Dollar becoming ‘toxic’ – Russia’s top MP

BRICS countries are abandoning the greenback because it is being used as a political tool, Vyacheslav Volodin has said

Washington has completely undermined trust in the US dollar as a global reserve currency by using it as a political tool to impose “illegal” sanctions on Russia, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin has said.

The US government announced a new batch of sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, targeting the energy, metals, and mining industries, as well as the Moscow Stock Exchange and major lenders Sber and VTB. The measures, which cover 300 additional individuals and entities, are aimed at impacting trade between Russia and its partners in China, Türkiye, and Kyrgyzstan, as well as other nations in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.

Russia’s top lawmaker said on Friday that by using the dollar as an instrument of political influence, Washington has pushed other countries to increasingly abandon the greenback.

“The dollar has become toxic. Washington has totally undermined trust in the dollar as a global reserve currency by imposing illegal sanctions against our country’s financial institutions,” Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel.

The sanctions, however, have not yielded the expected results for the US, according to the Russian lawmaker. The global trend towards using national currencies in trade instead of the greenback has gained momentum, Volodin said, claiming that many other nations – in particular BRICS members – are looking for alternatives to the dollar as they don’t want to become “hostages” of US politics.

The lawmaker noted that since 2022, the share of “unfriendly” currencies in Russia’s export settlements has dropped from 84.7% to 17.8%. At the same time, transactions in the ruble and national currencies have surged by 3.5 and 15 times respectively.

According to Volodin, more than 90% of payments between Russia and its partners within the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) bloc of post-Soviet nations are carried out in national currencies. Russia-China trade is now 95% settled in rubles and yuan, he added.

Volodin went on to remark that payment restrictions and the “theft” of Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves should prompt other countries to think about the reliability of storing their funds in US currency.

The dollar has “discredited” itself as a reserve currency and therefore “dedollarization is inevitable,” Volodin argued.

https://www.rt.com/russia/599257-dollar-becoming-toxic-volodin/

>>21020916

Yuan to replace dollar as Russia’s main foreign currency – Central Bank

The renminbi accounted for a 54% share of the FX market in May, according to the regulator

The yuan/ruble exchange rate will now set the trajectory for other currency pairs on the Moscow Exchange (MOEX), including for the euro and dollar, the Bank of Russia (CBR) announced on Thursday.

The statement comes as the latest round of US sanctions prompted the MOEX on Wednesday to suspend trading in dollars and euros. The UK followed Washington’s lead on Thursday, introducing restrictions against the Russian financial system. Transactions in US dollars and euro will continue on the over-the-counter (OTC) market.

“The yuan/ruble exchange rate … will become a reference point for market participants. The share of the yuan in Moscow Exchange trading in May was 54%,” the Bank of Russia said. “Thus, the yuan has already become the main currency in exchange trading,” it added.

According to the regulator, the share of the dollar and euro in the Russian market has consistently declined over the past two years as a result of the redirection of trade flows to the East and a change in the currency of settlements to rubles, yuan and other currencies of friendly countries.

Russia has actively begun to replace the dollar and euro in foreign trade amid Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine conflict. It has since dramatically reduced the number of bank accounts and transactions between companies and financial institutions involving Western currencies. Prior to the conflict, the share of the US dollar and euro in Russia’s settlements was around 90%.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week addressing a plenary session at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum that the share of payments for Russian exports in the so-called ‘toxic’ currencies of unfriendly states has decreased by half.

The share of the ruble in Russia’s foreign-trade operations continues to grow while payments in the currencies of ‘unfriendly’ states – those who imposed sanctions against Russia – is declining, Putin stated.

MOEX said on Thursday that the suspension of trading in dollar and euro affects foreign and precious metals trade as well as stock and money trading on Russia’s largest public trading markets. Except for dollars and euros, all other financial instruments remain operational. The derivatives market has also been unaffected by the changes, with trade going on as usual, it said.

https://www.rt.com/business/599225-yuan-moscow-exchange-trading/

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How the US government uses NGOs to corrupt ‘civil society’ around the world

Washington weaponizes pseudo-academic ‘human rights’ groups as a foreign policy

In the West, and beyond, pressure groups operating under the banner of “human rights non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) have become key actors in disseminating war propaganda, intimidating academics, and corrupting civil society. These outfits act as gatekeepers determining which voices should be elevated and which should be censored and canceled.

Civil society is imperative to balance the power of the state, but governments are increasingly seeking to hijack it through NGOs they fund. They can enable a loud minority to override a silent majority.

In the 1980s, the Reagan doctrine exacerbated the problem as these “human rights NGOs” were financed by the government and staffed by people with ties to intelligence agencies, to ensure civil society won’t deviate significantly from government policies.

The ability of academics to speak openly and honestly is restricted by these gatekeepers. In a case in pointtoday, NGOs limit dissent in academic debates about the great power rivalry in Ukraine. Well-documented and proven facts that are imperative to understanding the conflict are simply not reported in the media, and any efforts to address these facts are confronted with vague accusations of being “controversial” or “pro-Russian,” a transgression that must be punished with intimidation, censorship, and cancellation.

I will outline here first my personal experiences with one of these NGOs, and how they are hijacking civil society.

My Encounter with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is financed by the US government and CIA-cutout the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). They regularly publish hit pieces about me and rarely miss their weekly tweets that label me a propagandist for Russia. It is always name-calling and smearing, rather than anything that can be considered coherent argument.

