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I have the feeling that the whole trade war starts from a pile of nonsense.
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soldar:

--- Quote from: apis on May 29, 2019, 08:32:10 pm --- Maybe it has something to do with the right-wing nationalists winning the civil war and Spain had to suffer under dictatorship up until 1975. Spain didn't get a democracy until 1977, it's not so long ago (same year as Afghanistan btw.)
--- End quote ---

I don't want to digress too much but it has nothing to do with Spain having to "suffer" under anything. Spain has had little stability in the last 200 years and the most stability and progress was during those years during Franco. Just like China today.

Younger generations in Spain are completely brainwashed about the Franco years and repeat the mantra of how bad things were. Spain in those years was a miracle of development, stability, public order, low crime, etc. Now we can vote but everything is going to shit because politicians have been lining their pockets while everything was going to shit. Now all we get is political ideology while unemployment is rampant, crime is out of hand, the judiciary is useless, bureaucracy drowns us, but, hey, we can vote.

I lived those years and statistics are out there for everyone to see but I get young people trying to explain to me how bad the Franco years were.  After Franco's death Spain has never again had the GDP growth or the low unemployment of those years. Not even close.

I am amazed how propaganda can cover the truth so easily.  How easy it is to make up a new version of history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_miracle

In the last 15 - 20 years things here are going to shit and there is no prospect of things getting better. People are fed up and five years ago a new communist - anti-system group appeared and got much support. Five years later they have been as incompetent and corrupt as the rest. So now we have a new extreme right party which, given a few years will be just as bad. 

Things are not looking good. This is a mess and getting worse and it makes me mad that politicians treat democracy as an end in itself while the steal us blind and insecurity is rampant. It is no wonder that people are getting tired of this BS.

Spanish people have no notion of what it is to respect other ideas. Here the idea of being in government is to steal all you can, put your friends and family into bullshit government jobs and silence the speech of anything you don't like. We have no concept of rule of law, that a town mayor has no authority to restrict speech and yet they do it. The judiciary is worthless and offers no protection.  It is a disfunctional country where most people cheat what they can on their taxes because it is the only way to survive.  The state is a worthless bureaucracy, a cancer. Small town mayors are small time dictators who favor friends and family while giving a hard time to their enemies. Corruption is rampant. This first ones not abiding by the laws are the politicians in charge.

Democracy is all well and good but after I have personal safety, low crime, stability, jobs. To me these things come before voting. And if in Spain democracy means unemployment, corruption, insecurity, crime and stagnation then I will gladly give up democracy. 

Don't get me started because I could go on for hours.
bsfeechannel:

--- Quote from: magic on May 27, 2019, 03:35:06 pm ---
--- Quote from: technix on May 27, 2019, 10:54:00 am ---It is not whether the west that can make long term plans, it is whether the west can stick to a plan after it is made across political shifts. Take Obamacare for an example, the second Republicans took power they start to dismantle it. With this kind of political aggression in place, why bother with long term plans when they ain't gonna stick after an election?

--- End quote ---
This is democracy in action.
As is well known, democracy is a system where two men and one woman strangled on a desert island can hold a legally binding vote over legalization of rape.
Or a system where whoever gets 60% seats in the parliament enjoys total power for four years and pushes reforms rejected by 40% of society not expecting the balance to flip later.

--- End quote ---

Democracy is not about the power to vote. It's about distrusting the rulers.

In a democracy the political power is pulverized among several institutions and not concentrated in the hands of an autocrat, to avoid privileges. Incumbents have a limited term, after which they will be private citizens and won't be able to use their position anymore to protect themselves against their misdeeds. You also have civilized ways to oust someone from office, should they abuse their position.

The Obamacare was cancelled because those who voted for Trump didn't trust the other party.

And that's the beauty of democracy. The leaders are always in check.

Democracy is a political system with a feedback loop.

Democratic countries, however, do have long term plans and they carry them out independently of the administration for years and decades. In this case an administration is evaluated by how well they lead the plan.

Now take North Korea. They have elections. But you can only vote for that chubby guy with that funny haircut whose name I forgot. And once he does something that is not exactly in the interest of the people (which happens to be the whole time), they cannot get him out of his position without a coup, followed by purges and killings, as we have seen recently.

That's clearly not a democracy, even though they jokingly name themselves a democratic people's republic.


--- Quote from: blueskull on May 28, 2019, 10:06:07 pm ---We appreciate the peace brought by US. We are just mad about its political and military expansion after WWII.

--- End quote ---

"Hell is other people" (Sartre). When the US interfered radically, for the benefit of China, in the "internal process" of Japan, by throwing a bomb in their heads, yay! Now that you invited this monster to your turf, dang!

History is full of episodes like that.


