 Hello and welcome again to another live discussion of the M25, a radical political movement for Europe. We're back after the summer break with another season of live discussions with our coordinating team featuring ideas you won't hear anywhere else. This has been an eventful summer with some significant shifts in international order. Tonight we talk about them and ask ourselves what's your place in all of this. Now these events are global in nature, but a few important recent developments have taken place in Africa, a continent more colonized and exploited by European powers than any other. Just weeks ago, coup d'etat in Niger and Gabon removed historical European allies from office. Other countries in West Africa, like Burkina Faso, have also seen coups take place in recent years with the new military governments after enduring significant popular support. And some of these leaders are claiming they want to reassess their deep new colonial ties with Europe, particularly France, while Paris and its remaining West African allies reject the authority of these governments and even threaten war. And in August in Johannesburg in the south of the continent, leaders from the BRICS, the most powerful emerging economies in the world, made key announcements. A major expansion of the block with six new countries scattered to join next year. A commitment to reduce the dependency of the US dollar and a promise to promote green growth. Now are the BRICS nations offering a blueprint for a more just world? Could the wave of upheavals in Africa lead to an end to European exploitation? And what role, if any, should progressives in Europe want for our countries in these unfolding stories? That's what we discussed tonight with Janis Varoufakis and our panel of activists, thinkers and doers. And you, of course, if you have any thoughts or questions for us, please throw the matters in the chats and we'll get to them as best as we can. Now, I like to kick things off by introducing a new face here to our coordinating collective, Noma Zulutata, originally from Zimbabwe based in Bremen or this in Germany for many decades now. Noma, welcome. And I like to ask you to ask you to kick things off for us. You wrote an article recently for a website on the coup in Niger. That's very comprehensively made the argument that you see this not as a coup, but as a realignment. Can you explain why you believe that? Believe you are muted. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to speak to you regarding the situation in Africa. Yeah, I said in my article that this article, this coup, is not a coup. These coups, they're not coups as such, but they are realigning. What I mean by that is that voters are shifting their allegiance from the government to the military. Now, there are many coups in West Africa. I think they're about 110 since the beginning of the independence time in the 1960s. It started with Ghana and then there was Togo. It was coups and counterpunters. But now let me just narrow down to these coups that had Bremen circle. You know, there was a coup in Poukina Faso. We didn't hear France talking too much. And then there was a coup again in charge in Mali. And then when there was a coup in Niger, then everything changed. France was on out to go to Mali and reinstate the democratically elected president. Now, my question is, why not other countries? Why Mali? Now, the situation in West Africa is that EQUAS is an organization that is supposed to be economic. Now it has turned into a military entity that is supposed to march in and reinstate an elected government. Now, was that government elected or was there a coup? Not in the military sense, but in the sense that it is elections in Africa. They are always manipulated by the colonizers most of the time, not all the time. We see ourselves in a situation whereby in Niger any time it will be invaded. Not by France, but by African countries. This is a dimension that has always been that African presidents have always acted in favor of the colonizers. Most of the time. It is inconceivable that countries in West Africa would produce an army that is financed by France to invade another African country. Just inconceivable. Even in Nigeria itself, because Nigeria plays a big part in West Africa. There's got a population of 150. Other countries have got very small populations, even their armies are very small. It simply means that it's Nigeria going to Niger to overthrow the military government that has taken power. The thing is this. Niger is supported by the population on the ground. So what ground does France and the equals, part of the equals, have to go and reinstate a president who has been rejected by the people on the ground? I think this is the bone of contention that we still need to look into, seriously. So these are young people that took over the government. The question is, are these young people saying we have been disappointed by our elders, our forefathers? By the way, in which they ruled these countries, not in the interest of the population, but in the interest of the colonizers all the time. I remember when South Africa put independent. It was not anywhere different from how these countries were different. South Africa, yes, it got its independence politically, but