B.R.I.C.S. Discussion

Just saw this article on Vox about BRICS: It repeats the lie that the Russian economy is struggling:

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/8/23/23842066/brics-economic-group-explained

(...................)

https://www.azerbaycan24.com/en/nato-cheerleader-advocates-breaking-up-brazil/

NATO cheerleader advocates breaking up Brazil

Austrian economist Gunther Fehlinger has called for Brazil to be divided up into five different states over its partnership with Russia in the BRICS group, according to a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday.

Fehlinger, whose profile describes him as “Chair of European Committee for NATO Enlargement for Kosovo, Ukraine, Bosnia, Austria, Moldova, Ireland, Georgia,” couched his demands in an appeal to “the people of Brazil,” insisting they could only be free by “dismantling the Socialist Genocidal BRICS Ally of Russia” – and that they had been misled by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Brazil should be broken up “into 5 new better free states who can join NATO, OECD, [and] Mercosur,” the economist declared, appending the hashtags “#ExBrazil” and “#FehlingerDoctrine.”

The “Fehlinger doctrine” appears to mandate balkanization as punishment for transgression against NATO’s oft-cited rules-based international order, as the economist also posted an image of Russia broken up into over a dozen mini-states, each with their own made-up flag, alongside text proclaiming “Freedom to captive nations in Russia.”

“Dismantling the just punishment for Genocide,” he wrote above the colorful fantasy map.

Here, for the lack of doubt, the tweet by this retarded criminal who is a fine specimen of the kind of psychopaths running the show in the West:



Thank you Herr Fehlinger for producing such self incriminating evidence, it will save a lot of work in the future

“Dismantling the just punishment for Genocide,” 

Where is his plan for the US? 

...or Europe...

NATO achieves more stuff done in a lunch break than BRICS could in a month. Just saying.

HATO invades and kills and then runs away with its tail between its legs like a coward leaving someone else to pay the bill, lets not mention those turds shall we...

It's only a question of time before the incorporation of Mexico to BRICS+.
Whereas Portuguese-speaking Brazil is important in terms of territorial extension, Spanish-speaking Mexico's soft power projection over Latin America is infinitely greater, exerting influence in all of Spanish-speaking Central America and Caribbean, as well as Hispanic South America.
Mexican economic and demographic links to Yanqui North America constitute an invitation and opportunity for their breaking-up and its approaching to energy-domination BRICS+ and predominantly Yanqui-resistant Spanish-speaking Latin America.

Kiko wrote:It's only a question of time before the incorporation of Mexico to BRICS+.
Whereas Portuguese-speaking Brazil is important in terms of territorial extension, Spanish-speaking Mexico's soft power projection over Latin America is infinitely greater, exerting influence in all of Spanish-speaking Central America and Caribbean, as well as Hispanic South America.
Mexican economic and demographic links to Yanqui North America constitute an invitation and opportunity for their breaking-up and its approaching to energy-domination BRICS+ and predominantly Yanqui-resistant Spanish-speaking Latin America.

It is highly unlikely Mexico would try to enter BRICS. If they do try, that would mean USMCA (ex NAFTA) would be void immediately. They have way too many benefits from it, to even risk it. Almost 80% of Mexico's exports go to US. Second largest export market is Canada with less than 3% and only then China with less than 2%.

NATOstan Robots Versus the Heavenly Horses of Multipolarity, by Pepe Escobar for Strategic Culture Foundation. 08.31.2023.

We will all need plenty of time and introspection to analyze the full range of game-changing vectors unleashed by the unveiling of BRICS 11 last week in South Africa.

Yet time waits for no one. The Empire will (italics mine) strike back in full force; in fact its multi-hydra Hybrid War tentacles are already on display.

