Martin Wolf, glavni ekonomski komentator v Financial Timesu:

Moreover, both the “unipolar” moment of the US and the economic dominance of the G7 are history. True, the latter is still the most powerful and cohesive economic bloc in the world. It continues, for example, to produce all the world’s leading reserve currencies. Yet, between 2000 and 2023, its share in global output (at purchasing power) will have fallen from 44 to 30 per cent, while that of all high-income countries will have fallen from 57 to 41 per cent. Meanwhile, China’s share will have risen from 7 to 19 per cent. China is now an economic superpower. Via its Belt and Road Initiative it has become a huge investor in (and creditor of) developing countries, though, predictably, it is having to deal with the consequent bad debts so familiar to G7 countries. For some emerging and developing countries, China is a more important economic partner than the G7: Brazil is one example. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva may have attended the G7, but he cannot sensibly ignore China’s heft.

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Pričakovati čudeže od nekaj zastarelih in inferiornih letal z doletom 500 km, brez ukrajinskih vzletišč in brez zračnih tankerjev bi bilo precej naivno. Ampak tukaj gre za PR učinke. …dokler jih Rusi ne sklatijo, kot so v staro železje spremenili čudežne Himarse in Patriote. Eden izmed dobrih zapisov o specifiki F-16 je spodaj.

Je morda kdo pomislil na začetek mirovnih pogovorov? Ali pa mora za ameriške interese prej umreti še zadnjih nekaj deset tisoč ukrajinskih vojakov, ki so še ostali od začetnih +300 tisoč vojakov?

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A few days ago U.S. President Joe Biden announced the training of Ukrainian pilots for the F-16 multirole fighter aircraft:

President Joe Biden told G7 leaders on Friday that the US would join in efforts to train Ukraine’s pilots on fourth generation fighter jets including the F-16s, a senior administration official told CNN on Friday.

This has obviously been in the planning for some time. The timing of the announcement at the G7 summit was simply chosen to maximize the propaganda value for Biden.

The process we have seen has repeated itself again and again. As pro-Ukrainian blogger (with no military knowledge) describes it:

This has clearly become a proxy war between Russia and NATO, supercharging the political considerations inherent to any war. Ukraine’s goal is to wheedle as much military aid as humanly possibly out of NATO, especially the United States. The United States’ goal is more complex: give enough aid to push Russia back, but not so much that its proxy war with Russia escalates into an actual one.This dynamic has created a Hunger Games scenario where Ukraine is constantly playing to the cameras to cajole extra gifts from the wealthy sponsors who watch its every move over the internet in real time. I had decided against using this analogy until I saw Ukrainians themselves using it. There is something grotesque and sobering about finding yourself in this position, and writing about it. But it is what it is.

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Zabavno

South Africa reported that applications for joining the BRICS are received almost weekly. According to Anil Suklal, Ambassador-at-Large for Asia and BRICS at the South African Foreign Ministry, we are talking about 30 countries. At the moment, BRICS consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. News portal NewZimbabwe reported last week, citing internal BRICS documents, that joining the group is now sought by:

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Kitajska je je bila leta 2015 na 3-krat nižji ravni kot ZDA glede prispevka k “high quality” znanosti (po metriki najbolj ugledne znanstvene revije Nature), leta 2022 avtorji iz kitajskih raziskovalnih inštitucij po prispevku k znanosti prehitele kolege iz ameriških raziskovalnih inštitucij.

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Kot pravijo, “true American interests are all about oil and arms“. Če ste že pozabili Irak, Libijo in Sirijo, Ukrajinski primer se odvija prav zdaj pred našimi očmi:

As the war in Ukraine drags on, the government is selling off state assets in a big privatization spree.

US fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Halliburton are participating in discussions to take over the Eastern European nation’s oil and gas industry, as Kiev pushes to increase production to replace Russian energy exports.

This comes soon after Ukraine’s Western-backed leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, sent a friendly video message to a US corporate lobby group, thanking companies like BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Starlink, and promising “big business” for others.

In September, Zelensky also symbolically opened the New York Stock Exchange, announcing that his country is “open for business”, offering more than $400 billion in “public-private partnerships, privatization, and private ventures” for US companies.

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Odlično predavanje Larsa Schernikaua, ki bi ga morali pogledati vsi, da bi sploh razumeli, kaj pomeni, da bo našo prihodnost poganjala elektrika. Da bi razumeli napačne predpostavke in zavajujoče LCOE izračune, na katerih je zgrajen balon “zelenega prehoda”. Toliko blefa in zavajanja, kot ga je v “električnem zelenem balonu”, težko najdete. Dobro je, da to slišite od strokovnjaka na tem področju.

Vsaka država je nesrečna na svoj način in vsaka država ima svoje norce. Le da se z nesrečniki in norci velikih držav, hočeš nočeš, mora ukvarjati ves svet. No, v tem ameriškem šovu med demokrati in republikanci glede meje zadolžitve se zdi, da sta Biden in Yellenova slabo odigrala svoji vlogi.

As soon as Republicans took control of the House last November, it was obvious that they would try to take the economy hostage by refusing to raise the federal debt limit. After all, that’s what they did in 2011 — and hard as it may be to believe, the Tea Party Republicans were sober and sane compared to the MAGA crew. So it was also obvious that the Biden administration needed a strategy to head off the looming crisis.

More and more, however, it looks as if there never was a strategy beyond wishful thinking. I hope that I’m wrong about this — that President Biden will, at the last minute, unveil an effective counter to G.O.P. blackmail. He may even be forced to do so, as I’ll explain in a bit. But right now I have a sick feeling about all of this. What were they thinking? How can they have been caught so off-guard by something that everyone who’s paying attention saw coming?

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