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South Africa: Putin to miss BRICS summit by ‘mutual agreement’

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the summit of the BRICS group of nations in South Africa in August “by mutual agreement”, South Africa’s presidency said on Wednesday.

“By mutual agreement, President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation will not attend the summit, but the Russian Federation will be represented by Foreign Minister Mr [Sergey] Lavrov,” Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for President Cyril Ramaphosa, said in a statement.

South Africa faced a dilemma in hosting the summit because, as a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March for alleged war crimes, it would theoretically be required to arrest him if he were to attend.

The dilemma led to intense debate in South Africa and the West about whether the warrant would be executed, given South Africa’s stance of neutrality on the war in Ukraine and Pretoria’s historic ties to the Kremlin.

In 2015, South Africa also failed to arrest then-Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who was also the subject of an ICC warrant.

The leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa will attend the summit, the presidency said.

BRICS, a bloc of emerging economic powers comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China was formed in 2019 as BRIC. South Africa joined the following year after an invitation from China, expanding the group.

Ethiopia, Iran and Argentina have also applied to join the bloc.

mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/

75 comments
  • Russia is a fascist, terrorist oligarchy on the verge of collapse.

    China is a dictatorship with free hand to do genocides at home (Uygurs, Tibet etc) because they have nukes.

    South Africa is almost a failed state, where due to corruption people only have electricity a few hours a day and where a separatist movement in the only functional province is growing everyday.

    India is sliding fast into a nationalistic hindu dictactorship as well. Although praised for being the biggest democracy in the world, its flaws are growing constantly under Modi.

    And what does Brazil want to do with this bunch? Didn't Bolsonaro damage its image enough?

    Iran and Ethiopia want to join? Wow, it can always get creepier.

    • Russia is not on the verge of collapse, the IMF predicted that Russian GDP would rebound slightly in 2023 to 0.3 percent growth, and in 2024, the Russian economy is predicted to grow by 2.1 percent.

      https://www.newsweek.com/russias-economy-forecast-outperform-us-within-two-years-1777788

      That's higher than the IMF's projection for the United States, which it said would see only 1 percent GDP growth that year, and down from a predicted 1.4 percent in 2023, and the 2 percent the U.S. enjoyed in 2022.

      China isn’t doing anything of the sort. What they’re doing is fighting religious extremism, the sort of which no western country would ever tolerate. It’s interesting how the same people who purport to support human rights are pretty comfortable with theocracy when it suits their geopolitical interests.

      Tibetean Buddhist Feudalism was responsible for slavery, and brutal torture

      The charges made by the Dalai Lama himself about Chinese mass sterilization and forced deportation of Tibetans have remained unsupported by any evidence. Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that "more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation." [38]

      No matter how often stated, that figure is puzzling. The official 1953 census---six years before the Chinese crackdown---recorded the entire population of Tibet at 1,274,000. Other estimates varied from one to three million. [39]

      Other census counts put the ethnic Tibetan population within the country at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then whole cities and huge portions of the countryside, indeed almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves---of which we have seen no evidence. The Chinese military force in Tibet was not big enough to round up, hunt down, and exterminate that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.

      1. Tendzin Choegyal, "The Truth about Tibet," Imprimis (publication of Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999.
      2. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 52-53.

      According to preliminary data from the seventh national census in 2020, the total population of Xinjiang was 25.85 million, among which the Han ethnic group numbered 10.92 million, and ethnic minorities 14.93 million. The population of ethnic groups in Xinjiang increased from 4.45 million in 1953 to 14.93 million in 2020

      The Uygur population grew at a compound annual growth rate of 1.67 per cent during the first two decades in the 21st century, which was much higher than that of the country's ethnic minority population, which stood at 0.83 per cent. The Uygur population grew from 3.61 million in 1953 to more than 11.62 million in 2020 Xinjiang Population Dynamics and Data report

      Here’s an interview with a son of imam killed in Xinjiang which makes it pretty clear that religious people are a target just like everyone else https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-19/Son-of-imam-assassinated-in-Kashgar-s-2014-mosque-attack-speaks-out-RqNiyrcRuo/index.html

      Here’s another interview with Imams https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/on-eid-xinjiang-imams-defend-china-against-u-s-criticism-1.5425967

      A Pakistani journalist who has been all over Xinjiang (which borders Pakistan) claims that western media reports on “atrocities” are lies. https://dailytimes.com.pk/723317/exposing-the-occidents-baseless-lies-about-xinjiang/

      Western reports on Xinjiang don’t support the lurid narrative you’re pushing either

       undefined
              https://idi-international.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/New-Report.pdf
          https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china
      