Here and here I have attempted two rough drafts of History on the birth of BRICS 11. Essentially, what the Russia-China strategic partnership is accomplishing, one (giant) step at a time, is also multi-vectorial:

- expanding BRICS into an alliance to fight against U.S. non-diplomacy.
- counter-acting the sanctions dementia.
- promoting alternatives to SWIFT.
- promoting autonomy, self-reliance and instances of sovereignty.
- and in the near future, integrating BRICS 11 (and counting) with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to counter imperial military threats, something already alluded to by President Lukashenko, the inventor of the precious neologism “Global Globe”.

In contrast, the indispensable Michael Hudson has constantly shown how the U.S. and EU’s “strategic error of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive, so total, that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.”

Thus Prof. Hudson’s contention that the proxy war in Ukraine – not only against Russia but also against Europe – “may be thought of as World War III.”

In several ways, Prof. Hudson details, we are living “an outgrowth of World War II, whose aftermath saw the United States establish international economic and political organization under its own control to operate in its own national self-interest: the International Monetary Fund to impose U.S. financial control and dollarize the world economy; the World Bank to lend governments money to bear the infrastructure costs of creating trade dependency on U.S. food and manufactures; promoting plantation agriculture, U.S./NATO control of oil, mining and natural resources; and United Nations agencies under U.S. control, with veto power in all international organizations that it created or joined.”

Now it’s another ball game entirely when it comes to Global South, or Global Majority, of “Global Globe” real emancipation. Just take Moscow hosting the Russia-Africa summit in late July, then Beijing, with Xi in person, spending a day last week in Johannesburg with dozens of African leaders, all of them part of the new Non-Aligned Movement (NAM): the G77 (actually 134 nations), presided by a Cuban, President Diaz-Canel.

That’s the Russia-China Double Helix in effect – offering large swathes of the “Global Globe” security and high-tech infrastructure (Russia) and finance, manufactured exports and road and rail infrastructure (China).

In this context, a BRICS currency is not necessary. Prof. Hudson crucially quotes President Putin: what’s needed is a “means of settlement” for Central Banks for their balance of payments, to keep in check imbalances in trade and investment. That has nothing to do with a BRICS gold-backed supra-national currency.

Moreover, there will be no need for a new reserve currency as increasingly more nations will be ditching the U.S. dollar in their settlements.

Putin has referred to a “temporary” accounting unit – as intra-BRICS 11 trade will be inevitably expanding in their national currencies. All that will develop in the context of an increasingly overwhelming alliance of major oil, gas, minerals, agriculture and commodities producers: a real (italics mine) economy capable of supporting a new global order progressively pushing Western dominance into oblivion.

Call it the soft way to euthanize Hegemony.

All aboard the “malign China” narrative

Now compare all of the above with that piece of Norwegian wood posing as NATO secretary-general telling the CIA mouthpiece paper in Washington, in a unique moment of frankness, that the Ukraine War “didn’t start in 2022. The war started in 2014”.

So here we have a designated imperial vassal plainly admitting that the whole thing started with Maidan, the U.S.-engineered coup supervised by cookie distributor Vicky “F**k the E” Nuland. This means that NATO’s claim of a Russia “invasion”, referring to the Special Military Operation (SMO) is absolutely bogus from a legal standpoint.

It’s firmly established that the spin doctors/ paid propagandist “experts” of Atlanticist idiocracy, practicing an unrivalled mix of arrogance/ignorance, believe they can get away with anything when it comes to demonizing Russia. The same applies to their new narrative on “malign China”.

Chinese scholars which I have the honor to interact with are always delighted to point out that imperial pop narratives and predictive programming are absolutely useless when it comes to confronting Zhong Hua (“The Splendid Central Civilization”).

That’s because China, as one of them describes it, is endowed with a “clear-minded, purposeful and relentless aristocratic oligarchy at the helm of the Chinese State”, using tools of power that guarantee, among other issues, public safety and hygiene for all; education focused on learning useful information and skills, not indoctrination; a monetary system under control; physical assets and the industrial capacity to make real stuff; first-class diplomatic, supply chain, techno-scientific, economic, cultural, commercial, geostrategic and financial networks; and first-class physical infrastructure.

