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

[Tendrin]

Here's a good thread of non-western sources on Uyghur oppression.

https://twitter.com/thecoleslaws/sta...29983234093059

[Zauriel]

Romney receives JFK 'Profile in Courage' award for impeachment vote

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/26/p...ard/index.html

Well what about the other Republican senators and congressmen who voted "yes" on impeaching Trump? Don't they also deserve the award?

[JackDaw]

Here's a good thread of non-western sources on Uyghur oppression.

https://twitter.com/thecoleslaws/sta...29983234093059

I suspect the Chinese are just as bad (or good) overall as we are...not sure why anyone would be firmly convinced otherwise.

A couple of friends have lived there for years (I was supposed to be visiting them this year, lol). Based on discussions with them I do accept there are obvious differences in some high level government practices...in brief greater emphasis tends to be put on overall social good rather than individual human rights.

An example of that can be tseen in way the Chinese were able to control the spread of the COVID virus relatively well (after a bumpy start)..their government has far better ability to know exactly where every one is ( id systems monitor travel within the country far more tightly than in UK) and can exert greater control.

To a Brit like me it can seem a wee bit troubling, but then as my friends have pointed out a time or three, “ more Brits would be alive if your government knew what it was doing”.

[CaptainEurope]

I suppose poorer is a relative term.

That graphic is misleading, as the export mechanism it describes targets only countries not covered by COVAX. The EU is one of the main financial contributors to COVAX, giving 500,000,000 €. So even if the COVAX vaccine is produced in India, it's not financed by the Indian government.

Yourgraphic also does not include countries like Albania and North Macrdonia, which are not part of the EU but neighbors who also receive vaccine, but via different routes than the one particular export program in the graphic.

[Gray Lensman]

Romney receives JFK 'Profile in Courage' award for impeachment vote

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/26/p...ard/index.html

Well what about the other Republican senators and congressmen who voted "yes" on impeaching Trump? Don't they also deserve the award?

Romney did it twice.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

President Biden prepares to issue executive orders on gun reform. Yay we have a president who finally does something about gun violence. He might as well try to repeal the second amendment.

Like THAT will ever happen in my lifetime, or anyone else's for that matter. I have no problem with people owning handguns to protect themselves or their property, or hunting rifles for hunting, what chafes the hell out of me is people insisting they need assault weapons better left in the hands of law enforcement or the military. Civilians have ZERO business owning the damn things which are used for one purpose and one purpose only, to kill human beings. The Assault Weapons ban, which worked immensely when in effect, needs to be reinstated....immediately!

[JackDaw]

That graphic is misleading, as the export mechanism it describes targets only countries not covered by COVAX. The EU is one of the main financial contributors to COVAX, giving 500,000,000 €. So even if the COVAX vaccine is produced in India, it's not financed by the Indian government.

Yourgraphic also does not include countries like Albania and North Macrdonia, which are not part of the EU but neighbors who also receive vaccine, but via different routes than the one particular export program in the graphic.

The UK on its own has given more to COVAX...around 600 million Euros at current exchange rates. So I don’t think it’s completely unfair to argue that at least some vaccines arriving in poorer countries were funded by UK government.

But in general..I’m not sure what to make of overall Western response to “vaccine saga” so far. Partly it’s a joyous saga, the widespread sharing of scientific and technological expertise to develop use-able vaccines so quickly. But part of me is depressed by knowing distribution is so unfair.

[Gray Lensman]

The UK on its own has given more to COVAX...around 600 million Euros at current exchange rates. So I don’t think it’s completely unfair to argue that at least some vaccines arriving in poorer countries were funded by UK government.

But in general..I’m not sure what to make of overall Western response to “vaccine saga” so far. Partly it’s a joyous saga, the widespread sharing of scientific and technological expertise to develop use-able vaccines so quickly. But part of me is depressed by knowing distribution is so unfair.

It's more the human condition than anything else, IMO. Times like these make people afraid, and willing to turn to those who provide easy answers. The elected officials can either deal with that, or lose power to opportunists who are likely to prevent any more fair elections after they get swept in. It's the great weakness of democracy - here in the US, Biden can either take care of America first, or put Trump back in power. And that would be the last real election this country ever has.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Kelly Keisling, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives who prior to the 2012 election, made headlines by sending out an e-mail forward from his government account that contained a conspiracy theory that the Obama administration was going to stage a “false flag” assassination attack to institute martial law in major cities and prevent the elections from happening. The theory, insane as it was, originated from a Canadian conspiracy theorist and was then circulated through the hard-right conservative crowd via the Constitution Party of Florida, and their forwards eventually found their way to Keisling’s inbox. After widespread criticism, Keisling defended forwarding the e-mail to his constituents, saying, “I wouldn’t put anything past anybody.”

