All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[CSTowle]

Speaking of China (and personally, I'm glad we're finally making a stand against them. China has been pushing us around for years, with spies being caught photographing Naval bases and Chinese spies continuously stealing designs and technology from American companies with seemingly very little in reprisals), Biden has now announced a new security pact between the US, the UK, and Australia in order to counter China's rising influence. Part of this deal will be assisting Australia in purchasing nuclear submarines.


Of course, this has pissed off not only China, but France, as they had inked a deal in 2016 to build subs for Australia. That deal has now been canceled because of this pact. In retaliation, France canceled a gala that was to be held commemorating the 240th anniversary of the Battle of the Capes.

In fairness to China we do the same kind of spying, including on our allies (and they do the same to us), large international companies do the same to each other, and honestly they'd be doing a disservice to their people if they weren't trying to acquire information to gain advantage.

I'm not a fan of the Chinese government or their actions (also in fairness to them, I largely am not a fan of our own government's actions internationally) but to expect them to be above the board when countries with far less reach and far lower stakes are not is unfair at best.

Will you be so relaxed when another general subverts the decisions of a Democrat President and the Republicans trot out the equivalent argument to justify it??

For all his faults there was no credible reason to believe the Donald was about to launch world war three…or indeed any material military action.

I'll admit, as I've said before I feel like he's too much of a coward and what awareness of the world around him he does seem to have mostly includes the perception of him and threats to him or it. He probably wouldn't have provoked such a thing, but I could see him sitting by while someone else (an ally, or an enemy he was too cowardly to make a stand against) did.

[Kirby101]

Yeah but maybe you can accept that I know a little bit more about the subject than you do, given that the relationship between the US and China probably isn't something you gave much thought to until recently, and that your ability to live a normal life probably doesn't hinge on the two countries maintaining some kind of modus vivendi.

I have no idea what your area of expertise is. As you do not know mine. But predicting that Biden will start an active war with China is a curious thing to say for someone who knows more than anyone else. And truthfully, you could be Ambassador to China and you still aren't right. The last Administration showed how ill informed and downright ignorant people in these positions can be. Mike Pompeo, for one, was wrong about everything he said, as well as being completely corrupt.

[Tendrin]

I'm so amused we literally had someone do the 'donald the dove, biden the hawk' bullshit in this thread with regards to China.

[CaptainEurope]

Something interesting on German language twitter: I am falling a leftwing, Austrian journalist called https://twitter.com/Natascha_Strobl. While I agree with most of her European views, it bothered me how much she has always been pro-Bernie Sanders. She was quite disappointed when Biden won the primaries.
This week, she "liked" and retweeted this thread: https://twitter.com/pablodiabolo/sta...372333577?s=20

Briefly summarized in English, another (very) progressive writer points out that Biden is setting a progressive agenda that nobody on the left expected from somebody they considered a "boring centrist." He's pointing out that Biden is forcing a debate about progressive policies in a way that no force in Europe has managed in decades: better healthcare, free daycare for children, cheaper education, family leave to care for elderly relatives, better public transport, more rights for undocumented immigrants. He, in short, is admitting to have been wrong about Biden, and he is in awe about the things he's tackling, and wondering why the European left can't do what Biden is doing.

I'm not seeing that kind of attitude from, say, American Jacobin writers.

[Tendrin]

Something interesting on German language twitter: I am falling a leftwing, Austrian journalist called https://twitter.com/Natascha_Strobl. While I agree with most of her European views, it bothered me how much she has always been pro-Bernie Sanders. She was quite disappointed when Biden won the primaries.
This week, she "liked" and retweeted this thread: https://twitter.com/pablodiabolo/sta...372333577?s=20

Briefly summarized in English, another (very) progressive writer points out that Biden is setting a progressive agenda that nobody on the left expected from somebody they considered a "boring centrist." He's pointing out that Biden is forcing a debate about progressive policies in a way that no force in Europe has managed in decades: better healthcare, free daycare for children, cheaper education, family leave to care for elderly relatives, better public transport, more rights for undocumented immigrants. He, in short, is admitting to have been wrong about Biden, and he is in awe about the things he's tackling, and wondering why the European left can't do what Biden is doing.

