How to Take Off a (Political) Straitjacket
Serbia should understand that it could and must take off the straitjacket the West put on it with its generous assistance.
This issue should have already been resolved which means that there is no reason for concern until ‘the next one reason comes round’. Namely, Kosovo is Serbia and even after the Ohrid meeting in the same proportion it used to be before that meeting on the 18th March between Belgrade and Pristina – the first lady of the Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova explained a few days ago, which means that Kosovo remains the heart of Serbia with its essential autonomy in accordance with the Resolution 1244. Above all, Zakharova, when we asked her a few further questions gave two very important and equally reassuring questions.
Firstly, the Serbian province of Kosovo entering any international organizations is non-negotiable. These are not the UN only. We asked specifically about Interpol and UNESCO and we got said response. And secondly, the EU can change their negotiating positions as much as they wish, and regrettably with our (Serbian) forced consent. but the Security Council is to be asked i.e. Russia and China with it. Anyhow, if the matters were any different, the self-proclaimed pseudostate of Kosovo would have joined the UN a long time ago. In this way it cannot move an inch from the UN Resolution 1244. That goes to say in case that the unfavorable total turnaround does not happen, except that we do not have anything to hope for, we should not fret too much about the International Donors’ conference for Kosovo (without the asterisk and a footnote) and this crippled rump of a country which might be left behind out of Serbia.
It is common knowledge that by Ohrid Annex we were threatened within the next 150 days. Mercifully, it is written there that no allocation of funds will occur before the EU determines that all the clauses of the Agreement are fulfilled in its entirety. Lest we forget, the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic himself pledged in public that not all the clauses will be fulfilled. We should take his word for it. And not only because the breaching of his pledge would mean the breaching of the Serbian Constitution. Our ‘not meant to be’ donors did not express enough resourcefulness yet again. We were offered the very same thing earlier as well: to bribe us into selling our Kosovo to them demanding from us to agree to the Faustian bargain.
At the time of the Ahtisaari negotiations, as part of the secret K1 strategy, which was later exposed by Wikileaks so as ”to move us away from the Kosovo issue laden with emotions, towards a more democratic, more prosperous future”. They offered us the long-term programme worth $23 million ‘most generously’ for agriculture, $14 million in technical aid for the sectors with high growth potential, $21 million for Sandzak and the south of Central Serbia; One may wonder why there exactly because that was not a mere coincidence, and $1 million for the Dom Omladine (Youth Cultural Centre) in Belgrade ‘to throw the Serbs off the scent’. All in all, it was about $60 million in total. In other words: beads and trinkets – the good old recipe already tried and tested on all the other ‘Indians‘.
But back then the benefactors were, at least they thought they were, in a much better financial state than today. Back then they were not going through the great economic crisis such as the one in 2008 which did not happen out of the blue, whereas now 15 years later, they should brace up for a perfect storm, so to speak. That is most probably the crucial aspect of this war between the Collective West and the rest of the world. Thus it is vitally important for us to pay particular attention. Anyway none of this can be avoided, be it good or evil so it would not go amiss for us to prepare to any extent imaginable.
For starters we should understand that we could and we must take off the straitjacket they put on us with our generous assistance and moreover that for this procedure of taking off a strait jacket we do not need the skills of Harry Houdini but the readiness to do it. On one hand, the banking crisis is gaining momentum as we speak. The collapse of a few smaller banks in the USA nobody has heard of before immediately spilt over to the systemically important Credit Suisse Bank of which many have heard of course, and then even more important Deutsche Bank is mentioned for its notoriety, which in its portfolio has an abnormal amount of speculative financial derivatives which is dozen times bigger than the total GDP of Germany.
Bloomberg reports that Charles Schwab’s financial empire worth 7 billion dollars is in turmoil. This is not the Klaus Schwab of Davos but nonetheless both belong to the same order. Fox TV warns that out of 17 thousand billion dollars in deposits with the U.S. banks only 128 billion dollars are insured. Dr Mohamed el Erian, the President at King’s College, Cambridge University, warns that the crisis which is now taking shape will not be limited to the banking sector only. By the way, all those who are prone to believe the pledges given by the ‘competent authorities’ that all will be fine, it might be worth remembering that the very same ‘competent authorities’ claimed the very same thing 15 years ago.
