So the CCP oppresses Uighurs, Mongolians, Falun Gang Practioners, Tibetans, and Catholics? Do the Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in China enjoy any special privileges? Not really. This video speaks for itself. I'm not always happy with my apartment. There was once an uneven step near the bottom of the stairs that was a tripping hazard, and it took them months to fix, but I was never late to work because the entire mahrlect stairwell disappeared.
Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made. Generally speaking, if I peak behind the curtain of how anything is made I am going to be at least slightly disillusioned. I do not watch sports on television very often to begin with. As a child, teenager and young adult I liked the Olympics especially because I watch obscure sports I don't see much and see top level athletes give their all on it. I soured on watching the Olympics because there is a lot of cheating. Russia is famous for performance enhancing drug use but it's hardly a uniquely Russian thing. Biased judges cause issues. Again Russia is infamous for this, but it's hardly a uniquely Russian thing. China was caught bending the rules on age limits for gymnastics competitions, but I'm sure they are not the only ones. Then there is the fact that it's really expensive to set up all the equipment and arenas for the Olympics. Some of these setups are only going to be used once. What are you going to do with a Olympic bob sled track after the Olympics are over? Hosting the Olympics boosts tourism but with all the associated costs and inconveniences, it is a net financial cost on the city hosting the games. Sure you get national and city pride (technically the city hosts the games, not the country). That's just the equipment. You have to close down normal businesses in the area and you need more police and infrastructure workers for an Olympic Games. Then you factor a bid to the Olympic comittee which according to some, is more of a "bribe" than a "bid." You either need to collect tax moneys or donations to pay for an Olympics. This is easier to do in an autocratic country than a free one and autocratic countries love to have spectacles of grandeur. You'll notice in the 21st century, fewer free countries are hosting the games and more autocratic despots are hosting and if you look at the countries with hte top bids for future, it's going to get worse before it gets better. All things considered, I have transitioned from a wide eyed kid that watched all the Olympic footage he could into a cynical 38 year old who is not going to watch any of the Olympics except maybe the snowboarding event because mahrlect...that looks cool. I remember Sean White's gold medal performance years ago. Let's look back to 1936 when the Olympic games were hosted in Berlin and Adolf Hitler was the host. Okay you can argue that the amazing performance of Jesse Owens and other American Black athletes embarrassed Hitler, but I would argue that on the whole the 1936 Olympic games gave legitimacy to Hitler's regime and that is a very bad thing. I would agree that North Korea is a worse place to live than mainland China. There are probably other countries that are more oppressive and have leaders who are more evil than the CCP but all the governments that are more evil than the CCP are very insular. They don't export their evil to the rest of the world the way that the CCP does now, or the way Nazi Germany and the USSR did decades ago. I wish we could boycott any international sporting event under the CCP's aegis. The genocide alone should get them barred from all international games everywhere. The general oppression, obscene pollution, and the mishandled pandemic is enough to get China ousted from the 2022 games. So it looks like the UK is not going to formally boycott the games, but they are encouraging athletes to do so. I do empathize with the athletes. Many of them have trained their whole lives for one shot at Olympic glory. They are not going to give up the one thing they lived their entire lives in order to make a symbolic political gesture. Hypothetically, if the best downhill skier in the UK refuses to go to games in solidarity with the Uighers, then it's likely that the second best downhill skier in the UK is not going to be so high minded. Within a week, the first skier's protest will be forgot unless his countryman maybe the Bronze or Silver. Then there might be speculation that the UK could have gotten another Gold medal if their best athlete wasn't so high and mighty. I'm sure this pattern would repeat itself across dozens of countries and sports. It's not reasonable to expect our top tier athletes to stand up to the CCP by themselves like this. I think the best idea is for the free world to send our athletes and trainers to the games, but not to send any political dignitaries or tourists at all. Probably not realistic, but that is what I would like to see.
