After following US policy for over 30 years, and consistently seeing real-world outcomes that contradict the public rationales for the policies that caused them; I recognised quite some time ago that the official rationales have nothing whatsoever to do with the intention behind any policy. However, because the outcomes regularly bear no resemblance to the stated policy objectives, you will often see critics lambasting the US for incompetence. This characterization either reveals the incompetence of complicity of such critics. In other words, they are either so naïve as to believe that the outcomes of a policy are genuinely mistakes – in which case they are incompetent as critics, or, they are knowingly deflecting blame for malicious intent by writing it off as foolishness on the part of policy makers – in which case, they are complicit.
And this keeps happening. I am seeing so many commentators talking about de-dollarization, about the fall of the dollar, about the economic free fall of Europe, all as unintended consequences of the sanctions against Russia; and they are either cheering about it because they fancy themselves champions of the Global South, or they are lamenting it as a dangerous decline of US hegemony. But either perspective seems consistently to assume that no one could have possibly seen this coming, or that it was otherwise unintended. This, in my opinion, is absurd. These outcomes were not only entirely predictable, they were predicted; by myself and surely by others. What is happening with the dollar, what is happening to Europe, is exactly what was intended to happen.

The OCGFC do not have an ideology, or anyway, ideology does not guide their decisions. However, states and populations do have ideologies. This is where think tanks come in. Think tanks function to translate the pursuit of narrow self-interest by the OCGFC into ideologically and philosophically justifiable policies that can camouflage their actual purpose, because most people – including people within the so-called “deep state”, cannot endorse policies that blatantly serve the wealth accumulation and power consolidation of the OCGFC.
Most normal people, including people in government, have some form of moral belief system, some form of ideology; be that religious, nationalistic, or what have you. Therefore, the greed and lust for power of the owners and controllers of global financialised capital must be clothed in moral or patriotic rationales. That is what think tanks do; whether it is the Heritage Foundation, Brookings Institution, or the World Economic Forum. These organisations do not set policy, they simply translate the desires of the OCGFC into the language of policy.

There is no book more thoroughly authenticated than the Qur'an

Ok, who did the thumbs down?

Make of this what you will

Saudi Arabia acted promptly as the first foreign country to evacuate its diplomats from Sudan. The embassy convoy traveled to Port Sudan, where the evacuees were safely picked up by the fleet.

Additionally, the Sudanese army has confirmed that an agreement has been established for the military aviation evacuation of citizens from the United States, France, and China.

BRICS De-Dollarization Push Gaining Momentum – Jakarta

Indonesia is following the lead of the BRICS group in its policy of shifting away from the US dollar in trade and financial transactions, and has introduced transactions in the local currency to settle cross-border trades, according to the Bank of Indonesia.

Indonesia has already implemented the practice with a number of countries, such as Thailand, Malaysia, China, and Japan. It also plans to sign a cooperation agreement with South Korea regarding local currency trading in early May.

The BRICS economic bloc – comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – claims to be working on establishing a joint payment network to cut reliance on the Western financial system, and on the dollar in particular.

🇺🇬 The Ugandan President backed anti-homosexual law

Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, has backed the anti-homosexual bill. At a National Resistance Movement (NRM) meeting on Friday, Museveni praised the lawmakers for approving the bill and insisted he would never bow to international condemnation.

“I want to congratulate the honourable members of parliament on your stand on the “Ebitingwa,” (Runyankore word for gay men)," he said. "Congratulations, I congratulate you for that strong stand. It is good that you rejected the pressure from the imperialists.”

“Europe is lost. So they also want us to be lost, but in order to fight we must be patriotic. They want Africa to be prostitutes. Do what we don’t believe in because we want money.”

#Uganda

@africaintel

You can choose to believe that there is no causal connection between the development and mass production of HIV medication and other related treatments, the tens of billions of dollars spent in lobbying and political donations by the pharmaceutical industry, and their support for NGOs, with the rapid advances made by the LGBT movement in the West; just as you can choose to believe that there is no causal connection between a frisbee flying through the air and you having thrown it.

- 🇺🇸/🇸🇩 BREAKING: Special operation to evacuate U.S. embassy in Khartoum has started, helicopters in the air and C-130's ready for airlifting personnel

@Middle_East_Spectator

US is so drama. Everybody else doing evacuations just does it, and we hear a brief statement after the fact that it was done. The Americans can't be that un-theatrical. Just sayin'. Why does it always have to be so loud? 😅

🇺🇸 🇸🇩 Congressman Michael McCaul:
"There will be consequences for those who interfere in the safe passage of American citizens, including our diplomats, who are fleeing indiscriminate violence in Khartoum and throughout Sudan.

"I once again call on regional partners to support the safe evacuation of civilians leaving Sudan. And I reiterate my call for belligerents not to target civilians who are caught in the middle of this fighting or civilian infrastructure."

UAE behind RSF’s attempted coup in Sudan, leaked recording says – Middle East Monitor
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230420-uae-behind-rsfs-attempted-coup-in-sudan-leaked-recording-says/

Sound familiar?

https://twitter.com/andreas_krieg/status/1649423423070715908?s=20

Useful thread

As I have been saying...

⚡️US knows that weapons supplied to Kiev end up on the black market, but their media is hushing it up - US journalist Seymour Hersh.

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Sudan: evacuations and noncommittal narratives

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