Chana [none/use name]

For screen readers it is possible to make entire elements automatically hidden/skipped or to label the tagline as a labelled group that is easy to move past (or drill down if you want to read it).

Consistency between exoeriences (screen reader vs not) is very important, so I would suggest doing the latter (skippable but present labelled tagline) or removing it altogether / moving it to a footer.

Petition to move the long ones to a “shit liberals say” archive we can all see and enjoy (linked from front page).

Your comment doesn’t really address most things I said and appears agitated. Please consider whether that comment is fair and comradely.

Are you seriously expecting BRICS to come out and say “fuck America, we’re de-dollarizing!” That would be fucking ridiculous, as much as I wish sometimes that would happen.

No and I didn’t say or imply that. You are exaggerating, really straw manning, what I sais. Though in BRICS’ founding statements, they absolutely did prioritize holding each others’ reserve currencies, which is of course the beginning of dedollarization. And most of their founding statements are a direct response to US / OECD domination of finance, trade, and international relations in general, calling for instead following international law and using the UN democratically.

BRICS was also first theorized as primarily a trade/development bloc

By some crackers that didn’t actually found BRICS, sure. As actually envisioned via summits and documents it is not only economic, it also extends to cooperation on law enforcement, climate change, multipolar diplomacy, respect for sovereignty, etc etc. The economic is of course the driving force behind any of those things.

but China is steering it into a vehicle for a new vision of the world

How so? What has BRICS done in the last 4-5 years, as I asked and received no answer?

which is fervently anti-imperialist

BRICS is not fervently anti-imperialist by a long shot. It could become functionally anti-imperialist by way of forwarding multipolarity, but only with discipline.

and BRICS has allowed dozens of countries to dodge sanctions and get resources they would otherwise be locked out of.

BRICS itself, as an organization or strategy, can’t take much credit for that. Causation here is reversed. BRICS and multipolarity and fueled by imperialist sanctions regimes and dollar hegemony. Direct trade in each others’ currencies, for example, is a consequence of their own previous economic development and the sanctions regime itself, not the institution of BRICS.

BRICS collectively increases the GDP of all participating countries by multiple billions of dollars

GDP is a magical quantity that tends to mean different things for different countries. China’s real estate bubble drove up GDP but was actually an economic drag, for example. Actual mutual development would be something to look for, and one would need to tie it to BRICS. I am not sure what you are referring to when you say BRICS itself increases GDP, anyways.

BRICS operates more like a parallel G20. It is a diplomatic vehicle and pulls on the same types of levers as international capitalism, but from the perspective of global majority states. Think tanks, lending bodies, friendly vision statement versions of cooperation agreements. The language is like you’ll find from World Bank ghouls but from the (correct) perspective that it is unfair to the global south.

allows trade and exchange to occur faster and more effectively than anything the imperialists would allow.

I am not sure what you mean by this. Are you using BRICS as a stand-in for all direct trade agreements made between its members / other global south countries? That is of course a good development but again I think causation here is reversed.

To question if it’s progressing at all, is fucking nuts.

I didn’t do that. And please do your best to avoid ableist language.

Irish immigrants to the US became white by getting jobs as cops and land-stealing settlers (mostly farmers).

Gross. I’m sorry you have to negotiate this, I am sure it is difficult to square any caring and familial and friendly feelings towards your brother with him joining the latine harassment squad.

Ah, gross

Of course, though Kissinger mostly operated at the level of thinking like, “hey we should bring China into our orbit to isolate the USSR”. But even then it looks like the Kissingers aren’t really in power anymore, it is the failsons of Kissingers that believe their parents’ cynical propaganda.

Also consider that the enemy is not overly competent at individual gambits, they just have many opportunities to deploy them and react, as they have the levers of power. Capitalists generally do not coordinate and plan long term, capital just forces them to on occasion by shared interests. If they screw up enough to threaten overall domination and profit, they pull on every lever they can until restorative action is taken - bailouts, war, theft, etc.

I think Brave is at least mostly open source. Their builds are public and come from their github repo. I think they might throw in some proprietary bits during packaging (maybe related to drm or crypto or ads?) but I’m not 100% certain.

I’ve been tying to convince myself to use Brave for like 6 months but their crypto and ad history makes me wary.

It’s true that at the top they spend a ton of money for slight improvements. There’s even a big group that tries to copy them, as if a fifth placer in a local race would’ve won if only their bike was $5k of carbon fiber.

But that is almost never necessary. When starting out, a $100 used (not stolen) bike will do you well for years. Nerds with $3k bikes and full lycra get passed by folks in shorts and a band t-shirt on old cheap mountain bikes. If a person gets competitive, getting a more appropriate bike (road bike for road riding, for example), it might jump up to a $500 used (not stolen) cost. Folks on 80s steel bikes still beat $3k bike nerds in local competitions.

Plus just like in many other sports, there are all kinds of variations, including levels of competitiveness. Like with soccer, mentioned throughout this thread, most people are playing for fun and with pickup games. They have to buy a ball to get started ($10-$50). Once they start getting competitive or just more invested, now they need socks ($10), shin guards ($80), shorts ($15), and shoes ($100+). They’ll need that kit for pickup games that are slightly more competitive. Go up a level (on a team in a league) and now they want better shoes ($200) and new shinguards for their preference ($80) and they have to buy a jersey or shirt and maybe even new socks ($50-100). They have to get a gym bag for carrying their stuff to and from events and practice ($20). If they move up to better teams etc etc they will end up getting a whole new iteration of kit and get into personal optimization and travel expenses, etc etc.