I'm not seeing that kind of attitude from, say, American Jacobin writers.

That's because American Jacobin writers are frequently red-brown sorts or, really, this describes their politics better than I can:
fuckdemocrats.jpg

Then you've got guys like Nathan J Robinson who busted the union trying to form at his left-wing Current Affair magazine, which again, tells you most of what you need to know about 'em. :P

[Jack Dracula]

Will you be so relaxed when another general subverts the decisions of a Democrat President and the Republicans trot out the equivalent argument to justify it??

For all his faults there was no credible reason to believe the Donald was about to launch world war three…or indeed any material military action.

The fact that a 4-star General who worked closely with Trump and his admin saw fit to take such measures - at risk to his career- tells me all I need to know.

[Xheight]

Biden's moves present far more of a credible threat to China than Trump's ramblings, but I'm sure that in the face of all of this pressure the Chinese will just fold and accede to all of our demands. This all stick and no carrot type of diplomacy never works because it doesn't give the other party a way to make any concessions without looking like they're capitulating. What could possibly be the outcome of this if not war?



Books which were invariably written by Japanese authors looking to whitewash their ugly history in Korea, and not doing it particularly convincingly. Meanwhile the vast majority of Korean people view the period of Japanese rule as just about the worst thing ever and continue to hold a grudge to this day, which sort of throws a wrench in American plans for Japan and Korea to form a united front against China.

Sorry but no those are Koreans and Americans writing those books. I am writing from the korean perspective myself and not giving the period a wash and yes there is a generation of animosity that still survives but it is just that a younger generation has moved on. Essentially I am saying that is where America needs to go too but there is am ulterior motive for the dwelling on the slave period to explain the failings of the African American community to achieve equity.

[PwrdOn]

Sorry but no those are Koreans and Americans writing those books. I am writing from the korean perspective myself and not giving the period a wash and yes there is a generation of animosity that still survives but it is just that a younger generation has moved on. Essentially I am saying that is where America needs to go too but there is am ulterior motive for the dwelling on the slave period to explain the failings of the African American community to achieve equity.

Meh I suppose there are Uncle Toms in every culture. Uncle Kim?

[Xheight]

As has been pointed out, offering to help by not helping is exactly what it sounds like. It's the same strategy he took with Covid and Afghanistan, let someone else handle it and maybe try to take credit if it works out. The only genius he has is appealing to suckers, and he has that in spades. Part of that appeal to suckers is making people think he's just unstable enough that he might buck tradition and do exactly what they want him to do, as opposed to experienced politicians who follow norms and take history and diplomacy into consideration and are unlikely to make rash decisions.

This works equally well to play on the hopes of Japan, China, or Korea. Strong-men in other Asian countries like Duterte also knew they just had to talk tough and Trump would love them and let them get away with (mass) murder. But it's not strategy, it's chaos and a lack of caring and/or understanding. Which again, folks were hoping would fall in their favor or they could be able to use to their advantage. He wasn't playing 4D chess.

---------------------

What-aboutism when it comes to slavery is either lazy trolling or (and this is common among people who love to believe in the mythical "shining city on a hill", good-guy myth about the US as a or the force for good in the world) staggering and willful ignorance of the damage slavery did and continues to do and its role in our being the country we are today (for both good and ill). We also concentrate a lot on the genocide and land theft of the native peoples. For good reason, we don't exist as a nation without it. It's part of why I get the flag-waving and oath-taking and "USA" chanting. You have to do a lot of work to drown out a conscience that guilty.

I tend to find myself agreeing with you more than most folks on this board, but this is utter nonsense. Biden is where he is because he's the least offensive, least partisan, least passionate, least likely to rock the boat politician in my lifetime. Or at worst, tied with a bunch of other folks who talk a lot but ultimately do nothing or very little. He's Hillary Clinton without the baggage (well, without much baggage aside from an addict son with questionable ties and the rape allegations so by comparison very little baggage).

