Lead Editorial

30 October 2024
Vol. 26 No. 44

The 22-24 October BRICS summit at Kazan, Russia (p. 7), accepted a new category of “partner state” into the fold, accepting 13 nations for accession and emphasising that no nation will be excluded. “It is open to all those who share BRICS values”, said Russian President and host Vladimir Putin. Those values—including an insistence on national policy independence, dialogue rather than war to solve conflicts, and “people-centric” economic growth—are non-negotiable for the 23 BRICS members and partners, representing 4.6 billion people, around 57 per cent of the world’s population.

But really, those values are universal. Western nations must have the courage to realise that their civilisation is declining and make an urgent change of course, as anti-war advocate and Julian Assange’s father John Shipton wisely told viewers of Russian media during his attendance at the summit. (Almanac, p. IV) The alternative is the descent into a terrifying combination of war, ever-present terrorism and a deep cultural dark age—if we are not all obliterated by a nuclear exchange.

Facing “two wars with the potential to become global, it is essential to restore our ability to work together towards common goals”, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told the BRICS summit. With “radical changes … underway across the globe”, Putin declared the necessity to set aside differences. BRICS countries, he said, “represent different continents, development models, religions, and distinctive civilisations and cultures”, but they are all “like-minded sovereign states” when it comes to equality, mutual respect and well-being. Therefore, the BRICS has “assumed responsibility for the future of the world”.

The BRICS way was underlined by the first sit-down meeting in five years between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who saw past their differences to boost the transformative BRICS process underway. These are the adults in the room, capable of putting aside petty concerns for the greater good. Putin observed that BRICS has been “compelled to respond to the burgeoning demand in the world for such cooperation” by expanding its format. With “no hegemonic aspirations”, BRICS even welcomes NATO or EU states.

President Xi asserted that BRICS has become “a systemforming factor in the creation of equal, orderly multipolarity”. The BRICS founders urged that a new financial order is “long overdue” and “cannot be postponed”, but that progress must, in Lula’s words, be “approached seriously, cautiously and with technical solidity”. As Putin has previously made clear, the partners will make haste slowly—it is not yet time for a BRICS common currency—but alternative mechanisms to fund development such as the New Development Bank were showcased, and new ones proposed, including a new BRICS investment platform. Putin made clear the era of IMF-World Bank control is over. (Back page feature.)

The demand for a new financial architecture has huge traction even across the heart of the Anglo-American allied world. Perhaps nowhere more so than in Australia, thanks to the Citizens Party’s campaign to put clear alternatives on the table. Australia has an added incentive to pursue the BRICS approach. Not only will it boost our economy, it will take the target off our backs. Rupert Murdoch’s NT News publishing—astonishingly—former Ambassador John Lander’s warning that Northern Australia is “increasingly becoming a potential threat” to Beijing, followed the news that the government will spend a cool $7 billion on US-made medium- and long-range missiles to arm Royal Australian Navy ships. (p. 10)

The BRICS summit has drawn attention to the “US’s diminishing global influence”, wrote Geoff Raby, Australia’s ambassador to China in 2007-11, in the Australian Financial Review on 25 October. Putin has not been sidelined as an international pariah; the summit was attended by “the largest number of heads of state to date”; the march to dedollarisation was strengthened; and the summit convened in the “bullseye in the heart of Eurasia from where the new global order is emerging”.

In this week’s issue:

• Mary Kostakidis symbolises the danger of Albanese’s MAD censorship bill
• Qld Council for Civil Liberties: The state should not regulate political speech
• Aussie Dan Duggan marks two years in prison despite breaking no Australian laws
• Qantas and tolls roads are corporate state fascism rubbed in Aussie faces
• BRICS now 4.6 billion strong
• Postal banking spreads in Africa
• Ambassador’s dire warning: US military presence in Australia to reach WWII levels!
• ‘Dr Strangelove’ planned Israel’s current war expansion policy 50 years ago
• The ‘West’, not China, is ‘distorting history’ over Taiwan
• At the altar of the rules-based order
• The people’s government is assembling
• The IMF has had its day
• ALMANAC – Julian Assange: ‘I plead guilty to journalism’
• John Shipton exposes Western decline, information warfare

Click here to find out how to subscribe. For freely available AAS articles, click here.

Click here for the archive of previous issues of the Australian Alert Service

---