The initiative, devised by Cass Horowitz of ‘Brand Rishi’ fame, has been criticized by activists as ineffective ‘toy town tinkering.’

A United Nations report indicates that Albanian criminals now dominate the UK’s cocaine market, importing the drug via south-east England’s ports with the aid of violent European gangs. Among these, the Hellbanianz gang from East London openly flaunts its criminal endeavors on social media.

Additionally, in the first four months of the year, 80 Albanian migrants were collectively sentenced to 130 years in prison.

Tik Tok commented: “TikTok works closely with UK law enforcement, the National Crime Agency and organisations such as STOP THE TRAFFIK to fight this industry-wide issue, and our steadfast efforts helped reduce the number of small boat crossings last year, according to Border Officials. We continue to strictly maintain a zero tolerance approach to human exploitation and proactively find over 95% of content we remove for breaking these rules.”

Meta responded: “We have removed the violating content brought to our attention. Buying, selling or soliciting drugs is not allowed on our platforms; our teams use a mix of technology and human review to remove this content as quickly as possible, and we work with the police and youth organisations to get better at detection.”

Fears of a luxury slowdown are materializing. New data from the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry shows that exports of luxury timepieces tumbled the most since 2020 as demand crashed in Asia. 

Swiss watch exports dropped in March. Their value fell by 16.1% compared with the same month in 2023 to 2 billion Swiss francs ($2.2 billion). Cratering demand in China and Hong Kong caused most of the decline. Weakness was reported across all six main markets. 

Exports to mainland China, the second-biggest market for Swiss watches, plunged 42%, the worst decline since March 2020, when the global economy began seizing up due to government-enforced lockdowns. Shipments to Hong Kong tumbled even more, down 44%. 

“The negative trend is even worse than we expected and the decline in China is really worrying and probably indicates that inventories in the region were once again too high,” Jean-Philippe Bertschy, an analyst at Vontobel in Switzerland, told Bloomberg. 

Faltering demand for Swiss watches comes one day after LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world’s largest luxury group, controlled by the family of billionaire Bernard Arnault, reported that “uncertain geopolitical and economic environment” has weighed on luxury spending. 

LVMH shares in Paris are 10.5% below the peak put in early last year. 

For a broader view of global luxury stocks, the MSCI World Textiles, Apparel & Luxury Goods Index also shows the index well below (-21%) the peak put in at the end of 2021. 

A combination of China’s slower-than-expected economic recovery and generational highs in interest rates across the Western world are some of the reasons why a global slowdown in the luxury market has materialized. 

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

This is credible enough of a reason to justify a conventional NATO intervention in defense of Israel without giving Ukraine grounds to claim that there are double standards at play.

Ukraine became jealous like never before after NATO members helped shoot down Iranian missiles en route to Israel earlier this month yet won’t lift a finger to help Ukraine shoot down Russian ones.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that “the difficulty with what you suggest (about the UK shooting down Russian missiles) is if you want to avoid an escalation in terms of a wider European war, I think the one thing you do need to avoid is NATO troops directly engaging Russian troops.”

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby responded to a similar question by saying “Look: different conflicts, different airspace, different threat picture. And [President Joe Biden] has been clear from the beginning [of the Ukraine hostilities] that the US is not going to be involved in that conflict in a combat role.” Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andrey Yermak didn’t buy their explanations, however, and demanded that the West start shooting down Russian missiles just like they shot down Iranian ones.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg tried allaying Ukraine’s jealousy by declaring that “if allies face a choice between meeting NATO capability targets and providing more aid to Ukraine, my message is clear: send more to Ukraine.”

Even though he’s telling members to prioritize Ukraine’s interests over their own national ones, Kiev isn’t expected to calm down since it still knows that NATO won’t come to its rescue in this respect like the bloc just did for Israel.

That’s where EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s nifty excuse comes in. As he explained, “Iran’s attacks flew over air bases of the armies of France, the US, the UK and Jordan. They have gone over their bases, which then acted in self-defense. There are no air bases of the UK, or the US, much less Jordan of course, on Ukrainian territory or in the territory Russian missiles fly over. Therefore, the same answer cannot be given because the circumstances are not the same.”

