Comment by unity1001 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unity1001 | Hacker News Reader

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> I'll be frank, every article that presents BRICS as a real thing is propaganda

Huh? Its an actual organization with actual rules and actual institutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS

Brazil's ex president Rousseff has been elected the president of the bank of that non-existing organization.

https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2023/03/24/dilma-rousseff-...

How does one get elected to be the president of the bank of something that is 'not real'...

> BRICS members don't even vote in each other's favor in the UN. Russia has received zero meaningful assistance from them during the war in Ukraine.

False. And even if true, that wouldnt change the existence of the actual organization, its rules, and the arrangements in between countries.

What happens in the UN is mostly PR. Brazil voted to condemn the war in Ukraine because the left-wing segment that Lula and his crowd belongs to condemns all wars, and yet it voted in favor of the Nord Stream investigation.

> India and China are enemies, they keep having border skirmishes. South Africa is a failed state and it has negligible influence on the world stage. Brazil is one of the reasons why the term "middle-income trap" was devised......It's entirely possible that in the future a real anti-western bloc will emerge. But it isn't BRICS

This feels like a lot of reality-denial. Or copium at best...

I think it's a bit of both. There is a real organization, with real interests, that are at this point mostly being held together by the desire to no longer be dominated by the US-centric dollar-based system. If the US fades, this unifying principle will disappear over time, and the unity of this organization would as well. Already some of what it has accomplished, to some great fanfare in certain places, strikes me as being nothing more, and nothing less, than that.

It isn't as unified as some would like to present, and it isn't something that the existing world powers should just ignore as irrelevant. It's complicated. It's a complicated time in world history, as transitions are.

I'd mostly agree with this analysis. I don't see them holding together absent the unipolar NATO-dominated world giving them common ground, as they're mainly composed of the top representative states of all three major non-NATO blocs from the Cold War (Soviet, Maoist, and "3rd world" movement) and there's a reason those three groups weren't all pals back then.

> If the US fades, this unifying principle will disappear over time

Working, functional partnership do not dissolve easily. The Eu, despite all its problems is a good example. Even the US-controlled system was one - it had a lot of disadvantages, but it worked to some degree, and it kept going on.

BRICS and the analogues that are converging with it are multilateral, egalitarian partnerships that worked well for all their participants, totally independent of the US. Some favored US allies kept increasing their BRICS participation even while they got a lot of benefits from the US. So its unlikely that they would just leave.

To simplify, BRICS and its analogues seem to be what the WTO would be without the 'special rules based order' that the US was subjecting everyone to, and the blackmailing influence of the Anglosaxon dominated financial system. (as can be seen from what happened recently with 'sanctions' and the resulting confiscations of money).

That was the last straw actually, all the countries that are rushing to BRICS as of this moment, started those initiatives immediately after 'asset seizures', or, rather, theft, that was effected on their enemies by the US, the UK and the supposedly neutral Switzerland. The 'neutrality' was discovered to be a farce and the 'rules based order' discovered to be able to change its rules whenever, however it suit its rule-makers.

The result is everyone applying to BRICS membership or observer status...

> > If the US fades, this unifying principle will disappear over time.

> Working, functional partnership do not dissolve easily.

I would suggest you may want to consider the fairly vast gulf between what I said and what you seem to think I said.

As all organizations eventually converge into their primary purpose becoming their own perpetuation, I'm sure the BRICS will be around far longer than I will. The UN, a much larger organization already far past its prime and effectively bereft of purpose, lurches on at a scale essentially incomprehensible to the human mind, yet it does not die, because such things rarely do, and effectively never on a sensible time scale.

Without an enemy unifying it, BRICS will eventually just be the UN 2.0.

But it will take time, decades probably, to get there.

The really entertaining question to ponder is, when will the US, or at least something that is composed of some chunk of the 50 states (the territories may well do so much sooner), apply to join the BRICS?

>Huh? Its an actual organization with actual rules and actual institutions.

Of course, the organization exists, it wasn't my point.

> False.

What is false?

The UN votes? Recent example: UN resolution A/ES-11/L.7 ("Principles of the Charter of the United Nations underlying a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine"). The only countries that voted against are Belarus, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia and Syria. Brazil supported the resolution, while China, India and South Africa abstained.

Lack of assistance? I haven't seen Russia using, say, Chinese missiles or tanks in Ukraine. They import weapons from Iran. It's odd, considering that China is a major arms exporter.

>This feels like a lot of reality-denial. Or copium at best...

What part is "reality denial"? Are you saying that India and China aren't having border skirmishes? South Africa is a healthy state? Brazil isn't a middle-income country?

Russia is absolutely using Chinese ammunition, though it might have come through a third party. There is photographic evidence of it.

is there any evidence that the PRC is providing tanks or missiles to russia for their war on Ukraine?

or even the aforementioned ammunition?

I am not able to find the image I think I have seen as evidence. The US has "confirmed" ie accused with all it's political capital that Russia has fired Chinese made ammunition in Ukraine. It could have actually come from North Korea, as Russia bought millions of shells from them.

No tanks or missiles yet, but it also took the US and EU about a year to finally send tanks. China is very likely weighing the pros and cons of assisting Russia in this war.

I'm not sure what to make of your claim regarding the accusations, I haven't heard that, and even then, you seem to be trying to change the topic from China providing weaponry to any rando providing weaponry that happens to have been made in China – we're discussing the former, as the lack thereof indicates the lack of strong Chinese ties to russia

> Chinese missiles or tanks

That's because Russian misses and tanks are better (as are their aircraft) than anything China can produce. Russia has no issue so far producing these domestically (evidenced by their usage contrary to predictions this time last year that they'd be out soon).

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme...

However, they are getting stuff like consumer drones, vests and clothing from China. And drones from Iran. Russia is behind on certain types of drones (but are very successful with domestic ones for taking out stationary targets like artillery):

https://airtable.com/shrWRJsWz0HY3UW02/tblGOzFRGPpsw551J

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Development_Bank

Well, it's on downgrade, but at least it's quite a bit smaller than SVB?

What links them together other than corruption? It looks like a money grab.

Yeah, like go look at the pro-Western Wikipedia article on BRICS which clearly states it's real and has had a summit. The original comment is just plainly false.

I think he's pointing out that BRICS seems to be less strategic than the media makes it out to be. Looking at the topics in their summits they seem to be more of a debate group, but I've only known about them for the past 15 min.

> This feels like a lot of reality-denial. Or copium at best...

You should defend your point otherwise it just sounds like your feelings were hurt as well.

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