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That was the time when China was "gang banged" by 8 nations, and then drugged using gov. backed & imported opium, pillaged & sucked dried for almost half century, until WWII started. Hence these unique entities so called HongKong, Macau, Taiwan exist for reasons.
First opium war was only the British empire, second they got backup from France and the US apparently (if Wikipedia is correct). What other 5 countries? If I understand it correctly, HongKong has been returned to China by the UK now. I understand that it makes Chinese people feel extra strong dislike of drugs and drug dealers, but I don't see why it's an argument for the death penalty, or why the dislike for human rights.
And suddenly all of this so called developed, advanced and highly moralled nations starting to tell how China should behave accordingly , yeah, right.
All countries in the world have been treated unjustly in their past, can't even count all the wars Sweden have had with Denmark, probably incited by the Hansa so that neither country could monopolise the sea way out of the Baltic sea. The Vikings used to travel around Europe to rape and plunder. The world is rotten enough without everyone holding grudges for historic injustices.
As we all know, the US also has the death penalty, as does Japan, Iran and Saudi Arabia to name a few. I just find it strange that China keeps using it, it gives its detractors an easy way of criticising them and there isn't really any benefit for the state/government. There isn't anything in the communist ideology that requires it as far as I can understand? -
That was the time when China was "gang banged" by 8 nations, and then drugged using gov. backed & imported opium, pillaged & sucked dried for almost half century, until WWII started. Hence these unique entities so called HongKong, Macau, Taiwan exist for reasons.
First opium war was only the British empire, second they got backup from France and the US apparently (if Wikipedia is correct). What other 5 countries?
And suddenly all of this so called developed, advanced and highly moralled nations starting to tell how China should behave accordingly , yeah, right.
Those 8 countries were actually in a separate conflict, the Boxer Rebellion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
Not one of the actual Opium Wars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
One thing to have in perspective when thinking about either Russian-style "Communism" or Chinese-style "Communism" is that both the Russian and Chinese revolutions replaced dynasties. The subtlety is that dynasties with hereditary lineage were replaced by... dynasties with political lineage. Communism was a good way to keep most of the populace distracted.
The plight of most peasants didn't change, and the relative upward mobility of those who could work within the system didn't change. Dynastic systems require large, segmented bureaucracies with multiple layers to keep any one bureaucrat from obtaining too much power. This allows for a controlled grooming and selection process for those who are allowed to approach the levers of actual political power. -
This thread has completely left the topic subject matter at hand...
It's going to get locked down...
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This thread has completely left the topic subject matter at hand...
It's going to get locked down...
Some of it may be way off and some of it is mine but it shows perhaps the divide in cultures and ideas faced by the world when two bully's start blustering with the rest of us stuck in the middle. Discussing those differences is better than putting up a wall or dare I say Tariff barrier.
As to the topic I really don't see it making a real difference in practical terms to most countries in the world. China has product it makes and needs to sell. While a large part of the market the USA isn't 'the market' it may well be a win in the short term for other countries if China gets into an overstock position.
Longer term and without wanting to start a flame war Trump would have to be on shaky ground in the next Presidential election and I would hope the next one has at least a little less bluster and more brains to sort out whatever mess they may inherit. Worst case we have only six more years of him as US president - what could go wrong in that time.
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Six years = four prime ministers
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Blueskull, what percentage of convicted Chinese 'criminals' turn out to be innocent on appeal, say when they are exonerated by DNA evidence?
Many convicted in China are not based on any criminal lab examination...
The USA is not much better than their communist friends in China. In China, the communist state almost always wins in convictions, irreespective whether the defendent was innocent. But China is starting to clean up its draconian record on compensating the rare exoneree.
