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Moon of Alabama – Sept 19, 2022

Last week the Head of States Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization met in Samarkand. The meeting was not very remarkable. It was business as usual. Iran will soon join the organization and several other states want association agreements with it.

An important side event was a non-scripted press conference President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation held. There is a video with English subtitles that covers it and the Kremlin provides as usual an English language transcript. Putin made some important points that were not reflected in ‘western’ news coverage as they contradicted the propaganda positions the ‘western’ media have taken. Below I excerpted parts and added a few comments.

On the SCO:

Vladimir Putin: The most important thing always and everywhere is economic development. And the SCO, cooperation with the SCO countries, creates conditions for the development of the Russian economy, and thus for the social sphere and for resolving the tasks related to improving the living standards of our citizens.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation includes countries whose population, as has been said many times, comprises almost or even slightly more than half of humanity. It is 25 percent of world GDP. And, most importantly, the national economies in the region, those of the SCO member states, are developing much faster than others in the world.

The SCO markets are where global economic growth is happening. But the ‘west’ is excluding itself from those regions. ‘Western’ policies are hostile towards many of the big SCO members. Those policies build up barriers that hinder ‘western’ industries to profit from that growth. These are self-defeating measures.

There is a question about military strikes within Russia. Putin didn’t seem bothered too much about those.

Cont. reading: Putin’s Press Conference On Ukraine, Terrorism, Fertilizer, Europe’s Energy Crisis