economically. South Africa remained in fact a country all the time. Yes, countries north of South Africa, they looked to South Africa as a sub-machine. That was in 1994 when Manuela came out of prison. So they were wholly disappointed when South Africa did not get that independence in one bit. All eyes were on South Africa and ANC disappointed Africa. And I think there was a moment where Africa resigned completely. They were disappointed in the way Manuela hanged the processes leading to independence in South Africa. So now here comes a young text, you know, military boys that are just simply saying we have had enough. We are taking over the governments and then we see how we can liberate ourselves, especially from France. So I think in a nutshell, this is what my article was talking about. Thank you very much, Noma. Janis, what's your view on this? You're awesome, you did. Okay, let me begin by welcoming in public Noma to our team, to the coordinating collective of DM25. Thank you for your article. Thank you for your introduction. Is it wonderful to have an African voice being represented here, as opposed to us, you know, white Europeans, again, pontificating on matters beyond our borders south of the Mediterranean on matters that pertain to Africa. A number of comments. The first one is, history is repeating itself. What is happening now in the sub-Saharan African continent in Niger, and in other, and so on with various military coups, changes of government. They are not all the same cases. Each one of them has its own particularities. Let's not bundle them together, right? But the general feel of these regime changes. I'm not saying anything different to what Noma is saying, but I'm just going to add a slightly different angle from which to look at things. Well, it resembles what happened in northern Africa in the 1950s and 60s in the Arab part of Africa. You will recall that Egypt, for instance, Iraq are two examples that were essentially and a lot of a large part of Arabia, were under the thumb of the British Empire, of the British, who unlike the French in Algeria in Morocco. They were not running these countries as if they were part and parcel of the metropolis. France was pretending that Algeria was part of France, right? France had friendship, citizenship. The English were different. They never officially took over Egypt, for instance. They had a government, a king, in Farouk, in Egypt. There was a government, Egyptian government, supposedly was an independent state, but it was completely run and taken over by the British. And the British were using Africa, northern Africa, and the Middle East more generally, places like Iraq, in order to gain geostrategic advantages versus other superpowers of the time, raw materials, trade, and markets as well. And they had this twin policy of security and development, they called it. So essentially, I mean it was insecurity and underdevelopment, but the official version was that they had the army there, the British army, to keep the peace and prevent the locals from killing each other. That was the official ideology of the British Empire. And at the same time they claimed that they introduced railways, they introduced operas, they introduced schools, and they think they introduced quite a bit of that in the same way they had done in India. But it was colonialism, okay? It was colonialism. And at some point, army officers like Nasser, like Saddam Hussein, for that matter, like Adafi in Libya, they took up arms and they staged a coup that had many of the features of what's happening in Israel today. Because France, under Macron, is using the British strategy in the Sahara, in the sub-Saharan. So what were they doing in Mali? What were they doing in Niger? Security and development. French army to keep the peace and supposedly development. It's exactly the same playbook. Macron copied, you know, played a British game in sub-Saharan Africa. The result is the same. A coup d'etat, which is supported by the people in exactly the same way that Saddam Hussein, the Ba'ath party, was supported in Iraq, in Syria, and of course under Nasser, massive support that Nasser received in North Africa, in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya. Progressives in Europe as well as progressive Africans, North Africans and Arabs, looked at those resurrections or those coups d'etats as a positive thing, because they did throw off the yoke of the European colonials, colonial power. But we know how it ended. We know that simply putting your trust in military men who take over and even if they do the right thing of getting rid of the colonial armies, whether they were the British then or the French today is not a good idea. My great fear is that we are now having a repetition of what happened in Egypt, in Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon, in the Sahel, with new players. Russia, through Wagner in particular, and China, who are far more benign because they never send troops, they send money, which is always preferable to sending troops. But nevertheless, it's another way of treating Africans as objects, not as subjects, continuing colonialism by other means. So, until and unless a democratic African movement springs up in those countries, saying thank