If trump wasn't there, the rioters wouldn't have assaulted the capitol. His rhetoric was what inspired the majority of rioters to storm the capitol and save their dear leader's presidency. In fact, many of the rioters admitted trump was the main reason they've committed their crimes. Trump never directly ordered these rioters and many more to assault the capitol, but his inflammatory rhetoric and his baseless claims led them to act on their respect and reverence towards Trump. Any political leader or essentially anyone enjoying large followings has a certain responsibility for how these people that highly respect them interpret their words. If trump is too stupid to understand the grave responsibility that comes from garnering such reverence, he shouldn't hold office again. If trump doesn't care about this responsibility, and instead only cares that people only blindly follow his words and his examples, then he shouldn't hold office again. Lawmakers' lives and Pence's life were very much in danger. You don't need a knife or a gun to kill someone. Bashing someone with blunt objects or repeatedly punching and kicking someone with multiple people can kill. The rioters were specifically looking for lawmakers and Pence. A lot of them narrowly avoided the rioters. I disagree. Republicans have initially chided him when he was running for president, but now the party not only defends most of his actions, but actively adopt and support his rhetoric because most republican voters of their jurisdictions support trump. Ignoring him isn't possible. He was a trump loyalist, so imo, not much better either. I disagree. I believe fascism is the greatest threat to democracy right now. I don't know what China has done that Trump already did that threatened democracy in the U.S. I also don't know what they've done to threaten other democracies besides Taiwan. But fascism has been a reoccurring theme of Trump's presidency and some eastern European countries. The U.S. produces the most Co2 emissions per capita.
Trump may have been a greater threat to world peace and stability than the CCP. But if that is the case. He is a past tense threat. He is not president anymore. Even if he is not impeached, I do not expect him to successfully run for president again. No one likes to back a presidential loser. Also, Trump is pretty old and does not live a particularly healthy lifestyle. Even if he doesn't die of a heart attack in the next twenty years, the ravages of time are gong to sap his energy and prevent him from being able to effectively campaign again. None of his children are charismatic or popular enough to create a Trump dynasty. None of his cabinet members are charismatic or popular enough to run for president, though I hope Pompeo manages to stay politically active. The rest of Trumps appointees. I hope they fade away. Since the threat of Trump has ended, or at least been severely dimished, I would be interested in your opinion on a potential invasion of Taiwan, a potential war between the PLA and India, the Olympics, tofu buildings, or the struggle of minority groups within China. The US should take steps to reduce carbon emissions. The US is taking steps to reduce carbon emission but not enough. Not nearly enough. This is my single biggest complaint against the American Right. Most high profile political figures refuse to even acknowledge carbon emissions are a problem. I still think China is the world's worst polluter. They have about four times the population of the US so by this graph, they produce more carbon in total. The US is taking steps to lower the carbon footprint of the middle class. The CCP is trying to grow their middle class (a worthy goal) but they are not trying to tamp down on carbon emissions while doing so. Note a majority of China's population is living in poverty barely making anything. If you look at China's elite population, they are probably producing more carbon than most Americans. Second I would point out that carbon dioxide is not the only pollutant there is. China's water, air, and soil is all pretty toxic. The skies are only blue when the CCP orders cars and factories to cease for a few weeks for PR photo shoots. A friend of a friend lives in South Korea. South Korea, not North Korea. According to this person, the pollution for China is so bad that the snow that falls in South Korea is yellow. Chinese mines spew all sorts of toxins everywhere. Chinese fishing vessels metaphorically rape the seas strip mining the fish so that they cannot recover. Most fresh water fish are all dead or too toxic for humans to safely to eat. China has virtually no birds in it. Other critters are uncommon. The CCP only puts resources to conservation when there is a political aspect to it like with pandas. Pandas are very valuable for diplomacy. Also, the CCP lies. It's not just on the top. The local offices will doctor bad statistics for the regional offices. The regional offices will doctor bad statistics for the national offices. The national CCP will then doctor the statistics they publish to the Chinese people and the world at large. I doubt China emits 16.5 metric tons of carbon per person like the United States does but I would bet money they emit more than the officially reported statistic of 7.5. The CCP lies about the number of street crimes, suicides, industrial accidents, automoble accidents, Covid deaths, infant mortality, lung cancer, political detainees, force labor statistics, and construction mishaps, and intellectual property thefts. They are probably lying about their carbon emissions too. If the entire human race stopped burning fossil fuel entirely. The amount of greenhouse gases are such that the average global temperature would still keep rising. That means we cannot fix the problem by reducing emissions. Reducing emissions is a good idea for the secondary benefits alone. Renewable energy creates jobs and reduces our dependence on foreign fossil fuel markets, but I believe we need a technological solution to carbon emissions. As a child, I believed that planting trees would solve this problem. After all, plants suck up carbon dioxide from the air. Planting trees and saving the rain forest were hugely popular in the 1990s. Polluting corporations really supported the idea that we could fix everything by planting lots of trees and not changing our lifestyles dramatically. I believed, erroneously, that oil and coal was constantly being replenished. It was just being replenished at a much slower rate than we were using it. What I learned only a few years ago is that most fossil fuels we have today was formed in the Carboniferous Period. The bacteria that helps wood decompose did not exist yet. So trees and tree-like plants would suck in carbon dioxide and then the plants would die, and get compressed underground eventually becoming fossil fuels. Now if a plant removes carbon dioxide from the air, the plant, it's a temporary solution. Most of the carbon dioxide will re-enter the air when the plant dies and is decomposed (or when the plant is eaten and turned into poop which then decomposes). We need some kind of method to capture carbon dioxide and trap it in solid form mimicking what happened in the Carboniferous Period. I don't know how we could do this effectively. I am pretty sure that the first people to come up with a way to do this will emerged from a capitalist economy, not a state planned economy. In the short term, I think we should take a second look at nuclear power plants. They create virtually zero carbon emission and produce a lot of power in an economical setting. The only problem s the threat of meltdowns (which modern technology has more or less solved) and nuclear waste. We have earthquake-free deserts to store our radioactively waste in the United States southwest, but the NIMBYs are roadblocking it.
