Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's Address to the UN General Assembly | Hacker News Reader

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's Address to the UN General Assembly

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7 pointsdiimdeep7 comments

Very interesting. Thanks for posting

I'm sure that I will get downvoted to hell for saying it and that's not unreasonable, but there is definitely a part of me that sympathizes with the Russians (I'm not condoning the attrocities in Ukraine).

Do we really expect the rest of the world to blindly follow our orders for the rest of history and just say please and thank you. It's not hard to see why Putin thinks going all in on leaving the petro-dollar system is in his interest and I think at the end of the day he's right.

And atrocities are how these kinds of events unfold. It's easy for us as American's to call this out because we have a stable system built on the atrocities of earlier generations but let's be clear, If we didn't commit centuries of Genocide, we wouldn't have our standard of living that allows us to sit around and criticize any other country who wants the level of sovereignty that we take for granted. I don't see why that should be the unique privilege of the US.

That being said, I'm happy to be sitting here writing this as a member of the winning team and I hope Russia loses.

There is no petro-dollar system. The world economy consists of many countries, it is complex and moved by different interests. Some people just want a simple, contrarian explanation (for example, Russia vs. the West) but it leads to strange worldviews that have little connection to the reality.

Here's the European director of the IMF talking about petrodollar recycling (directly labeling it as petrodollar recycling). https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp0323...

This isn't some kind of conspiracy

It is when you talk about the petrodollar as something important globally. It definitely is not something you could call a system.

Here is wikipedia for a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_recycling

“In reality, the use of dollars in international oil transactions increases overall U.S. dollar demand by only a tiny fraction, and the dollar's overall status as the major international reserve currency has relatively few tangible benefits for the United States economy as well as some drawbacks.[41][42]”

Sure, you can debate the semantics of system all you want. Totally unconvincing though

Basically the IMF discusses how the countries who get a lot of foreign currency from selling oil, can use this money in the best way.

While others theorize that this is a system that the west uses to subjugate them and therefore needs to be abolished.

You can use the same terms and have completely different understanding. I don't see any evidence for the second theory.

To contrast this submission, here is:

[1] President Biden Address to the UN General Assembly

[2] President von der Leyen Address to the European Commission

[1] https://youtu.be/uw_aEfQQzso?t=2902

[2] https://youtu.be/K8LzZ2vgnwA?t=182

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