The world holds its breath as final preparations are made for the 15th BRICS summit in South Africa. This year, bloc expansion seems to be at the forefront of the agenda, with over 40 nations expressing interest in joining. How will the summit change the global geopolitical landscape? Veteran international affairs observer Pepe Escobar explains.
Johannesburg is gearing up for the 15th BRICS Summit, which will kick off on Tuesday and run through Thursday, with this year’s theme entitled "|BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development, and Inclusive Multilateralism."
"Multilateralism" is perhaps the most significant word to describe the gathering nations' intentions, with the BRICS' combined economic might already outweighing that of the G7, and, when accounting for the human, geographic, economic and resource potential of countries that have expressed interest in joining, pose a serious challenge to the US-led international order.
"The great potential for creating a fair and democratic architecture of international relations lies in structures like BRICS," Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin said last week on the eve of the summit.
Pointing to the bloc name's similarity to the English word "bricks", Naryshkin indicated that BRICS is a subtle nod to the US and its allies that the so-called "rules based international order" is on its way out.....more gelow
Any moment now I am expecting John Cleese (a veteran of Monty Python) to jump out of the bushes and announce the creation of the Ministry of Silly Wars, with Donald Trump as the deranged leader. For you youngsters out there, Monty Python’s skit, The Ministry of Silly Walks, helped make the members of MP legends. I had to reference Monty Python because the line of bullshit the Trump administration is feeding the American people and the world about the amazing, obliterating US attack on Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday morning, is more ridiculous that all of the silly walks pictured in the following video:
My hopes that Donald Trump would finally act like a responsible adult are dashed. He’s a dangerous buffoon. While the team around him are working frantically to maintain the fiction that Trump has a vision and is calling the shots on the foreign policy front, he is careening around the globe like an out-of-control cue ball on a billiards table. It started a week ago… first, he claimed...
Tuesday marks the third anniversary of the launch of the Fujian, China's first aircraft carrier equipped with electromagnetic catapults. Official media said China is about to enter a three-aircraft-carrier era, with the Fujian expected to enter service by 2025.
After the launch of the Fujian on June 17, 2022, it carried out its first sea trial from May 1 to 8 in 2024. Since then, the Fujian has completed multiple sea trials, accumulating more than 100 days of sea trial, China Central Television (CCTV) News reported on Tuesday.
Wei Dongxu, a Chinese military affairs commentator, said that the aircraft carrier Fujian has been making steady progress in sea trials, and is expected to be commissioned within this year, CCTV News reported.
With a full displacement of more than 80,000 tons, the Fujian is the world's first conventionally powered aircraft carrier to feature electromagnetic catapult technologies, according to CCTV News. The report noted that it will carry a wide variety of carrier-borne...
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday that China and Central Asian countries have explored and formed the China-Central Asia Spirit, which features mutual respect, mutual trust, mutual benefit, mutual assistance, and the pursuit of common modernization through high-quality development.
Xi made the remarks in his speech at the second China-Central Asia Summit in the Kazakh capital of Astana.
Xi said that the Chinese side has decided to establish three cooperation centers and a trade facilitation platform within the China-Central Asia cooperation mechanism.
When addressing the summit, Xi said these institutions include the China-Central Asia poverty reduction cooperation center, the China-Central Asia education exchange cooperation center, the China-Central Asia desertification control cooperation center, as well as the China-Central Asia trade facilitation cooperation....more below