It's not just trump i'm railing about, but the republican party's descent into trumpism. Sure trump may never regain office, but his ideals and characteristics that has constantly lead to corruption and chaos still remain popular. Only 10 republicans voted to impeach him during Congress' vote. Republican lawmaker with increasingly far-right tendencies and views are steadily gaining popularity within the party. I really don't want dangerous conspiracy theories and threats of political violence to be the new norm with republicanism, yet that may very well become the reality in the near-future. I don't want the U.S. to become something akin to CCP's rule of China, wherein the free press is thoroughly delegitimized and attacked (for all its faults, mainstream media still holds politicians accountable), minorities are dehumanized, and democracy is left to rot. I don't want to circlejerk, so I don't talk about these issues. I want to talk about how the US relates to China. I brought this fact up to highlight that pollution and global warming are issues all countries must deal with, unlike most of republicans who often defer to places such as India and Africa when pressed on the US' responsibility to deal with these problems.
To be fair, the possibility of a Taiwan invasion is DEEPLY related to a possible USA involvment. Am i wrong? I recall there's a USA aircraft carrier that is doing some "patrolling' down that route...
Indeed. I don't think the PLA is going to invade Taiwan in the next four years. Probably not the four years after that either. If it happens, I think the United States will intervene on Taiwan's behalf. Modern warfare is won by logistics. Besides the Covid Virus, the Chinese infrastructure is in shambles because of a series of natural disasters and tofu buildings. Right now large regions of the country are facing famine conditions. I suspect the PLA is going to keep trying Salami slicing strategies and they are probably going to try economic and cyber warfare to bleed Taiwan slowly. My prediction is that Biden's successor will have to deal with a Taiwan invasion between 2028 and 2036 or the CCP is going to have a major party shake up and Winnie the Pooh's successor opts to shelf the invasion of Taiwan because either the party cannot afford it anymore or the CCP is dying outright.
If Justin Trudeau was a cat, I would give him such a spritzing. Bad Justin! As pointed out, if Biden and Trump agree that the CCP is perpetrating genocide, it's not that controversial a claim to make. At this point, there might be some ordinary citizens who are uneducated about what is going on within mainland China vis a vis their minority groups, but a Prime Minister and his senior staff cannot hide behind a veil of plausible ignorance. Trudeau and his compatriots are complicit with genocide. Also, I'm done with the Economist magazine now. A publication I used to be quite fond of.
It's harsh to open fire on fishing vessels, but it's necessary. The first rule of environmentalism is don't piss in your drinking water. The second rule of environmentalism is don't piss in your neighbors drinking water. The third rule of environmentalism is don't piss in your grandchildren's drinking water. For this metaphor, "drinking water" can stand in for any life giving resource. The CCP has perverted Chinese culture which one had a respect for the sanctity of life and the need for balance. Now they violate all three laws of environmentalism and are inflicting irreparable damage to the seas for short term gains. They have such a large fleet of long range fishing vessels because they used up all the waters in their own territory and severely depleted their immediate neighbors fish resources too.
If this is how the CCP battles poverty, think about how they battle racism, global warming, terrorism, loss of environmentalism, and of course Covid.
