US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8107

On July 18 2017 02:35 Velr wrote:


What has anything of this to do with them being black?
Extensions forbidden gtfo.

The penalty seems draconian but else?

On July 18 2017 02:40 KwarK wrote:

African Americans in the US get told that their genetics are "wrong" and that they need to conform better to standards which are normalized around white Americans. This wasn't the best example of it, for better examples see being told that curly/frizzy hair is unprofessional and needs to be straightened etc but it is a real thing that happens. Particularly in areas that are predominantly white. I can absolutely believe that white parents adopting black kids and bringing them into their white bubble get told that the kids need to whiten up.

On July 18 2017 02:55 Velr wrote:


America seems to be one strange place, more and more.
But... If they wanted to show their heritage, just grow it?

I find the rule as is dumb as fuck no matter in which context but well...

On July 18 2017 02:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:


He's really fighting for that picture next to "whataboutism" in the encyclopedia, isn't he?

On July 18 2017 04:25 Gahlo wrote:

I don't know about the rest of the country, but that happened to my mom as well.

When nine members of a Shiite militia battling the Islamic State in Northern Iraq were mistakenly killed by an Iraqi errant drone strike in January, the world was surprised the Iraqi military operated drones at all — much less machines capable of striking targets on the ground.

What was even more disconcerting was the fact that the Iraqi drones were made in China, a country filling a void created by the U.S. that's rapidly becoming a multi-billion dollar global market.

The world's largest economy has agreed to export its much publicized armed-drone technology to only two allies, the United Kingdom and Italy — the latter only late last year. It's even rebuffed Jordan's requests for U.S. military drones to defend against ISIS on its border. Discerning for reasons both strategic and regulatory, the U.S. has held its military drone technology close, and its armed-drone technology closer still.

Countries seeking armed drones capable of remotely striking targets on the ground are instead turning to China, whose Caihong family of unmanned aircraft — specifically, the Caihong-3 and Caihong-4, or CH-3 and CH-4 — are turning up in arsenals across the globe.

Along with Iraq, several Middle Eastern states have purchased China's weaponized drone technology. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE have all reportedly imported armed drones from China, as have Nigeria and, some suspect, Somalia (the Somali army admits to having purchased armed drones, though it won't disclose the seller). Iraq and Pakistan have used them in combat, launching strikes at militants within their own borders.

The list of states that now possess weapons-capable Chinese drones likely reaches beyond those enumerated above. Unhindered by the same international agreements as the United States or the same concerns about armed-drone proliferation, China has made a concerted push into the international arms market, offering weaponized drones that are easier to get and far less expensive than U.S. drone technologies. According to some analyst estimates, cash-strapped militaries can purchase an armed Chinese drone for just $1 million — roughly a quarter of the asking price of comparable U.S. technology.

As a result, states with just a few million dollars to spend can get their hands on weaponized drones from China without jumping through the myriad hoops of the U.S. arms export process. Increasingly, they are doing exactly that.

Drones, like the CH-3 and CH-4, are widely considered to be less capable and reliable than U.S.-made drones, like the iconic MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper.

But although they lack the range and capability of U.S. drones, for most countries drones like the CH-3 and CH-4 fall into the category of "good enough," experts say. While specifications for the aircraft are hard to come by, the smaller CH-3 can reportedly carry at least 130 pounds of sensors or weapons, including at least one AR-1 laser-guided missile — the rough Chinese equivalent of the AGM-114 Hell Fire missile carried by U.S. drones.

The larger, CH-4 is instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with drones the U.S. military has operated since the mid-1990s. Visually, it closely resembles the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper — so much so that experts believe it was engineered using information stolen from U.S. defense contractors, said Peter W. Singer, a strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

"The CH-4 is the more interesting one," said Singer. "It doesn't look exactly like [the Reaper] because that's the only way to build this kind of system. It's not a coincidence, when you look at the amount of intellectual property theft that's going on."

As such, the CH-4 likely shares some other characteristics of with U.S. Predator-class drones as well, Singer says, including a much greater payload than the CH-3 (more like 500 pounds) and a greater range (the Air Force lists the Predator's range at 770 miles).

While pricing information is a closely held secret, analysts widely believe that militaries can acquire some Chinese drone systems for as little as a quarter of what their U.S.-built counterparts cost (a Predator system retails for about $4 million according to U.S. Air Force budget documents). That makes Chinese drones particularly alluring for countries that don't have massive military budgets but desire the symbolic power that drones impart.

"There's a certain PR advantage to having these kinds of drones," said Sarah Kreps, an associate professor in Cornell University's Department of Government and expert on international security and technology proliferation. "I think that you can claim some cachet even if these things aren't fifth generation fighters, because there just aren't that many countries that have this. Even if they're not transformative in serious material ways, just having them can send a signal."

