So of course China is very homophobic in their policies. They censor anything remotely pro-LGBT and sideline openly gay people. That doesn't mean there aren't closet gays in the CCP itself... This segues into other social issues. Disney loves to talk about racially inclusive they are but then they sideline black actors and actresses to market stuff to the Chinese movie market. I don't know if the Chinese people themselves don't like movies with high profile black actors because the CCP is the gatekeeper to all foreign media in China. Disney, Blizzard, and many other big media companies censor gay characters to market things to China. China is not the only homophobic government that corporations bend the knee to. Companies do this to sell things to Russia and many Middle Eastern countries. I'm sure there are other nations and groups. I am a supporter of LGBT rights but I don't follow the details of LGBT issues in the news very closely.
Yep, as much as it is sad, this doesn't irk me. It's a well expected behavior, i don't recall any authoritarian regime that is open minded toward LGBT. this, on the other hand.. or Hollywood that lectures me during the Oscar awards show, while keeping double standards. I hate much more hypocrisy.
There is a special kind of hypocrisy that is really common in the 21st century: virtue signaling. Virtue signalling is when a person or group broadcasts how virtuous they are out of vanity or greed. I don't believe I've ever met a good person who is a virtue signaller and I do not believe I've ever met a virtue signaller who is a good person. Legally corporations are people. And those people tend to be sociopaths.
Okay, the last minute covering the implications of the the three-child policy was horrifying but the notion that bipartisan Senators and president Biden are pushing back against the CCP's attempt to politicize vaccines while also incrementally enhancing the political status of Taiwan makes me happy.
Youtube and Google demonetized these videos. I don't see why someone would do this other than at the behest of the CCP! They are monsters. That's why I use an ad blocker whenever I use Youtube. CCP collaborators aren't getting a penny from me.
Their algorithms demonetize everything. Generally, if a video has any indication or hint of violence, it'll increase its chances of getting demonetized.
I recently heard of something called the narcissist's prayer. That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it. I think this works great with the CCP's propaganda machine on almost every topic.
Reminds me of Seneca Crane and the nightlock berries. Hopefully John Cena's example (and his career crashing and burning) will show every high profile person that making a faustian bargain with the CCP never works out. I mean, if you are going to sell your soul, make sure you get a good price for it.
I'm not sure this is a China problem so much as it's a world problem. The one-child policy made exacerbated this problem, but I don't believe it caused the problem. Japan has "herbivore men" or grass eaters." The United States doesn't have a fancy term for this, but there does seem to be a motivation problem with people in their 20s and 30s. It's probably world wide. We've made the world so safe that there is less motivation to work hard. The difference is that China's economy cannot afford to take a hit like this. All governments have carrots and sticks. The CCP's only carrot right now is China's economic growth and prosperity or more accurate the appearance of economic growth and prosperity. If China's prosperity dips across the board in a way that cannot be papered over, they will face growing unrest. Even Han Chinese are beginning to protest government actions, not just the oppressed minority groups. The CCP is evolving suppressing dissent into an art form, but it's very hard to stop people from "lying down." There was a comment below the Youtube video about an old Soviet Union joke. "They pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work."
