Lurker > Firewerx

But how many roads must he walk down before you call him a cab?

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Watching the shadows burn

There's probably not enough passing trade out there.

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I'd ask them about their lives together before I was born. I never took any interest until it was too late.

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StarDestroyer posted...

How's this worth noting? Chrystia Freeland is a progressive liberal. Not an alt right politician.

Also, political beliefs aren't coded in DNA, and no one's responsible for what their grandparents did in their youth.

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Bernie Farber of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network said there is a need for Halton Regional Police to better educate themselves on what constitutes a hate-motivated crime. Yes, its destruction of property for sure, Farber said of the graffiti on the monument. But a hate crime? Far from it.

That seems about the right approach to take.

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ssjevot posted...

If Trump said he wanted to stop bombing people in the Middle East to save money I wouldn't start begging for bombings to continue until they stop for the right reason.

Whereas obviously, what I've done is to vigorously defend the Chinese government imprisoning critics until people learn to start opposing it correctly.

All I'm simply asking for is for people not to wait for their government to green-light opposition to brutally repressive policies, but to pick up that banner independently -- and just as importantly, not to forget about it as soon as their government quietly shoves it to the back of the bottom drawer. Genuine human rights campaigns can take years, decades of work before they start to bear fruit; trendy bandwagon-hopping from one foreign policy change to another doesn't sustain momentum. I'm also saying, take off the blinkers and look around a bit more -- don't look only at where your government is pointing its finger. Maybe there are places it doesn't want you to look.

If you're got an issue with anything I've said in that paragraph, then I give up; because it'll prove you're simply just arguing for the sake of argument. I'm definitely not saying, "shut up about China, because it makes you look like a Trump stooge." Got it yet?

And yes, caring about this stuff does work. That's how and why in a democracy, reforms are forced through, bad laws are repealed, and governments are forced to make U-turns on policy: it happens because eventually, enough people care about these things -- and most of the time, it's not because they waited for a cue from their government.

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ssjevot posted...

Except you're falling back on the "if they support the right thing for the wrong reason, it's wrong" fallacy.

No, I'm making a plea to support the right thing for the right reason because: If people support it only because the government's fickle foreign policy has shone a spotlight on it, then (a) they'll lose interest as soon as the government does, and (b) they'll continue to ignore whatever their government doesn't want to spotlight -- and maybe even wants to hide. Supporting the right thing then becomes a hostage to political fortune, a pawn of politicians and policymakers pursuing their own agenda.

You've written: "If economic size factors into how much you care about or don't care about human rights abuses, you should rethink your moral priorities." Why doesn't that make you guilty of the same "if they support the right thing for the wrong reason, it's wrong" fallacy? Because you've said essentially what I've been saying. If you shackle your global concerns simply to whatever the government tells you is in this month's national interest, or to notions of patriotic sentiment, then that's neither a moral decision nor even necessarily a wise one. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to campaign against what the government tells you is in the national interest.

Yes, obviously it can be a good thing if -- for whatever reason -- the government or some organization highlights an issue you weren't aware of in a distant country that you know nothing about, and makes you want to talk about it and do something about it. I've campaigned on behalf of human rights organizations and I don't question the importance of raising awareness. But do it because it's the right thing to do, not because it fits the purposes of your government's foreign policy plans.

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ssjevot posted...

The size of China's economy is not an issue at all for human rights abuses. If economic size factors into how much you care about or don't care about human rights abuses, you should rethink your moral priorities.

This is in fact exactly the argument I was trying to make.

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ssjevot posted...

Almost no one in the US or elsewhere, care about human rights very much. In the US concern for things like war or indefinite detection or deporting immigrants or whatever issue people allegedly care about evaporate if their guy is in charge and doing the exact same shit. People largely care about their in-group succeeding and only feel bad for some other group if they can use it as a tool to criticize their out-group. However a common mistake to make is to then think you should oppose caring about something because people are doing the right thing for the wrong reason. So regardless of why people care about bad things that are happening in China, you shouldn't suddenly think that makes those things okay. I don't care why people do or don't oppose the US bombing countries in the Middle East, it doesn't suddenly become okay or not okay depending on who drops the bombs on a wedding.

I agree with all of that. I've tried to make the point that while criticism of the Chinese government is deserved and should be welcomed, people should care about the same sort of shit in other countries too, and not just the one that the president has turned the blowtorch onto this week. But like I say, I'm pessimistic and unfortunately, you've hit the nail on the head.

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ssjevot posted...

The Chinese government has changed many times since then.

Were there policies of liberalization that allowed an independent media, or allowed ordinary citizens to openly criticize policies or politicians without consequences? If not, then while politics at the top may have changed (and despite the bureaucratic infighting or lack thereof), for most Chinese the business of government has been pretty much business as usual.