This is credible enough of a reason to justify a conventional NATO intervention in defense of Israel without giving Ukraine grounds to claim that there are double standards at play.

The only way that Kiev could try flipping the tables is in the far-fetched event that it officially admits the presence of NATO troops on its territory, which Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski described as an “open secret” last month, and pinpoints their bases to prove that the bloc does nothing as Russian missiles fly overhead.

That is extremely unlikely to happen, however, since it would represent a major security risk. Ukrainian officials might still hint that this is the case and perhaps leak vague information about it into their national media and/or to international media via their “agents of influence”, but they’re almost certainly not going to cross the red line of disclosing specific details that could put those troops at risk. Borrell, for all his professional faults, knows this and thus crafted his nifty excuse that inspired this analysis.

Giving credit where it’s due, that was a wise move since his explanation is consistent enough to dispel Ukraine’s complaints about NATO’s double standards and consequent perception of being less important to the bloc than Israel is, both of which are true but can now be more plausibly denied. Ukraine should accept that NATO isn’t going to treat it and Israel as equals, with the only consolation being if some members send it more Patriot systems, but that’s not the same as them shooting down Russian missiles.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via ReMix News,

A Congolese migrant who had his deportation from the U.K. blocked by an airline’s cabin crew and previously campaigned outside a detention center with a sign that read, “Migrants are not criminals,” has pleaded guilty to raping a 15-year-old girl.

Anicet Mayela entered his guilty plea at Oxford Crown Court last Friday for one count of rape of a former economics student.

The court heard how there was a high level of “dangerousness” surrounding the attack, which is understood to have taken place between Dec. 1 and Dec. 31 last year.

The Congolese national had been living in Britain since 2004 when he paid smugglers to help him escape his country of origin where he claimed he was being persecuted.

Several attempts by the U.K. Home Office to deport him were thwarted by feigned injuries and legal challenges, including an incident back in May 2005 when a planned deportation flight was prevented from taking off by Air France cabin crew who claimed public officials had broken Mayela’s hand after handcuffing him.

With the aid of left-wing charities, including the Institute of Race Relations, and immigration lawyers, the Congolese national won leave to remain in Britain later that year after successfully arguing a return to his homeland would be a violation of his human rights.

Mayela used the opportunity to actively campaign against the deportation of illegal migrants, participating in a demonstration near his detention center in Oxford where he spoke to the BBC and hung a sign around his neck that read, “Migrants are not criminals.”

“I am here to support my friends. I have been inside here, and at Colnbrook,” he told the U.K.’s public broadcaster from outside the detention center.

On Friday, Mayela was ordered to remain in custody while a pre-sentencing report was prepared.

He is scheduled to return for sentencing on May 10.

Read more here…

Authored by Peter Hanseler via VoiceOfRussia.com,

The Western media are prioritizing the Ukraine conflict, the green revolution and the woke revolution. In the shadow of this media coverage, BRICS is changing the world.

We bring you the latest figures and place them in the current geopolitical environment. – An analysis.

Introduction

One of the main topics of this blog is BRICS. We have written numerous articles, followed and analyzed the development of this organization. Significantly, the first independent post on this blog was dedicated to BRICS on November 18, 2022 “The unstoppable rise of the East“.

Our last dedicated BRICS-only article from 24 September 2023 “BRICS will change the world – slowly” gave an overview of the development and summarized the results of the BRICS summit in South Africa in August 2023. This article was published by ZeroHedge, the GloomBoomDoom report by Dr. Marc Faber and Weltwoche (print and online).

From the density of our coverage, it is clear that we ascribe paramount importance to BRICS for the geopolitical and geo-economic development of the world. Based on the facts, we have come to the conclusion that BRICS will change the world more than all other developments of the last 100 years put together. The developments around BRICS have already triggered a tectonic shift in the geopolitical balance of power; the Ukraine conflict and the accelerating crisis in the Middle East are merely pieces of the mosaic by comparison.

The Western media are setting their priorities differently and focusing on topics that we believe are of lesser importance: Mortal enemy Russia, wokeness and green ideology.