you to the military officers that got rid of the French troops, but no thank you, you're not going to be running our lives. They will probably be a repetition of the tragedy of Egypt and of Libya and of Syria and of Iraq. One last point, Noma. I was a member of the ANC back in the late 70s, early 80s in Britain. We were all rooting for Nelson Mandela to come out of prison. At a time when Margaret Thatcher was clearly labeling him a terrorist and calling for his continued imprisonment. Let us not forget all that, right? Because now Nelson Mandela has been defied, sanctified in the Western liberal press. Back then, the very same people who are now sanctifying Nelson Mandela were treating him like a terrorist, right? Anyway, he was a great man, there is no doubt about that. But like Noma, I also decry and lament the way in which the ANC, in government, essentially accepted economic apartheid. So, formal freedom, formal equality, that was important. We should not belittle how important that was. We should not belittle the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. That was an important process. A lot of restitution took place through the Truth and Reconciliation process. The Constitution of South Africa is a brilliant text. We should all be proud of the Constitution of South Africa. But under the shadow of these formal rights and beautiful texts and the change of guard in government, apartheid is stronger than ever. Not legally. I mean, I'm pleased that you have the formal right as a black person to move around in South Africa without being harassed by the police. But given the maintenance of property rights over land and mines, land and mines, that's the main source of strength and power in South Africa. The fact that these property rights remain within the white community and remain within the multinational companies that still own the mines, diamond mines, gold mines and particular coal mines, apartheid will continue. So, national liberation is a struggle that needs to be supported. But we must be very mindful that a dictatorship, a black dictatorship can rise up that may be worse than the white one in the sense that at least when you have a white face in the face of, you know, in South Africa or at Horrible Man in Rhodesia, what was his name? At least you can see the enemy. You say, all right, these are the white oppressors who get rid of them will be fine. But when you have black faces representing very fierce capitalist dictatorships run by white companies, then that's for me, I don't know whether I have the right to say that, but I will say it, it's darker and grimmer. Thank you. Thank you, Yanis. A couple of questions from the chat. Salman asks, is there a good coup and a bad coup considering what's happening in Africa? And another question, will Briggs use blockchain technologies to wean off the US dollar and its hegemony, which is something that I'm sure we'll get to later in this discussion. I'd like to bring in our other voice from Africa here now. I'm from South Africa, raised in South Africa, forget where you're even born, I'm here, you're such a true internationalist, but based in the Netherlands now. I'm sure you have your opinions on what's currently speaking about, but I also wanted to ask you about the Briggs Summit, which took place in South Africa. And how do you see the developments that took place there specifically, the important announcement that the block is going to expand, finally, which I know that in Brazil, for example, where I'm from, was viewed with a certain level of skepticism, I think in the Western media in general, as an attempt by China to sort of dilute the powers inside of the block and make it more dominant. How do you see all that? Well, this is definitely a development of where we are now internationally, of course, you know, and the realignment in global politics and global this order if I can use that word, in that sense, because we've seen the major shift that happened, for example, in the Middle East, when Saudi Arabia and Iran started reconciling. That was a huge shift and that was a moving away of Saudi Arabia, a little bit away from the United States and sort of these shifts as the global landscape is changing. We start seeing this new coalescing of states, not necessarily the global public body, but states around, you know, these kind of loose alliances. And these are loose in the sense that you see, for example, BRICS countries that are also part of G20 and so on. So it's never exactly clear, ideologically, where this new development will take those countries, if you will, from that point of view, in that sense. And when it comes to, and also one of the questions that we have as well on the, for the discussion tonight is around, can the emboldened BRICS really lead the world into a fair, lead the world into a fairer international order. At the moment, the answer is more on the no than the yes. The recent, for example, the recent communique, the Johannesburg communique. I'm just going to quote a little bit here because it's very indicative of where they're going, talks of centering the International Monetary Fund, using the governance framework that's coming out of the G20 and maintaining the capital adequacy frameworks and so on and so on and so