And yet, since at least 1990, Western mainstream media is obsessed to dictate that China’s economic collapse, or “hard landing”, is imminent.

Nonsense. As another Chinese scholar frames it, “China’s strategy has been to let sleeping dogs lie and let lying machines lie. Meanwhile, let China surpass them in their sleep and cause the Empire’s demise.”

Poisons, viruses, microchips

And that bring us full circle back to the New Great Game: NATOstan versus the Multipolar World. No matter the evidence provided by graphic reality, NATOstan in advanced seppuku mode – especially the European sector – actually believes it will win the war against Russia-China.

As for the Global South/Global Majority/”Global Globe”, they are regarded as enemies. So their mostly poor populations should be poisoned with famine, experimental injections, new modified viruses, implanted microchips as in BCI (Brain Computer Interface) and soon NATO As Global Robocop “security” outfits.

The coming of BRICS 11 is already unleashing a new imperial wave of deadly poisoning, brand new viruses and cyborgs.

The imperial master issued the order to “save” the Japanese seafood industry – a few scraps as quid pro quod for Tokyo acting as a rabid dog in the imperial Chip War against China, and dutifully pledging alliance at the recent Camp David summit side by side with the South Korean vassals.

The EU vassals, in synch, lifted Japan food import rules just as Fukushima nuclear wastewater was to be pumped into the ocean. That’s yet another instance of the EU continuing to dig its own grave – as Japan is set to suffer a Typhoon Number Ten type of blowback.

Radiation spread across the world through the Pacific will breed endless cancer patients around the world and simultaneously destroy the economy of several small island nations relying heavily on tourism.

In parallel, Sergey Glazyev, Minister of Macroeconomics at the Eurasian Economic Commission, part of the EAEU, has been among the very few warning about the new trans-humanist frontier: the Nanotechnology Injection craze ahead – something quite well documented in scientific journals.

Quoting Dr. Steve Hotze, Glazyev in one of his Telegram posts explained what DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has been doing, “injecting nanobots in the form of graphene oxide and hydrogel” into the human body, thus creating an interface between nanobots and brain cells. We become “a receptor, receiver and transmitter of signals. The brain will receive signals from the outside, and you can be manipulated remotely.”

Glazyev also refers to the by now frantic promotion of “Eris”, a new Covid variety, named by the WHO after the Greek goddess of discord and enmity, daughter of the goddess of night, Nykta.

Those familiar with Greek mythology will know that Eris was quite angry because she was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Her vengeance was to plant at the feast a golden apple from the gardens of Hesperides with the inscription “Most Beautiful”: that was the legendary “apple of discord”, which generated the Mother of All Catfights between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. And that eventually led to no less than the Trojan War.

In the White Room, with black curtains

It’s oh so predictable, coming from those “elites” running the show, to name a new virus as a harbinger of war. After all, The Next War is badly needed because Project Ukraine turned out to be a massive strategic failure, with the cosmic humiliation of NATO just around the corner.

During the Vietnam War – which the empire lost to a peasant guerrilla army – the daily briefing at the command HQ in Saigon was derided by every journalist with an IQ above room temperature as the “Saigon follies”.

Saigon would never compare with the tsunami of daily follies offered on the proxy war in Ukraine by a tawdry moveable feast at the White House, State Dept., Pentagon, NATO HQ, the Brussels Kafkaesque machine and other Western environs. The difference is that those posing as “journalists” today are cognitively incapable of understanding these are “follies” – and even if they did, they would be prevented from reporting them.

So that’s where the collective West is at the moment: in a White Room, a simulacrum of Plato’s cave depicted in Cream’s 1968 masterpiece, partly inspired by William Blake, invoking pale “silver horses” and exhausted “yellow tigers”.