Reporting on BRICS in the West, if it takes place at all, is limited to portraying BRICS either as an instrument of China to achieve world power – as the Financial Times put it,

«How the BRICS nations risk becoming satellites of China»

FINANCIAL TIMES – 26 JULY 2023

or to trivialize the success of BRICS – according to the NZZ,

“We explain in the video why this extension only promises limited success.”

NZZ, 14 DECEMBER 2023

Preliminary remarks on the figures

We proceed as we always do and develop a fact-based foundation for a discussion.

Membership doubled as of January 1

Since January 1, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Ethiopia have joined the existing members (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as new members.

Argentina not participating

In August 2023, Argentina was invited to become the sixth member. However, the new president of Argentina, Javier Milei, decided not to accept this invitation and to rely on the USA and Donald Trump to rescue his economy.

It is impossible to judge at this point whether this decision will prove to be the right one. For the second largest country in South America, which was once one of the richest countries in the world, it is to be hoped that Milei can pull the cart out of the deep mire. Milei is fighting against the establishment in Argentina, which has driven the country economically to the wall. These former rulers are serious opponents who are fighting for sinecures that Milei must wrest from them if he wants to save Argentina. We hope that Javier Milei can prevail and wish him every success and good luck. The first signs of success appear to be emerging: The country was able to report a positive budget for the first time last month. It seems to be heading in the right direction.

Saudi Arabia

According to Western media reports, Saudi Arabia is not yet fully on board. South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor is reported to have told Reuters that “Saudi Arabia has not yet responded to the invitation to join BRICS. It is still being considered”.

Saudi Arabia, or rather the ruling Saud family, has been an ally of the USA since the end of the Second World War, and this relationship has been further strengthened since the agreement of the ” Petrodollar” in 1974.

Since President Biden has been in power, the relationship with the USA has suffered massively, while at the same time cooperation with China and Russia has strengthened to an unprecedented level.

The problem that Saudi Arabia now has is the gigantic investments that the state and private individuals have made, particularly in the USA and the UK. Government investments in the USA alone amount to over USD 35 billion and investments in the UK are said to be around USD 75 billion. Due to the geopolitical situation in the world and the West’s aggressive sanctions policy, the concerns of Saudi Arabia that these investments could be confiscated in the event of a BRICS accession are definitely justified. As Saudi Arabia is important to BRICS and China has overtaken the US as Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner, we expect Saudi Arabia to join BRICS as soon as China might make commitments to the Saudis in the event of Western expropriation.

BRICS-10 in numbers

Map

Dark green BRICS until August 2023 – light green – the new BRICS members – Source: VoicefromRussia

Numbers

In our figures, we compare the BRICS-10 with the G7 and the world as a whole to give you a feel for the ratios. The parameters we use are population, GDP (adjusted for purchasing power), oil production, gas production and gold production.

We show the gross national product adjusted for purchasing power. If you use the US dollar as a measure of GDP, the economic power of a country is distorted: if you want to measure financial strength realistically, it makes a big difference whether, for example, a Big Mac in US dollars costs twice as much in one place as elsewhere. The so-called Big Mac Index is reason enough to use purchasing power-adjusted figures when comparing GDP figures. The reason why Western media use the unadjusted figures is pure marketing to disguise the devaluation of the US dollar and make it appear stronger than it is.

Charts

Graphical representation of the figures – Source: VoicefromRussia.

Interim result

All factors show that the BRICS 10 far outstrip the G7 and it seems incomprehensible that the West is simply suppressing this fact. A look beneath the surface reveals facts that reinforce the impression of the bare figures.

Assessment of these figures

Oil production

The following additional facts should be taken into consideration when evaluating the oil production figures:

Firstly, although the USA is still the largest oil producer in the world, accounting for around 18% of global production, it also consumes the most oil, with a share of over 20%. This means that the USA is currently not even able to cover its own consumption. This fact alone is a compelling reason for the US to pressure Saudi Arabia not to join BRICS.

Secondly, the major oil-producing members of BRICS have a great deal of influence or even control over OPEC. As BRICS thus also controls OPEC and therefore controls the price and distribution of a large proportion of oil, BRICS can be said to have an (indirect) monopoly position.

Thirdly, the production costs for US oil are around 2.5 times higher than the production costs for Saudi oil.

