There’s no way to follow the complex inner workings of the Eurasia integration process without considering what takes place annually at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. BRICS for the moment may be dead – considering the nasty cocktail of economic brutalism and social intolerance delivered by the incendiary “Captain” Bolsonaro in Brazil. Yet RIC... Read More

In a wide-ranging, two-hour-plus, exclusive interview from a prison room in Curitiba in southern Brazil, former Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva re-emerged for the first time, after more than 500 days in jail, and sent a clear message to the world. Amid the 24/7 media frenzy of scripted sound bites and “fake news”,... Read More

The United Nations Security Council’s 15-0 vote to impose a new set of sanctions on North Korea somewhat disguises the critical role played by the Russia-China strategic partnership, the “RC” at the core of the BRICS group. The new sanctions are pretty harsh. They include a 30% reduction on crude and refined oil exports to... Read More

The annual BRICS summit in Xiamen – where President Xi Jinping was once mayor – could not intervene in a more incandescent geopolitical context. Once again, it’s essential to keep in mind that the current core of BRICS is “RC”; the Russia-China strategic partnership. So in the Korean peninsula chessboard, RC context – with both... Read More

The headline news is that this Tuesday in Fortaleza, northeast Brazil, the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) fights the (Neoliberal) World (Dis)Order via a new development bank and a reserve fund set up to offset financial crises. The devil, of course, is in the details of how they’ll do... Read More

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is at the moment the hardest-working man in (geopolitical) show business. He has just stepped into the lion's den - or goldfish bowl; the World Economic Forum at Davos. And he charmed them all just with his "prudent moderation" strategy, which broadcasts what every Master of The Universe, real or fake,... Read More

The working title of the Edward Snowden movie is still The Spy Who Remains in the Cold. Here's where we stand: Snowden could only fly out of Hong Kong because China allowed it. Snowden could only arrive in Moscow because Russia knew it - in co-operation with China. This is part of their strategic relationship,... Read More

Review of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South by Vijay Prashad It is not so far-fetched to imagine Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History succumbing to the temptation, and stressing that the time of the Global South has finally come. Oh yes, it will be a long, arduous and winding road. But... Read More

Reports on the premature death of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been greatly exaggerated. Western corporate media is flooded with such nonsense, perpetrated in this particular case by the head of Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Reality spells otherwise. The BRICS meet in Durban, South Africa, this Tuesday to, among other... Read More

Let's start sledgehammer style. Iran won't crack. Iran won't crack. Iran won't crack. No sledgehammer, though, is likely to perforate the limitless fog of delusion hovering over a US elite that a relentless propaganda campaign tries to sell as "the international community". See, for instance, this bland op-ed, where we discover that "the international community... Read More

Goldman Sachs - via economist Jim O'Neill - invented the concept of a rising new bloc on the planet: BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Some cynics couldn't help calling it the "Bloody Ridiculous Investment Concept." Not really. Goldman now expects the BRICS countries to account for almost 40% of global gross domestic product... Read More

There is a video [1] that could be loosely translated as "Terrorist Turkish border opening fire on the Syrian side" that pretty accurately sums up what's going on at the ultra-volatile geopolitical hotspot of the moment. The voice over says, "This is the Syria-Turkey border, and this is an operation of the Free Syrian Army... Read More

It was deep into the night, somewhere over Siberia, in a Moscow to Beijing flight (BRIC to BRIC?) when the thought, like a lightning bolt, began to take hold. What the hell is wrong with those Arabs? Maybe it was the narcotic effect of that perennially dreadful Terminal F at Sheremetyevo airport - straight out... Read More

In his State of the Union address, United States President Barack Obama said, "Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal." In the real world, this means Washington is willing to go to war... Read More

This Thursday, in Washington, finance ministers and central bank governors of the BRICS group of emerging powers - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - will get together and, in the words of Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega, "Talk about what to do to help the European Union get out of this situation." Hold... Read More

You don't stay 41 years in power without learning a geopolitical trick or two. A wily fox, the African king of kings Muammar Gaddafi seems to have carefully surveyed the chessboard and come to an iron-clad conclusion; the no-fly option - not to mention an invasion of Libya - won't fly in the United Nations... Read More

What passes for a global elite has just invested in the two-hour drive in the snow from Zurich to Davos in Switzerland for the 2011 World Economic Forum (WEF) - ostensibly to discuss the state of the world under the overarching theme "Shared Norms for the New Reality". One of these norms is "collective sacrifice"... Read More

It certainly beats any dreary Group of 20 (G-20) communique. Everything one needs to know about the US Federal Reserve's quantitative easing (QE), currency wars and the mudslinging tsunami that passes for the current global financial system can be found at this animated rap video by Taiwan-based Next Media Animation (see the video here) If... Read More

SAO PAULO - Brazil is a country the world loves to love. Brazil is a (joyful) riddle wrapped in a (chaotic) enigma, with the added complexity that the riddle and the enigma are ritualistically juggling with football, dancing a samba, ogling a sensual mulata, watching a telenovela and sipping a lethal caipirinha - all at... Read More

It does not necessarily take two to samba - but if you samba as a group the result is much more infectious. Brazil has advanced a proposal to unblock the Iranian nuclear dossier that is in fact the common view among the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China), the emerging geopolitical counter-power to United States... Read More

The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) got together in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, on Thursday with a bang. After meeting Chinese President Hu Jintao, and once again condemning an "asymmetric, dysfunctional globalization", Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was at his ebullient best: "A new global economic geography has been born." Well,... Read More

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from Brazil and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad from Iran. What is this - the new axis of evil? No - Luladinejad is a new axis of business. As Ahmadinejad was coming from a visit to the Brazilian parliament in Brasilia on Monday, Lula was waiting for him, virtually alone. The... Read More