on. If you, if you didn't say BRICS on top, you wouldn't think that it's a BRICS declarations, you know, in that sense. And, you know, we know that one of the, you know, biggest strangle hopes for any development, fair development is debt. 24 African countries, for example, spend more on interest payments than health care and so on. And, you know, we've seen it, we've seen how in the West, we are happy to bail out the banks, cancel debt, the German debts, the Second World War debt was cut by half, for example, in the 50s, etc. So debt forgiveness is the tool that we in Europe will use for our own benefits. But we are really rarely reaching that option when it comes to dealing with quote unquote the global south. And here also on this issue, the BRICS declaration is quite telling because they do note the high levels of debt issue. However, the solution is and I'm reading quoting here addressing debt vulnerabilities, according to the G20 common framework for debt treatment. We're not seeing, again, so, you know, we might see geopolitical rhetoric, that is maybe anti-western imperialist, etc. But when it comes to actual action, it's still, you know, maintaining the international order, it's not really looking to change it. It might reform it slightly towards its own benefit, but we're not seeing any major moves to, you know, begin a new or radically depart from what we have right now. So that is, that is a problem. And also what should Europe's place be? And I think that's also an important question to really get into it. And I'm hinting a bit, of course, at the debt issue as a very easy low hanging fruit, given that there's enough accounts of how much wealth has been taken from former colonies and current colonies. As well as also interestingly how Haiti had to repay France back for its revolution, right? It had to pay back over a 150 year period or so. Voss sums of money because during independent slave owners lost business. Yeah, so this issue of reparations and issue of debt relief is something that Europe can easily, and I'm saying easily, do the more difficult options, the other options are more difficult partially because of our lack of independence of Europe in making bigger decisions for itself. Thank you, Amir. Let me bring Norma back in with a quick question and then we'll move on with some new speakers. Norma, please. Yeah, Amir was in South Africa recently. And my question is, how does South Africa fit in into the bricks? What has the South African government to offer in terms of trade? Because that economy is not their economy, just like what Yannis said, that economy belongs to globalists, to apartheid populists. So what are they offering bricks? I'm sorry to say this is someone who comes from Africa, but somehow I feel the globalist, the apartheid economy would like to be part of that bricks. Are they not going to sabotage because bricks means leaving the dollar, age and money, you know, setting up their own structures. So don't you see the danger there? Yeah, that's my question. Amir, quick answer before we go. Yeah, sure, of course. I don't necessarily see the danger because I also don't see necessarily the bricks set up wanting to create a completely different infrastructure away from the current trade international trade system. It looks like the WTO, the World Trade Organization system is still undercuts, China is very much in favour of that and so on. So, you know, there could be some, in terms of planning and creating an alternative structure, sure, what they're talking about potentially a common currency. There was a actually 100 whatever the nomination bill I know gifted, for example, then I saw it's going around in Twitter with the different countries logo and so on. But it's unnecessarily sabotage because there's no intention to radically transform anything in that sense. So, if that helps you. Thank you, Amir. A question from the chat from Imogen. How do we convince current leaders in Europe to cancel that though? It's a very good question and I hope someone else can share the thoughts on this as well, but just to mention quickly. If you're not familiar with it, this is a great campaign that DM25 is actually a part of called that for climate that tries to do exactly that, using the climate as a motivator to build a popular movement that will reach this eventual final goal of cancelling the debts in developing nations to help them fund their degree transitions. So we'll leave a link to that in the chat in case you want to read more about it. But again, just another one more food for thought for a panel here. Let's go to Johannes now based in Germany. Go ahead, Johannes. Thank you, Lukas. Hello from Berlin. I wanted to pick up something that was said in the chat, which was what's a good coup and what's a bad coup. And I think, of course, there's not only two categories where we can clearly categorize, you know, overthrow of government in all kinds of different nations around the world. But I think it's very important to look at what was there before, and how do you categorize that and what's coming after. And in, in, you know, case of Niger, I think, you know, it's yet to say what comes after I think the government there, the new military government has said that they want to do a