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BRICS

The Boomerang Effect: Shortsighted Policies Cause Decline Of US Hegemony

The world is changing rapidly, driven by the necessity of creating alternative institutions to counter US domination and aggression. As the multipolar world rises, it is a critical time for the United States to re-evaluate and change its policies and practices in order to remain an active member of the global community. Clearing the FOG speaks with Ben Norton of Geopolitical Economy about the ways that US policy, the Washington Consensus, have backfired and what the growing US deficit means. Norton outlines what can be done to counter the current path the US is taking.

Trump’s Tariff Threats Could Destabilize The Global Economy

Trump told the Davos Economic Forum January 23: “My message to every business in the world is very simple: Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth.” Otherwise, if they continue to try and produce at home or in other countries, their products will be charged tariff rates at Trump’s threatened 20%. To Germany this means (my paraphrase): “Sorry your energy prices have quadrupled. Come to America and get them at almost as low a price as you were paying Russia before your elected leaders let us cut Nord Stream off.”

BRICS Expands To 54.6% Of World Population By Adding Nigeria

BRICS continues to grow. On 17 January, it officially admitted Nigeria as a new partner country. Nigeria has the world’s sixth-largest population, with the biggest population on the African continent. In addition to being Africa’s second-largest economy, Nigeria is the number one oil producer on the continent. With the addition of Nigeria, BRICS now has 10 full members and nine partners. At the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia in 2024, the organization adopted a comprehensive plan to transform the international monetary and financial system, by challenging the dominance of the US dollar and promoting trade and settlement in local currencies. Together, the extended BRICS+ group represents 54.6% of the world population.

BRICS Grows, Adding Indonesia As Member

Indonesia is the world’s number one producer of nickel, by a large margin. Nickel is an important mineral needed for renewable energy technologies like batteries and solar panels. In the past decade, the Indonesian government has embarked upon an ambitious industrialization program. Through careful state planning and industrial policy, Jakarta banned the export of raw minerals and, with strategic investments from Chinese state-owned enterprises and favorable loans from Chinese state-owned banks, Indonesia has moved up the value chain, processing nickel at home, instead of simply exporting the ore.

Will The Cuban Revolution Survive The Storm Of 2025?

On January 1, Cuba officially joined the international grouping known as BRICS, as one of 13 nations incorporated as “partner states.” The date, which coincides with the 66th anniversary of the triumph of their revolution, could mark a turning point for the beleaguered socialist state. But unless the country’s leaders embrace a strategic fiscal shift in the face of an asphyxiating US blockade, the prospect of state collapse – and the unraveling of over a half century of revolutionary social development – can not be dismissed.

What’s Left In Latin American And The Caribbean: Year 2024 In Review

The progressive regional current, the “Pink Tide,” could be better called “troubled waters” in 2024. The tide had already slackened by 2023 compared to its rise in 2022, when it was buoyed by big wins in Colombia and Brazil. Then, progressive alternatives had sailed into power replacing failed neoliberal policies. Since, they have had to govern under circumstances that they inherited but were not their own making. Brazil’s “suicidal veto” in August, which excluded Venezuela and Nicaragua from the BRICS trade alliance, was indicative of triangulating between the US and regional allegiances.

BRICS Expands With Nine New Partner Countries

With its nine members and nine partners, BRICS now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP). The group is an economic powerhouse, including top producers of key commodities like oil, gas, grains, meat, and minerals. At the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, 13 countries were invited to become BRICS partners, meaning they are on the path to full membership in the near future. Nine of these 13 nations accepted the invitation. The remaining four did not give a formal response as of the end of 2024. These were Algeria, Nigeria, Turkey/Türkiye, Vietnam.

ALBA-TCP Summit Approves Declaration Of Principles And Commitments

The 24th Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty ( ALBA-TCP ) ended with the unanimous approval of the Declaration of Principles and Commitments by the heads of state and government of the regional cooperation bloc. The declaration was agreed upon by the leaders and high-ranking representatives who attended the summit held in Caracas, Venezuela. At the closing ceremony on Saturday, December 14, it was issued under the name “Special Declaration of the 24th ALBA-TCP Summit: Reaffirmation of the Principles, Objectives, Commitments and Banners of Struggle of ALBA-TCP,” 20 years after its founding.