The entire West is waiting at the room at the station with black curtains – and no trains. They will “sleep in this place with the lonely crowd” and “lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves”.

Outside in the cold, long distance, under the sunlight, away from the moving shadows, across roads made of silk and iron, the Heavenly Horses (Tianma) of the multipolar world gallop gallantly from network to network, from Belt and Road to Eurasia and Afro-Eurasia Bridge, from intuition to integration, from emancipation to sovereignty.

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/natostan-robots-versus-the-heavenly-horses-of-multipolarity/

Never said they thought things through. They did on a lunch break remember?

No thinking involved in HATO. The US dictates and the rest of the countries fall over themselves to show they are loyal... quite funny when that falls on its arse though...

How about when the US said it was leaving Afghanistan and Britain and a few others said they will stay anyway because the job was not done... hahahaha and then an about face and they left too.

Most HATO countries are not capable of independent military action... that is why they form coalitions of evil... even the US is too weak to do it on their own.

Almost seems like the next conflict will start with the discussion about who is going to foot the bill.... of course in Africa it is more about what happens to our economy when we can't keep arse raping the darkies any more and have to pay full market price for everything...

The point is that the west can't send an enormous force and any force they do send will be horribly vulnerable to the modern weapons Russia and also probably China will be only too happy to send... hell with the enemy being the west I suspect Iran and North Korea and Cuba will be sending weapons for Africa... the Aide for Africa concert this year will be playing Wagner...

Natural reaction from USA right-wing politicians:

https://www.rt.com/news/582193-brics-devastating-us-taylor-greene/

I remember a certain former French president indirectly admitted the parasitic nature of French imperialism by acknowledged that without Africa, France is nothing.

It is essentially the same regarding USA imperialism.

========

Rise of BRICS ‘devastating’ for US – congresswoman

The group can bypass the dollar, chipping away at Washington’s economic dominance, Marjorie Taylor Greene has said

Speaking to her constituents in Georgia, the Republican congresswoman lashed out at the administration of US President Joe Biden, which she said is turning a blind eye to the rise of BRICS – an economic group which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and accounts for more than a quarter of global GDP.

The Republican firebrand claimed that while Washington is “doing… nonsense” – including providing all kinds of support to Ukraine which is locked in a conflict with Russia – “there are other countries in the world, powerful countries, organizing together because they are tired of the United States.”

In this sense, the BRICS countries are making serious trade agreements “where they are saying: we’ll buy from you, you’ll buy from us, we don’t care about US sanctions and we’ll sell to one another, buy and sell in our own currency, not the US dollar,” she stated.

“This is one of the most devastating things that can happen to all of us,” Greene claimed.

As BRICS becomes more powerful, the US dollar gets weaker, she said. “And you know what happens to all of us? We’re going to go broke,” the congresswoman predicted, adding that this dynamic will negatively affect the retirement plans and personal savings of ordinary Americans.

“What is going to happen to our children, when the US dollar means nothing anymore, because Russia, and China, and India with its huge population of billions of people have more buying power in their own currencies than we do? This is a very serious concern,” Greene said.

Argentina is a rotten oligarchy. The perpetual inflation crisis is absurd. Even Russia managed to get it under control. What's Argentina's freaking excuse?
The inflation is a manifestation of the rot.

Too bad for Argentinians, but this court jester is an oligarch stooge.

The west has a lot of soft power and in the background getting stooges elected to keep a country in their orbit or away from someone elses should not be underestimated, but even the leader of Ukraine that was elected couldn't be convinced to go with the western trade deal over the Russian trade deal (which could have been accepted together with the Chinese trade deal of the time). The western trade deal was loans and foreign ownership and was exclusive so they couldn't take the western deal and the Russian or Chinese deal as well.

They ended up having to engineer a coup and murder lots of people, but if there is one country with no real respect for democracy that is the US of A.

