Showing posts with label Neocolonialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neocolonialism. Show all posts

Monday, October 27, 2025

Javier Milei's Chainsaw Massacre of the Trump Presidency? | Alex Krainer

Yesterday, Argentinians voted in midterm elections which were critical as the first nationwide referendum since President Javier Milei came to power and introduced his radical economic reforms. The recent bailout(s) from the US Treasury helped Milei’s La Libertad Avanza Party win the elections with 40.8% of the vote. However, not everyone is convinced: that result was better than even Milei’s own party hoped for.

» To bail out his [Bessent's] dumb friends on Wall Street, that’s banana republic level corruption. «
» To bail out his [Bessent's] dumb friends on Wall Street, that’s banana republic level corruption. «
 
Inevitably, haters will say that the polls were rigged which won’t help the government’s legitimacy. Either way, Argentina will remain stuck in a downward spiral. Milei’s reforms have been so staggeringly successful that keeping Argentina’s economy scotched together required repeated massive rescue packages this year.

First, on 11 April 2025, the IMF approved a $20 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) to support Milei’s awesome economic program, strengthen foreign currency reserves, and facilitate the removal of capital controls. The IMF is seldom that generous but it seems that it wasn’t generous enough that time, requiring the Trump administration to step in last month. On 24 September, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced another $20 billion bailout for Argentina.

"El Bobo de Wallstreet"—"The Dumb-Ass of Wall Street".
"El Bobo de Wallstreet""The Dumb-Ass of Wall Street".

Under the plan, the US Treasury provided Argentina with US dollars in exchange for Argentine pesos. This raised the awkward question: why did Trump’s MAGA, “America first,” administration put its taxpayers on the hook for Argentina? Bessent said that Argentina was “a systemically important US ally in Latin America,” and that the US “stands ready to do what is needed within its mandate to support Argentina. All options for stabilization are on the table.”

» [Trump] may have to distance himself from Bessent or even sack him. «
» [Trump] may have to distance himself from Bessent or even sack him. «
 
Well, OK then, but even supposing that Bessent’s justification for the huge bailout of Argentina is good enough, it didn’t seem that the bailout was big enough: the Argentine Peso continued to crash and hit a record low on Friday at nearly 1,490 pesos to the dollar. Before Milei won Argentine presidential elections on 19 November 2023, it took about 360 pesos to buy one dollar. Ever since, Argentina’s currency has been collapsing in spite of the successive IMF/US bailouts:
 
» Either way, Argentina will remain stuck in a downward spiral. «
» Either way, Argentina will remain stuck in a downward spiral. «
 
“All options” being “on the table,” on 15 October, weeks after Bessent announced the $20 billion swap, he said that he was arranging a separate $20 billion facility financed by banks and private equity. But for the deal to stick, it may still have to be backed by the US Treasury. A-gain. And in spite of President Trump himself admitting that the bailout might not work and would provide little benefit to the American people. So again: if this is a burden on the American people with no benefit to them, then why is the MAGA administration doing it? [...] As it happens, Rob Citrone is a personal friend and former colleague of Scott Bessent. Here’s what the “Popular Information” newsletter reported earlier this month:

Major Argentine media outlets are now reporting that Citrone asked Bessent for a United States rescue package. Ariel Maciel, Political Economy Editor at Perfil, a large Argentine media outlet, wrote that after the Buenos Aires elections, Citrone “returned to his friend and former colleague… to request a second bailout, this time from the very coffers Bessent manages: the US Treasury.”

CE Noticias Financieras, a major wire service in Latin America, similarly reported that after Argentine officials ran into resistance with lower-level Trump officials, “Citrone managed to connect with Bessent to get him to intervene directly.” But from there, it gets a bit worse than that still: Maciel also noted that two weeks before Bessent announced the bailout, Citrone purchased additional bonds for “almost nothing.” Maciel said the timing of Citrone’s recent purchases has raised “suspicions” that Citrone had access to “confidential information.”

