BRICS in one chart

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UPDATE: A mere glance at this map show how tragic it is that Europe did not seize the opportunity to form a solid, mutually beneficial alliance with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Instead, directed by US neocons, Europe did almost everything it could to destroy the possibility of that alliance. All the blame falls on the neocons, no one else. Russia, especially under Putin, did all it could to become a rightful member of the Western alliance. The worst foreign policy mistake in world history has been the neocon West antagonizing Russia when they should have been embracing her with open arms. I have been watching this tragedy unfold over the past thirty plus years and take no pleasure in seeing what has resulted. The West will go on, the world will go on, but what a monumental waste it was to reject Russia. ABN

BRICS 11: Strategic Tour de Force — Pepe Escobar

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Chinese President Xi Jinping defined all the major decisions embedded in the 15th BRICS summit in South Africa as “historic”. That may be seen as an understatement.

It will take time for the Global South, or Global Majority, or “Global Globe” (copyright President Lukashenko), not to mention the stunned collective West, to fully grasp the enormity of the new strategic stakes.

President Putin, for his part, described the negotiations on BRICS expansion as quite difficult. By now a relatively accurate picture is emerging of what really went down on that table in Johannesburg.

India wanted 3 new members. China wanted as many as 10. A compromise was finally reached, with 6 members: Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Argentina and Ethiopia.

So from now on it’s BRICS 11. And that’s just the beginning. Starting with the rotating Russian presidency of BRICS on January 1, 2024, more partners will be progressively included, and most certainly a new round of full members will be announced at the BRICS 11 summit in Kazan in October next year.

So we may soon progress to BRICS 20 – on the way to BRICS 40. The G7, for all practical purposes, is sliding towards oblivion.

…The BRICS 11 Shock of the New, in the energy sphere, is a sharp historical counterpoint to the 1973 oil shock, after which Riyadh started wallowing in petrodollars. Now Saudi Arabia under MbS is operating a tectonic shift, in the process of becoming strategically aligned with Russia-China-India-Iran.

Diplomatic coup does not even begin to describe it. This is the second stage of the Russian-initiated and Chinese-finalized rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran, recently sealed in Beijing. The Russia-China strategic leadership, working patiently in synch, never lost sight of the ball.

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Excellent analysis, straight to the point. US neocons have brought us to this dismal end. Like a tribe of uneducable adolescents they have wreaked havoc with US and deep Western interests as well as global interests for all. Self-aggrandizement has been the neocon only goal throughout their thirty year reign over USA and the West, and all the world can see it. ABN

Chef Kenneth Law ‘who sold poison online to help people end their lives’ probed over 88 UK deaths, as he appears in court in Canada after the ‘sale of lethal substances’

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  • Kenneth Law, 57, was arrested in his hometown of Ontario, Canada and charged with two counts of counselling and aiding suicide after allegedly selling 1,200 packages to 40 countries through disguised websites 
  • The UK’s National Crime Agency has launched a probe into the deaths of 88 people but could not confirm the substance was the direct cause of the deaths
  • Law is also being investigated by forces across the world including in the United States, Italy and Australia 

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Sam Altman fears Meta taking huge risks with open source AI

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Meta wants to open-source a GPT-5-level model and seems dead-set on open-sourcing right up until AGI. I want to be clear about what this means:

There is no kill-switch. If something goes wrong–an agent gets out of control or a bad actor weaponizes it–there’s no easy way to turn it off. It could be running on any small cluster. There will be no security.

Safety research becomes meaningless. All the work people have done into making AI systems honest, aligned, ethical, etc becomes (mostly) moot. The population of AI’s out in the world will evolve towards whichever systems produce the most economic output, irrespective of what values or motives they have. There will be no guardrails. Anyone can change their AI’s values or capabilities as they want, for good or bad.

If Meta continues to open-source as we get much smarter AI, it’s pretty clear to me that things will become a shitshow. The arrival of these alien intelligences in the world is already going to be chaotic, but much much moreso if we just fling off what little levers of human control we have.

As far as I can tell, Meta’s wish to open-source stems mostly from some software industry dogma that “open-source good”.

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Andrei Troshev to replace Prigozhin as head of Wagner Group — unconfirmed

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This is the new leader of the Wagner group‼️

According to many sources, Prigozhin’s successor could be 61-year-old Andrei Troshev, better known as “Sedoy” (“Sit”).

Exactly 18 months since the start of the war in Ukraine and a day after the alleged death of Wagner’s leader👇

Yevgeny Prigozhin, who, according to Russian media, died in a plane crash in the Russian region of Tver, there is already widespread speculation in Russia about his successor.

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In the text, his birth year is given as 1953, so he was either born later or is 71 years old. ABN

Fired Ukrainian prosecutor Shokin says Joe and Hunter Biden DID take BRIBES – and were behind his ousting: ‘Isn’t that corruption alone?’ he says in preview of bombshell interview

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Former Ukranian Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin is accusing Joe and Hunter Biden of ‘corruption’ – saying they accepted large money ‘bribes’ from Burisma and were behind his firing.

Shokin, who was ousted as Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2016, made the accusations during excerpts of an upcoming explosive interview airing on Fox News. 

At the time of his firing, he was investigating oil company Burisma Holdings for corruption – when Hunter was serving on the firm’s board.

‘I do not want to deal in unproven facts. But my firm personal conviction is that yes, this was the case. They were being bribed,’ Shokin says in the clip of the interview.

‘The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal – my firing – isn’t that alone a case of corruption?’ he continues in another clip.

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Research and Studies on CBD and Anxiety

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CBD has gained a lot of attention in recent years for its potential therapeutic benefits for anxiety. While there is some evidence to support the use of CBD for anxiety, there are also limitations to the current research, and more studies are needed to fully understand the potential benefits and risks.

What does existing research say about the potential benefits of CBD for anxiety?

Several studies investigating the potential benefits of CBD for anxiety have borne promising results. Some of the proposed benefits of CBD for anxiety, according to emerging research, include:

  • Reducing symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD)
  • Improving sleep in people with anxiety
  • Reducing anxiety in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Reducing symptoms of panic disorder

In the scientific literature, any drug or substance that causes a decrease in anxiety is known as an anxiolytic. Hence CBD is the subject of ongoing research into these proposed anxiolytic properties of CBD and their underlying mechanisms. Despite the need for some caution, these initial findings are exciting for researchers and sufferers of these varying facets of anxiety alike.

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The linked essay is a thorough review of the use of CBD to relieve anxieties. Sent by a reader and well worth viewing if topic is of interest. ABN