As a legislator up until this point in his first two terms, had voted to nullify the Affordable Care Act, voted for stricter Voter ID laws to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters to prevent statistically non-existent in person-voter fraud, had voted to prevent enacting the United Nations’ Agenda 21 environmental treaty, voted for abstinence-only sex education in Tennessee schools, voted for abortion to be outlawed if a fetal heartbeat is detected (i.e. six weeks in, before many women even realize they’re pregnant), voted to bring back the electric chair as a valid method of execution in the Volunteer State, and voted for every pro-gun bill that flew through the Tennessee state legislature prior to the 2016 NRA convention being hosted in Nashville.

In 2018, Keisling co-sponsored a fetal heart abortion ban in Tennessee that would effectively ban abortion at 6 weeks, or before many women even realize they are pregnant, and voted for a bill to allow adoption agencies to refuse to allow couples to adopt children based on “religious exemptions” like deciding that they’re just going to discriminate against gay people rather than let a child be adopted into a loving family because of some twisted ideology.

In 2020, he was re-elected with… sigh… 86% of the vote. He went back to work to help his constituents during the Covid-19 pan… nope. Just kidding… he was a co-sponsor of HB 23, Tennessee Republicans’ attempts to go full-fascist and be able to remove judges who overturn any laws they write, (citing a judge who supported absentee voting in 2020 as an example) removing the ability to do so from voters.

[PwrdOn]

Here's a good thread of non-western sources on Uyghur oppression.

https://twitter.com/thecoleslaws/sta...29983234093059

There's no way you read all of those articles, but on the off chance that you did, maybe your next research project can be about how the fetishization of Asian women is actually a product of the same warmongering imperialist propaganda as the current wave of anti-China rhetoric.

I suspect the Chinese are just as bad (or good) overall as we are...not sure why anyone would be firmly convinced otherwise.

A couple of friends have lived there for years (I was supposed to be visiting them this year, lol). Based on discussions with them I do accept there are obvious differences in some high level government practices...in brief greater emphasis tends to be put on overall social good rather than individual human rights.

An example of that can be tseen in way the Chinese were able to control the spread of the COVID virus relatively well (after a bumpy start)..their government has far better ability to know exactly where every one is ( id systems monitor travel within the country far more tightly than in UK) and can exert greater control.

To a Brit like me it can seem a wee bit troubling, but then as my friends have pointed out a time or three, “ more Brits would be alive if your government knew what it was doing”.

I mean it's not like anyone likes being oppressed, but individual freedom also means the freedom for a handful of bad actors to ruin things for everybody. And you see that everywhere these days, from fake news on social media, to corporate lobbyists buying up elections, to people hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer, to idiots refusing to wear masks and harassing those who do, to crazed gunmen shooting up schools. This is a rather difficult circle to square, because there is no surefire way to distinguish between genuinely malicious activity, and harmless expressions of individuality, so at some point you have to make a decision about whether you care more about stamping out all the bad behavior, or accepting these incidents are just the price we have to pay to protect personal freedoms. And for the longest time, Americans believed that we were justified in taking a mostly passive stance and preserving the status quo, believing that our society mostly functioned well and that a few bad actors on the fringes of society shouldn't be cause to compromise our fundamental values. The problem though, is that these supposed anomalies are much more widespread and inherent to the nature of our socioeconomic system than anyone had ever imagined, and that the only reason we hadn't picked up on it before was because the rapid improvement in our living standards made them seem minor by comparison, and now that this breakneck growth has largely halted, these issues seem more and more intractable since we can't just bootstrap our way out of it.

[Tendrin]

There's no way you read all of those articles, but on the off chance that you did, maybe your next research project can be about how the fetishization of Asian women is actually a product of the same warmongering imperialist propaganda as the current wave of anti-China rhetoric.

You're right. I mean, I haven't been able to read Borderland Capitalism yet. I'm poor and don't have $65 to buy it.

I agree that the roots of fetishization of Asian Women is deep and long-standing, and it goes back well into the 19th century and even earlier, but I'd argue that current wave of Anti-Chinese rhetoric is mostly driven by the pandemic and a year of a government that was irresponsibly fanning its flames. Assuredly, it sits atop the last few decades of Anti-Chinese/Anti-Asian BS pushed by people for whom its politically useful, just as its politically useful to you now to ask for silence about Xinjiang by weaponizing a shooting for the sake of trying to win a message board argument. I'm pretty sure that if you were to ask most people, they'd simply say 'Uighur who?', so trying to hang the shooting around the necks of people discussing the Uighurs on a politics message board is just plain disgusting, alongside you showing your in ability to offer a concrete argument against the accusation beyond your personal assurance that 'they're gonna be okay' because of course China's government would never engage in racist practices towards a minority population that meets the UN definition of a genocide.

[Kirby101]

Is the argument that the Chinese Government isn't oppressive? Or that the Chinese are basically good people? I am coming in late and haven't read all the post.

[Tendrin]

Is the argument that the Chinese Government isn't oppressive? Or that the Chinese are basically good people? I am coming in late and haven't read all the post.