Turkey Takes Aleppo

Before it fell under 20th century Anglo-American colonialism, Syria was the core of the Levant, encompassing (today’s) Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, the site of multireligious, multicultural cities between which people traveled and traded freely. In the countryside, peasants and herders tended an agricultural and pastoral landscape of olive and orange trees, pasture, forest, and drylands. This region was under the control of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years (perhaps Erdogan’s dream is to take some of it back. He’s been accused of “neo-Ottoman” fantasies).

US Influence On The Decline As China And BRICS On The Rise

In recent weeks, various summits and international conferences took place that set the priorities both regionally and internationally for the next several years. Two in particular in the region of Nuestra América highlighted both the growing influence of China and its Belt and Road Initiative and the US empire’s declining power in its “backyard”. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, APEC 2024 , Perú and the Group of 20, G20 summit , in Río de Janeiro, Brazil took place in November and both provided glaring examples on the world stage of the decline of US influence and the rise of BRICS and China as contending power players in the region.

The End Of The US Empire And The Denial Of The US

I mean to tell you all that if you ask me to tell you what is the biggest reality we now have to face, it’s the end of the American empire, what we inherited from the British because they had the last Empire before this one is now over, and there is zero chance it’s coming back. It ought to have been a central issue in the presidential election we just had. Instead, the two candidates and their parties worked overtime to practice denial. No such a thing. The war in Ukraine, just to take one of countless examples, will show you how costly this denial is.

Samir Amin On The Theory Of Multipolarity

It is almost universally recognized today that we are living in a multipolar world, symbolized by the continuing decline of U.S. hegemony; the economic stagnation of the imperial triad of the United States, Europe, and Japan; and the rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). But the historical and theoretical significance of this is in dispute. The foremost theorist of multipolarity was Samir Amin, through his concept of “delinking,” which he developed throughout his career. For Amin, the struggle against imperialism required a delinking from the law of value on the world level centered in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo, and its replacement by a more “polycentric” or “multipolar” world order, in which nations in the periphery of the system could reorient their economies toward their own nation-based value systems, thereby meeting their own internal developmental needs.

The BRICS Summit Should Mark The End Of Neocon Delusions

The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia should mark the end of the Neocon delusions encapsulated in the subtitle of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Global Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. Since the 1990s, the goal of American foreign policy has been “primacy,” aka global hegemony. The U.S. methods of choice have been wars, regime change operations, and unilateral coercive measures (economic sanctions). Kazan brought together 35 countries with more than half the world population that reject the U.S. bullying and that are not cowed by U.S. claims of hegemony.

The BRICS Summit In Kazan: A Manifesto For A Rational World Order

The Kazan Declaration of 23 October 2024, adopted at the 16th BRICS Summit[1] hosted by Russia in the city of Kazan on the Volga river from 22 to 24 October and attended by 36 countries[2], constitutes a pivotal moment for humanity. There is hope in the air, a certain optimism that we can gradually change the paradigm, marshal the world disorder, move away from bloc-mentality, abandon confrontational politics, phase out dependence on the US-dollar, and craft a coherent policy to enhance trade, social and cultural exchange in tandem with the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter and in the spirit of the UNESCO Constitution

Israel And Its Neighborhood, An Interview With Ambassador Chas Freeman

A German newspaper recently published an interview with the Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, who expressed his profound frustration with the Americans as Israel continues its assault in Gaza—and now the West Bank and Lebanon. You can’t work with the Americans, he complained in so many words. They say one thing, they rarely mean it, and typically do something else altogether. It prompts my first question in the context of the enlarging crisis in West Asia, please comment on the diplomatic positions of America’s allies in the region. What, generally, is going through their minds? Why haven’t they reacted more vigorously to the Israeli assault? Are they simply “bought,” in one or another way? Or is there more to it?

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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