These factors therefore further strengthen the BRICS’ position of power with regard to oil.

Natural gas

With regard to natural gas, it should be noted that with Iran’s accession to BRICS, the two largest natural gas producers in the world are joint members of BRICS: Russia and Iran.

The largest non-BRICS gas producer is Qatar, which is (still) allied with the USA. BRICS is therefore also a real center of power when it comes to natural gas.

Gold

With regard to gold, it should be briefly mentioned that China and Russia are number 1 and 2 in global gold production respectively. I mention gold here because there is a good chance that gold will again play an important role in future monetary systems at some point – more on this below.

Russia holds the BRICS chairmanship in 2024

Over 220 BRICS conferences will be held in Russia over the course of 2024. The topics are diverse: science, high technology, healthcare, environmental protection, culture, sport, youth exchange and civil society.

President Putin’s statements at the beginning of the year at the opening event of BRICS 2024 in Moscow were interesting. He mentioned several times the closer cooperation between the members on security issues. It seems that BRICS will therefore not only focus on economic aspects, but also on security-related aspects more and more. The apparent coordination of the BRICS states in connection with the Middle East conflict at the UN in New York clearly indicates close cooperation on non-economic issues.

Various non-official sources have reported that the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) is moving closer to BRICS and may even merge with it. In addition to China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Iran has also been a member of the SCO since July 2023.

This is extremely important due to the heightened geopolitical tensions and the two major conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. If these two organizations were to merge, there would be a new counterweight to NATO. NATO is already increasingly being characterized by experts as a mere chattering club, particularly due to its performance in the Ukraine conflict, which was not a success. As a result, NATO has almost lost its threatening potential. If the BRICS-SCO merger becomes a reality, NATO would finally degenerate into an empty shell.

Formal applications for admission – BRICS+

Candidates

Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Kuwait, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Senegal, Thailand, Venezuela, Vietnam and Belarus have formally applied for membership.

Green: BRICS 10 (light green Saudi Arabia) – Yellow: formal membership applications

Figures

Charts

Assessment

It should be noted in this list that the formal applicants will probably not all be admitted in 2024. This illustration shows the maximum and the broad formal interest in this organization. The applications for admission from some countries harbor great potential for conflict with the USA.

In my opinion, the greatest potential for conflict from an American perspective is the possible accession of Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela. Mexico’s membership would be seen by the USA in the same way as the Soviet stationing of nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 – “enemy on the doorstep of the USA”. This is probably also the reason why it was reported on March 3 that Mexico had not submitted a formal application for membership. Fear is breathing down the necks of the Mexicans and the USA is exerting pressure in the background.

In Venezuela, the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, the US has been trying for years to overthrow President Maduro and install a puppet.
Last August, it was not enough to gain admission and the USA will do everything in its power to prevent this oil giant from joining. However, the USA has a losing hand with the Venezuelan population, as it is imposing sanctions on the beleaguered country to bring about a collapse and accepting that the Venezuelan people are suffering from hunger.

The list of formal applications for admission could therefore change considerably between now and October, when the decisions on who will be invited to Kazan are made. What is certain, however, is that the G7 – especially the United States – is devoting huge energies to slowing down the development of BRICS. In my opinion, however, this organization is already too powerful to be weakened by the West.

BRICS turns its back on the US dollar

The petrodollar – US dollar as a reserve currency

The greatest danger of this ever stronger community is to the USA. We have discussed many times that the Petrodollar is the real foundation of American supremacy and not the American armed forces.

It is of existential importance for the USA that international trade, especially commodity trade, is conducted in US dollars. We explain why.

The US dollar as a global trading currency means that practically all countries have to hold US dollars in reserve in order to be able to settle their trade invoices. This makes the US dollar a reserve currency.

However, central banks do not hold the US dollar in cash, but in US government securities in order to earn interest. This makes the world’s central banks the biggest buyers of US government securities, regardless of whether they think they are a good investment. As a result, the US can refinance its debt on terms that are not based on the strength of the US economy, but on these systemic purchases. French President Giscard d’Estaing rightly described the petrodollar in the 1970s as an “exorbitant privilege”, as it leads to the automatic refinancing of the USA.