The USA has one of the most deplorable records in the world for convicting innocent people - especially blacks and Hispanics, usually due to corrupt cops, corrupt lawyers, plea bargaining, good 'old white boy racism, or the systemic guilty until proven innocent approach to convictions. The United States of America is completely DISUNITED when it comes to exoneree compensation. About half the states offer no compensation, no support, no job, no nothing to exonerees. A bloke who has spent 25 years in jail or with 10 years on death row for something he never did (often proven through DNA), has little or no prospects of ever getting a job due to widespread discrimination of anyone who has served time, even if they were known to be innocent. Its not only in lynch mob southern states. Chicago Police have framed hundreds of innocent black men and teenagers in recent years, the extent of which is coming out now. The State of New York's "finest" bashed Kalief Browder when they they sent him in Rikers Island prison without him even being charged for 2 years, and then drove the poor innocent teenager who was suffering extreme PTSD to commit suicide. No apology to the family, because that would be admitting guilt which means they could have to pay compensation to a poor family. And lets not forget the Central Park Five. The USA justice system has little to do with justice. Their legal system is not only broken, it is severely retarded.
Australia is not clean either - consider the murder of Colin-Campbell Ross. The pommies have their Birmingham Six, and the Jean-Charles de-Menezes cover-up. Probably all countries have their shameful past in the corruption of justice, but the USA and China would have to top the charts as being international pariahs on justice.
If this woman from Huawei is brought to trial in the USA, one way or the other she will be subject to this US justice system. Because she is loaded with cash, on balance she will receive a better outcome than someone who is poor. Consider the corrupt drug dealer money laundering bank, the HSBC. They got off with a slap on the wrist. But if a poor black man sells cigarettes illegally on the street corner..."I CAN'T BREATH! I CAN'T BREATH!" -
This is a very well written explanation by cult expert and sociologist Robert J. Lifton, - on cults, it looks at China in the 1960s but it is one of the definitive books on how all cults work.
https://archive.org/details/ThoughtReformAndThePsychologyOfTotalism/page/n3
Here in the US we are also now it seems ruled by a hidden cult.
Re privatized prisons- they basically are creating conditions where they are hoping poor people are tripped up. Then they can convert their misfortune into money.
It used to be almost entirely black people but its shifting to be poor people. And more and more people will be poor. Its a really bad situation we're being led into, one entirely of our own making. We all have to rise above the noise machine and see whats happening clearly.
We deserve better than this, everybody does. We're creating a monster thats hell bent on making everybody miserable, even its own acolytes are. Nobody is happy, everybody realizes something is broken.
The answer is simple, treat everybody with respect and try to share the gains of technology with all.
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The US is based on the free market system so companies have a right to sell everything and nothing is free. So it's arguably a crime to be poor. If you are committed of a crime you can be enslaved. (The 13th Amendment is about not enslaving people by race.) The US Constitution is under attack by right wingers who want to hold a Constitutional Convention to complete the corporate takeover of the country and provide cover for the hidden trade deals which are what is really ruling the world now. Both US 'parties' are right wing now, and have been for a long time. We currently still have in theory a right to the 'unenumerated rights' by default, but not for long if they get their way. What we're seeing is a second enclosure (like the Inclosure Acts in the UK that stole the land from its people for the aristocracy.) of the entire planet. Except its basically the planet and the rights to live and occupy space, breathe, without paying fees to/being stolen by huge transnational corporations. Led by several big power blocs, China is one, the US is another. Some small blocs are semi independent still but not for long.
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This is a very well written explanation by cult expert and sociologist Robert J. Lifton, - on cults, it looks at China in the 1960s but it is one of the definitive books on how all cults work.
https://archive.org/details/ThoughtReformAndThePsychologyOfTotalism/page/n3
Thanks for the link. Even today most of the Chinese look on Chairman Mao favourably. In China, especially country areas, there are many portraits of Mao hanging on walls of homes. Most of them believe the lie fed to them by their CCP comrades: "Mao was 70% good, 30% bad", despite Mao being responsible for the deaths of 70 million people, creating civil war and plummeting the entire country into extreme poverty. The best thing Mao did for China was to die. -
Interesting saw my first Huawei adds on Australian Free to air TV tonight. Charm offensive or counter offensive?