Argentina might leave or they might remain and agitate, but at the end of the day it is surprising the US could only manage to do this to one BRICS country... they will have been trying their best against all of them and all prospective members too... who are lining up anyway.

If Argentina dips out then there are other countries to take their place and there will be space for Argentina to rejoin when they are ready... but for Argentina that just means a delay for them and their economy and their growth and development.

Caracas & Bogotá might well sign in jointly for BRICS membership candidature.

Cold calculation: Russia and China are preparing a blow to the dollar, by Natalia Dembinskaya for RiaNovosti. 03.25.2024.

The development of payment systems within the BRICS will weaken the influence of the dollar.

The renewed BRICS goes further in expanding payments not pegged to the dollar and US-controlled SWIFT. Our immediate plans include the creation of a blockchain-based international payment system, BRICS Pay. A decentralized multi-currency mechanism will make it possible to bypass Western sanctions, strengthen the economic influence of the international association and accelerate the emergence of a supranational currency. This has already been seen as a direct threat to the American currency.

Blockchain bet

Avoiding dollar dependence is one of the main goals of BRICS. Rate for settlements and lending in national currencies. With China, already 95% of trade transactions are in rubles and yuan.

This increases solvency and economic resilience to uncertainties and external shocks, says Shen Yi, head of the BRICS Research Center at the Development Research Institute of Fudan University.

“Objectively speaking, the diversified development of the international monetary and payment systems is consistent with the changing trends in the distribution of power and the general direction of evolution of the global system,” he notes.
The next step is our own system of international payments.

The other day, Russian Presidential Assistant Yuri Ushakov announced the intention of the BRICS countries to create a payment system based on digital currency technology - blockchain. The task is to develop a modern and effective payment service (pilot name - BRICS Pay), convenient, cost-effective, and most importantly - free from political influence. We need to completely move away from the peg to the dollar and Western instruments like SWIFT.

The technology that will form the basis of the system is widely used in the crypto industry. Most likely, this will be a common platform of BRICS central banks on the blockchain - through it, the countries included in the organization will be able to pay each other, explains Guzel Protsenko, CEO of Alfa-Forex.

The advantages of the new system are confidentiality, fast payment processing, low political risks. In addition, this is an effective way to level sanctions.

“A strong alternative to SWIFT was obvious - it is necessary to reduce the risks for international banks serving Russian small, medium and large businesses. This is necessary for the security and stability of transfers,” the analyst points out.

Dangerous precedent

The BRICS countries have long wanted to end their dependence on the US currency. Western sanctions against Russia forced action, Forbes notes.

BRICS Pay, along with the development of digital payment platforms within the association, in particular in China, will greatly undermine the position of the dollar on the world stage.

“This is more dangerous for American hegemony than nuclear weapons,” the publication quotes economist Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister.

Experts emphasize: the BRICS payment system really neutralizes the sanctions of the United States and its allies. Vladislav Antonov, financial analyst at BitRiver, highlights the following in this regard.

Firstly, the BRICS countries and other joining states will be able to carry out mutual payments without going through the dollar. This will weaken its role as the main means of international payments and reserve currency.

Secondly, a decentralized cryptocurrency system on a blockchain is much more difficult to track. This will allow trade with Russia without fear of secondary sanctions.

Thirdly, BRICS Pay will become a direct competitor to Western-controlled SWIFT. This will strengthen multipolarity in global finance, undermining the dictates of the West and the EU. Finally, the successful launch of its own payment system will strengthen economic integration into BRICS and increase its overall financial and political weight on the world stage. And this is a good incentive for other states to join.

“If this project is implemented, its participants will switch to their own currencies in international payments, without the dollar and SWIFT terminals. At the same time, it is planned that countries outside the bloc will also be able to use the new system. The synergistic effect from such interaction will strengthen the position of BRICS in the global economic system,” says Yaroslav Ostrovsky, specialist in the strategic research department at Total Research.