Thank you for helping stimulate discussion as opposed to me just posting assorted China Uncensored Videos that I think are especially good. He is right on a lot of what he says. Americans are silly and we could be doing a lot of things better. I am certainly on Bill Maher's side opposing cancel culture. I cannot explain it, but I really don't like Bill Maher that much even though I agree with most of the things he says. I'm normally okay dealing with someone that I agree 70% on and disagree 30% but something about him rubs me the wrong way. I haven't forgotten when he went through a phase where he couldn't stop shilling Religulous, even interrupting Heath Ledger's eulogy to do it. Bill Marr says correct things, but he leaves out a lot of critical context. He could be lazy, but I believe he is a smart man that deliberately omits information that goes against his point. I know that the United States could have handled Covid better. I think the Republicans were not aggressive enough at implementing measures and the Democrats were extremely sloppy with their measures. All that said, I wouldn't want to trade places with China, in my opinion, anyone who says the CCP solved their Covid problem is either childishly naïve or they are actively shilling CCP propaganda. I will note that he said that Chinese people are not concerned about racist portrayals of Chinese people in Dr. Seus. He is mostly right, but the CCP's propaganda wings love to say that X, Y, or Z offends the Chinese people. The CCP is not going to say that Dr. Seus offends the Chinese people but they are going to say that "lies" about their poor treatment of Hong Kong and minorities. The CCP did not move the bulk of the country from the poor to the middle class. This was a lie. They eliminated "extreme poverty" by changing the definition of "extreme poverty" Yen is the currency of Japan, not China, that's just a lazy joke. We could use some high speed rail on the coast but the middle states couldn't really benefit from it in a cost effective standpoint. I understand that it costs slightly more than a penny to make a penny, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make pennies. Making money and regulating it is expensive, it has always has been. I like having exact change, but I guess I wouldn't cry if pennies went away. I'd like to get rid of Day Light Savings Day. It's annoying and it literally costs lives. The CCP is good at getting construction projects done fast, but a quick look below the surface reveals the flaws brought in by corruption and waste. A lot of these projects are tofu buildings. A lot of construction projects are boondoggles that serve no purpose other than to look impressive such as the famous ghost cities. What is the point of building a city if no one lives or works there? Bill Marr based his video on the idea that authoritarian regimes get things done. I haven't found a specific video debunking this. I know they exist. While in theory, once an authoritarian regime decides to act, they can act swifter than a democracy can because nothing has to be discussed. The CCP has an inherit weakness that hits nearly every authoritarian regime, Cuba, Nazi Germany, the USSR, and a gazillion other authoritarian regimes both Left and Right and that is lying and a desire to save face. The CCP has guidelines on how many people should die each year in industrial accidents, car accidents, fires, suicides, fires etc. It's noted that once newspapers for a local area reach their quota, they stop reporting bad things. For a high school paper years ago I wrote a paper on the Battle of Britain in WWII. I remember reading that pilots would exaggerate how many planes they shot down. Their commanders would then boost how planes their squadrons shot down. Every officer fluffed the numbers so by the time it got to Hitler he had believed that the Royal Air Force took about 2-3 times the losses they actually did. That's part of the reason why they switched to attacking civilian targets before neutralizing the RAF and then they were surprised by the number of planes they had to fight. In China, the local CCP branch have every incentive to pad the numbers of good things and hide the numbers on bad things. This only gets worst as you move from the local level to the provincial level to the regional level to the national level, so the "quick decisive actions" taken by the authoritarian regime are inadequate and based on faulty data. And that's assuming no malice or active deception. If the CCP decides that the general populace does not need to know anything at all, they will ignore a problem to save face. North Korea spokespeople claim the nation has zero Covid cases, but the actions on the ground say otherwise. The regime is willing to let 10,000 people die before admitting one person got Covid. They certainly seem willing to let a million people die before admitting a hundred North Koreans have Covid, and I'm sure more than a hundred North Koreans have Covid. The CCP is similar but less extreme. Too many of their people have phones and computers, even with the Great Firewall, they have to be a little bit more realistic with their official numbers than North Korea does. In an authoritarian regime, they solve problems quickly. But the problem they solve is not "a bad thing is happening." The problem is "people are saying a bad thing is happening." EDIT: This video just came out. A resident posts on social media that he was without food for almost ten days and he got arrested for saying this. I guess the point is that democracies may be slower to make decisions than authoritarian regimes but information is relatively open, so decisions are relatively informed. Maybe democracies spend a lot of time ineffectually discussing problems, but that is marginally better than decisively and quickly working to hide and obfuscate problems rather than solve them.
