Cui Bono? A Flight Down Over Ukraine

At no juncture during the Ukrainian crisis could the downing of Malaysian Boeing 777 flight MH17 have been more convenient for NATO and its proxy regime in Kiev. Kiev’s forces were being picked apart in eastern Ukraine with several units encircled and destroyed. In the west of the country, dissent was growing by Ukrainians unwilling to march off to fight in the east. NATO’s attempts to bait Russia into moving into Ukrainian territory and shift global opinion against Moscow had repeatedly failed. The final card to be played by the US was another round of sanctions that almost immediately was ridiculed as ineffective and impotent. Even US corporate-financier interests condemned the latest round of sanctions claiming they were “unilateral” in nature and thus limited US enterprise from interacting with Russia while leaving European competitors free to move into the void. An effective US policy of confronting, containing, and undermining Russia would require multilateral sanctions with almost universal support – but the impetus for such sweeping sanctions did not exist – until now.

Faced with the US-led Western Freeze-Out, BRICS Bank Is a Coup for Russia

Top of the agenda at the sixth summit of the BRICS developing nations beginning Tuesday is the founding of two multilateral financial institutions designed to erode the dominance of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as arbiters of the global economic system. For Russia, the creation of a $100 billion BRICS development bank and a reserve currency fund worth another $100 billion is a political coup. Just as the West freezes Russia out of its own economic system as punishment for its politics in Ukraine, Russia is tying itself into the financial superstructure of the next generation of economic heavyweights: India, Brazil, China and South Africa. The World Bank and the IMF have come under criticism from the rapidly developing BRICS, who together account for 20 percent of global GDP and 40 percent of the world’s population. In their view, the two financial institutions are dominated by the rich nations of the G7 and attach stringent conditions to their lending that impinge on the economic sovereignty of its members

Putin, Kirchner Believe in Multipolarity, in Multilateralism, in a WORLD WHERE Countries Don't Have a Double Standard

Putin, Kirchner seek ‘multipolarity’ in Argentina visit Buenos Aires Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Argentine counterpart Cristina Kirchner called for a multipolar world order as Moscow sought to boost ties with Latin America amid heightened East-West tensions. Putin is on a six-day tour seeking to increase Moscow’s influence in the region at a time when the Ukraine crisis has eroded Russia’s relations with the United States and Europe to their lowest point since the Cold War. His itinerary includes meetings with a string of leftist leaders critical of the United States and a summit of the BRICS group of emerging countries — an agenda that neatly aligns with his push for a multipolar world less dominated by the West.