If true, these arrangements present horribly bad optics for Donald Trump and his administration. If his Treasury Secretary is using his office and American taxpayers’ money to bail out his dumb friends on Wall Street, that’s banana republic level corruption. Any substance of this story will be milked for all it’s worth - and it could be worth a lot - by his political opponents at home and abroad. It doesn’t even matter whether Trump himself was aware of the nature of the bailouts.

Trump may have bought the ideological and geostrategic story about the chainsaw freedom crusader Milei and Argentina being a systemically important ally. In that case, he may have to distance himself from Bessent or even sack him. But even so, the damage has been done. It is hard to see how this won’t undermine the confidence in his administration and further erode his MAGA-base support. On top of that, corrupt dealings with Argentina and Trump’s aggressive stance toward Venezuela, has worsened his administration’s standing in the region:

» Like nobody’s ever seen before. « The MIGA-MAGA gaga crowds are diminishing, and not only in Argentina.
» Like nobody’s ever seen before. «
The MIGA-MAGA gaga crowds are diminishing, and not only in Argentina.
 
Even if you bring all your carrier strike groups to the Caribbean Sea and threaten action “like nobody’s ever seen before,” the ultimate struggle is and always will be that for the hearts and minds of the people. That struggle is being lost like nobody’s ever seen before.

 

Thursday, October 9, 2025

The West's Dystopia: War, Fragmentation, and Perversity | Emmanuel Todd

Trump’s perversity is unfolding in the Middle East, NATO’s warmongering in Europe. [...] Such is our world as we approach 2026. The dislocation of the West takes the form of a ‘hierarchical fracture’.

» One of the fundamental concepts of the West’s defeat is nihilism.  «

The United States is giving up control of Russia and, I increasingly believe, of China. Blockaded by China for its imports of samarium, a rare earth element essential to military aeronautics, the United States can no longer dream of confronting China militarily. The rest of the world – India, Brazil, the Arab world, Africa – is taking advantage of this and slipping away. But the United States is turning vigorously against its European and East Asian ‘allies’ in a final effort at overexploitation and, it must be admitted, out of sheer spite. To escape their humiliation, to hide their weakness from the world and from themselves, they are punishing Europe. The Empire is devouring itself. This is the meaning of the tariffs and forced investments imposed by Trump on Europeans, who have become colonial subjects in a shrinking empire rather than partners. The era of liberal democracies standing in solidarity is over.

 
[...] Cutting the European continent in half economically was an act of suicidal madness. [...] The rage resulting from defeat is leading each country to turn against those weaker than itself in order to vent its resentment. The United States is turning against Europe and Japan. France is reactivating its conflict with Algeria, its former colony. There is no doubt that Germany, which, from Scholz to Merz, has agreed to obey the United States, will turn its humiliation against its weaker European partners. My own country, France, seems to me to be the most threatened.
 

[...] One of the interesting features of America today is that its leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between internal and external issues, despite MAGA’s attempt to stop immigration from the south with a wall. The army fires on boats leaving Venezuela, bombs Iran, enters the centres of Democratic cities in the United States, and sponsors the Israeli air force for an attack on Qatar, where there is a huge American base. Any science fiction reader will recognise in this disturbing list the beginnings of a descent into dystopia, that is, a negative world where power, fragmentation, hierarchy, violence, poverty and perversity intermingle.
 
So let us remain ourselves, outside America. Let us retain our perception of the inside and the outside, our sense of proportion, our contact with reality, our conception of what is right and beautiful. Let us not allow ourselves to be dragged into a headlong rush to war by our own European leaders, those privileged individuals lost in history, desperate at having been defeated, terrified at the idea of one day being judged by their peoples. And above all, above all, let us continue to reflect on the meaning of things.