Abuse of this exorbitant privilege

However, the USA has been abusing this privilege for decades. Whenever a country implements something that the US does not like, it is cut off from the US dollar. The US can implement this without any problems, as all US dollar transactions go through the US. The consequences for the country concerned are catastrophic, as it is effectively banned from the commodities trade.

Theft of Russian central bank reserves

However, by blocking the foreign currency reserves of the Russian central bank in March 2023, the US has overstepped the mark, because now the entire Global South is afraid to hold US dollars, as they may suffer the same fate. Although every legal expert declares that the freeze was already carried out without an international legal basis, the West is about to go one step further and prepare the confiscation. This is the unequivocal statement made by Janet Yellen on February 27:

“I also believe it is necessary and urgent for our coalition to find a way to unlock the value of these immobilized assets to support Ukraine’s continued resistance and long-term reconstruction.”

JANET YELLEN AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE BEFORE THE G20 ON FEBRUARY 27, 2024

The EU under Ms. von der Leyen and even exponents in Switzerland are preparing to put this planned raid into practice and thus not only continue to block these funds, but to steal them.

De-dollarization is already here

Until 2022, Russia conducted 80% of its trade in USD and EUR, 50% in US dollars. Today it is only 13%.

In the same period, Russia’s trade activity in roubles and yuan rose from 3% to 34% for both currencies.

These figures are clearly the result of the sanctions against Russia. However, it is a declared goal of all BRICS countries to no longer trade with each other in US dollars, but in the respective local currencies.

If you look at the current size of BRICS – 36% of global GDP – this will herald a tectonic development away from the US dollar; if you add the formal applicants, this figure rises to 42% of global GDP.

According to Bloomberg, the use of the US dollar as a reserve currency is collapsing.

Source: Bloomberg

Consequences for the US

De-dollarization poses an existential threat to the USA, as it will result in the loss of buyers of US government bonds and thus the USA’s ability to refinance its highly deficit-ridden national budget. As US government bonds are a product like any other, whose price is determined by supply and demand, a collapse in demand also leads to a collapse in the price of US government bonds. As the interest rate on bonds moves inversely to the price, the interest rate on bonds and therefore inflation will rise.

Debt in the USA is currently accelerating at an unprecedented rate. Debt currently amounts to over USD 34 trillion. It will soon take just one month to accumulate the next trillion in debt – apocalyptic. When President Reagan was in power, the total US debt amounted to less than one trillion. It therefore took just under 200 years to build up the first trillion in debt; soon this amount of debt will be a reality within a month.

One of the reasons for this is that the USA will already have to pay one trillion US dollars (1,000,000,000,000) in interest payments on its own debt this year alone. This is more than the USA spends on its entire military expenditure, which is gigantic in itself, as the USA spends more money on its military than the next 13 countries combined.

Source: Wikipedia

If the willingness of the countries of the Global South, and in particular the BRICS members, to buy decreases, the USA will sooner or later find itself in an existentially dangerous situation.

BRICS’ own currency

Trading currency

There is a lot of talk about a new currency that would serve as a payment and financing instrument for the BRICS. There were voices – including James Rickards – who were convinced last August that a BRICS single currency would be created as early as 2023. We were skeptical about this timing and took the view that it would take longer, and we were right. However, this does not mean that James Rickards was wrong, he was just a little early.

We have seen above that the BRICS countries are in fact hardly using the US dollar among themselves any more, instead using their local currencies.

Use of local currencies

The consequence of this is that the BRICS members accumulate currencies of their trading partners over the course of a trading year if they sell more goods than they buy. Example: Russia and India use Roubles and Rupees in their trade. Since Russia sells more to India (especially raw materials) than India sells to Russia, the Russians are sitting on large amounts of Rupees at the end of the year. This problem arises regularly throughout the BRICS region among the various members in bilateral trade when deficits or surpluses build up.

Settlement with gold

I believe that the bilateral use of national currencies will continue for the time being, but that the first step will be to look for a mechanism to balance these surpluses or deficits at the end of a trading year.