The crisis which began to raise its ugly head in February 2007 exploded with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers only in September 2008. It further goes to say that most probably the chaos is yet to unleash. And this chaos will be substantially bigger because that crisis back then was concealed by using all the means said ‘competent authorities’ had at their disposal. This crisis now starts exactly for that reason because the unlimited amount of fiat money printed and low interest rate. But other means are non-existent. Additionally not even the causes of the original crisis were resolved. Now there is an ever worse backlash against them because there is an ongoing parallel process which did not exist back then.
The news comes in quick succession. The ASEAN members are giving up on the trade in dollars, euros, pounds sterling and Japanese yen. India and Russia are now using ruble and rupee. Brazil and China are ditching the dollar currency from their trade calculations. Kenya will be buying oil from Saudi Arabia for their own currency and not for U.S. dollars. All these are the news from the past few days and there are more similar news. Saudi Arabia and China already agreed on yen currency to be used to purchase oil. And it is not a coincidence that at the same time Iran and Saudi Arabia are en route to mutual reconciliation helped by China and Russia and all of them together complete with India will be members of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The formula: oil for security as the basis for petrodollar and the basis of power of the U.S. dollar ever since it had to leave the Gold Standard is becoming meaningless. The key word is de-dollarization. It goes without saying that it did not come from nothing and it is not a random matter either. In fact, in all likelihood now mechanisms which were designed after 2008 to be used under these circumstances are being set in motion now. And sanctions against Russia and the freezing of its assets in the range of Western finances and control, those finances which are already within their range must wonder who may well be the next one in line to be brutally robbed (by the U.S. and NATO) has accelerated matters. And then add to all this the protests throughout the USA and Europe to all this. And what we see now is just the beginning of what will inevitably escalate because the discontent will not be any less, the bigger the economic crisis becomes. And the accompanying efforts by the government to suppress the expression of this discontent.
In line with that, draconian measures are being issued even for bad mouthing Macron on Facebook – which is now, strangely enough, a verbal injury whereas the regime in the USA in the eve of the U.S. elections 2024 is issuing an indictment against Donald Trump, the leading opposition candidate and the former U.S. President. (N.B. indicting a former U.S. President is illegal and unconstitutional per se according to the very same U.S. Constitution) These are the golden standards of the Western ‘democracy’. And we are still wearing said (political) straitjacket. We are so constrained with this straitjacket that we ‘banned ourselves’ by the Law of National Bank of Serbia (Article 62) from borrowing as a country with our own National Bank. But we are allowed to borrow from foreign banks which leads to debt slavery which is the most ‘desirable’ state of the matter we should sink deep into.
The same applies to Greece, which is now more indebted than before it even entered into the savings programmes and it sold off everything they could, somewhere along the line. It is worth noting that the aforesaid Article 62 has one crucial exception. Namely, we can borrow from our own National Bank of Serbia but only for the liabilities we have with the IMF. As if the IMF had written that law for its own interests and not ours. But times change. Bloomberg informs us these days that there is an alternative to the IMF. China, research indicates, has become the chief financial saviour of the developing countries rather than the IMF. It is already carrying out the rescuing missions throughout Africa. And we (Serbia) are a developing country. And we are in close (economic and political) proximity to China in the same manner Africa is, which means that even that excuse of not having another economic choice to make is inapplicable any more, in order to ‘keep on wearing the straitjacket’.
The former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Treasury, Monica Crowley, is warning these days that with the current political process and economic realignment in the world, the dollar will lose its status of a global reserve currency and alongside that, she says the USA will lose their economic dominance and the status of the super power in the world. One should not even elaborate on how favorable this development will have to be for Serbia. But only if we do not fritter it away for the proverbial ‘trinkets and beads’. Otherwise, we do not deserve to be rescued from the straitjacket. Because we would prove we truly deserve it.
Based on the video report for RT Balkan by Nikola Vrzic , a renowned Serbian reporter.
