The Global South-led organization BRICS has expanded again.
Indonesia, the largest country in Southeast Asia, has officially been admitted into the group as a full member.
Indonesia is the fourth-most populous country on Earth, with the seventh-biggest economy.
BRICS now has 10 full members. These are:
- Brazil
- Russia
- India
- China
- South Africa
- Egypt
- Ethiopia
- Indonesia
- Iran
- United Arab Emirates
Another eight countries became BRICS partners in January 2025 as well, including:
- Belarus
- Bolivia
- Cuba
- Kazakhstan
- Malaysia
- Thailand
- Uganda
- Uzbekistan
The following is a map of BRICS members and partners, as of January 6, 2025:
BRICS makes up 41.41% of global GDP (PPP)
The 18 BRICS members and partners made up 41.4% of global GDP, when measured at purchasing power parity (PPP), according to October 2024 data published by the IMF.
Just the 10 BRICS full members comprised 38.8% of global GDP (PPP) in 2024.
BRICS countries make up a significantly larger share of the global economy than the G7, the group of seven Western countries that colonized most of the world.
Combined, G7 members Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States comprised 29.08% of world GDP (PPP) in 2024.
By contrast, BRICS members and partners were together 41.41% of the global economy.
Indonesia: the world’s only nickel superpower
Indonesia’s economy is larger than that of the UK and France, which are permanent members of the UN Security Council. Indonesia makes up 2.44% of global GDP (PPP), compared to just 2.2% for the UK and France.
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.
By capturing more value in the production process, Indonesia quintupled its nickel revenue, from just $6 billion in 2013, when it only exported raw ore, to $30 billion in 2022, when it domestically processed the mineral.
ASEAN prefers China over USA
China is the number one trading partner of Indonesia. Nearly a quarter of Indonesia’s exports (22.58%) went to China in 2022, and 28.52% of Indonesia’s imports came from China.
China is also the top trading partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a whole.
A 2024 poll found that a slim majority (50.5%) of people in ASEAN as a whole would choose to ally with China over the United States, if they had to pick one.
In Indonesia, 73.2% of the population prefers China, whereas just 26.8% would go with the US.
Many Southeast Asian nations have joined BRICS in the global de-dollarization movement, seeking alternatives to the dollar and the US-dominated global financial system. At a summit in 2023, ASEAN members signed a deal to increase the use of local currencies in cross-border transactions and regional trade.
BRICS goals: reform global governance institutions and deepen Global South cooperation
At its 2024 summit in Kazan, Russia, BRICS endorsed a comprehensive plan to transform the international monetary and financial system, to benefit formerly colonized countries in the Global South.
In its capacity as chair of BRICS in 2025, Brazil announced on January 6 that Indonesia had been admitted as a full member.
Brasilia revealed that Jakarta had been invited to become a member at the 2023 BRICS conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, but the Indonesian government asked to delay the offer until after its 2024 presidential election.
Brazil stressed that the top goals of BRICS are to “reform global governance institutions” and to “deepen the cooperation of the Global South”.
In a statement congratulating Indonesia’s entry into the organization, China’s Foreign Ministry stated:
BRICS is a main platform for promoting solidarity and cooperation of the Global South and a major force driving the reform of the global governance system. BRICS countries are always committed to multilateralism, fairness and justice, and common development. BRICS’s latest addition follows the historic trend of the collective rise of the Global South.
Indonesia’s historic role in the anti-colonial movement
Indonesia’s entry into BRICS is deeply symbolic, given the leading role the country played in the anti-colonial movement in the 1950s and ’60s.
Indonesia’s leftist anti-imperialist leader Sukarno sponsored the Bandung Conference in 1955, and co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.
The founders of the Non-Aligned Movement (from left to right): India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indonesia’s Sukarno, and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito
Sukarno was overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup in 1965. Following his ouster, Indonesia’s right-wing military dictatorship, led by General Suharto, carried out what is known as a politicide, or a political genocide.
With assistance from the US government, Indonesia’s military junta killed between 1 million and 3 million leftists in 1965 and 1966, destroying the enormous Communist Party of Indonesia and massacring anyone accused of sympathizing with socialism.