(from the preface to the 2025 Slovenian publication of La Défaite de l'Occident) 

Emmanuel Todd, one of the last phenotypical old-school French intellectuals, is a historian, sociologist, demographer, statistician, anthropologist and political scientist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris. A prominent critic of the US, globalization, and European integration, he is best known for predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union (La Chute Finale, 1976), After the Empire (2002) and his 2024 book The Defeat of the West

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

South Korea: The Sad Chronicles of a US Vassal State

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law on December 3, 2024. Lawmakers voted against the move, and protesters gathered outside parliament. Yoon framed the declaration as "rooting out pro-North Korean forces", but it was strongly opposed by the parliamentary speaker and even Han Dong-hoon, leader of Yoon's own party, who has clashed with the president over recent scandals. Self-coup, martial law, dictatorship? Megalomania, nut-case, loony bin? Will we hear cries from the US State Department about human rights, democracy, and sanctions, or will they remain silent since South Korea (ROK) is the best-controlled and most diligent US vassal state in Asia, still occupied since 1945 by more than 24,000 US combat troops? South Korea doesn’t even command its own military; the Pentagon does. The American occupation regime systematically destroyed traditional Korean culture and identity. Today, the country is trapped in a death spiral, with the lowest fertility rate in Asia, 350,000 abortions annually, and the highest suicide rate in the world.
 
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's approval rating 
fell to a mere 19% just days before he declared martial law.
 
Maximum dishonor, submission, and degeneracy:
Yoon sings 'American Pie' at Biden's
April 2023 state dinner.
 
» Martial law, to root out pro-North Korean forces. «
 
To better understand the realities in South Korea, the following list provides a brief overview of the political turmoil and challenges faced by South Koreans under US occupation since 1948:

1. Lee Seung-man (1948-1960) – The first president of South Korea; overthrown after student protests and widespread unrest.  
2. Yun Bo-seon (1960-1962) – The second president, whose term ended after a military coup.  
3. Park Chung-hee (1962-1979) – Seized power in a 1961 coup and ruled until his assassination in 1979.  
4. Choi Kyu-hah (1979-1980) – Served as president after Park’s death but was deposed by a military coup led by Chun Doo-hwan.  
5. Chun Doo-hwan (1981-1988) – Came to power through a coup, later sentenced to death (commuted to life imprisonment) after his presidency.  
6. Roh Tae-woo (1988-1993) – Former military leader and Chun’s ally, later convicted of corruption and sentenced to prison.  
7. Kim Young-sam (1993-1998) – The first civilian president in decades, he pushed for democratic reforms and prosecuted former military leaders.  
8. Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003) – A former pro-democracy activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his policy towards North Korea; was imprisoned and sentenced to death before becoming president.
9. Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008) – Impeached (later reinstated), faced corruption investigations after his presidency, and tragically committed suicide.  
10. Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) – Former businessman, arrested after his presidency on corruption charges and is serving a sentence.  
11. Park Geun-hye (2013-2016) – South Korea's first female president, impeached over a corruption scandal, and sentenced to 24 years in prison.  
12. Moon Jae-in (2017-2022) – Elected after Park’s impeachment, a former human rights lawyer who focused on engagement with North Korea and domestic reforms.  
13. Yoon Suk-yeol (2022-present) – Ran on a hardline stance on North Korea, accuses the main opposition party of sympathizing with North Korea and declared martial law on December 3, 2024,
"to root out pro-North Korean forces".
   
»
He can’t even do martial law properly.«
Kim Jong-un, Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Thursday, November 28, 2024

Trump’s Coming War on BRICS and the Global South | Pepe Escobar

The incoming Trump 2.0 administration is expected to intensify US economic and geopolitical strategies against BRICS and their growing global network. Trump's actions will likely resemble earlier colonial approaches, involving covert regime-change operations, military pressure and intervention, and economic incentives to undermine BRICS and protect US control over resources such as oil and rare earth minerals. The goal is to prevent the new, multipolar world order that reduces US hegemony. This will shape US-BRICS relations and have significant implications for the entire Global South.
 
 Goodbye, America. The cheating game of YOU counterfeiters is over.
 
Trump's swampy 'realist' approach to international relations contrasts with Biden's 'liberal' approach, primarily in that Trump openly defines the national interest as global, full-spectrum American military and economic dominance, asserting that all wars, sanctions, tariffs, and "great deals" benefiting his donor class and billionaire peers would also be acceptable to his MAGA crowd of "hard-working Americans."
 