But for the most part, China's emergence as weaponized drone dealer to the world is a result of U.S. restrictions on the export of its own drone technology. Aside from tight controls on military exports imposed by the State and Commerce departments, the U.S. is signatory to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). Established among several countries in the late 1980s to curb the proliferation of missile technology as the Cold War came to a close, MTCR regulations require that signatory states apply a "strong presumption of denial" to exports of unmanned vehicles capable of carrying a 1,100-pound payload more than 185 miles.

In other words, unless the exporting state can provide compelling reasons to export such systems to another country, its default response should be to deny such sales. That's put most countries — even U.S. allies — on the wrong side of MTCR export regulations, even though the agreement is aimed at technologies like warhead-delivering cruise missiles rather than drones.

That's given China — which is not a signatory to the MTCR — a pronounced edge in both global armed-drone sales and in the foreign policy arena, where arms deals are often used to reward allies or telegraph displeasure to foreign governments. "We use arms sales as a tool in trying to shape other nations' behavior," Singer says. "And right now we have less options, because other nations now have more options."

With the global market for military drones headed toward $10 billion annually by the mid-2020s, the economic implications are very real as well. In November, the U.S. took limited measures to lower the high regulatory bar for military drone technology exports. Since then, only Italy has secured a commitment from the U.S. government to help it arm its Reaper drones. Meanwhile, armed Chinese drones continue to emerge in parts of the world where they haven't been seen previously.

"It's clear that China is not bound by the same set of international standards — they don't have end-user agreements the way the U.S. does with its drone sales, so it looks much more like an arms bazaar when China is selling these things," Kreps said. "That will very much affect the international market, and it makes you think the U.S. needs to either be part of that game or try to co-opt China into being a little more discriminate."

On July 18 2017 04:47 Toadesstern wrote:

yeah I'm just going to assume that was pretty common all over the western world a couple years ago. I think either my uncle or my grandma had that as well? Maybe both

On July 18 2017 05:49 Simberto wrote:
Turns out when you make it look like you can just bomb anyone you want, no matter where they are, as long as you are using drones to do it, other people also want drones, and thus some people will sell them drones.

And the reason people criticize the US and Israel for that kind of behaviour, but not China, is pretty simple. The US and Israel claim to be western countries that value human rights and try to make the world a better place for everyone. Thus, when they act in apparent disregard of human rights, this is contrary to their claim to be better than random dictatorships or crime lords.

China does no such thing.Obviously it is shitty when China just sells arms to whoever can pay for them. But they don't really claim not to do that, and we can't really force them not to either. China does a lot of pretty shitty things (Tibet springs to mind), but there is not really a lot anyone can do about that, and they don't really care if people complain. China is still a dictatorship. It is not the worst there is, but it is also not a free society that respects universal human rights.

It is the same reason we complain more about Guantanamo then about the North Korean torture camps. The latter are objectively way shittier, but they are also pretty far away, and the people responsible for them don't care if people in the west condemn them. Meanwhile, if the US puts people into secret torture camps, this is a bigger deal, because they claim a higher standard for themselves, and are thus held to that higher standard.

France sold weapons to Bacchar's Syria, Saudi Arabia, Khadafi's Lybia, Egypt, Israel and Tchad amongst others. It's a shame but why should China stop selling weapons when all Western countries with a weapon industry do the same? I don't understand your point, the weapon industry's issues are almost a taboo and no one blamed the US more than another weapon seller on this matter.

Human rights are another issue and we obviously expect more from our close allies from the Western world than from China.

On July 18 2017 06:11 mozoku wrote:

The international community has no control over China? That's news to me. I'm pretty sure China is an export-driven economy where the vast majority of these exports go to the same Western countries that the human rights activists come from. The CCP's only claim to legitimacy among the Chinese is the export-driven growth that the West affords it.

You have just as much democratic political power to pressure your local government officials to sanction China as you do to tell them to condemn the US for bombing targets in Pakistan and Yemen. Why does it matter to you that the US "claims to be moral" when China is causing far more human suffering?


Selling weapons (in and of itself) isn't the issue that the article raises. The issue is that there's a international agreement (even Russia signed it) on drone sale limitations that China refused to sign, and then went ahead selling them to countries that parties to the agreement agreed not to sell them to.

In other words, China ignored the agreement and then actively undermined it for profit. It's pretty much the equivalent of breaking an international arms sale treaty, except China never signed it so they're technically not breaking it.

On July 18 2017 06:40 GreenHorizons wrote:
I'm sure this has been discussed before, but why shouldn't we means test politicians pay?

On July 18 2017 06:47 WolfintheSheep wrote:

In like a performance review kind of way or a "you earn too much so you're disqualified" way?