"Make it Possible" .... -
I think what he actually said was something like "n% of all people are good" and the Mao crazed populace interpreted that in those bizarre times as meaning the rest (n) were bad. I will have to go digging for what he said that morphed into that because that period and the mass madness that occurred is really quite interesting - not just because of communism, because it seems to happen as a result of orthodoxy and anti-intellectual hysteria .
Another symptom are famines which are portrayed as non-intentional but clearly occur as a result of deliberate incompetence. There were actually five very similar famines, one was in the former Soviet Union in the Ukraine in the 1930s, one was in China in the late 1950s, one was in North Korea, in the late 1990s, and two were in the British Empire, one in Ireland in the 1840s and another in Bengal in India in the early 1940s. They all killed millions of people and had strong structural similarities. The fact that two of them occurred under extreme capitalism makes it clear to me that whatever malady that they occurred as a result of is not Communism per se, its something else , some lack of vision or particular spiteful aspect that both the UK of that era and the aforementioned three Communist countries shared.This is a very well written explanation by cult expert and sociologist Robert J. Lifton, - on cults, it looks at China in the 1960s but it is one of the definitive books on how all cults work.
https://archive.org/details/ThoughtReformAndThePsychologyOfTotalism/page/n3
Thanks for the link. Even today most of the Chinese look on Chairman Mao favourably. In China, especially country areas, there are many portraits of Mao hanging on walls of homes. Most of them believe the lie fed to them by their CCP comrades: "Mao was 70% good, 30% bad", despite Mao being responsible for the deaths of 70 million people, creating civil war and plummeting the entire country into extreme poverty. The best thing Mao did for China was to die.
Also, by "Civil War" - China's civil war was the struggle between the Nationalists and Communists and if we ignore the conflict between the PRC and the Nationalists which to some extent persists to this day, as far as the mainland it mostly ended in 1949 when - (with the exception of some groups who fought on for some time in the Golden Triangle area) the conflict mostly ended in the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan.
UndoubtedlyMaybethe PRC (and Soviet and DPRK) governments portray/portrayed their various 'struggles' against dissent as a civil war (this is definitely true even today in the DPRK with their 'songbun' caste system). but the fact is the opposition that existed (which they went to great lengths to root out and destroy, as totalitarian nations do) was as far as I can ascertain to the (arguably self-destructive) extremist policies and not to the governments.
Basically everybody who had an opinion of any kind, everybody who cared for their country, literally the best and the brightest in the country were attacked and many lost their lives or their lives were ruined.
I think that now the two remaining countries (even DPRK) may have internally (although quite tentatively at this time) realized that at least to some extent. But they cant admit it. -
Even today most of the Chinese look on Chairman Mao favourably. In China, especially country areas, there are many portraits of Mao hanging on walls of homes. Most of them believe the lie fed to them by their CCP comrades: "Mao was 70% good, 30% bad", despite Mao being responsible for the deaths of 70 million people, creating civil war and plummeting the entire country into extreme poverty. The best thing Mao did for China was to die.
Well, kind of hard to compare but Bush's invation of Iraq has cost 0.5 million lives, many more mutilated and millions of refugees fleeing to neighbouring regions like Europe. And since it led to ISIS and terrorism we should probably add those casualties too (another 0.5 from the Syrian war) etc. Yet, not that many people seem all too concerned. And that was much more recent. People are strange. -
For a good chunk of our recent history the US was allied with Saddam Hussein BTW. Also, Irans nuclear program was started by the Shah of Iran. See attached document here.
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Re China. China became communist because of the US mistake in supporting the incredibly corrupt admittedly fascist Nationalist government which because of the US educated and articulate Madame Chiang Kai Shek got a sympathetic ear in Washington it didnt deserve - meanwhile most of the aid we sent them was getting siphoned off. They were almost as brutal as the Japanese.