--- Quote from: technix on May 29, 2019, 04:45:24 am ---From what I can see, the document US handed to China as the draft trade deal includes terms like:
* termination of Made in China 2025
* termination of Belt and Road Initiative
* termination of small enterprise stimulation package

Those are internal process of China.

--- End quote ---

Nope. What the US is doing is exercising their bargaining power. China is free to comply or not. If China decides not to comply, that's OK. The US will discriminate Chinese products and this is something that any country can do, and in fact they do.


--- Quote from: soldar on May 29, 2019, 10:08:22 am ---In a state all power and authority derives from the state and no town, city, county, group or individual has any legal authority except as delegated by the state.

--- End quote ---

Just for the record: State = Government + People.
magic:

--- Quote from: apis on May 28, 2019, 03:29:18 pm ---the dictator only cares about making himself and his family rich.
--- End quote ---
I'm not sure if I could name one dictator who did it for the money.
Certainly not the European classics like megalomaniac Hitler or SJW Stalin.
Supposedly Putin has some shady businesses on the side, but he could be making even more money if he didn't go "fuck America" so I think he too is a nationalist and imperialist at heart.
Angela Merkel does it for boomer pensions and ending racism forever :P
I have no idea about Mao and Franco, but I would be surprised.
Maybe in some minor 3rd world countries? :-//


--- Quote from: soldar on May 29, 2019, 12:17:43 am ---
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on May 28, 2019, 11:34:09 pm --- It's even worse:  Newer generations are starting to forget the lessons of WWII and are beginning to make many of the same dumb mistakes that led up to it.  -  I'm thinking of the rampant nationalism that has spread like a cancer in some countries.
--- End quote ---
Nationalism is cancer and has only led to bad things but it is so easy to show a lure, a flag, and have people follow.
--- End quote ---
Are you talking about pointing finger at nationalism and saying it's the source of all evil? ;D

It seems to me like few people make effort to understand where Hitler came from, what his ideology was, why he believed what he did, why anyone voted for him, why France refused to raid Germany with us and knock him down, how anyone could possibly still consider him attractive today.
The only answer they have is "nationalism fell from the sky and a war broke out".


--- Quote from: Hitler ---What was impossible to understand was the boundless hatred they expressed against their own fellow-citizens, how they disparaged their own nation, mocked at its greatness, reviled its history and dragged the names of its most illustrious men in the gutter.
--- End quote ---
That rings quite true, particularly when I look at Westerners. Go figure.


--- Quote from: Marco on May 29, 2019, 04:25:42 pm ---Nah, international law is a joke where weaklings pretend to be able to lay claim to the owners of power based on arbitrary rules which are only ever as relevant as those with power choose to make them. True sovereignty is about having the power to control your land, literally. Homegrown power and the power of allies.
--- End quote ---
I approve. I will add that as long as Americans have more guns than citizens and some balls to use or threaten to use them when appropriate, they are sovereign people. And the US does seem to be more stable than any country in Europe, even despite being somewhat democratic.


--- Quote from: blueskull on May 29, 2019, 07:03:21 pm ---Even if the CCP completely gains Taiwan, it wants nothing to do with it. 24 million of Western freedom brainwashed people can tear the CCP inside out if force relocated. It will be allowed to keep everything it has for now, and the CCP will infiltrate through education and culture, just like how the CCP infiltrated young HK people from tapping into their textbooks and building museums.
--- End quote ---
:-DD
At the same time, it will be interesting to watch because if China reduces censorship on the Internet, there will surely be people trying to spread Westernism inside.
I'm speaking from experience, lots of idiotic ideas from the West are finding their way into Poland, from assorted SJWism to holocaust denial. I wasn't used to seeing it before 2010.
My main hope these days is that Westerners will finally hit the wall and find it impossible to pretend they really believe what they preach, at least some of them.
KL27x:

--- Quote ---Maybe in some minor 3rd world countries? :-//
--- End quote ---
Esp where a foreign government has incited a revolution and installed their own dictator?


--- Quote ---Democracy is not about the power to vote. It's about distrusting the rulers.
--- End quote ---
The problem with democracy is illustrated by history. True democracies do not last very long. Everyone voting their own self-interest is like having the worker's union run the company.
bsfeechannel:

--- Quote from: KL27x on May 29, 2019, 11:53:14 pm ---The problem with democracy is illustrated by history. True democracies do not last very long. Everyone voting their own self-interest is like having the worker's union run the company.

--- End quote ---

That's not how democracies fail. Countries are not factories. Democracies fail because, in the name of some emergency, rulers claim some exceptional power that aims at getting rid of the controls to which they are subject.

The true enemies of democracy are the politicians. They hate it. The only part of it that they like is the election. And that's why they like to emphasize that, because you have the freedom to vote for them, you are living in a democracy. But they never tell you that, after elected, you have the power to check them.
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