Though I've not been taking part in this thread for a long time, I've been watching it and here are my views. I certainly agree China is a very great threat, that is making the world a lot more of a mess than it could be. And not just with China but also in the West, with regards to the debate between @Paradoxical Pacifism and @Scalenex, the left wing is by far the greater threat right now than the right. Whenever someone in a Western country says anything at least remotely patriotic, they are automatically set-upon by the extreme left and denounced as 'Nazis', 'racists', 'homophobes' and 'sexists', and encourage others to do the same, while when anyone says something that is leftist in the extreme nobody bats an eyelid, because they're afraid of the left-wing gangs on social media encouraging them to be ostracised from society. In this way the left-wing is suppressing freedom of speech. It's just lucky that at least in the UK the majority spoke out against it by voting Conservative rather than Labour (who have become pretty much a Communist party), but even with this the left wing is still causing a lot of trouble here. Many of our national institutions are being brainwashed by the left. The BBC is a left-wing mouthpiece when it should be a neutral broadcaster, and it and other government organisations are sometimes openly racist to white people in their recruitment advertisements (job adverts for them that only allow 'people of ethnic minorities' to apply are not uncommon), all the worse because white people are the natives and the majority in this country. Companies have biased edicts that require a specific minimum of people from ethnic minorities to be recruited, yet no such luxury applies to whites. Local councils and universities pander to BLM protesters who cause riots and defile historic monuments like Warhammer Beastmen, which simply encourages them to do it again and again because they'll know they'll get their way by doing it. Probably the biggest act of injustice that the left have caused is that schools can be marked down by OFSTED for having 'too many white children' which is without a doubt racist. Not to mention that the British Empire is being painted as an evil neo-Nazi regime, even though it did a lot of good as well as bad and that nobody pays any attention to the similarly brutal atrocities black people have committed against each other (African kings selling their people to slave traders, the Zulu Empire massacring rival tribes, e.t.c). As well as encouraging this injustice to occur across the world, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's Chinese magnates who are paying African poachers to continue practicing the murder of rhinos and elephants in Africa for their horns and tusks respectively, particularly rhinos given the Chinese use rhino horns in their savage medicines that don't work. Rangers on the reserves are doing a great job in shooting poachers and protecting those animals they can save, yet despite the risk of death there is something that still causes some Africans to choose a life of murdering animals, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that incentive was money coming from the Chinese bigger bad. The idea of reduced motivation causing unrest to the CCP is an interesting concept, that I hope could cause their regime to crash without the need for war. This would be great for everyone, but it isn't guaranteed that the unrest will be enough to destabilise the CCP, so maybe war is the only answer to free the world from the Red Menace. Funnily enough the Americans are paranoid about going to war on their own ever since they lost in Vietnam. They want at least one other country to hold their hand for them and accompany them into a conflict, usually Britain (that's how we got into the mess that was Afghanistan, thanks for that one Tony Blair). Certainly they aimed to plan to go into one arena (I forget which), and asked France to join them, who agreed, and then asked Britain to come too. Britain said no, and then coincidentally both America and France decided not to go to fight after all. But to be honest, I'm sceptical as to whether even NATO would be enough to take down China. However, Britain has the Commonwealth to call upon - India has already had some skirmishes with the Chinese and we've been reaffirming the bond between us with Britain sending additional vaccines to help tie down their rampant strain of COVID, and Canada, Australia and New Zealand are loyal friends of ours (especially with the notion of a CANZUK alliance between the four countries in the works now that Britain's free from the spiteful EU). Between NATO and the Commonwealth we would have a lot of resources to use against the CCP, but a World War III would be hideous and potentially could lead to a post-apocalyptic Earth either in the style of Mortal Engines (which predicts a war between the US and China) or (if we're luckier) Star Trek. I am certainly not fond of the idea of another World War happening in my lifetime and I certainly don't want to be murdered by a Chinese nuclear missile or drone strike if I can help it.
I'm very surprised by your post. I see almost everything exactly the other way round, except the Africa part, in fact I find it very hard to even follow your train of thought. Edit: to make sure we are on the same page: I do understand what you are saying, just not the conclusions.