Of course, setting up the payment system will take time. Experts do not exclude that debugging will take more than one year.

Single currency

A blockchain payment system could serve as the basis for a future single BRICS supranational currency. And here, certain difficulties are created by the prospects for expanding the association itself and integrating newcomers: among them there are direct strategic opponents.

“This currency must be fully convertible in world transactions. Otherwise, leaders such as China or India, having accumulated enough digital coins through the export of resources and products, will ask the question: what to buy with them if the West does not recognize them?” — notes Oleg Kalmanovich, chief analyst at Neomarkets.

But be that as it may, all these processes are part of the long journey of the formation of BRICS as a world organization, trade union and financial association.

https://ria.ru/20240325/briks-1935017090.html

If most financial transactions still go through SWIFT the threat of cutting your access will still act as a deterrent. If your country still depends on IMF or World Bank loans, contracts a large part of its debt in dollars, and buys oil in dollars, the US still has a chokehold on your country's economy.

The new blockchain transactions between central banks, which are being pioneered by China, UAE, and Thailand right now are another piece in the puzzle. The alternatives to the Bretton Woods based economic system with the US at the center of it have been in progress for quite some time now.

Didn't you guys read this news when it came out recently?
https://www.cryptopolitan.com/uae-china-13m-in-cbdc-transaction/

If anything the Russian Central Bank is behind the curve on this one. Their blockchain currency is still an e-currency for consumer use similar to the e-yuan. Meant for user to user payments. Not for central bank transactions like the mBridge in the article above.

The blockchain is just one piece of it. You also have the Shanghai Stock Exchange trading oil in Yuan. The Chinese buying oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia in currencies other than the dollar including their own. The bilateral yuan swap deals. The New Development Bank, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, and others. The Chinese have been working on this alternate economic system for many years already, and the other members of BRICS are also more or less behind it. With only India being somewhat reticent. They depend way too much on the dollar system.

Behind the curve how? Russia does not need this crap domestically. When BRICS pay is organized, which is primarily a political issue,
then this curve lag will evapourate.

Pioneering is a bit of hyperbole. Alternatives to SWIFT are happening because of the current geopolitical climate. If there was no
coercive incentive then SWIFT would be used indefinitely.

kvs wrote:Behind the curve how?   Russia does not need this crap domestically.   When BRICS pay is organized, which is primarily a political issue,
then this curve lag will evapourate.  

Pioneering is a bit of hyperbole.   Alternatives to SWIFT are happening because of the current geopolitical climate.   If there was no
coercive incentive then SWIFT would be used indefinitely.    

Remember how the US threatened to cut access to SWIFT to the Turkish banks which accepted the Russian SPFS and Mir card? How the Turkish banks acquiesced? How they are now doing the same to Chinese banks? What makes you think the US wouldn't do the same to this BRICS pay? The only way BRICS pay will go through is if there is more transaction volume between BRICS nations than between them and Western nations. This is only conceivable because today China is a large trading partner for most of the world. Between China with most of the manufactured products you could want, and Russia and the Persian Gulf nations having loads of oil and other mineral resources, you won't need to trade with the West. The more the West continues trying to block other nations from using SWIFT the faster this move will happen.

China also already exports more to the third world than to nations like the US. They could drop US trade like a stone if they wanted. The USs attempts at decoupling their economy from China have only assisted in this process.

Like I said the main obstacle to this in BRICS is India. They insist on remaining tied together industrially more to the West than China, and a lot of their trade deficit is balanced because of income from services rendered to the West. Russia needs to figure out a way to balance its trade with India and reduce their economic links with the West.

Remember how the US threatened to cut access to SWIFT to the Turkish banks which accepted the Russian SPFS and Mir card? How the Turkish banks acquiesced? How they are now doing the same to Chinese banks? What makes you think the US wouldn't do the same to this BRICS pay?

But they can't, because if no one can pay Russia for energy or fertiliser or Uranium then no one can buy it.