transition and three years to do election or something like that but that's of course remain to be seen what's actually coming. I think if we look at these. Yeah, these things then of course we need to see if, you know, a good coup is of course the revolution supported by the people. And I think if we also look at the European history, for example, Portugal where, you know, the dictatorship was overthrown by lower ranks of the military in support by the people. And where replaced was replaced with a democracy I think this is what you can call maybe a good coup of course we call it a revolution rightfully so. And I think, yeah, of course, from as afar it's very difficult to yet determine what we're looking at in those countries in the zone in Africa. Another question is for us in Europe and other parts of the world of course what to do in these circumstances where there is uncertainty. We don't know if, you know, who's acting in good or bad faith and in which interest. And I think for that reason it is very important for us to do one thing which is try to establish direct links to people in the country and not necessarily, you know, government officials or something like that but organizations where we know people from organizations where we know that they have similar values than us, and, you know, gather information this way, and try also to maybe implement through dialogue, different organizations in the country that we in the future can work with of course always, you know, not as colonizes and the colonized and as, you know, Europeans telling someone what they should do, but as you know, on high level discussions about the future. For example, of Europe and Africa together run run by the people. And I think this kind of practice solidarity is the way to go and of course also, if now in Niger, I think, you know, people are starting to call for, you know, war and invasion. And it's very important for us to stand against that because I think this would be a catastrophe war is, you know, never a good thing. The opposite of development of country. And, yeah, I think that should be what what we are doing if we're not on the ground in country. Thank you. I'm honest. And I think you touch upon an important point there this discussion that might seem semantic semantic but it's not really about what's the cool and what's a was a revolution right I think that's a harder issue. You did, you did smile from from Germany, so far away from Germany at the moment. Yeah, right now in America which makes this doubly interesting from Germany in America talking about Africa. And of course, I don't claim to know all that much about the African continent, certainly not more than normal here. But one thing that I would like to add to the, to the thought process is a long more long term question, more long term consideration which for me is nevertheless has a certain urgency. And the issue is language, because right now, most of Africa runs on colonizer languages. And that gives a huge advantage to the white minorities in Africa, as well as to people with good connections to France to Britain and so on. And it also holds back the education of people raised in traditional African languages, because it is so much harder for someone who's native language is, let's say a banter language to learn French or English, then to learn another banter language. So, I believe that if Africa wants to really emancipate itself it has to consider the question of language and consider for example, whether universities in Nigeria might offer programs in Hausa, which students from Niger, Niger might also attend in Hausa, in order to have a new kind of education, similarly to convert primary schools to African languages in order to make it easier for African students to to complete primary and also secondary school. And maybe make this the language of government that would require companies, the corporations that currently have so much influence over these countries to employ people who speak, let's say, Hausa or Swahili or whatever the language you choose for for your country. Obviously it's not my choices has to be the choice of the people over there but I believe that switching to African languages would automatically require some kind of reorganization of the economy, because the elites who speak French are not the elites that speak Hausa. They would have to employ a lot more African people and less people who come straight from France and just tell everyone local what to do. If you make it a requirement for the managers of the company to speak to the government in Hausa, you're not going to have Europeans in that position, simple as that. And this is also a question that relates to our second topic, the bricks. I would highly encourage the bricks to find a language that is not English. In order to reduce the influence of propaganda from the United States, which is mainly in English, people acquire all this propaganda in unconsciously just by watching Netflix just by reading English literature. And whatever books come out, if there was another language that the bricks could use to encourage also people to study in each other's countries, let's say someone from Brazil going to Russia to study or vice versa. Right now, the only way they could do that would be by learning English and going to whatever English language programs are offered at those universities. Now imagine there is a cooperation where some universities offer Brazilian universities offer programs in Russian or Russian universities offer programs in Portuguese, or even better. Both of these universities offer programs in Esperanto and then people from Egypt and from other countries could also attend it without spending years of their life, learning the language of a country that has no business in this relationship between two countries that want to become more independent. Thank you, Yudith. Let's go now to Daphne, Daphne Dalkada, based in France originally from Turkey. I think, yeah. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to swaying away from quite a bit from what you did said, but nevertheless still within the theme. I mean, it's very hard not to be like when Yanis was saying like the history is repeated itself maybe not repeating exactly but you know history doesn't repeat itself at Rhymes. It's very, I was briefly reminded of an old interview I'd watched on some major American network. Maybe MSNBC something like this, and it was the was an interview with the president of, I mean the president of South Africa during apartheid the clerk. And he was mentioning, which something that disturbed me a lot but he was mentioning it in a way that was quite almost triumphalist and he was underlining how he was able to, I mean they were able to end apartheid. Because there was no longer the threat of communism, because they didn't think that, like, it was the end of it was the beginning of the end of history so there was no competing alternative or no competing poll if you like. And then they felt safe enough to change the system then when there was no alternative in play. And I think I always come back to this in these talks but I mean it really comes back to me for me to the multi polarity. I think at the end of end of history now, like the end of multi polarity and here we are discussing the coups in Africa, and we are discussing the new bricks. So, I just can't help but remark and remember this really strange interview that was like maybe 10 years ago or like that I listened to but it really like stuck with me that he didn't even feel bad saying this was something that he was proud to say. So, it might maybe feel off topic but I don't know it felt really relevant to me so I just want to add that. Thank you definitely. And that question that chat came in about the possible use of blockchain technology by the bricks to counter the dollar Germany. I could see already itching to get back in the discussion so I like to bring you back in. We have some other questions in the in our internal chat here as well on this topic. But before, just to take a quick step back and you know you were in in Cuba earlier this year you gave a speech there. And I linked about this and many other very important geopolitical topics, but just take a step back because I feel if you're not educated in economics it can sometimes be difficult to understand what is it that we're even talking about what is it about the US dollar. That's so magical. If you're a buyer in China and I'm a seller in Brazil, why can't you just convert your currency to my currency, we trade and everybody goes home happy. What is it that makes a dollar such a powerful weapon for the US in brief. The huge trade deficit of the United States. What really makes the dollar powerful is that the United States is in the red. It keeps buying stuff from China from Europe from Africa from Asia, a lot more stuff than what it sells. That sounds very weird. Because for an African country for Greece, for, you know, normal countries, when you have a big trade deficit, then you're in trouble. Then your currency depreciates. Then you have debt crisis, then the IMF comes to you and then very soon after that you lose your schools, your roads, your hospitals, your people are thrown out of their homes. How is it that the United States have managed to turn a trade deficit into the greatest instrument of colonial power in the history of humanity. Because that's what it is. Because if you think about, yeah, we talk about the bricks, right, a cautionary note to begin with. Atlanticists, NATO propaganda lists, the EU cadres, they underestimate the bricks. We progressives overestimate the bricks. Let's not make either mistake. The bricks is not going to be at least not in the next 10, 20 years. An alternative to the G7 to Western capitalism. It is not going to be the new Soviet Union, the new, you know, source of internationalism and socialism. And at the same time, it is not insignificant. But let's, okay, that's closing the bracket. Let's go back to the American trade deficit. Imagine you are a capitalist in Shanghai. And you have a factory producing aluminum. And where do you sell this to the United States? That's whom you send it to whom you send your aluminum to. Why can the United States purchaser buyer buy it from you, because the American has dollars. And uses dollars to buy your aluminum. Now, this is the trade deficit. The fact that they can keep buying stuff without selling by printing dollars, which says then the Chinese capitalist. What does the Chinese