But a person can also just play pickup games or go back to them. Or play futsol for fun. Or juggle in their own yard or street. Most people that ride bikes, even those who want to go fast and occasionally race, are mostly just having fun rides of various kinds that don’t take any input outside of routine maintenance and wearing padded clothing for long rides.

Cycling has a bigger opportunity for a person to obsess over an expensive material object for sure, though, no doubt. But most expensive bikes, for most people, are really about a consumption hobby more than the activity. Many of the expensive ones you’ll see in the street are in no way race-optimized. They are big hunks of steel or titanium with parts milled in the imperial core in batches of 10-20, purchased for aesthetics. They could have spent $300 on an older bike with better steel and fixed it up, but they are instead in a consumerist subculture where they got a brand new, lower quality frame for $800 on its own because it says “soma” on the side. A better new frame from China costs $200-300. And all of these bikes… they just look like normal bikes. Maybe one is orange and the other is blue. But a person with extra cash looking for a consumerist hobby will find options like thst $800 ho-hum frame and obsess over it.

Riding bikes is most proletarian. Poor people transportation to work and requires industrialization, made of metal tubes and chains.

Most reactionary is modern golf. It is absurdly expensive on an ongoing basis and is all about weird Victorian ideas of landscaping and maintaining separation from the lower classes via literal gatekeepers.

Yes, I’m still optimistic for BRICS and want to see it succeed with more members! It would be great to establish stronger lines of trade, hopefully leading to US embargo-proof shipping routes.

Of course. The two are partners. They are not really at odds, fundamentally. Settlers and imperialists alike tied together with mutual interests.

Cuba is in the “partner state” category, not a full member state, for which it has been applying. The category was created about 2 months before this. The partner state category furnishes very few benefits. It is basically being a “candidate” allegedly in the running, like being in a later stage of an interview.

Edit: I should note that Brazil fairly publicly blocked Venezuela from becoming a member of any kind in just the last year, citing their elections, i.e. the most lib PR possible.

Hell yeah

There is bleed-over of this into liberal/baby left spaces as well, starting with the “Israel dictates to America, actually” theory. This is just one step removed from an antisemitic conspiracy theory. At its base is just confused liberalism, but by getting the nature of the relationship reversed they remove blame and action from the dominant partner, the country in which most of these people live and could take action, and replace it with a far away enemy that is controlling “us”, with the main “action” being to spread this idea and nothing more.

I mean behind closed doors they are often like this, and have been since the beginning. The first guy was a Nazi. NATO / adjascent generals like McArthur were crude and genocidal.

They just don’t have the respectability veneer cultivated by liberals. Crude behind the scenes, diplomatic and higj-minded in print or in front of cameras. Their subculture doesn’t care about that.

I don’t think this is actually a worse thing in any way. Imperialists being worse at PR means we can discuss what is happening more easily and openly rathee than also having to teach liberals basic media criticism. Like how no, Biden was not actually fighting for a ceasefire, he is genocidal and should be tried and foind guilty for his crimes.

I think it’s extremely premature and unfair to say that BRICS isn’t living up to it’s potential at the moment.

Why? They have slow-walked (and to am extent, reversed) dedollarization and excluded countries like Cuba, indicating a lack of commitment to multipolar ties (it indicates the opposite trend - pro-imperialist concerns). It is a truly barebones “this is purely for our own trade interests” show at this point and has done very little compared to its founding statements and theory. What positive progress has it made in the last 4-5 years?

It’s important to compare the material base to the theory and see how it is measuring up. One can’t build expectations too much from the theory, only the concrete actions can provide hope and analysis.

They were going to but the CIA agent responsible for installing the bomb on thr aircraft carrier bumped into the deep cover state department asset trying to smuggle drones onboard and they both fell overboard and drowned.

Something vaguely as dumb as this is actually possible. Maybe Trump didn’t like their proposals and said to wait a week and he basically forgot about the whole thing. Maybe the ghouls that would try to do it anyways are in disarray because they’re Heritage Foundation dummies. Maybe one of them planned on buying the decommissioned carrier and making it a private museum.

Multipolarity is the only option by which to transition away from unipolarity, US domination. Any alternative will look fairly multipolar, even one with two main rivals, as other countries position themselves relative to them (like when the USSR existed and there were aligned/“non-aligned”).

Multipolarity as advocated by e.g. BRICS envisions multiple counties holding to mutual win-win pacts to have non-US-based economic ties. The feasibility of this is a materialist question, it will be about economic and military outcomes over the next few years and arguably BRICS is not living up to its potential at the moment. But as a goal or organizing principle it is a good strategy when no other countries are ready to become an opposite pole to US imperialism. Instead of going it alone, it is better to foster mutial ties and interests and devise strategies by which they could, if necessary, decouple from the imperialist countries. US domination, and therefore imperialist domination, is not just wars or the IMF, it is also the many economic tendrils weighing on your country and people for attempting to have sovereignty. The imperialists will pull and pull and pull with thousands of strings. If a country achieves a greater degree of sovereignty, what allies can they depend on if they are also subject to those strings? Integration with many counties is a way to create an intertwined economic world order that can (I think, at least) resist imperialism from a single country or even a bloc.

And with that, he lost the vote