The Washington Post reported on this in 1990, in an article titled “U.S. officials’ lists aided Indonesian bloodbath in ’60s”. The newspaper wrote:
U.S. officials 25 years ago supplied the names of thousands of members of the Indonesian Communist Party to the army in Jakarta, which at the time was hunting down the leftists and killing them in a crackdown branded as one of the century’s worst massacres, former U.S. diplomats and CIA officials say.
For the first time, the officials are acknowledging that they systematically compiled comprehensive lists of communist operatives, from the top echelons down to village cadres in Indonesia, the world’s fifth most populous nation. As many as 5,000 names were furnished over a period of months to the army there, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured, according to the former U.S. officials.
The assassinations were part of a massive bloodletting that decimated the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of more than 13,500 islands. The PKI was the third-largest Communist Party in the world at the time, with 3 million members, and through affiliated organizations — such as labor and youth groups — it claimed the loyalties of 17 million others.
Luke J.
2025-01-07 at 08:14
Once again – thank you Brian Norton for an outstanding news item and analysis.
Eric Arthur Blair
2025-01-07 at 16:45
The agenda of China and BRICS is now crystal clear. Having lifted 800 million Chinese out of absolute poverty, China’s diabolical plan is to lift the entire Global South out of absolute poverty and Ben Norton is a proponent of this nefarious goal.
How dare they! The Garden dictates that The Jungle must remain downtrodden and poor forever. Most important is to export freedom and democracy by bombing Palestinian children and lobbing missiles into the Russian heartland.
Also be informed that if you put a thuggish murderer of women and children in a monkey suit and stage a scripted interview with him on CNN, he ceases to be a terrorist and you can remove the $10 million bounty on his head. Also the fact that SatanYahoo received 58 standing ovations during his 2024 speech in the US congress proves that the USA does not support genocide and war criminals, it only exports freedom and democracy, which is the only way to teach them uppity darkies good.
USA faaark yeah!!
Eric Arthur Blair
2025-01-08 at 15:44
Seriously though (and don’t call me Shirley) here is one of the best interviews I have ever seen with the globetrotting Pepe Escobar who offers us amazing insight into current tectonic events taking place in the USA, BRICS, West Asia (especially Iran and the former entity called Syria) etc.
It starts with an astounding report that Drumpf had shared on X, a Jeffrey Sachs hardhitting fact based video attacking the deceit and mendacity of US foreign policy. Amazing!!!
https://www.youtube.com/live/Ay3NOoMPHpM?si=7Ozsc90mQzTzvqLd
JonnyJames
2025-01-09 at 11:20
Cheers for the link EAB: I’ve been following Pepe Escobar for years, and he is one of the best.
It is standard procedure for the DT crowd to say one thing and do another. That’s what a good conman does: you gain some credibility with the disgruntled plebs, get them to believe “hope and change”: that something different will happen this time, then you continue the same old status quo
It’s the old bait and switch routine, and millions take the bait. DT may be a loud-mouthed genocidal asshole, but he knows how to bullshit people – he’s been doing it his whole life. And the media love him (despite saying they don’t) and the so-called deep state love him as well. He is a great freak-show distraction, he polarizes the plebs (divide and rule), he whips up emotional issues, scapegoats the powerless, and will continue the status-quo (just like last time). Our friends in Langley know full well that the DT is no threat, and is a useful distraction and polarizer. (If DT was a genuine threat, he would have had an unfortunate accident years ago.)
Ben Norton, Chris Hedges, and other objective journalists have pointed out how the policies of the first DT regime were not substantively different than long-term US foreign policy, or domestic policy. Vladimir Putin himself has pointed out several times how the first DT regime was equally as damaging to Russian interests, despite the cheap BS. (With “friends” like that, who needs…)
The DT did get crony tax cuts for the 1% passed, with BIPARTISAN support. The policies were continued under the JB regime, and, as Pepe says, the Genocide of Palestine will continue. And the War On Iran (and China etc.) will escalate. Miriam Adelson wants her 100 million worth, and then some. (Billions more will be given to Israel)
The Kleptocratic Kakistocracy will continue until there is little left to asset strip, no matter which puppets sit in Congress or the WH. Let’s just hope the End of History hubris does not lead to the End of Life on Earth.
Eric Arthur Blair
2025-01-09 at 13:55
Jeff Sachs’ own take on Drumpf’s re-post:
https://podtail.com/en/podcast/judging-freedom/prof-jeffrey-sachs-does-trump-want-peace/
JJ, I previously wrote there is a 99% likelihood you are correct. I am guessing odds have now increased to 99.9% that you are correct, given the swamp vermin Mr Delirium Tremens wants to appoint to cabinet.