capitalist do with the dollars that he gets from selling aluminum? He takes it to Wall Street. And there he buys American debt. Therefore he finances the American government and he buys real estate. He buys, you know, properties in Miami, in California, in Chicago, New York. And therefore you've got this recycling scheme. The greatest threat. There isn't why the bricks are not going to be a significant threat to the dollar. It's because Russian capitalists, Chinese capitalists, Indian capitalists, Indonesian capitalists, United Arab Emirates capitalists, they do not want to see the dollar being displaced by any currency, digital, crypto or normal. They want the dollar to remain completely and utterly dominant because their loot, their wealth is in dollars and it lives in the United States financial system. That is the issue. Now, why are we... By the way, take the bricks, right? Take the acronym BRICS. You're talking about language. All right, let's talk about language. Who came up with the acronym BRICS? A guy called O'Neill, Jim O'Neill. What was Jim O'Neill? The chief economist of Goldman Sachs. He came up with the idea of the BRICS. He was making the point that if you are investing money, you forget about the West. You should invest it in countries like Brazil, in Russia, in China. And in order to make it snazzy to give it a marketing edge to his article, he called... I asked him, why did you put South Africa in the S of BRICS once I met Jim O'Neill? Do you know what he said to me? He said, because one brick didn't sound good and I wanted an S. So he added South Africa in there. So this is the degree of Anglo-European American dominance that now all the developing world is looking at the BRICS as their saviour and the BRICS is an acronym concocted by the chief economist of Goldman Sachs. Now it's not insignificant. It's not insignificant because an increasing amount of international trade is not going to be in dollars. And I think the most interesting event of the last weeks is when we heard that Argentina repaid a few billion dollars that it owed to the international monetary fund using Chinese one. If you couple that with the news that the new development bank, which is the BRICS bank, where Dilma is the president, the former Brazilian president, is going to be lending in local currencies. And also there's another outfit of the BRICS, a separate outfit that is going to try to replace the IMF. So when one country, which is associated with the BRICS, let's say South Africa, or any other country that joins the BRICS in some associative form, when they have a problem with the balance of payments, when the country pays their bankers in Germany, their bankers in England, their bankers in France, in America, then this BRICS IMF version of the IMF will come in and lend them in local currencies. Now what does this mean? What does it mean to be lent in local currency? Well, when Argentina repaid its IMF installment with some like four or five billion dollars using one, what that means is this, the Chinese repaid it using their own dollar stock. If this new development bank and the Dilma lends to Argentina or South Africa or to Zambia, if they lend money in local currency, in South Africa around to the South African government, what does that mean? The BRICS bank does not have around to give. What it has is dollars. Okay? All one. It can give them one or give them dollars. Now for that loan to South Africa to be useful to South Africa, the South African government that takes on this loan must be able to buy stuff from America, from Europe, from India. They will have to pay dollars. So essentially they get dollars from the BRICS bank, but they have to repay in the future with interest the dollars that it costs initially to give the round. What does this mean? It means that if the round devalues 50% in the next 10 years when the loan has to be repaid. This is a good thing for South Africa because South Africa will have inflation. The same quantity of round in 10 years time will be worth half as much. So they effectively will have to pay to the BRICS bank half the money. So it's negative interest rates for the BRICS bank. Who is going to suffer for this? The Chinese because they are the only ones amongst the BRICS that have a big wad of dollars. So essentially the BRICS bank means that the Chinese are using their stock of dollars in order to lend the countries that take loans from the BRICS bank and take on itself Beijing will take on its shoulders the devaluation risk, which now when an African country borrows the devaluation risk is its own. It will have to pay for it. Now, why would the Chinese do that? Well, one reason is because they have too many dollars. In the sense that, you know, because they have a very large current account surplus, they keep with a lump of aluminum or car or whatever it is that they all close that they sell to the Americans or to the Europeans, they get dollars back, right? What do they do with these dollars? They have to take them to Wall Street. Now they've seen what happened after the Ukraine war that the central bank of the United States, the Fed confiscated 350 billion Russian dollars. So they think they may do this to us. We might as well use our dollars through the BRICS