
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin today presided at the closing session of a summit of the Brics bloc, praising its role as a counterbalance to what he called the West’s “perverse methods.”
The three-day summit in the city of Kazan covered the deepening of financial co-operation, including the development of alternatives to Western-dominated payment systems, efforts to settle regional conflicts and the expansion of the Brics group of nations.
The alliance that initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa when it was founded in 2009 has expanded to embrace Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

ROGER McKENZIE expounds on the motivation that drove him to write a book that anticipates a dawn of a new, fully liberated Africa – the land of his ancestors

While much attention is focused on Israel’s aggression, we cannot ignore the conflicts in Africa, stoked by Western imperialism and greed for natural resources, if we’re to understand the full picture of geopolitics today, argues ROGER McKENZIE