Some difference between DT and the total Deep State stooges eg Obama, Shrub Sr & Jr etc who were previously in office:
– the Deep State actually tried to kill DT on at least 2 occasions that we know of, the Butler attempt coming within one inch of doing so.*
– Intentionally or not, DT does sometimes blurt out the truth eg the USA is in Syria to steal their oil etc.
– DT now has an unfiltered platform to blurt out or re-X anti Deep State material, unlike during the time he was banned by Twitter. He can use that to test the waters of public opinion. This is something the LEMSO** would never permit.
– the predictable thing about DT is that he is unpredictable, hence I predict he will do unpredictable things.
*the golf course guy of the 2nd attempt, despite not having been in the military, apparently “visited” Fort Bragg >140 times.
Firt Bragg is the psyops center of the MIC where MK Ultra type operations continue to be performed.
Both the New Orleans and Las Vegas terrorists in 1st January had “coincidentally” undergone “training” in Fort Bragg, suggesting possible Deep State false flags.
** Lying Establishment Media Sewer Outlets
Eric Arthur Blair
2025-01-12 at 13:22
HUGE NEWS wilfully ignored by the LEMSO* despite being indisputably true and vitally important. Veteran ex-CIA analysts discuss this:
https://podbay.fm/p/judging-freedom/e/1736547436
Two days before Xmas 2024, the US National Security Archive under FOI released a massive document outlining the history of CIA mind manipulation programs publishing dates, places, activities and names of the perps (including their old photos).
50 years ago Seymour Hersh’ first covered this “conspiracy theory” proven to be conspiracy FACT by the Church committee inquiry and which was supposedly reformed / dismantled, yet the so-called oversight bodies proved useless. Programmes such as MK Ultra were simply rebadged and relocated and continued uninterrupted.
This reminded me of an old Rolling Stone article written by RFK Jr who interviewed Sirhan Sirhan in prison and was convinced he was a patsy set up by the Deep State, too drugged up to know what he was doing and certainly standing in the wrong spot to have shot RFK Sr, judging from the direction of the bullet wounds.
Mind faaarkery of disposable patsies by the CIA continues unabated.
*Lying Establishment Media Sewer Outlets
JonnyJames
2025-01-09 at 17:55
EAB, I largely agree. But for all we know, the so-called deep state orchestrated the silly assassination attempts in order to further polarize and distract the plebs. And it was quite effective. Cui Bono? The Oligarchy, Israel and the Israel Lobby all openly support DT, so how on earth can he be a threat to the so-called deep state? He had 4 years and he didn’t do shit except bloviate and spew his usual nonsense. His supporters continue to make excuses and engage in wishful hope and change, just like the Obama crowd. =
On the other hand, a civilian, Luigi Mangione took out his target successfully.
The contrived Russiagate BS also helped to divide the gullible, insouciant “electorate” into tilting at windmills instead of focusing about hard-core structural issues. It also helps to maintain the illusion of choice in the US fake democracy.
The DT never went after his financial kleptocrat buddies in Wall St., never even gave lip service to opposing the Genocide of Palestine etc.
If DT went against Israel, or Wall St., I would then believe he is a threat to the “deep state”. But as we know, he LOVES Israel, the Kushners, the Netanyahus, the Adelsons, and his friends on Wall St. I might be overly cynical or skeptical, and I do hope I am wrong.
Eric Arthur Blair
2025-01-09 at 23:53
One thing is certain, ordinary Joe six pack (beer, not abs) in the USA is faaarked.
JonnyJames
2025-01-10 at 10:31
And the UK Mini Me as well…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U0wQPMwvVc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPMkCkU0QmU
JonnyJames
2025-01-13 at 12:41
You’re too f-in right mate!
Or as my island friends say:
D’as fe sho’ bruddah!
And meanwhile in ol’ Blighty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZKYU3loMuo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U0wQPMwvVc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vSxCwE86JI
Eric Arthur Blair
2025-01-14 at 15:14
As the sun sets on Airstrip One, let us sing this solemn swansong:
“Fool Brittania,
Brittanic fools and knaves,
Britain ever ever ever is depraved.”
A ditty the Sex Pistols might have written if they were not firing with blanks.