The fall of the Qing Dynasty led to a three way power struggle between the Japanese who were most successful in northeastern part of China/Manchuria and an uncomfortable coalition between Nationalists and Communists and after the Japanese fell all out civil war, that civil war represented just the latest century of many millennia of nothing that could be called prosperity, and many incredibly hard times, and we need to realize that the inequality we complain about in Western nations is luxury compared to the extremes of Asia and Africa where life has been cheap, rulers incredibly corrupt, for a long long time. This is the situation that western countries made themselves wealthy by exploiting, forming alliances between the elites in those countries and themselves to divide the spoils that persist to this day.
I'm afraid that rapprochement between the US and North Korea could lead to some particularly bad alliances. We dont want to offshore our prisoners to North Korea, for example. But that could happen if they join the WTO. Comparative Advantage, look it up.
The stateless children of terrified North Korean women in China have had it bad also.
We should look back in time to the so called Yalta Percentages Agreement, when the fate of Eastern Europe was sketched out ona cocktail napkin, the spirit of which led to the partitions of both Korea and Vietnam as well as Europe, and resolve never to do it again.
Also, Operation Keelhaul, resulted in the deaths of millions of refugees from Russia when they were 'repatriated' back to Stalin who killed them. A history which remains largely unknown. We cant do that with North Korea.
As we can see Asia and Africa remain a place of extremes in a world of extremism. The only way to fix that is just to do it, to lose the greed and just do it. We can afford to. We have to STFU and dump the greed.
The conditions many (the vast majority) of people lived (and in most cases still live under) was extreme bone-grinding poverty.
Read about colonialism in Africa under King Leopold of Belgium in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In order to force Africans to work in the rubber trade they would enslave villages and if anybody resisted they were mercilessly slaughtered and their hands cut off to show that they had been killed. These hands were used as proof.
People in the US and Europe don't realize how hard the past has been - how hard many Asian and African and American countries had it under colonialism. And still do with Western countries (like the US) largely propping up the governments that are the most compliant in looting them. Thats the deal. Democracy is not what they want. Far from it. They want a compliant ruling class that helps them skim off the wealth and give back as little as possible. High returns on investments. Why invest domestically why educate when you can exploit? We're returning to that today. We force credit on them, but make sure it goes to the most corrupt compliant people. Anybody tries to start a union, we support repression. I'm being quite kind in my use of terms here. The real descriptive term is death related. This has happened again and again. Basically they are looted by their rich and our rich.
Building up huge debts that countries cant ever repay. When the people chafe under these debts, we send in the troops, or the CIA.
William Blum wrote a book, Killing Hope that enumerates the history of these US interventions. An old version of it is on the web. Its a must read. But, the most recent interventions arent covered.
In 1995 we shifted to a new method of hegemony, the IMF, WTO and World Bank.
In part it was because they want to continue the looting even under a so called rule of law.
Now expecting their repayment out of the taxpayers hard earned money, never from the globe-trotting aristocracy which loots them again and again. They want to trade away the middle classes jobs, robbing Peter to pay Paul. To keep the Global South oligarchs in power.
A modern standard of living is a fairly recent development in Asia. Oligarchs in the US and Europe unfortunately now want their countries to support them like their friends in India, China etc live.
They are tired of having a middle class. What can we look forward to?
Famines were not infrequent and killed huge numbers, often millions of people. Tropical countries are known for tropical diseases, many of those diseases, chronic diseases basically created lives of pain and illness. Now those diseases are diversifying geographically, northward and southward, while illnesses are being made profitable again.
Also grinding hunger, vulnerable to the variations in climate cause failure of crops and then large numbers of people died. Also many people made lots of money.
Under colonial Europe's influence, India and China would export and convert land to grow various cash crops, not always food people needed, (then they could import food and sell that making two profits) even as people starved by the millions.
Thats the real free market system. Seriously. Many people are still very poor. Even in cities. Example.