I'm not ascribing the change of Western attitudes to a change in US presidents. It's more that criticism of China's human rights record doesn't seem to have gained much popular traction (which is to say, outside of people who are normally active in politics) for many years until quite recently. That may be due to the administration temporarily shining a public spotlight on it; but I'll bet you once that spotlight moves onto somewhere or something else, those concerns will quickly fade. The only thing that's going to keep China in the spotlight is the size of its economy, which is the real issue here.

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ssjevot posted...

Are you unironically arguing that people in the West didn't care about Tienanmen Square? You should maybe read about what happened at that time or something, because as much as I don't like the US myself, that's not at all true that they didn't care at the time.

No, I'm saying that after Tienanmen Square it took a year or less for the initial outrage to fade, and then there was generally a kind of fatalistic acceptance that "well, this is just how China is". Interest spiked again in 1997 when the fate of Hong Kong after the hand-back became an issue.

But it's only really been since China has started rubbing shoulders with Uncle Sam in the superpower stakes -- in fact, only the last two or three years, really -- that people have again paid much attention to what kind of government is running China. And my thinking is that because Chinese government and politics haven't really changed since Tienanmen Square, this latest concern isn't really sparked by its record on human rights but by discomfort at the prospect of the US finally having a serious economic competitor. In other words, it's the thought that Uncle Sam might not always be #1 that's really grinding Americans' gears, not any crackdown by the Chinese authorities.

I'm just hoping that critics of China's human rights record are sincere enough about human rights to be concerned about them even in other countries that don't pose an economic threat the the US, but I'm pessimistic.

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josifrees posted...

Gold plated is not a euphemism, it means things looked good but underneath the surface it was dysfunctional a la the gilded age

Yes, the Weimar economy had underlying structural defects. But the point is that despite the popular image of a Germany reduced to a desolate moonscape of economic rubble for a decade after WW1, and of an electorate seething with vengeful right-wing fury that rushed to vote Nazi to overturn a spiteful treaty, the reality was quite different.

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The discussion has been about China's treatment of its own citizens. Since Tienanmen Square in 1988, Americans generally were not worried about how China treated its own citizens -- until, strange coincidence, the last few years since China has become more prosperous and powerful. Suddenly, Americans have discovered that (gasp!) freedoms and human rights are limited in China!

If you're worried about the external reach of Chinese influence, then that's a different issue. But let's not pretend that how the Chinese government represses civil liberties for 1.4 billion of its own people is anywhere on the list of concerns. Because if you were genuinely concerned about human rights and democracy, then you'd be concerned about such matters even in smaller countries -- instead of shrugging off even the most appalling government abuses so long as "they only do it in their own country" and making artificial distinctions between home-grown and exported repression.

What really threatens freedom and democracy is a readiness to tolerate their denial anywhere behind the cloak of national sovereignty. What moral difference does it really make if it's one country spreading its influence to 18 million people in five other countries, or it's those five other countries repressing 18 million of their own people?

There are valid concerns about the danger of other countries' democracy being compromised, of buckling under Chinese external pressure: censorship, handing over exiled dissidents or denying them asylum, etc. Those concerns should be recognized and that pressure should be resisted. But please, just stop connecting dots in a short straight line between China and Nazi Germany, as if governments treating their own citizens like an occupied enemy population is something new or unique to China. And start caring about this sort of shit in other countries too.

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"To protect the kids". How much idiocy has been perpetrated in the name of "protecting the kids"?

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I don't often agree with Zeus, but he's right to point out that (a) this is very late in the day to suddenly start focusing upon a lack of civil liberties and human rights in China, and (b) China is by no means the only -- or even the worst -- repressive regime anywhere in the world.

It seems this focus has narrowed on China only since the country has come to be viewed as a serious economic competitor to the US. No one throws around comparisons to Hitler's police state when it comes to anti-democratic, violently repressive regimes in small countries that aren't rivals to American power, no matter how brutally they treat their own citizens.

So what's really the problem here? Are you suddenly going all Amnesty International on China because this issue isn't really about human rights or democracy at all (since you show little to no interest in bad governance in other countries), but because it's really about staring down a rival superpower?

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Free Will Boson now!

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Get him to put it in writing, to cover yourself legally.

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RadiantAdolin posted...

Interesting, thanks for the lesson! I knew Nazis were a fairly unpopular party through most of Hitler's rise, but clearly didn't know enough about the economic situation.

Yeah, the Weimar Republic wasn't the economic basket case that people imagine it was throughout its lifetime. Between 1925-28, the Weimar economy enjoyed what some historians have called its "gold-plated years". Adam Tooze, in The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (2006) writes that Weimar's rebound from the recession of winter 1926-27 saw a twelve-month growth rate higher than at any time under the Third Reich.

