Multipolarity

After the BRICS meeting in Kazan, a picture of a bundle of fake BRICS banknotes began to circulate online. Right up to a picture of Putin holding one, like a mobster holds a cigar. 

The intent was mocking. But while the end goal of the kind of paper that rappers shove into g-strings is still a long way off - in the background, the bureaucratic elves of BRICS were chipping away at the dense, dull, paperwork of a new payments system. 

This was never going to be a big bang. More like popping the world’s biggest roll of bubble wrap. 

After all, like the nuclear secrets themselves, the mechanism for making a new international method for the settlement of accounts is an obscure and technical thing. And it is eighty years since anyone tried to do it from scratch. 

Few people are better placed to be the Robert Oppenheimer to this kind of project than Warwick Powell. 

Powell is Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology and the author of "China, Trust and Digital Supply Chains”, and "Dynamics of a Zero Trust World".

At his Substack, he blogs about China, trade, and the dense subterranean plumbing network that underlies the global payments system. 

This week, he joins us…  to explain how to make a new global currency. 

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Moldova has voted to join the EU – A referendum won by less than a single percentage point. It’s less clear when the EU’s citizens get their vote on whether they want to house a very poor, seriously divided, minority-Russian post-Soviet state. Surely this is the moment the eastwards expansion runs aground in the geopolitical reality?

Meanwhile, China and India have quietly settled their long-running border dispute in the Himalayas. Far from the recent era where rival troops would run at each other with sticks - or even the notorious 2020 microwaving incident - this bizarre superpower friction seems to have been cleared up inside a few paragraphs. Is this proof positive that the BRICS are turning their attentions outwards?

Finally, the story that the Trump campaign has launched a complaint against the British Labour party has spooked the Starmer regime. Staffers campaigning for their Democratic Party cognates seemed like a cute idea and a nice holiday. But if these naive limeys wanted to know how strictly Americans take their electoral laws, they should have dropped a dime to Steve Bannon’s prison cell. Is this the greatest example yet of how the disinformation NGO blob is rapidly destroying its handlers?

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Oil might be about to fall out of bed, because of an almighty concatenation of the US elections, the Houthis in the Red Sea, the Israelis  striking Iran, and the Iranians striking The Strait of Hormuz. If it pushes toward $300 a barrel, they’ll be laying it down like Chateau Lafite. 

Meanwhile, Serbia says it might be joining the BRICS rather than entering the EU. Is it really that important to get away from Croatians? Or is it more to do with the increasingly centripetal force of its Russia relationship? Luckily, Great Power competition in the Balkans has very few bad historical connotations. 

Finally, 153 Chinese military aircraft, plus drones and warships encircled Taiwan on Monday, as the Chinese python gave its rebel province a friendly squeeze. But this is more than just another shot across the bows. It’s a clue that far from the Private Ryan D-Day fantasy, the Chinese would choose to take the island by siege.

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Something a little bit different. 

In a crowded news week, we’re bringing you only two stories - but three hosts.

Katrina, Sandy, Helene. In the annals of hurricane disasters, the latest storm is looking like it might post a new high score on the leaderboard. But the response has been little short of a new low score from the creaking US federal bureaucracy. 

Malcom Kyeyune has been tracking the fallout. He thinks it’s the perfect example of an end of empire US elite prioritising foreign aid over domestic help. 

Finally, not long after the bombs fell over Lebanon, the Iranian bombs began to fall over Tel Aviv. And no information blackout could hide the multiple online clips of strikes. 

It was fine for Hamas bottle rockets, but now that big regional players are showing their technological hand, the Iron Dome seems more like a porcelain potty. 

But beyond the he-said she-said of the Israeli wars. Is there something seismic happening here? 

Are we in fact witnessing a massive real-time evolution in the eternal balance between missile defence and missile attack?  

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Hezbollah has been decapitated. As the turban falls off Hassan Nasrallah for the final time, we’ll be assessing whether anyone will pick up the crown of Jihad they find lying in the gutter. 

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy is reportedly spending a third of his daily time planning an operation as big as D-Day to resettle displaced Lebanese in Europe. 

After the bombs fall, the refugee deluge dawns. After Ukraine, after Syria, can Europe even cope with the latest wave? And what does it say about Lammy that he can plan D-Day with only a third of his time? 