Gold is an obvious choice here, not gold calculated in US dollars, Rupees or Roubles, but gold in units of weight. The trade differences at the end of a year or month would be settled in gold (kg or tons). Whether in this case the gold is actually physically delivered or merely recorded in a ledger depends on the trust between the parties. I also assume that in such a case, gold warehouses would be opened in various locations in the BRICS region, where the member countries would store their gold and their holdings would be confirmed by a BRICS auditing company.

A final issue would then be to determine the exchange rate of the local currencies. This seems to be one of the major sticking points so far.

Indications that the trend is towards gold

Evidence always comes from the facts. The world produces around 3,000 tons of gold per year.

According to the World Gold Council, central banks have been net buyers of gold since 2010 and the trend in gold purchases has increased steadily in recent years.

The Chinese bought the most gold (225 tons).

Caution is advised with regard to the official reported gold reserves.

It is very possible – and in my opinion probable – that the gold reserves of China and Russia are much larger than officially reported.

It is clear that central banks are buying more gold than they have since the 1960s. This is an indication that they are not only arming themselves against inflation, but also for the settlement of commodities.

It will be interesting to see what exactly will happen this year, but I assume that at the next BRICS summit, which will take place in Kazan in October, announcements will be made that will surprise the West. In addition to new members, I believe that a trade clearing system as described above or even more is within the realm of possibility.

Future of BRICS – many new members

Preliminary remarks

Looking to the future, BRICS has the potential to unite many countries of the Global South and completely eclipse the Collective West.

We have compiled the data of those countries that are interested in joining. This is for the future, but in times of geopolitical tensions and military conflicts, history teaches us that a lot can happen in a short time, especially after decades, without major changes. For this reason, we are merely providing a framework below and are not making any predictions regarding the timeline, but rather letting the figures speak for themselves and refraining from commenting at this stage.

Map

Green: BRICS 10 – Yellow: formal requests for membership – Blue: countries that show interest

Numbers

Charts

Conclusion

After BRICS became BRICS-10 last August by doubling its membership and thus far outstripping the previous economic colossus G7, the current year is set to continue in giant strides. The gap to the G7 will definitely widen further at the BRICS summit in Kazan. It is still uncertain which of the formal applicants will actually be invited and thus become new members on January 1, 2025.

In my opinion, however, one thing is already a fact: the hegemony of the USA will come to an end as a result of de-dollarization. The combination of astronomical debts, rampant new borrowing and the fact that more and more countries in the Global South are turning away from the US dollar is accelerating the demise of the hegemon that ascended to the throne in 1945 and is increasingly harming itself through its aggressive geopolitics.

No world power has ever left voluntarily and peacefully. The aggressive stance of the USA towards Russia and China and its adherence to the alliance with Israel are de facto proof of the aggressive behavior of the sick hegemon.

This attitude could lead to a war between Russia and NATO in Ukraine, where a local conflict is still taking place, all the more so as the Americans have so far been on the way to inciting France, Great Britain and Germany to wage war against the giant empire.

In the Middle East, the attitude is downright perverse. In order not to alienate the Jewish lobbies in the USA, which traditionally have a major influence on presidential elections, the USA is supporting a genocide that has been clearly designated as such by the International Court of Justice. In addition to purely electoral considerations in the USA, the USA also supports Israel in order not to lose its last power base in the Middle East. These two ends obviously justify the means – and the means is genocide. The Israeli attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon has already begun and so there is ever less in the way of a burning Middle East.

Finally, they are also trying to provoke a conflict over Taiwan – a conflict that would be fought between Chinese and would therefore be a civil war. China’s intention to reach a diplomatic agreement with Taiwan in the next 20 to 30 years – that was the plan – is in jeopardy due to Washington’s aggressive stance.

The behavior of the US is unfortunately typical – the downfall is predetermined, the facts and figures in this article prove it. Whether the smouldering fires already blazing in American society will bring about a change and whether they will be aggressive or more balanced cannot yet be guessed. We will have to wait for the presidential elections in the USA, but a lot can still happen between now and November.

For a geopolitician, the world could hardly be more exciting – but for humanity, a little less tension and pressure would be a blessing. After all, people under pressure, especially politicians, have a tendency to make big mistakes.