I think chronology is important in all this. As I've said, the Nazis' share of the vote was only 2.6% in May 1928, and this slide towards political obscurity had been part of a downward trend since 1924; yet in September 1930, it suddenly shot up to 19%. I think only a fool would see absolutely no connection between the impact of Brning's deeply unpopular deflationary policies and the late surge of support for the NSDAP.

I suspect it was popular frustration at the seeming inability of the Weimar government to do anything about the slump that hit Germany after the Wall Street Crash -- and not the loss of Memel or Pomerelia or the demilitarization of the Rhineland -- that persuaded voters to try Hitler's own brand of radical alternative. In other words, Versailles was a bitter pill that many ordinary Germans were quite prepared to swallow so long as they had a job to go to, a meal to come home to, and savings or a pension to sit on.

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RadiantAdolin posted...

and would it maybe have ended in better terms for Germany to alleviate the conditions that let Hitler talk Germany into more fighting

German voters didn't back the NSDAP to avenge Versailles. When a referendum was held in 1929 on whether Germany should pass a law formally renouncing the Treaty of Versailles and banning the collection of reparations, fewer than 15% of voters even bothered to turn out for it.

Even during the Allied occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr, Hitler's party never managed to win more than 6.5% of the votes in federal elections. Worse, the Party's share of the vote actually fell from 6.5% in May 1924 to 3% in December that year, and then crashed to a feeble 2.6% in May 1928. In fact the most popular party in Germany throughout the 1920s -- when memories of defeat and Versailles were fresher and more bitter -- remained the centre-left SPD, not the Nazis.

Even before Hitler came to power, the Allied occupations of the Rhineland and Ruhr had ended; Germany had stopped paying reparations; other, fixed-term financial and economic clauses of the Treaty had reached or were nearing the end of their term; and Germany had a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations. Stresemann had shown what could be achieved through negotiation with Germany's former enemies, and war was not inevitable.

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Is the real problem that parents are afraid their kids might ask them questions they don't feel comfortable answering?

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AC_Dragonfire posted...

I don't trust statistics when it comes to things not recorded in the digital age.

Some fucking historian when you don't trust anything written on paper before 1995. Or at least, you don't trust anything that's unfavourable. You felt confident enough about the statistics for Gulag death rates in the 1930s to treat them as a yardstick.

And LOL at the idea that the digital disinformation age in which we now live is far more trustworthy.

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AC_Dragonfire posted...

Forced labour.... probably way better living conditions than some Russian Gulag. There's different levels to these things.

I don't know about that. Even a cursory examination turns up this on Wikipedia, about the forced labour regime in Angola after Salazar re-established the institution:

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"By 1947, 40% of the forced labourers died each year with a 60% infant mortality rate in the territory (according to The World Factbook's 2007 estimates, infant mortality rate (deaths/1,000 live births) in modern-day Angola was 184.44 - the worst result among all countries in the world). Historian Basil Davidson visited Angola in 1954 and found 30% of all adult males working in these conditions; "there was probably more coercion than ever before."

Marcelo Caetano, Portugal's Minister of the Colonies, recognized the inherent flaws in the system, which he described as using natives "like pieces of equipment without any concern for their yearning, interests, or desires". Parliament held a closed session in 1947 to discuss the deteriorating situation. Henrique Galvo, Angolan deputy to the Portuguese National Assembly, read his "Report on Native Problems in the Portuguese Colonies". Galvo condemned the "shameful outrages" he had uncovered, the forced labour of "women, of children, of the sick, [and] of decrepit old men." He concluded that in Angola, "only the dead are really exempt from forced labor."

The government's control over the natives eliminated the worker-employer's incentive to keep his employees alive because, unlike in other colonial societies, the state replaced deceased workers without directly charging the employer. The Portuguese government refuted the report and arrested Galvo in 1952."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Angola
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Also, "well, at least forced labour probably didn't have the same death rate as the Russian gulag" isn't exactly what I'd call a sound fallback position. The cotton plantations of the 1850s South probably didn't have the same death rate as the Russian gulag either.

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It changes depending on your mood and your age.

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AC_Dragonfire posted...

Oh what else did Portugal do? ABOLISH SLAVERY 100 YEARS BEFORE AMERICA DID.

Nice that Salazar re-established forced labour for black Africans (implemented in 1911, abolished 1913) in Portugal's African colonies in 1926 though.

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I'd also point out that few white Europeans enjoyed a share of the colossal fortunes made by traders, planters and speculators in the heyday of Europe's colonial adventures. In fact, industrialists made much of their private wealth off the backs of sweated "free" labour -- drones working for long hours in appalling conditions in factories for very little money, and condemned to ill health and an early death (very early for shockingly high numbers of infants) in overcrowded urban slums. Most of us weren't overlords revelling in ill-gotten wealth.