If no one can buy these things from Russia then the international price will go up which will hurt the US.

Only recently the US told the Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries because the effect on energy prices was hurting the US at election time...

Turkish and Chinese banks are afraid of getting kicked off SWIFT because there is no BRICS Pay yet to use as an alternative.

Once BRICS Pay is available then the US wont threaten anyone regarding SWIFT or they will just create demand for BRICS Pay and destroy SWIFT.

Amusing the Europeans that run SWIFT have let the US bully them into bullying other countries over this so called international financial system because in doing so they are essentially destroying it.

But of course it is all Putins fault obviously.

The only way BRICS pay will go through is if there is more transaction volume between BRICS nations than between them and Western nations.

BRICS Pay is going to work because the countries that are members of BRICS already have equal or better economic power than the G-7, so there will be plenty of money flowing through the system to make a healthy safe system... and of course depending on what the US does with SWIFT threats and bullying it will certainly be the only way for many countries to buy things from Russia and China...

The west might even have to join BRICS Pay to buy from Russia and China... I rather doubt BRICS Pay will share information with the US the way SWIFT most likely does so the transactions will be private.

That is a problem the west has been having regarding Russian energy exports... sales through western markets and shipped via western shipping companies and insured by western insurance agencies... they pretty much had advanced warning of what was going to whom and when. Now it is a black box... Russian ships and non western insurance don't have to tell the west anything.

This is only conceivable because today China is a large trading partner for most of the world. Between China with most of the manufactured products you could want, and Russia and the Persian Gulf nations having loads of oil and other mineral resources, you won't need to trade with the West. The more the West continues trying to block other nations from using SWIFT the faster this move will happen.

Indeed... it is going to be successful because we can rely on the US pushing countries one after the other away from SWIFT and this will be a viable alternative.

China also already exports more to the third world than to nations like the US. They could drop US trade like a stone if they wanted. The USs attempts at decoupling their economy from China have only assisted in this process.

Putin could not have achieved the level of independence from the west without the support of the west pushing Russia away, and Xi is going to find it easier to push away from the west with idiots like both Biden and Trump who want to make Russia and China enemies of the US of A.

Of course if either woke up and smelt the roses and realised partnerships and cooperation will benefit America more than competition and confrontation I don't think either Xi or Putin would believe they were sincere anyway.

Like I said the main obstacle to this in BRICS is India. They insist on remaining tied together industrially more to the West than China, and a lot of their trade deficit is balanced because of income from services rendered to the West. Russia needs to figure out a way to balance its trade with India and reduce their economic links with the West.

I am sure it will fix itself... as the west starts to fall apart and demands India go to war with China to damage China.... ironically the way Russia has damaged the Ukraine.... then I suspect India will decline that offer and the US and the west will get the hump and do something that pushes India away for good...

The voters of America don't get any choice... it all comes down to the 1% and they want idiots or old men that will do as they are told, and even if they got someone into the seat of President who could make real changes the US system is designed to stop him. How much damage can he do in two terms? Enough to make things worse so the next guy will just reverse all the changes before it has time to actually make a difference and start making things better.

North Korea has reportedly shown interest in joining BRICS.

Any word on when they will invite the next batch of countries to BRICS.

I guess as more countries join it will become more complex so they will have to design a smooth way of trade and interactions before they invite a lot of countries.

Being an economic group the more the merrier....

North Korea is seen as a very poor country in the west but that is partly from their delusion that all the countries they put under sanction are poor countries or will become poor countries.

North Korea has as much growth potential as South Korea had, where South Korea got investments and no sanctions and could grow and develop, while north korea was isolated by the west.

Of course as Russia is showing currently foreign investment is all about generating wealth for the foreign investors, so while it might help build things and start projects, it ultimately removes wealth from the economy. Russian investors investing in Russian projects creates wealth and keeps it in the Russian economy and creates growth and development at home.