Authored by Richard Porter via RealClear Politics,

Jury selection is underway now complete in the case of The People of the State of New York vs. Donald J. Trump, which alleges that the defendant lied to his own check register, and lied to the general ledger of his own company, when the invoice given to him by his lawyer was paid and recorded by someone else, and that the misstatement he made to himself in his own records was done “with the intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.”

It is often noted that this is the first time that a former U.S. president is being tried for a crime, although Ulysses S. Grant may (or may not) have been cited for speeding in his carriage. The federal government chose not to prosecute Bill Clinton, who lied under oath during a sexual harassment lawsuit and then dissembled again about sex before a grand jury. Clinton lost his law license, settled the case on unfavorable terms, and was sanctioned by both federal and Arkansas state courts.

So, this is a first. And let’s be honest about who is doing what to whom and why.

The prosecutor elected in New York County of New York state indicted Trump, after Trump announced his 2024 run for president, for allegedly violating New York Penal Laws 175.05 and 175.10 seven years ago.

That local prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, is a member of the Democratic Party – and the voters who elected Bragg and from whom the jury will be chosen support the Democratic Party. In 2016, the people of New York County voted 87% for Hillary Clinton and 10% for Donald Trump, and in 2020, 87% for Joe Biden and 12% for Donald Trump. In other words, the jury pool is chosen from one of the most partisan jurisdictions in the country – a place where almost all the judges are Democrats as well.

So the Democratic prosecutor elected in the second most Democratic county in the United States will try the former Republican president and current putative Republican Party presidential nominee before a Democrat-appointed judge and a jury drawn from a pool 87% of whom voted against him (and who are being asked if they watch Fox News or listen to talk radio in the screening process).

One wonders if the law even matters. But let’s review the two statutes at issue to highlight what the law requires the prosecution to prove. First, the prosecutor must prove that Trump violated the relevant statute, which requires a finding that he falsified business records with intent to defraud – that he “makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.”

By the way, falsifying business records in the second degree is a misdemeanor, not a felony. Moreover, New York’s statute of limitations requires that misdemeanor prosecutions be commenced within two years of the commission of the act, meaning that under the last provision, this case should never have been filed.

Bragg elevated this misdemeanor into a felony by including New York  Penal Law 175.10 in the indictment – falsifying business records in the first degree. That statute reads this way:

“A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

There are other obvious difficulties with this case beyond the credibility of the witnesses (a porn star who denied any affair numerous times and a disbarred lawyer convicted of perjury).

For example, why does the entry in the check register or the general ledger matter at all? When would those entries, as opposed to the allegedly false invoices, be shown to anyone for any nefarious purpose? And were the entries even false? Was there any intent to fool someone to obtain something in making the entries – who was the target of the allegedly false entry in private books and records? If there’s no mark, no victim, then how could there be an “intent to defraud”? Defraud whom? And what is the other crime that the person making the book entry intended to commit or hide? If the other crime is not a New York crime but a federal crime, does every county prosecutor in the United States, including Alvin Bragg, have the jurisdiction to enforce an alleged federal crime indirectly through a state crime?

We shall see.

The political nature of this trial is obvious, and unprecedented in the United States. Even with irrefutable DNA evidence that Bill Clinton committed perjury, the special prosecutor declined to press criminal charges against him. In America’s recent past, prosecutors tended to exhibit a modicum of restraint. Those days are apparently gone.

I reviewed an interesting law review article of political show trials down through history, from the trial of Socrates in Athens to the famous show trials in the 1930s Stalinist Soviet Union, curious to see if I could find historical precedent for this trial.

The closest precedent is probably Anne Boleyn’s trial for adultery in 1536. It was about sex, the trial was in a hostile jurisdiction controlled by her accuser, and the whole point of the exercise was to lop off the head of someone who stood in the way of the regime’s continuity. But that’s what Democrats have lusted for since Donald Trump first arrived on the scene, isn’t it? They made no secret of it.

Richard Porter is a lawyer in Chicago and National Committeeman to the RNC from Illinois.

The FBI announced the return of several Revolutionary War-era firearms during a repatriation ceremony at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution last week, according to CBS.

These guns, stolen in the 1960s and 1970s from around Valley Forge Park, were recovered following a lengthy investigation involving the FBI’s Art Crime Team, the Department of Justice, and the Upper Merion Township Police Department. The agency is now seeking public assistance to locate more missing artifacts.