Well, starting with Labour. They might be a lot of things but they are VERY far from communist. Calling the BBC brainwashed and a leftist mouthpiece has to be hyperbole, right? I would call it center left if I had to put it onto that annoying left-right spectrum. (I very much prefer two dimensions on the political spectrum. Much clearer). Most of what they produce is exceptionally neutral and high quality compared to almost any other news source worldwide. Certainly better than all major German news sources except maybe the Deutschlandfunk and a handful others. The left being a bigger threat than the right? I see it completely different. Yes, there are annoying or even dangerous idiots on the left as well. But especially in Europe and the USA it is the extreme right that is the far bigger threat to our democracies. BLM and even the riots by a few rafical members of the movement was a joke compared to MAGA and Jan 6th. As for the statues: I don't support violence but understand the reasons. I'm fine with removing them. All of them, regardless of who the people were. Building statues of people is disgusting to me. You will not find any human who deserves one in my eyes. Put them in a museum if you must, but leave them out of the public. It is not people we should follow or believe in. The EU is a great idea IMO despite having severe flaws, and it was a huge mistake for the UK to leave, a move that hurts both them and their allies. And mostly because of a disinformation campaign mostly run by what I consider far right lunatics. I am not in the UK but here in Germany the far right keeps rambling on and on about how they are censored, claiming that you cannot say x or y, and yet they do so on every single public channel without any censorship. It is the right wing parties that push for censorship laws and try to build police states, all while lying to the very people they have sworn to protect and redirecting tax payers money into their pockets. If there is any side the government is on it is the right side, not the left. In Germany it is a running joke that Police is "blind on the right eye". Discrimination exists, and you can find it against every so-called "race" and also against genders, religions, age, and a whole lot of other things. But a middle aged, high-income, western man with white-ish skin and no disabilities comes out on top almost everywhere. That's literally the least discriminated-against group worldwide. I know that it can feel like it isn't, because it is an important topic of our time and yes, some of the efforts to level the playing field are both ridiculous and unfair when taken to the extreme, but on the other hand right wing populists do their best to spread disinformation where they can, because (surprise) most of those belong to that exact category and are not interested in things being fair. Saying that the British Empire if old had good and bad stuff is like saying "At least Hitler built the Autobahn". It was a force of evil in the world and historians have a very clear picture of it. Colonialism (not only by the British of course. Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Italy and Spain were just as bad) was one of the worst things ever done by humans, and we are still fighting the damage that it caused. As you stated correctly China hugely profits from that. African tribes did horrible things to each other, yes. But that doesn't make anything the Empire did any better. Instead of doing something against it, the colonial empires (again, not only the British, ALL of them) picked a convenient side and let them do their thing, selling them weapons, buying their slaves, and making money with that. Often the power vacuums that led to those bloody wars were even caused by the colonial forces. Funnily enough we are criticizing the very same things European empires did and do while China does them. Now, you definitely won't see me defend China here, what they are doing is despicable, and it is a shame that the west does hardly anything to stop it. They could, but there are rich and influential people here who see their $€£¥ in danger. But on the other hand: the fear mongering done by those exact people is also disgusting. The very people who profit most of deals with China and would have some power to change things are the ones who do it most incidentally. We don't need to fight a war against China and they have as little interest in one as we do. There are so many more things we could do. The main reason why this is pushed so much is to spread fear among the people. Fear of outside factors helps reining in everyone and concentrate at that instead of internal problems. Right wingers love to do that. I like this thread because it helps shedding a light at what is going on in China. But it is only a part of the picture. The other part is going on in our countries. We might not be able to change things there directly, but we can change things here. In Germany there are elections this year, and we will get a right wing government again very likely, probably mostly because old people are conservative and believe the lies told to them on TV. I hope that the Green party at least gets strong enough to be a mitigating factor in the government (CDU cannot govern alone thankfully) because the SPD (social democrats, a center-left party that is in the government now) failed to do so. We need change, and we have to start it in our own country. As for being patriotic: again, no idea about the UK, but here in Germany we have made some experiences in the past which made us see through patriotism and how it can work. I have no problems with it personally and most people don't. But there just isn't much to be proud of. The most patriotic people are usually the ones that either don't know their country or their country's history. Being patriotic for the sake of being patriotic is not getting anyone anywhere. Ok this was very quick (I am not at home and posting from mobile is a bit tedious), I hope I didn’t shorten my points too much. That's the rough version of it I guess.
African poachers kill animals and sell their parts because there's usually no other economic opportunities for them to take advantage of. Whenever extreme poverty exists, and there isn't many ways to provide for yourself and your family, there exists an increased chance you will turn towards committing crime. Humans are unique in their adaptability towards harsh, unforgiving environments, and can find any means necessary to survive. Unfortunately for many Africans, poaching exists as a means of supporting themselves and their families financially. Also note that many of these protected spaces in Africa in which endangered species are located originally had humans already living there and those people were forcibly removed without taking into consideration their needs. Poaching is a pretty complex issue that isn't really solved by killing poachers. They are humans after all—you'd probably do the same thing if you shared their circumstances. Instead, addressing poverty can reduce motivations for people to poach.