We no longer have pennies. Perhaps. I instead interpreted his message to be that a unified force will outperform a fractured and segmented one. I could be mistaken, but I didn't get the impression that he was trying to promote an authoritarian regime, but rather that the US is fractured, fighting with itself and focused on the wrong priorities. Obviously I'm not here to try to defend China, it isn't a place where I would like to live. I find many of the things they do to their people and to others to be utterly repulsive. On an individual level they are still well below many/most of the major countries. That said, on a country wide level, it cannot be denied that they are on a major upward trend. Today, the US is the economic and military superpower of the world, but would anyone want to bet that they will still hold that distinction 25 years time? 50 years perhaps? While the US is focused on canceling Pepe Le Pew and Dr. Seuss, China is building up its infrastructure. While the US military is worried about inclusivity (and creating flight suits for pregnant women... no joke, look it up), the Chinese military is focusing on become stronger and more efficient. I think the US is suffering from being too successful in many ways. In the absence of real problems, people are inventing stupid reasons to be offended. Half the country seems to utterly hate the country. Half country seems to look upon the US as an awful, racist and bigoted nation. You don't need another country to topple you when your own citizens burn the country's flag and their own cities. Of note, I'm just using the US as an example (because it was the one focused on in the video). Many of these very same trends are eating away at other countries too (Canada, UK, Germany, etc.). Sometimes this is even to greater extent while in other aspects to a lesser extent (so far). For the record, I am not replying as a form of debate instigation (for once), I actually agree with much of what you say. Just wanted to throw in a different perspective. My paragraphs above are not meant as a rebuke to the themes of this tread. I agree that many of the things the CCP government does are abhorrent and vile. That said, it is also important for all of us to recognize our own pitfalls (though not necessarily in this thread ). Besides, the Chinese have created the term baizuo, so they can't be all bad. Anyways, just my two cents. Back to memes!
Two things weird me out about this video. First, it seems counter intuitive that planting trees would harm the environment. Second, Ancient China had the Great Wall. CCP China has the Great Leap Forward, Great Restoration, Great Three Gorges Dam, the Great Fire Wall, and now the Great Green Wall. I don't remember if the War on Sparrows was the Great War on Sparrows, but it set a precedent that the CCP's environmental engineering projects aren't great. Not that the west track record with environment engineering is great. But my father dedicated a decade+ of his life to this. He pushed for public and university funny green spaces not for trees, but for prairies. After I turned 18 and could sort of take care of myself, pushing for prairies moved from a hobby to a true passion for my father. Relatively small prairies were created, but they had farther reaching help on soil erosion and helping threatened butterfly species like the monarchs have safe pits stops on their migration routes. It makes me think of this beloved Futurama character. The Grand Midwife, the Grand Match Maker, the Grand Butterfly Warden and the Grand Lunch Lady. The key to environmental engineering is the old axiom, thinking globally, act locally. If you have a bunch of little green spaces as opposed to a few big ones, you can spread out the benefits. And you create a wide variety of ecosystems and species it won't cause the problems associated with a single tree species. Forest here, prairies there, wetlands in a third spot. The more diverse nature is, the more resilient it is.
Hmmm, I need to shop around for an alternative to Steam now. I'm not going to throw away the things I already purchased, but I'm not planning on buying new products via Steam in the near future. If I stick to my guns, I am not going to buy any new products via Steam in the far future too.
That'd probably be very hard as Steam pretty much has and always has in the past a monopoly in digital video game distribution. Besides Steam, there's GOG with its alluring DRM-free purchases, but its lately been caving into pressure by the Chinese market. There's also Epic, but that's owned by a Chinese corporation. I'd probably recommend Humble Bundle. You can get crap tons of games at low prices while supporting charities with your purchases.
I knew about Epic, I didn't know about GOG. In any event, for non-political reasons, I have decided I may have a video game addiction because playing video games is mildly lowering of the quality of my life. It eats up time that I could be using exercising, addressing my adult responsibilities, writing, or even painting Warhammer models. All these activities provide me ongoing satisfaction and video games only give me a short term dopamine fix. But I cannot seem to stay away from turn based strategy games and tower defense games. None of the above has anything to do with the CCP, the only political issue I care about deeply. Perhaps if I remind myself if I like giving Steam money with helping the CCP, this will give me a moral impetus to cut back on video games.