BRICS

If China builds it, will they still come?
If China builds it, they will likely come, but with conditions … it, being the Silk Road economic initiative, and they, being countries of the European heartland.
Russia sees the Belt and Road Initiative as a necessary economic counterbalance to EU and US sanctions [PPIO]The Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation opens in Beijing April 25 with China already having scored a number of victories in 2019.

The club of emerging political and economic powers of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in response to new global challenges is famously known as BRICS. Since its inception in 2006, it has been a platform to highlight the prominence of multi-polar world order challenging the collision of G-7 members. These five countries account for 20 percent of world[Read More...]

Industrialized countries advanced by means that have been impermissible to the developing world, write Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram. By Anis Chowdhury in Sydney and Jomo Kwame Sundaram in Kuala Lumpur Inter Press Service The notion of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,…Read more →

Brazil is once again in the eye of a political hurricane, after President Jair Bolsonaro’s appearance at Davos and explosive revelations directly linking his clan to a criminal organization in Rio de Janeiro.
With his administration barely a month old, Bolsonaro is already being seen as expendable to the elites that propelled him to power – from the powerful agribusiness lobby to the financial system and the military.

The trade war launched by the Trump administration against China may not have been solved by a 2½-hour dinner between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump at the G20 in Buenos Aires on Saturday. But it may have opened a path towards a drastic realignment.
Way beyond the histrionics surrounding the “family pic” – and whose nods and winks signaled surefire geopolitical capital – the G20 walked and talked like a last gasp to “save” the current turbo-capitalist world (dis)order.

US President Donald Trump said the G20 Summit was a success for America’s interests [PPIO]
World markets on Sunday may have sighed some relief after news emerged from the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires that China and the US had agreed to put the breaks on any new trade tariffs for the next three months.
The US agreed not to raise current tariffs on some $200 billion in Chinese goods from 10 to 25 per cent on January 1, 2019.

The BRICS are not what they intended to be, never really were.
Today it’s clear that fascist-turned Brazil is out – so we are at RICS. There is not much to argue about. The world’s fifth largest economy, Brazil, has failed and betrayed the concept of the BRICS and the world at large. Whether you consider South Africa as a valid member of the BRICS is also questionable. Much of SA’s social injustice has actually become worse since the end of apartheid. Ending apartheid was a mere political and legal exercise.

   Jair Bolsonaro                   Fernando Haddad

The apparent victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections has been analysed as the return of some kind of fascism to Brazil: electing dictators where they previously had to enter office in tanks. However, Brazilians, unlike Portuguese, did not remove their dictators from power. The Brazilian military gave way to its civilian counterparts. A governing structure was created in 1986, which permitted the discrete withdrawal of uniformed personnel from public offices and public liability for the consequences of their acts.

With a range of 400 kilometers, S-400 Triumf is designed to shield from air strikes, strategic, cruise, tactical and operating tactical ballistic missiles and medium-range ballistic missiles [Russian MoD]
Despite US objections and the threat of sanctions, India says it will go ahead and purchase advanced Russian defense systems.
Chief of India’s Army Staff Bipin Rawat told the media on Monday that New Delhi will determine a military procurement of its own choosing.