His administration will aim to sanction any country bypassing the US dollar in trade, targeting the de-dollarization trend supported by BRICS. The de-dollarization movement, gaining momentum, challenges US financial dominance, with BRICS countries increasingly using national currencies and the petroyuan, and exploring alternative payment systems.
 
Marco Rubio will attempt to overthrow the governments
of Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia and seize control of their resources.
 
One of the major risks of a Trump 2.0 administration will be the attempt to destabilize the growing connectivity corridors across Eurasia, which are crucial for the strategic partnerships between Russia, China, India, and Iran. These corridors are part of two key axes: a horizontal one spanning across the Heartland from China to the West, including Central Asia, West Asia, and potentially extending to Europe (BRI); and a North-South axis connecting Russia, Iran, and India through the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). This development is critical to Eurasian integration.
 
As the United States observes these emerging networks, it sees its influence in Eurasia waning, particularly as BRICS and associated countries assert themselves. In the long term, this shift threatens America's presence and influence, not only in Eurasia but also in Africa. Africa and Latin America remain more complex due to entrenched regimes and comprador elites that support US interests. Overall, this represents a broader bipartisan struggle by Washington against the integration of Eurasia and the Global South, which undermines the unipolar world order that the US has historically maintained.

 
In Latin America, Venezuela, a quasi-BRICS country economically aligned with China, Russia, Türkiye, and Iran, remains a major obsession for the US. The US is expected to escalate sanctions and covert actions to oust the Maduro government in order to gain access to the world's largest reserves of hydrocarbons, as well as to gold, bauxite, iron ore, uranium, diamonds, and rare-earth elements. Bolivia, which has the world's largest lithium reserves and is rich in natural gas, tin, silver, and copper, will be treated in a similar fashion by the US. Washington think tanks still consider Brazil a "swing state," and controlling the policies of South America's industrial giant remains central to US efforts to limit and sabotage BRICS in the region.
 
 Spotted in Caracas, October 2024.
 
However, in recent years, US attempts at assassinations, regime change, maximum pressure sanctions, hybrid wars of all sorts, and the installation of puppet leaders like Jeanine Áñez, Juan Guaidó, María Corina Machado, and Edmundo González have become increasingly unsuccessful (with Javier Milei and Daniel Noboa appearing more as temporary exceptions). China, Russia, and Iran will not simply allow Venezuela to be looted by Trump, Musk, Rubio, Prince, and other swamp creatures from South Florida.
 
»
Facts have proven that the US is the biggest source of chaos in the international system [...] From Afghanistan to Iraq, 
from Ukraine to Gaza, all these crises and conflicts are the result of the self-serving double standards of the US. « 
— Jing Jianfeng, Lieutenant General of China’s People’s Liberation Army, Singapore, June 16, 2024.
 
Saudi Arabia's shift toward full BRICS membership would mark a major change in global financial power. Trump will likely apply diplomatic pressure or sanctions, such as asset freezing, to prevent this, as US influence over global oil markets is already diminishing rapidly.  Africa will see intensified efforts to counter mainly China's and Russia's investments in infrastructure and energy. Trump will also likely increase sanctions and, eventually, together with the French and the British, support destabilization—for example, by terrorist jihadis—as well as blackmail, assassination, and regime-change tactics to prevent further integration of African nations with BRICS. 
 
»
The US is at war with the rest of the world. The war in Syria is a microcosm of World War 3  through proxies. «
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, November 28, 2024.
 

Monday, March 25, 2024

From Prison to Palace │ Senegal's Faye will destroy French Neocolonialism

Historical events are brewing in yet another West African country: Senegal is getting rid of the neocolonial dependence on its former metropolis France. Bassirou Diomaye Faye, a charismatic opposition candidate who sought to break the treaty with France and improve relations with Russia won the presidential election last weekend. The 44-year-old was only freed from prison 10 days before. As part of his election campaign, Faye promised to review oil and gas deals with Western companies, including agreements with British Petroleum, Endeavor Mining and Kosmos Energy. The collapse of France's colonial empire in Africa continues. Hence the pitiful growl of Rothschild stooge Macron, who squandered the entire inheritance of the French colonialists.
 