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Damn straight. It's becoming difficult to take wrestling seriously!

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Sitting only ten yards away in the same open plan office.

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josifrees posted...

You want flies with that?

*rimshot*

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Neoconkers posted...

Yeah, first episode has him forced into retirement, and the series follows him trying to keep himself occupied.

And it gets positively surreal at some points.

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Many years ago. I was a bit of a fan of Frankenstein films. I think Universal's series (black and white was the golden age of Hollywood horror!) was superior to Hammer's.

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Herodopus posted...

great graphic, thank you @Taharqa_

If you overlook its defects.

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I spell mine with an upper case letter.

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LightHawKnight posted...

They wouldnt nuke, it would only ensure mutual destruction which defeats the purpose of a war.

The USA and China might not nuke each other directly, but they might gamble that escalation can be contained -- and nuke another country that's aligned with their enemy.

I really don't see any scenario in a conventional conflict where either the USA or China can topple each other's governments through brute force. So if you can't inflict a decisive defeat and ensure a long-term peace, what's the point?

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DDirtyDastard posted...

See? I haven't seen a single one.

If you haven't personally seen anyone die, do you believe that "death" is a hoax?

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REMercsChamp posted...

I think they have rain and cloud cover for like 11 months of the year

It's only about 10 months, actually.

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Bad_Mojo posted...

My friend, they were in a war for like 700 years strait. They are a war country

Not really. We were very rarely a nation in arms -- for over a century after the Napoleonic Wars, most of the fighting the country was involved in was done by a small, professional army in distant places. We were one of the few European nations on the eve of the First World War that didn't have military conscription as a state institution.

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UnfairRepresent posted...

It reeks of the decayed remains of a once mighty empire whose citizens feel humiliated and emasculated.

Bloody hell, I can't stand the stupid, misty-eyed nostalgia for an empire that most Brits have never known (and to be honest, most don't particularly care about).

It's not as if living in today's more "mediocre" world of shrivelled empires and shrunken reputations is actually somehow worse than living in the glory days of epic imperial adventure. I have a far more comfortable standard of living in my downsized Little Britain of today than my great-grandparents did when they were busy slaving for a shilling a day and a shit sandwich while the mighty Empire celebrated Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

We have a skewed index of a country's "greatness", and maybe it should be linked to the comparative well-being of its people -- instead of judging it on how many stickpin flags it has dotted across the atlas in its name.

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Bad_Mojo posted...

British people need war to be happy. It's in their blood

Only when we're spectators at a comfortably safe distance, then war's a voyeuristic bloodsport. People who think it's fun just haven't suffered enough from it.

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Veedrock- posted...

If we don't know, why is it being sold as fact and sure occurrence? That's misinformation.

It's misinformation that survivors of Covid-19 can suffer health after-effects?

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Wouldn't be the first time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War

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The absence of porn wouldn't be anywhere near as concerning as the fact that in this scenario, a government has somehow gotten into power that is locking up people for life for making it, trading it, or watching it.

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The wisdom being that religion rules through fear?

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I think you should have the courage of your convictions and refuse all forms of medical treatment, including ER, unless they're at NOI-owned health centres or hospitals. You obviously wouldn't want white devil paramedics loading you into the back of an ambulance, because it'll deliver you to a secret extermination facility.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Yes it's just a different way of saying you don't think racism exists.

Or it's a different way of saying you don't care as much about someone's race as racists do.

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Arcanine2009 posted...

Let me see you sing better

What would it prove if he couldn't sing a note? Would it somehow make them great singers?

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Be careful what you wish for. Once the boomer generation has gone, you'll need to search around desperately for someone else to blame for everything.

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WingsOfGood posted...

Now someone will call my title bait because I said a relationship not love. Therein lies another issue. The idea of love is that you meet someone and everything just falls into place and works. But reality is never that way. Love is a relationship you put the time in to make it work.
So some people leave totally good and stable relationships seeking a better one that often does not actually exist.

I would tend to agree with this.

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adjl posted...

I mean, supervision won't stop him from collecting more if he decides to do so, but it will make it pretty easy to catch him

You have more confidence in the efficiency of the system than I do.

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Even if it did bother me (which it doesn't), I'd just have to accept that sometimes, you just have to put up with being bothered by something.

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RedPixel posted...

JFC someone always has to turn it into something unpleasant when a new perspective challenges their own.

That's because "new perspective" all too often turns out to mean "lumps of bullshit I just tried to stick together to make interesting shapes", and the only thing that actually ends up getting challenged is common sense (and patience that got worn threadbare by dumbass disinformation and half-baked conspiracy fantasies on GameFAQs in the wake of 9/11).

Although to be fair, years of arguing with Holocaust deniers didn't improve my disposition either.

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