Various forms of slavery are still common.
To understand how we got where we are today we must read some history.
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Well, kind of hard to compare but Bush's invation of Iraq has cost 0.5 million lives, many more mutilated and millions of refugees fleeing to neighbouring regions like Europe. And since it led to ISIS and terrorism we should probably add those casualties too (another 0.5 from the Syrian war) etc. Yet, not that many people seem all too concerned. And that was much more recent. People are strange.
You forgot the US government bombing the civilian hospital in Kunduz. It was definitely no accident. This barely got a whimper out of the American population - not even from so-called Christians. But if a hospital was bombed in the USA, all hell would break loose. Yes people are strange. -
Huawei demoted two employees for tweeting from an iPhone
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/huawei-demoted-two-employees-for-tweeting-from-an-iphone-their-rival -
Huawei are not very nice people.
Their ads rip off material eg
vs
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Well itis an interrsting exercise in free market democracy. Kindof like american led attack on former Yugoslavia simply because the Yugoslav government did not want to do business with the west.
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spoiler alert! it's the same old plot!
here we go , another US war in the name zionism. looks like its Iran this time.
on top of a Chinese trade war -
Nailed it. US foreign policy is about as opaque as a window.
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spoiler alert! it's the same old plot!
This gives China a huge opening in the trade war really. War burns money like no end, and US treasury might not have enough funds to maintain a war for that long.
here we go , another US war in the name zionism. looks like its Iran this time.
on top of a Chinese trade war
Previously whenever US want to start a war US increases import from China first so people will increase purchasing. Chinese laws prohibits local trade from using any currency other than Renminbi, so all those dollars that ended up in Chinese hands have to be sent to Chinese banks to be exchanged for Renminbi. Then Chinese banks, including the central bank, buy US treasury bonds with those dollars Chinese businesses just handed over, so the dollars ended up in the hands of US governments so they can burn it to fuel the war.
Now the central bank of China have all kinds of ways to break this cycle and de-fund US war efforts, with all the dollar cash and US treasury bonds they hold. This can break hell on US economy when money is sourced from nowhere and drained into the war. -
Now the central bank of China have all kinds of ways to break this cycle and de-fund US war efforts, with all the dollar cash and US treasury bonds they hold. This can break hell on US economy when money is sourced from nowhere and drained into the war.
China can keep lending money to the US but it only means something if they pay back the loan. They haven't always done so in the past. Just sayin'.
"In February 1965 [French] President Charles de Gaulle announced his intention to exchange its U.S. dollar reserves for gold at the official exchange rate." which eventually led to the Nixon shock: "The Nixon shock was a series of economic measures undertaken by United States President Richard Nixon in 1971, in response to increasing inflation, the most significant of which were wage and price freezes, surcharges on imports, and the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock -
The Orange faced wannabe strongman needs his 'war' to try and get another term
Add more troops and assets to the Iranian area and sure there is then an 'increased threat' to USA troops so add more troops to protect those and ..... This is almost certainly 'assisted' by Israeli/Zionist lobbying (not Jewish!) and not wanting anyone else in the area to also have the possibility of Nuclear weapons. And how dare anyone besides the USA support acts of instability, sabotage or terrorism in another country only the CIA has that 'power'. If that is the reason to go to a war footing most of the world should be on that footing with the USA permanently!
Trade wars and Tariff protections won't work to protect the USA and the actual public will be the ones paying for it with their purchases. More expensive equipment imported to make locally with more expensive imported raw ingredients will make the USA uncompetitive as an exporter of product let alone the retail sales hit to the average person buying imported goods.
Dumb on all levels.
Sorry woke up grumpy will now have a second Coffee
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Just bought a Huawei Mate 20
Three month left before it starts becoming a brick
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In Canada Huawei is sponsoring Stanley Cup play-off translations with P30 and P30 Pro ads popping up several times during a game.
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Bean,
You remind the reader of the Sevendwarfs after Snow white left them.