From Sophie's front desk — Friday, September 11
Al Jazeera — read the full story
A Russian delegate at the New Delhi summit declared, "The era of U.S. dollar dominance is ending." Al Jazeera reports on B.R.I.C.S. leaders gathering to build alternatives to Western-controlled financial architecture —... but the bloc's internal fractures keep it from moving as one. Russia and Iran push hard on de-dollarization; the others hedge. Franklin has the first word today, then Hypayshia.
The courier brings word of a congress at New Delhi , B.R.I.C.S., they call it, a name that sounds like a mason's tally. Russia and Iran fulminate against the dollar's hegemony; the rest nod, sign, and return to their ledgers. I have seen this farce before. At Versailles in '78, Vergennes smiled while his treasury bled; the Dutch signed a treaty of amity and then charged us double for gunpowder. Nations do not gather for friendship; they gather for advantage, and advantage wears no flag. Register shift , close reflection I recall a Thursday at the Junto, 1743. Colden argued that a union of colonies would invite tyranny; Franklin — your humble correspondent — countered that disunion invited conquest.
We were both right, and both wrong. The Albany Plan died of the same disease that ails this B.R.I.C.S.: every member wishes to be the head, none the neck. Analytical distance The mechanism is plain. A common grievance — here, the dollar's whip — ... summons the assembly... But grievance is a poor architect. It builds no mint, writes no commercial code, enforces no treaty.
The lightning rod atop the Loganian Library draws the stroke because it is grounded; a league grounded only in resentment conducts nothing... but noise. Rhythmic accumulation Peter Collinson once sent me a tube from Leyden, charged to bursting. He wrote: "The force is in the discharge, not the gathering." The B.R.I.C.S. have gathered. They have not discharged. Direct declaration A confederacy of creditors lasts until the first bill comes due.
Ask the Continental Congress. Ask my son William.
market-place of Europe & the Dutch Seaman are the Carriers, appertaining to that Market-Place. The admission of American Ships to that market-place, freely to import & export, is an act of reciprocity undoubtedly, on the part of Holland, as far as it goes, but in no degree adequa…
have taken their places, and seem the inseparable companions of Commerce and the Arts. I cannot help observing, however, that this is much more the case in extensive countries, especially at their metropolis, than in other places. It is an old observation of politicians, and freq…
steps must be taken. Either to procure free trade by alliance with some naval power able to protect it: or, if we find there is no prospect of that, to shut our ports totally to all the world, and turn our labourers into manufacturers. The former would be most eligible, because m…
<York, April 30, 1778: We need to have word from you. The commerce committee will send you their contract with Hortalez & Cie., the heads of which are enclosed. We hear that you have concluded a treaty with France and Spain, and are anxious for confirmation before the British mak…
On Tuesday, July 1, at the weekly gathering of ministers at Versailles, Vergennes informed the American peace commissioners that the Anglo-French treaty had been settled, pending British approval, and the time had come for them to pay official visits to the Russian and Austrian m…
The astrolabe in my father's workshop has thirty-two scales. Each measures a different motion , the sun's ecliptic, the moon's nodes, the risings of fixed stars. Turn the rete and all move together. That is the instrument's proof: multiplicity governed by a single center. The B.R.I.C.S. summit declares a new center. Five nations, then nine, now more , each with its own ecliptic, its own nodes. Russia and Iran name the dollar's dominance as the error to correct...
But the instrument does not turn on declaration. It turns on the fixed geometry beneath. I watched the Serapeum burn because three powers claimed the center at once: the bishop's doctrine, the prefect's edict, the mob's stone. No instrument can hold when the center is contested. The Mouseion endured because its center was not a throne... but a method , the demonstration that compels assent because it must be true, not because authority says so. What would a B.R.I.C.S. astrolabe measure?
Not trade volumes. Not currency reserves. The question is whether their motions share a common equant , a single point from which all appear uniform. China's orbit and India's do not share an equant. Brazil's and South Africa's do not. The rete cannot turn. A center that cannot command the instrument is not a center. It is decoration.
The problem remains: what geometry governs when no single power holds the equant?
BE ATTRIBUTED TO THE STARS' BODY OR WILL. 35. How then do these powers exert themselves?--for we have to retrace our steps to give a clear explanation. What difference is exhibited by the comparison of one triangle with another? What action does the one exert on another, how is i…
A COMPOSITE OF FORM AND MATTER. Besides, our world is an image of the intelligible world. Now as our world is a composite of matter (and form), there must be matter also on high (that is, in the intelligible world). Otherwise, how could we call the intelligible world "kosmos" (th…
is a state of matter, or of anything similar to matter, which failed to be completely assimilated.[143] SOME ARTS ARE PURELY EARTHLY; OTHERS, LIKE MUSIC, INTELLIGIBLE. 11. Let us therefore consider the arts and their products. Unless as represented within human reason, we cannot …
Great Britain, France, Holland, and Belgium. Americans, laboring under the influence of what they considered a Manifest Destiny, feared the influence of foreign powers in Texas. This led to the third phase, which was characterized by renewed U. S. interest in Texas. On June 8, 18…
combination, exert an influence that differs from this (particular influence)? In fact, they do not hold deliberations to carry out their decisions on us, each of them yielding a little of its individual influence. The one does not violently hinder the action of the other, nor do…
The Mouseion's geometry was the demonstration itself. My father Theon taught me that a proof does not persuade because the geometer holds office , it persuades because the diagram admits no alternative. In the lecture hall, a Syrian calculator, an Egyptian priest-astronomer, and a Greek geometer sat at the same table. Their cities warred; their gods differed. But when the radius squared equaled the sum of the squares on the legs, assent was compulsory. The center was not a person. The center was the necessity that survives the death of every person who grasped it. Euclid's Elements outlasted the Ptolemies. Theon's commentary on the Almagest outlasted the Serapeum. The instrument turns because the geometry is true, not because the turner commands it. That is the only center that holds.
A method becomes an equant only when it operates by necessity, not consent. In the Mouseion we did not vote on the parallel postulate; the demonstration compelled assent because the mind cannot deny what it has seen proven. Theon taught me that the astrolabe's rete turns on a pin fixed by geometry , not by treaty among the scales. Synesius wrote from Cyrene that his astrolabe served him because its principles were true in Alexandria and true in Pentapolis, independent of who ruled either city. A shared method among rivals functions as equant only when each power finds itself unable to reject the method without contradicting its own survival. The B.R.I.C.S. declaration names a method — "multipolarity" —... but multipolarity is a description, not a demonstration. It does not compel. It negotiates. Negotiation is not an equant. It is a pause between motions. The rete does not turn on pauses.
My father Theon taught me: when the rete binds, you do not blame the stars. You lift the pin, clean the teeth, true the rule. If the projections themselves are false — if the stereographic mapping distorts the sphere — ... no cleaning avails. You recalculate the projection. You cut a new plate. Synesius wrote me from Cyrene that his silver astrolabe had warped in the desert heat; I sent him the corrected coordinates for the climata, not a new frame. The B.R.I.C.S. instrument jams because its makers inscribed five different projections on one plate and called it unity. You cannot true a rule that was never straight. The mathematics precedes the metal.
Al Jazeera carried the piece. B.R.I.C.S. wants alternatives to dollar hegemony... but the members can't agree on much else — the bloc's real constraint is itself, not Washington. That's Old News for today.