network to gain more influence over South Africa, over Saudi Arabia, right? So they are socializing amongst the third world, what we used to call the third world. They are dollar holdings. So the BRICS is China. Let's not beat about the bush here. The BRICS is China with India trying to find a kind of middle road with the United Arab Emirates playing the West against the BRICS in order to gain advantages like Saudi Arabia wants to negotiate deals. They don't want to get out of the dollar zone, but they want to enhance the relationship with China, with the BRICS in order to leverage their own bargaining with the United States. This is all very interesting, but leftists, I'm really appalled. Leftists have a tendency to look at the BRICS and say, we are orphans. We in the left since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we've been orphaned. We've been looking at a large power internationally that will look after us, that we will be able to dream that they are our people, that they will defeat the capitalist mammoth, right? Don't make this mistake. That's not what the BRICS is. It's significant. I explain why it is significant, but it is not the new communist international, the new socialist national, the new humanist international. That's not what it is. One last point, if I may, or a couple of points. You did, you made a very good pitch for Esperanto. Everything you said was a pitch for Esperanto. It was not a pitch for local languages. It is crazy for the Africans to use one local language and universalize it. It will not happen. It should not happen. It's a good pitch for Esperanto that we should all start from zero with a common language that is easy to learn. It's never going to work. I wish it did. Then I would learn Esperanto as well, but it will never work because what happens is some language takes the upper hand for historic reasons. And don't forget English is not American. It is English. England is becoming increasingly irrelevant. So it doesn't matter. It's a bit like Greece. Ancient Greece died and then Greek remained the lingua franca of the world, even when Greece was no longer in existence. So England is on the verge of not being in existence. I think English is a pretty good common language because the way it works is maximing the mathematical principle of maximing. That is, we maximize the use of the language that we all have a minimum grasp of. And that is English today. Once upon a time it might have been Spanish or French or Latin. Today it is English. And finally, in response to the question in the chat, are there good coups and bad coups? Well, if you have a military fascist dictatorship and some military officer overthrows the bastards, that is a good coup. And let me give you an example. 1975, Portugal, Otelo de Carvalho, the colonel of the fascist army then. He was a lefty who managed to survive the army and he overthrew the horrible 60-year-old fascist dictatorship of Portugal. That was a good coup. But it's a good coup only if overturns fascism. If it overturns a democratically elected regime like in Pinochet, by the way, yesterday we had 50 years from that despicable event, the valende, exposed. Then, of course, it's a bad thing. Enough said, thank you. Thank you, Janis. Speaking of us leftists, I want to invite Noma back in to take us home and talking about specifically if you could, Noma, because you touch upon this in your article as well. What's our role in all this? Not only as leftists, but leftists in our particular time and place, right? In the place by a large here where we're located in these former colonial powers. What is it that you think we should do in order to support this movement building towards democracy, towards development, towards independence in Africa? That's a very good question. There is a lot that we can do. For instance, we are looking at Gabon. Gabon there was a coup there. And we think that this coup was organized by France. And we also think that France is going to preempt those in its colonies that haven't changed their genes yet. We are speaking of a Cameroon. We are speaking of other countries that are in danger of getting coups. Nigeria is another place where a coup can happen anytime because the people on that region are not happy about what Eko was going to do here to replace old president. So what we can do here is to really shout. Can you imagine a prime minister like Miloni? She's a hero in Africa, in West Africa. Unbelievable. A few days ago I saw a diplomat giving his credentials to a president in Pokina Faso. When I saw that I said my country could do better in drumming up writing articles, really condemning France about their moves to want to invade Niger. That we can do here in a free Europe. We can write many articles in many media houses, especially in France and let them know that there are people here who are here in Europe who are against a military action in Niger. That is what I can think of now. Really turning up. Thank you very much for your invitation. Thank you, Noma. Won't be the last to be with us throughout now. Thank you so much to the rest of our panel for joining us. And thank you for watching and sending us your comments and questions. We're resuming this regular live streams now, so we'll see you again.