 » The departure of Senegal from the CFA franc zone puts a final 
cross on the entire system of French neocolonialism. «

Faye advocates a radical revision of relations between Senegal and France. And as part of this, Faye is going to follow neighboring Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso to leave the French currency system by abandoning the CFA franc. And the French military will have to leave Senegal. Sensing something was wrong, Paris had already announced a little earlier that it was sharply reducing the military contingent in Senegal (probably so that it would not be so shameful later). In return, Faye promises to take a course towards rapprochement with Russia.
 

Thus, France's next major foreign policy defeat on the African continent looms on the horizon. Moreover, last year Senegal still was a servile French key player in the issue of the blockade of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, which had previously freed themselves from the influence of Paris. And the departure of Senegal from the CFA franc zone puts a final and fat cross on the system which brought huge profits to France and on which the entire system of French neocolonialism was essentially built. 
 

 » France is the equivalent of an overfed Chihuahua, and you don't want to get in the ring with the really 
beefed up Rottweilers, especially when they've been trained to eat overfed Chihuahuas their entire life. «
Scott Ritter - March 21, 2024.

And hence all of Macron’s current anti-Russian hysteria. He lost access to Niger's gold and uranium last year, and now, like a plucked rooster, understands that France is also losing to Russia. Ukraine for him is the last chance to spoil Moscow. He will be disappointed there too.
 

Saturday, September 9, 2023

Terminating French Neocolonialism & the CFA Zone in Africa | Ibrahim Traoré

African states are, one by one, breaking free from the shackles of French neocolonialism. Six decades after "independence," Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are rejecting France's uninterrupted domination of African financial, political, economic, and security affairs. It is absolutely impossible to understand Africa's current turmoil without understanding the nature of French neocolonialism. The key is the CFA franc—the colonial franc—introduced in 1945 in French Africa, which still rules over 14 African countries.
 
» The slave that cannot carry out his own revolt deserves no pity. «
Captain Ibrahim Traoré, President of Burkina Faso, July 2023.

 
The whole world remembers that, after the 2008 global financial crisis, Libya’s leader Muammar al-Gaddafi was Chairperson of the African Union and called for the establishment of a pan-African currency pegged to gold: the African Gold Dinar. By that time, al-Gaddafi had developed Libya from one of the most miserable into the richest country in Africa. Libya was economically and socially stable, had a prosperous and educated population, a sovereign country with its own currency, no obligations to the IMF, the World Bank, or the BIS, zero foreign debt, and about 150 tons of gold kept in its own fully sovereign central bank—not in London, not in Paris, and not in New York. Together with South Africa's gold, the new pan-African currency would have had its own independent financial center in Tripoli, Libya, and a sovereign African Development Bank in Yaoundé, Cameroon. For scores of African nations, that was the plan and strategy to finally jailbreak from the CFA and from the entirely fraudulent Western global monetary and financial system that was imposed at gunpoint on the 'decolonized' after 1945 by the new 'free world' champions: the US, the French, and the British.

What Libya still did not have were nuclear weapons, satellite-guided long-range missiles, or an efficient air defense. In March 2011, the first airstrike on Libya came from a French Mirage fighter jet. France's bombing campaigns on Tripoli, Misrata, and Sirte—on water supply and electricity infrastructure, on public buildings and civilian living quarters alike—started even before simulated 'emergency talks' between Western leaders in Paris ended. The US continued bringing in, through Cyrenaica, tens of thousands of their jihadists from Syria and Iraq via US bases in Türkiye for the dirty work on the ground. In the course of the assault, the French COS looted the central bank in Tripoli and airlifted all of Libya's gold to Paris, while the EU Commission seized all Libyan assets in Europe (by the way, during the 2014 Maidan coup, UKSF rushed out 40 tons of Ukraine's central bank gold to London and New York). After murdering al-Gaddafi in October 2011, France became the first country in the world to recognize a US-fabricated mercenary jihadist 'National Transitional Council' as the legitimate government over a completely destroyed and dysfunctional Libya, contaminated by countless US, British, and French depleted uranium projectiles.

