We are accustomed to being the leader of the global order, the big kahuna on planet earth. But our preeminence is slipping. And your media, whether it’s Fox News or CNN, is not telling you about it.
Tuesday night, a two-day summit wrapped up that will slowly but surely have an impact on your life and the lives of your kids and grandkids. But it’s likely you never heard about it. It’s the annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was founded in 2001 and originally included only China, Russia, and four central Asian republics. No wonder it’s been so obscure. Today it also includes Iran, India, Belarus, and Pakistan.
Which means the two days of meetings that wrapped up Tuesday represented a quarter of the earth’s economy and half the world’s population. Yes, half. That’s according to Xi Jinping, China’s dictator.
Meaning that we may be working to isolate Iran and make it a pariah, but an organization representing half the world’s population is defending Iran’s sovereignty and condemning our attacks against it.
What were the fruits of this get-together? The participants condemned the airstrikes against Iran. They asserted each members’ rights to “peaceful” nuclear development and control over its own nuclear safety. They promoted “a collective non-Western position on nuclear governance.”
They did not mention the United States by name. But their condemnation of America was there for all to see. On the economic front, they opposed what they called our “unilateral coercive measures” against Iran, the hangman’s knot of economic sanctions we are trying to tighten around the neck of Iran’s economy.
They discussed their efforts to create a banking infrastructure that skirts America’s sanctions. Their alternative system is already having an impact. One major source of America’s extraordinary sanctions power is the central role of the dollar and of American financial institutions in the world’s finance. But as of today, Russian officials claim that 96% of trade between Russia and India is being settled in rubles and rupees. And this escape route out of the American dollar system, says Reuters, now involves 22 Russian and 17 Indian banks.
What’s more, Russian sources claim that 90% of transactions between Russia and India are processed within ten minutes, and more than half within one minute. The meeting adopted 28 documents. And at the end of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, all ten nations signed the Bishkek Declaration.
What does that declaration say? It speaks out loudly for the sovereignty of Iran. It condemns our military strikes on Iran’s territory and civilians. And it condemns sanctions. In other words, it condemns the United States.
And it calls for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to give birth to what Xi Jinping told the group must be an “equal and orderly multipolar world.” An order whose coming, said Xi, is “irreversible.”
On the path to that new world order, Xi announced a slew of Shanghai Cooperation Organization projects that would tie the ten countries of the Organization into the biggest infrastructure backbone in human history, China’s eight-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative. Which would make China the world’s biggest provider of infrastructure, technology, and economic coordination ever seen on planet earth.
What Xi hides is this: his equal and orderly multipolar world is designed to be a stepping stone for an unequal world, a world order ruled by China.
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About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Not to mention in scientific journals like Biosystems, New Ideas in Psychology, and PhysicaPlus. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.” For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute
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References:
South China Morning Post. “SCO Takes Landmark Stand on Nuclear Security as Iran Comes Under Renewed Attack.” Accessed September 3, 2026. [South China Morning Post](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3366108/sco-takes-landmark-stand-nuclear-security-iran-comes-under-renewed-attack
State Council of the People’s Republic of China. “Full Text of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Speech at SCO Plus Meeting.” September 1, 2026. [Chinese Government](https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202609/01/content_WS6a96dae9c6d00ca5f9a0cf2e.html
State Council of the People’s Republic of China. “Xi Puts Forward Four-Point Proposal at SCO Bishkek Summit.” September 1, 2026. [Chinese Government](https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202609/01/content_WS6a9786fcc6d00ca5f9a0cf49.html
Mehmet Ihsan Canayaz, “Financial Consequences of the Belt and Road Initiative,” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (2026): 1–37, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022109026102762.
Federal Reserve Board. “The International Role of the U.S. Dollar: 2025 Edition.” July 18, 2025. [Federal Reserve Board](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/the-international-role-of-the-u-s-dollar-2025-edition-20250718.html
International Monetary Fund. “IMF Data Brief: Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves.” [International Monetary Fund](https://data.imf.org/en/news/imf%20data%20brief%20july%201
Press TV. “Iran FM: US Must Honor Islamabad MoU It Signed, or War Continues.” August 31, 2026. [Press TV](https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/08/31/775442/Iran-FM–US-must-honor-Islamabad-MoU-it-signed%2C-or-war-continues
Press TV. “Iran, Russia Can Stand against US Unilateralism: Pezeshkian.” September 1, 2026. [Press TV](https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/09/01/775478/President-Pezeshkian-tells-Putin-Iran-Russia-can-resist-US-unilateralism
Press TV. “Pezeshkian Hails SCO’s Unanimous Condemnation of US-Israeli War on Iran.” September 1, 2026. [Press TV](https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/09/01/775497/Pezeshkian-hails-SCO-unanimous-condemnation-US-Israeli-aggression-Iran
Press TV. “US Economic D-Day against Iran Meets SCO Firewall.” September 2, 2026. [Press TV](https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/09/02/775515/US-economic-D-Day-against-Iran-meets-SCO-firewall-
Reuters. “Erdogan Says Turkey Would Consider Full Membership of China- and Russia-Led Security Bloc.” September 2, 2026. [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/erdogan-says-turkey-would-consider-full-membership-china-russia-led-security-2026-09-02/
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. “SCO Member States’ Finance Ministers and Central (National) Bank Governors Meet in Bishkek.” May 30, 2026. [Shanghai Cooperation Organisation](https://eng.sectsco.org/20260530/2340465.html
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. “The 26th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO Member States and the ‘SCO Plus’ Meeting Held in Kyrgyzstan.” September 1, 2026. [Shanghai Cooperation Organisation](https://eng.sectsco.org/20260901/2493609.html)