I don't even think he'd attempt a proxy war or force a confrontation that comes nowhere near to conflict but shakes up the market or takes focus away from other things he might be interested in, like dealing with Covid and getting the economy here back on track. And China doesn't want that either, we're continuing to buy things from them and borrow money from them and that looks like it's going to continue to be the status quo for some time until we either fall to #2 behind them or they climb over us and probably in some form beyond that. We're China's golden goose. They're not going to war over anything with us, there's no percentage in it for them (or us). Even an unstable and uncaring Trump wouldn't have done that, because ultimately he's a coward and doesn't like making decisions, and Biden's the stale but solid oatmeal President. He's getting hit for doing the rational thing in Afghanistan, he's not going to do something far riskier and with less upside over pride.

A child might not see a strategy of creating greater self reliance amid the tantrums of various moments of discipline but there was one as a number of foreign policy people grudgingly accept. Being undermined by one's own military and State dept hardly helps in creating cohesion for that matter.


And trying to dismiss world history as whataboutism is to try and claim some extraordinary status for American slavery alongside some mythic vitalism that it brought to the country.
You and collection academic activists are simply engaged in a kind of upside-down American exceptionalism
Slavery and its utility was universal up until the rise of labor mobility created by industry. That's not my opinion but Marx's whom many of these so called Frankfurt school grandkid scholars know but ignore.
"Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World.1 "

From Yongzheng emancipation" between 1723 and 1730 to Tsarist creation of serfs out of slaves the pattern is the same as the US only the US had a political structure that stymied changes and was fed by debt.

I have listed source books btw not links regarding the debt and infrastructure issue that got bogged down here on GDP.

Back to the false Dichotomy of Hawk and Dove, sane or insane vis China there still remains Biden's now hewing to Trump's positioning of the US as an adversary. What the advantages are of being Caspar Milquetoast in such a face off have to be explained better than servicing excuses for Generals.

[Xheight]

Meh I suppose there are Uncle Toms in every culture. Uncle Kim?

Wow, try looking at Wikipedia which lists those supposed Tom's studies vetted. Koreans understand that history isn't black and white. I note you have less to say about moving on.

[Xheight]

That's because American Jacobin writers are frequently red-brown sorts or, really, this describes their politics better than I can:
fuckdemocrats.jpg

Then you've got guys like Nathan J Robinson who busted the union trying to form at his left-wing Current Affair magazine, which again, tells you most of what you need to know about 'em. :P

That would be because they know they have made a deal with the devil and the results and their consciences won't let them rest. As to the faulty view from afar of the the success of Progressivism it seems that the conversation is mistaken for achievement as a causal read of Politico would show in the Bernie battle over healthcare with the mods. Jacobin magazine itself is still wondering how the Bernie still matters while Democrats are busy creating new bureaucracies hoping they will be the next institutions that people will feel like they can't live without...like Social Security, plastics, Obamacare...

[Jack Dracula]

Sorry but no those are Koreans and Americans writing those books. I am writing from the korean perspective myself and not giving the period a wash and yes there is a generation of animosity that still survives but it is just that a younger generation has moved on. Essentially I am saying that is where America needs to go too but there is am ulterior motive for the dwelling on the slave period to explain the failings of the African American community to achieve equity.

Step 1: Whitewash the past.
Step 2: Invoke the ‘Bootstraps’ myth.
Step 3: Blame the current generation.

“Land of opportunity” illusion maintained!

[PwrdOn]

Wow, try looking at Wikipedia which lists those supposed Tom's studies vetted. Koreans understand that history isn't black and white. I note you have less to say about moving on.

Japan-Korea relations are pretty much at an all time low right now, which is all the more telling given that under the present circumstances they really should be patching things up and present a united front against China. The problem, as always, is that regardless of what Koreans want, the Japanese don’t actually want to move on, because they still look back with pride on a time when Japan was a rising power and ruled over subject peoples following in the mold of the European empires they admired so much.

[Kirby101]

Japan-Korea relations are pretty much at an all time low right now.

Hyperbole much. Lower than the 35 year occupation? You are hysterical.

[Kirby101]

Essentially I am saying that is where America needs to go too but there is am ulterior motive for the dwelling on the slave period to explain the failings of the African American community to achieve equity.

Sorry, but Americans who do understand our history know it was also the 150+ years of racism and discrimination that also led to what has happened to Black People.
But I see you would rather go with the racist trope that it is their failings.