On the contrary, Labour in the UK certainly became Communist when Jeremy Corbyn took power, and though Starmer isn't anywhere near as bad as Corbyn, there are still neo-Communist politicians in there. Nope, the BBC is definitely leftist. They do all they can to criticise the Conservatives and glorify Labour and left-wing values. BBC dramas and even children's programmes have been made politically-correct so they can brainwash people with leftist values. The storming of the Capitol was instigated by Trump because he was a bad loser beta and couldn't stand someone else winning the election, that's all. As bad as it was, it wasn't directly associated with right-wing politics, that wasn't his main motive. The BLM riots on the other hand were directly motivated by left-wing politics. The statues are not meant to worship people, they're just there to commemorate them for the good things they did for the world, and to defile them like those dumbass BLM protesters do is desecrating a living human being's memory, second only to doing that to their graves. That is unforgivable. We're already forced to follow people whether you like it or not, we're still supposed to respect our country's leaders and people have become reliant upon greedy, self-serving businessmen like Gates, Bezos and Musk to have all their luxuries. It may hurt us in the UK right now but when we start trading with our other allies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the like, we'll be able to rise to our feet again. We can live without interference from mainland Europe. With all due respect, Germany is getting the most out of the EU at the expense of Italy, Spain and Greece, so it's pretty easy for its people to glorify it. What the EU have done to criticise and damage British companies after Brexit just because we decided to leave is pretty much revealing it as little more than a gangster group that intends to get us to fail as a warning to the other countries in it. Also the way it has tried to demean and belittle our politicians was awful. Maybe our difference in opinion is just because we live in different countries with different political parties. Here in Britain we don't hear anything from the far right except the odd National Action criminal being arrested, which is all well and good, that's true, but we hear a lot more from the leftist anarchists causing riot after riot after riot. Well, actively discriminating against these people, and whites in general, by giving other races special treatment isn't the way to solve the problem, that's just petty 'tit for tat'. I personally run by just a single rule - everyone is equal and must be treated as such, regardless of creed, race, gender or disability - why couldn't the government just instill that law and apply it to everything? Historians can be biased because of their background and their own agendas. The British Empire did do pretty good stuff in places. Once Britain abolished slavery, the Empire became an anti-slavery organisation, hunting down slave ships of other countries, giving the slaves new lives in their colonies and drafting them into the army to give them a wage to feed their families (the Empire also did this with slaves rescued from the American South during the American Civil War). With regards to the African campaign, the Empire did stop all inter-tribal warfare in the territories it colonised, and it's only resumed now that the Empire has gone and given countries independence. The Empire also protected the countries in its charge, like wiping out the Thuggi Cult in India, which was truly evil and slaughtered whole caravans of unarmed Indian traders by garroting. I'm not saying everything it did was good by any means, it still but it didn't do those bad things for fun as Hitler seemed to do with his atrocities. Many good men, both British and allied, died to establish its power, all to give Britain its best chance of survival. The colonies then repaid us for protecting them by doing all they could in the World Wars, and continue to have a healthy relationship with us today in the Commonwealth. The atrocities in China are very real, and being neutral to that, as the left wing wants us to do, is only going to help China carry on committing them. Just like Switzerland being neutral in both World Wars helped the aggressors, not the oppressed.
Well, I do respect your opinion, thanks for explaining it in more detail. I guess it would be futile to dig up sources showing that it is at least partly built upon straight-up lies, I don't want to derail the thread. So let me just close with expressing a bit of sadness that you think that way and wish you all the best. I'll go back to the rest of the forums and rather talk about the less complex/controversial stuff, like Warhammer rules.
First off, we might want to define the term a "few". As a percentage, maybe, but as an absolute value it was far from what I would define as a few. I'll keep this extremely short as these discussions are typically quite pointless. BLM riots versus January 6th incident: Fact: BLM riots were responsible for more death Fact: BLM riots were responsible for more assault/injury Fact: BLM riots were responsible for more property damage Fact: BLM riots had a greater negative impact on businesses Don't get me wrong, both were terrible incidents, but they are not comparable in terms of scope or damage.