The standard formula for cancellation is to shame my university in every article and tweet for allowing academic freedom, with the implicit offer of redemption by terminating my employment as a professor. Peak absurdity occurred with a seven-page article in a newspaper in which it was argued I’d violated international law by spreading war propaganda. They grudgingly had to admit that I have opposed the war from day one, although for a professor in Russian politics to engage with Russian media allegedly made me complicit in spreading war propaganda.

Every single time I am invited to give a speech at any event, this NGO will appear to publicly shame and pressure the organizers to cancel my invitation. The organization also openly attempts to incite academics to rally against me to strengthen their case for censorship in a trial of public opinion. Besides whipping up hatred in the media by labeling me a propagandist for Russia, they incite anonymous online troll armies such as “NAFO” to cancel me online and in the real world. After subsequent intimidations through social media, emails, SMS and phone calls, the police advised me to remove my home address and phone number from public access. One of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee recently posted a sale ad for my house, which included photos of my home with my address for their social media followers.

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee also infiltrates and corrupts other institutions. One of the more eager Helsinki Committee employees is also a board member at the Norwegian organization for non-fictional authors and translators (NFFO) and used his position there to cancel the organization’s co-hosting of an event, as I had been invited to speak. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is also overrepresented on the Nobel Committee, to ensure the right candidates are picked.

Why would a humanitarian NGO act like modern Brownshirts by limiting academic freedom? One could similarly ask why a human rights NGO spends more effort on demonizing Julian Assange rather than exploring the human-rights abuses he exposed.

https://www.rt.com/news/599262-us-government-uses-ngos/

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This “human rights NGO” is devoted primarily to addressing abuses in the East. Subsequently, all great power politics is framed as a competition between good values versus bad ones Constructing stereotypes for the in-group versus the out-groups as a conflict between good and evil is a key component of political propaganda. The complexity of security competition between the great powers is dumbed down and propagandized as a mere struggle between liberal democracy versus authoritarianism. Furthermore, they rest on the source credibility of being “non-governmental” and merely devoted to human rights, which increases the effectiveness of their messaging.

By framing the world as a conflict between good and evil, mutual understanding and compromise are tantamount to appeasement while peace is achieved by defeating enemies. Thus, these “human rights NGOs” call for confrontation and escalation against whoever is the most recent reincarnation of Hitler, while the people calling for diplomacy are denounced and censored as traitors.

NGOs Hijacking Civil Society

After the Second World War, American intelligence agencies took on a profound role in manipulating civil society in Europe. The intelligence agencies were embarrassed when they were caught, and the solution was to hide in plain sight.

The Reagan Doctrine entailed setting up NGOs that would openly interfere in the civil society of other states under the guise of supporting human rights. The well-documented objective was to conceal influence operations by US intelligence. The “non-governmental” aspect of the NGOs is fraudulent as they are almost completely funded by states and staffed with people connected to the intelligence community. Case in point, during Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” in 2004, an anti-corruption protest was transformed into a pro-NATO/anti-Russian government. The head of the influential NGO Freedom House in Ukraine was the former Director of the CIA.

Reagan himself gave the inauguration speech when he established the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1983. The Washington Post has called NED the “sugar daddy of overt operations” and “what used to be called ‘propaganda’ and can now simply be called ‘information’.” Documents released reveal that NED cooperated closely with CIA propaganda initiatives. Allen Weinstein, a cofounder of NED, acknowledged: “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Philip Agee, a CIA whistle-blower, explained that NED was established as a “propaganda and inducement program” to subvert foreign nations and style it as a democracy promotion initiative. NED also finances the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.

The NGOs enable a loud Western-backed minority to marginalize a silent majority, and then sell it as “democracy.” Protests can therefore legitimize the overthrow of elected governments. The Guardian referred to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004 as “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing” for the purpose of “winning other people’s elections.” Another article by the Guardian labeled the Orange Revolution as a “postmodern coup d’état” and a “CIA-sponsored third world uprising of cold war days, adapted to post-Soviet conditions.” A similar regime-change operation was repeated in Ukraine in 2014 to mobilize Ukrainian civil society against their government, resulting in overthrowing the democratically elected government against the will of the majority of Ukrainians. The NGOs branded it a “democratic revolution” and was followed by Washington asserting its dominance over key levers of power in Kiev.

Similar operations were also launched against Georgia. The NGOs staged Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” in 2003 which eventually resulted in war with Russia after the new authorities in Tbilisi attacked South Ossetia. Recently, the Prime Minister of Georgia cautioned that the US was yet again using NGOs in an effort to topple the government to use his country as a second front against Russia. Georgia’s democratically elected parliament passed a law with an overwhelming majority (83 in favor vs 23 against), for greater transparency over their funding. Unsurprisingly, the West decided that transparency over funding of its pressure groups was undemocratic, and it was labeled a “Russian law.” The Western public was fed footage of protests for democratic credibility, and they were reassured that the Georgian Prime Minister was merely a Russian puppet. The US and EU subsequently responded by threatening Georgia with sanctions in the name of “supporting” Georgia’s civil society.

>>21020968

seconded

>>21021152

is she fixin her hair or does crazy hold it's head that way?

>>21021159

feelin sorry for whoever might be dating or married to that