Special Agent Jake Archer, a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team said: “We were all committed to seeing justice — not just bringing the objects back home, but seeking a proper prosecution of those who perpetrated these crimes.”

CBS reported that in 2009, an investigation was triggered when a tipster informed Upper Merion Township police about a gun, suspected of being stolen, seen at a local antique show. Although it turned out not to belong to the Valley Forge collection, this tip led detectives to probe the thefts more deeply.

They collaborated with the Museum of the American Revolution, which now holds the collections previously managed by the dissolved Valley Forge Historical Society, and obtained a list of missing items.

As the investigation unfolded, Michael Corbett, Scott Corbett, and Thomas Gavin admitted to stealing items from Valley Forge Park and the Valley Forge Historical Society, according to the FBI. They assisted investigators in locating some of the stolen artifacts.

The collaborative effort expanded to include the FBI’s Art Crime Team, and together, they pursued leads on the thieves and the artifacts. Currently, the search continues for ten items: four firearms stolen on October 24, 1968, from Valley Forge and six other items taken from different locations.

The museum is actively working to refine the descriptions of the missing objects to include more distinctive details that may jog public memory, hoping that some artifacts might have been inherited unknowingly by individuals. The FBI and other involved agencies are still seeking public assistance to recover these pieces.

Scott Stephenson, president and CEO of the Museum of the American Revolution, concluded: “The fact is, the vast majority of people want to do the right thing.”

You can see photos and descriptions of the missing items on the FBI website.

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Back in February, when everyone was predicting a Fed rate cut, precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter said rates would be going up and not down.  Since that call, the 10-Year Treasury is up more than 30 basis points.  It closed today at 4.67%.  Now, Holter is still calling for higher interest rates that will coincide with higher gold and silver prices. 

Why?  It’s called inflation, and it’s not temporary. 

Holter explains, “Foreigners are backing away from buying Treasuries…”

“That is the only thing that has kept the doors open, so to speak, is the fact we are able to borrow an unlimited amount of money because we are the world reserve currency. 

Foreigners backing away from our debt is going to lead the Federal Reserve to be the buyer of last, and then, only resort.  So, you will have direct monetization between the Fed and the Treasury. 

What that will cause is a currency that declines in purchasing power.  It will decline in a big way, and it will decline rapidly. 

So, what I am describing is inflation that turns into hyperinflation.”

But that is not the end of our problems.  Holter points out, “I do think it is going to get worse, and that means interest rates will go higher, and that will put on much more pressure…”

”  We are at 4.65% on the 10-Year Treasury now.  We went from 3.75% to 4.65% (in a short amount of time).  We run through 5% on the 10-year Treasury, and everything blows up. . . . The bottom line here is we are at the end game of a fiat currency.  Young people have never experienced high inflation. . . . Where we are this time around, Paul Volker (Fed Head in 1979) was able to raise rates to 16% or 17% and crush inflation.  He was able to do that because there was not a ton of debt.  The U.S. debt back in 1980 was 35% of GDP.  Now, it is 125% plus debt to GDP.  If you raise rates to 6% to 8%, you will blow up the entire system because much of this debt was put on during the 1% to 3% interest rate time. . . . The inflation is going to push rates higher no matter what the Fed says.”

Gold is hitting one new record high after another.  It’s not greed, but fear, and Holter says:

“Big money is buying gold because they are looking for protection.”  

The other wild card is war, and Holter says, “War is a way to keep the system propped up.”

In closing, Holter contends, what you are seeing is not a series of mistakes by incompetent people.  Holter says,

“This is too stupid for it not to be the plan. . . .This is not a Republican or Democrat thing.  We are being steered directly into a brick wall because the globalists can’t take over the world with the US standing. 

They have to take the US down, and if they take the US down, so will the western financial system fall.  If that happens, the globalists can have their way.”

Bill also added that according to his former business partner, Jim Sinclair (who died in October of 2023) said at some point gold will start a rally that you never sell. 

Holter thinks the rally in gold and silver going on now is the rally Sinclair was talking about years ago.

There is much more in the 46-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter for 4.16.24.

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