      
        

      Representatives of Arab majority nations actually wrote a letter to the UN in support of China https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3853509?ln=en

      The reality is that US has been funding and arming extremists in Xinjiang trying to replicate Afghanistan model when they toppled a socialist government there. Don’t take my word for it though, here’s George Bush’s chief of staff openly saying that US wants to destabilize the region, and NED recently admitting to funding Uyghur separatism for the past 16 years on their own official Twitter page. An ex-CIA operative details US operations radicalizing and training terrorists in the region in this book. Here’s an excerpt:

       undefined
              Throughout the 1990s, hundreds of Uyghurs were transported to Afghanistan by the CIA for training in guerilla warfare by the mujahideen. When they returned to Xinjiang, they formed the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and came under Catli’s expert direction. Graham Fuller, CIA superspy, offered this explanation for radicalizing the Chinese Muslims:
      
          The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them [Muslims] against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan and against the Red Army. The doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter Chinese influence in Central Asia.
      
      
        

      US has been stoking terrorism in the region while they’ve been running a propaganda campaign against China in the west.

      And of course, before US started weaponizing terrorists they themselves were fighting these people https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-was-at-war-uyghur-terrorists-now-claims-etim-doesnt-exist/276916/

      While Lula seeks to distance Brazil from the oppressive nature of "Dollar Diplomacy" which funds forever wars and military baes around the world Bolsonaro had ties to the united states far right

      "Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and a family friend of Bolsonaro’s, took to his podcast, ‘Bannon’s War Room’, to raise allegations of electoral fraud. Bannon was joined by Matthew Tyrmand, a board member for Project Veritas – a discredited US group that uses hidden cameras to supposedly ‘expose’ leftist journalists – and Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after it emerged he had met with white nationalists two years earlier. (Beattie told US media he had said “nothing objectionable” at this meeting.)"

      In closing, you should not toss BRICS into a bin labeled "authoritarians" as I doubt you fully understand the word.

      "The importance of examining BRICS’ challenge to the US dollar’s dominance lies in the group’s collective economic power. BRICS accounts for 24 percent of world GDP and over 16 percent of world trade"

      "To be sure, the US dollar is still the dominant currency in nearly every aspect of the current global financial system, and it is unlikely that another currency will replace the dollar any time soon. However, history reminds us that the US dollar’s dominant status should not be assumed to last forever."

      https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/can-brics-dedollarize-the-global-financial-system/0AEF98D2F232072409E9556620AE09B0

      • Pro CCP copypasta and genocide denial. Classy.

      • Pretty copypasta you have here. But there's a lot of obvious bullshit - I admit I didn't even bother reading it in full, but:

        Russia is not on the verge of collapse, the IMF predicted that Russian GDP would rebound slightly in 2023 to 0.3 percent growth, and in 2024, the Russian economy is predicted to grow by 2.1 percent. That’s higher than the IMF’s projection for the United States, which it said would see only 1 percent GDP growth that year, and down from a predicted 1.4 percent in 2023, and the 2 percent the U.S. enjoyed in 2022.

        I'm not sure where that article got those numbers, but we can check IMF report now to see that prediction for russia is 0.7% in 2023 and 1.3% for 2024. For USA that's 1.6% and 1.1% respectively. Yet somehow that article claims, that:

        Russia's Economy Forecast to Outperform U.S. Within Two Years

        First of all. This is at best sign of some recovery after -2.1% "growth" russia was experiencing last year. Compared to USA 2.1% growth last year. (notice the absence of minus sign there) So even percentage-wise this does not even place russia at the beginning of 2022. Remember that these add up. Meanwhile over these 3 years (if predictions are accurate) USA will see almost 5% increase.

        Now overall that is still moot point ignoring the biggest elephant in the room that is the absolute size of the economies. The russian nominal GDP is about $2.2 trillion while USA is 10x bigger at around $25 trillion. So that 5% increase for USA means almost $1.3 trillion increase in absolute numbers. In other words USA's GDP (according to these predictions) will increase by almost half of entire russian GDP.

        I'm not saying that russia is on verge of collapsing economically. Personally I'd say it will collapse politically before that. But that article is pure misinformation.

      • So you're denying genocides based on the ideology of the executer and not on the account of their victims, ok. Another block.

      • China is committing genocide, end of discussion.

        There is no room to tolerate genocide deniers.

      • @C4RCOSA @bossito

        Bhagdadbob Great Russian Leader use magical polonium wand make everything better

        We can now eat Polonium

        We live in sparkling times

        I would normally block this but this is comedy gold right here

75 comments