The African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was immediately cut off from all funds and cleansed of pan-African sovereign aspirations and diplomats by a concerted coup by the US, the British, the French, and the EU Commission. The new head of the African Union became one of Jacob Zuma's ex-wives, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Her agenda replaced formerly well-funded programs for health, education, infrastructure, industrialization, and pan-African trade with mass vaccination and sterilization campaigns of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WHO 'Ebola' test runs for the Covid-19 plandemic, gender issues, CO2 reduction programs, WEF–Central Bank Digital Currency experiments, and an EU-funded African Union military intervention in Somalia, to name but a few of her achievements. When Zuma's term ended in 2017, any genuine purpose of the African Union had been erased. Since 2011, the neocolonial consortium of the US, the British, the French, and the EU Commission had launched the so-called 'Arab Spring,' destroyed Libya, established some two dozen additional military bases, fostered ethnic separatist movements, armed jihad fanatics, imposed bogus 'peacekeeping' and 'humanitarian' military interventions, and turned the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes Region, and the Sahel—from Mali to Sudan—into quagmires of violence and misery. This triggered displacement and migration of tens of millions within Africa—Egypt alone now hosts some 11 million refugees—as well as mass migration of epic proportions into Türkiye and Europe.

The French CFA racket in Africa makes the Mafia look like street punks. The monetary policy of 14 African nations, with a population of more than 120 million, is controlled by the French Treasury in Paris. The central bank of each African nation was initially required to keep at least 65 percent of their annual foreign exchange reserves in an 'operation account' held at the French Treasury, plus another 20 percent to cover financial 'liabilities.' Even after some 'reforms' were enacted since 2005, these nations were still required to transfer 50 percent of their foreign exchange to Paris, plus 20 percent VAT. The CFA central banks impose a cap on credit to each member country. The French Treasury invests these African foreign reserves in its own name on the Paris bourse and pulls in massive profits on Africa's dime. More than 80 percent of the foreign reserves of African nations in those 'operation accounts' are used by the French Treasury as if they were French capital and as collateral in pledging assets to French payments to the EU and the ECB. French conglomerate Bolloré controls ports and marine transport throughout West Africa; Bouygues/Vinci dominates construction and public works, water, and electricity distribution; Total has huge stakes in oil and gas. And then there is France Telecom and big banking—Société Générale, Crédit Lyonnais, BNP Paribas, AXA (insurance), Areva—France's highest valued company (uranium)—and so forth. France, de facto, controls the overwhelming majority of infrastructure in Francophone Africa. It is a virtual monopoly. Policies are issued by the President of the Republic of France and his 'African cell.' They have nothing to do with parliament or any democratic process, since the time of Charles De Gaulle. The 'African cell' is a general command and uses the French military apparatus to install 'friendly' leaders and to eliminate those who threaten the system.

The French exploitation scheme was shaken to its core by the 2021 military coup of Colonel Assimi Goïta in Mali, the 2022 military coup of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, now President of the transitional government of Burkina Faso, and the recent military coup of General Abdourahmane Tchiani in Niger in July 2023. They are now counting on their own abilities and capacities, and on support from Russia and China. During the past twenty years, China became Africa's biggest trading partner and foreign investor. No wars, no coups, no destabilization involved—without a single shot. Bypassing the African Union and based on bilateral agreements, China built thousands of kilometers of railways and roads, cargo trains, high-speed trains, urban transportation systems, dozens of airports, sports stadiums, schools, universities, some twenty deep-water ports, container hubs, hydroelectric dams, about eighty large power plants, tens of thousands of kilometers of power lines, hundreds of factories, mining projects, and hospitals; sent twenty thousand Chinese medical workers providing free care to hundreds of millions of Africans; and invited some one hundred fifty thousand Africans with all-inclusive academic scholarships to China. Many African countries expect increasing Russian engagement, mainly to promote their defense capacities and food security.

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