Finally, in Austria, the party that spurred Europe’s original Nazi panic, Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party, has come top of a national election, fifteen years after his death. 

This should be a moment of high moral drama. But in the year of Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, it just feels like today’s deja vu. Are we inured? And should we be? 

Of course, what with it being premium week and all, most listeners will be more like a European social democratic party - excluded. 

So get it while you can. Or get on Patreon and sign up. 

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Get us on Twitter. 

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For decades now, Germany has stood as the doughty centurion at the gates of European civilisation. A nation of recyclers, engineers, and a super-sensible, hyper-dull political class. 

But since 2022, German exceptionalism has taken a helluva beating. The country has been haemorrhaging its manufacturing base, and with it, the social consensus that lasted more than thirty years is beginning to unwind. What are the long roots of this crisis?

This week, The Lads are joined by Philipp Mattheis to discuss Germany's downward spiral. And its future.

Today, the trains literally do not run on time. So with the rise of the AfD, will the country soon hire a leader who can make those trains run on time? 

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There’s a changing of the guard at NATO. Down comes the regimental banner of Jens Stoltenberg. Eyes right, salute, the former Dutch PM Mark Rutte. Some say the Treaty Organisation has never been more relevant. But is that a bit like the man who jumps from the 23rd floor still looking very well as he passes the 3rd floor? 

Meanwhile, a new OBR forecast accuses pensioners of placing too much burden on the British treasury - tripling the national debt by mid-century. At the same time, The Labour government is fast-tracking euthanasia through parliament. Is Killer Keir’s latest economic strategy just The Day of the Pillow? 

Finally, there hasn’t been a Trump assassination attempt in at least forty eight hours. Unless there has by now - in which case please ignore this message. What does the never-ending conga line of would-be nation-destabilisers say about the health of the US polity?

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Touted in Eurocrat circles as a document that can square the circles and circle the wagons. Praised to the hilt by the Commission, hotly anticipated by industry, to some this is Europe's last best attempt to recant and repent before it is zapped by Asian competition and the ongoing energy drought.

This week, we've cleared the decks to rake over the Mario Draghi report into European competitiveness.

Can this arch-insider come up with the special sauce that sets the VW plants humming? Can he weave a "European Google" out of thin air? Or how about just a European Temu?

400 pages and 170 proposals later, The Lads have their answer...

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As Pavel Durov remains in French hands, we’re wondering whether Europe can finally develop its own Silicon Valley simply by mass detention of top entrepreneurial talent.

Or whether perhaps this is the desperate last whelp of a society increasingly bypassed by the global tech economy. 

Meanwhile, in Germany, the story of the day is that the AfD have taken a great swath of Thuringia and Saxony, while Sara Wagenknecht has gobbled the rest. This is democracy in action –  so can it be stopped? 

At the same time, the EU is redefining its central budget. For member states, that 1.2 trillion annual pocket money is no longer free - it will be conditional on economic reforms. We’re about to find out what exactly Slovenia is prepared to do for its slice. Better yet, what will Hungary do?

Finally, as Turkey applies to be the latest BRIC, we’re wondering: is this the point when it’s quicker to build a new acronym from states who aren’t in the club?

As you may have noticed, this week is an extended, four-story gutbuster of an episode. 

That’s because it’s Premium Week –  and we believe in giving our Patreons a little extra on the side. And round the back.

If you want to join the club, you too can sign up on Patreon to listen to the full version - it's 5 Pounds, Euros or Dollars a month. Cancel any time. 

Simply go to https://www.Patreon.com/multipolarity.

Thomas Fazi has been watching the EU implode for over a decade.

He's widely known as a contributor to UnHerd and Compact, and for his 2014 book: Battle For Europe: How An Elite Hijacked A Continent.

His work on the corruption of European institutions stretches back to the 2011 Sovereign Debt Crisis.

Multipolarity has been consistently arguing that the jesses of central bank policy are being used as political levers to keep the EU's wayward member states together - in contravention of both the letter and the spirit of its treaties.

Fazi has been another voice, consistently been making a similar critique, but from a Marxist perspective.

This week, the lads invite him on, to compare notes.

You can find Thomas' popular Substack here:

https://substack.com/@tfazi

***

Be excellent to each other, and -

Get us on Twitter. 

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On Patreon. 

www.patreon.com/multipolarity  

Or on our own Substack. 

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