The argument was that there is no on-going genocide in Xinjiang, and people who are saying that there is are, are indulging in anti-Chinese rhetoric that leads to things like the shooting in Atlanta.

[Mister Mets]

The Uyghurs will be fine, if there was any evidence that China was actually killing them then you would surely know about it, given how much ink the press has spilled on this topic based on loose conjecture. Now, of course China will never let them break off their own independent country, and for some Uyghurs that is in and of itself an intolerable oppression that must be fought by any means necessary, but carving the world up into racially homogenous ethnostates has never worked before I don't know why we would want to start doing it again.

And yes of course the West should stay silent on this issue because we should have learned from the Iraq War that when you start throwing around outlandish accusations without evidence, that tends to have some pretty dangerous consequences, and when we inevitably realize that the accusations have been bogus all along, we won't be able to take a do over for all the damage that they caused. Case in point, all of the anti-China rhetoric these days has already led to a spike in hate crimes and led to the murder of several American citizens, and ratcheting up the tensions with baseless accusations of genocide will only make that worse.

So the Uyghurs are fine as long as they're not killed, but just sterilized, made to relocate, indoctrinated to abandon their religion, and separated from their families?

Romney receives JFK 'Profile in Courage' award for impeachment vote

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/26/p...ard/index.html

Well what about the other Republican senators and congressmen who voted "yes" on impeaching Trump? Don't they also deserve the award?

This was for the first vote.

[Mister Mets]

It's a obvious political favor. But it's a commission, with no real power. Chao was Sec of Transportation and gave deals to her families company.

Elaine Chao was already Deputy Secretary of Transportation when she met Mitch McConnell.

Mrs Manchin's appointments came after her husband was elected to statewide office. Granted it's not a bad idea for Biden to select someone for a Senate-confirmed position who few people are going to want to vote against.

COVAX relies primarily on Indian production to supply most of its doses, which they had to do under license because the rich countries blocked a proposal at the WTO to waive IP protection for vaccines, and is now likely to be halted entirely because India just banned the export of vaccines in light of this latest EU/UK spat. Meanwhile the murderous authoritarian regimes of Russia and China have supplied 800 million doses of their vaccines to poor countries, something that has routinely been derided in the press as a cynical play at global influence, which the noble and enlightened West would never attempt, naturally. I suppose that the true galaxy brain take is that the US and Europe need those vaccines more than anyone else because they are suffering the worst from the virus given their governments' botched response to the outbreak.

The other countries will ultimately be better off because of the development of the vaccines. If it weren't for Britain and the US, the choices would be much more limited.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/...oting-76701807

So the shooter legally bought a gun after passing a background check? Most of the guns used in homicides were purchased legally after passing background checks. Forget background checks. Ban all the guns instead. It worked for Japan.

The conservatives opposed to modest attempts at gun reform are aware that for there to be a real impact, it's going to have to go further than what is currently proposed.

Matt Yglesias summed it up well.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/nationa...ded-re-embrace

And yet in a maddening way, the measures progressives are proposing would not address the policy issue that progressives claim is morally urgent.

Effective gun control would have to be extreme
Here’s the deal: There are about 40,000 firearms deaths per year in the United States and if you could make them go away that would be great.

But a majority of those deaths are suicides. And the homicides are mostly committed by normal, inexpensive easily concealed handguns, not by scary assault weapons. Where do the guns come from? In a 2016 report for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mariel Alper and Lauren Glaze look at a survey of prison inmates and found that 21 percent of all federal and state prisoners said they had a firearm when they committed the offense for which they were serving time in prison. Of those incarcerated gun owners, just “seven percent had purchased it under their own name from a licensed firearm dealer.”

The largest share (43 percent) said they bought the gun on the black market. Another 25 percent say they got it from family or friends.

None of this is to deny that gun control laws could drastically reduce the incidence of firearms death. You might think that potential suicides would just substitute some other means of killing themselves, but research does not bare that out. If fewer guns were around, then fewer people would kill themselves. By the same token, you definitely could drain the swamp of illegally circulating firearms. But the way you would accomplish these things would be by drastically reducing the number of legally owned guns around. Stricter background checks for new purchases just aren’t going to significantly change the situation.

The United Kingdom has drastically fewer gun assaults than we do and that has a lot of benefits. Not only are innocent lives saved, but it allows their police to operate largely unarmed which would greatly ameliorate a tangled nexus of American social problems around racism and police use of force. But the UK didn’t get there with really rigorous background checks, it got there by making civilian ownership of guns mostly illegal.

What’s more: Gun enthusiasts are aware of this. So when progressives talk about the tragedy of gun deaths in America, it doesn’t matter if their actual proposal is a very mild tweak to background checks. When you define “the problem” as gun deaths, you are pushing toward a drastic solution that gun hobbyists don’t want, and they are highly motivated to vote against you.