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On July 19 2020 23:25 Biff The Understudy wrote:
China is an authoritarian country but isn't totalitarian whatsoever. Arguably it stopped to be in 1976 after Mao's death. The state control over private life of chinese citizen today doesn't even start to resemble with totalitarianism.
I think we should be careful about the words we use and the comparisons we make, or they risk losing all meaning.
In the English language authoritarian/totalitarian are synonyms. The social credit system coupled with significant political oppression, Uighur "reeducation"/internments/concentration camps, forcibly relocating people for large infrastructure projects, strict curtailment of free speech and association, etc. China is pretty awful. Yeah they have more economic liberties now, but so did Chile under Pinochet.
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On July 19 2020 22:47 capu wrote:
fascism is very context-related in that every country / place has its own kind of fascism. Some researchers argue fascism should refer only to 1930s Italy and Mussolini. So I don't know if China is fascist but it certainly is totalitarian even if the communist party has made some concessions. The communist party of China infringes on many rights people in the West take for granted e.g freedom of speech and religion.
I believe so too. "Fascism" was not a general social phenomenon. "National Socialism" was. Every country became nationalist. Every country became "socialist," in the sense of having the welfare state.
China is that too. No country today will call itself "Nazi," but in principle, they all are.
I think China's main problem vis-a-vis racism is that they are protesting against it. That is because they mostly encounter the White race, whether as immigrants in the USA or otherwise. They never even see black people. They fight for themselves, and that means fighting against "White against Asian" racism. They never live in the same areas as black people, so they do not even know that much about them.
When I was young though, I recall that China hated Japan beyond all reason. Not exactly "racism," since the Japanese are the same race. But its own version of it, perhaps.
Re: "In the English language authoritarian/totalitarian are synonyms."
Not quite. And there we are bouncing around with words. They each mean something, but everyone will have his or her own definition. These mean nothing in modern political parlance. After all, take it away from politics. Are parents "totalitarian" vis-a-vis their own children? If so, until which age?
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On July 19 2020 23:38 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 23:25 Biff The Understudy wrote:
China is an authoritarian country but isn't totalitarian whatsoever. Arguably it stopped to be in 1976 after Mao's death. The state control over private life of chinese citizen today doesn't even start to resemble with totalitarianism.
I think we should be careful about the words we use and the comparisons we make, or they risk losing all meaning. In the English language authoritarian/totalitarian are synonyms. The social credit system coupled with significant political oppression, Uighur "reeducation"/internments/concentration camps, forcibly relocating people for large infrastructure projects, strict curtailment of free speech and association, etc. China is pretty awful. Yeah they have more economic liberties now, but so did Chile under Pinochet.
Hmm, are you sure about that? Totalitarian really mean something quite precise. You can't say that Hungary or Turkey are totalitarian even though they are clearly on the authoritarian side.
Seems to me like an abuse of language. Totalitarian is 1984 level of state control or something approaching. In Nazi Germany, a teenage, high school student could get sued and guillotined for carrying flyers criticizing the regime.
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The word, "totalitarianism"was coined back in the days when some dissidents were opposed to Italian Fascism. It then became a common propaganda item during WW2. After the war, that word became a facet of the Soviet Union...their former "ally."
Two main popularisers of that word immediately come to mind: Hannah Arendt and George Orwell
Arendt's book was unreadable. But there was one element in it which hit the right mark. The book was published in 1951, when the Cold War had begun. Arendt's equation of "Stalinism" with "Nazism" was welcome to many Americans at the time. Most of the book in fact only dealt with "Nazi" totalitarianism. Almost nothing dealt with Soviet communism. Opportune, because there is now evidence that Arendt wrote the book immediately after the war, at a time when any equivalency between the two governments would have been laughed out of court by most people.
Orwell was a very different case. You can read his biography to see how he had his own dismal encounters with a system that he once believed in.
To me, these words mean nothing at all. It is someone's way of bashing some other government that they do not like, and perhaps cannot even understand.
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Russian Federation421 Posts
I think fascist is a pretty good label for modern China. It might not fit perfectly but I think resemblance between modern China and Italy under Mussolini is pretty high considering differences between eras. There is the same right wing paternal government, the same fascination with their ancient culture, militarism, and corporatism as state economy.
As for “totalitarian vs authoritarian”, I would call China totalitarian - living in Russia I think I can tell the difference) Their control over media and internet is unprecedented (if we exclude North Korea), their ability to disappear people in Information Age is also impressive, and the whole Uighur concentration camp debacle also can’t happen in most of countries.
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On July 20 2020 00:53 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The word, "totalitarianism"was coined back in the days when some dissidents were opposed to Italian Fascism. It then became a common propaganda item during WW2. After the war, that word became a facet of the Soviet Union...their former "ally."
Two main popularisers of that word immediately come to mind: Hannah Arendt and George Orwell
Arendt's book was unreadable. But there was one element in it which hit the right mark. The book was published in 1951, when the Cold War had begun. Arendt's equation of "Stalinism" with "Nazism" was welcome to many Americans at the time. Most of the book in fact only dealt with "Nazi" totalitarianism. Almost nothing dealt with Soviet communism. Opportune, because there is now evidence that Arendt wrote the book immediately after the war, at a time when any equivalency between the two governments would have been laughed out of court by most people.
Orwell was a very different case. You can read his biography to see how he had his own dismal encounters with a system that he once believed in.
To me, these words mean nothing at all. It is someone's way of bashing some other government that they do not like, and perhaps cannot even understand.
So you don't think there is something unique, in nazism or stalinism - or their close offsprings - that distinguish them for more standards dictatorships?
I feel totalitarianism is pretty well defined. It's when everything is politicized and every aspect of life is meant to be subservient to the state. That's really not the case in China today.
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On July 20 2020 07:08 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 00:53 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The word, "totalitarianism"was coined back in the days when some dissidents were opposed to Italian Fascism. It then became a common propaganda item during WW2. After the war, that word became a facet of the Soviet Union...their former "ally."
Two main popularisers of that word immediately come to mind: Hannah Arendt and George Orwell
Arendt's book was unreadable. But there was one element in it which hit the right mark. The book was published in 1951, when the Cold War had begun. Arendt's equation of "Stalinism" with "Nazism" was welcome to many Americans at the time. Most of the book in fact only dealt with "Nazi" totalitarianism. Almost nothing dealt with Soviet communism. Opportune, because there is now evidence that Arendt wrote the book immediately after the war, at a time when any equivalency between the two governments would have been laughed out of court by most people.
Orwell was a very different case. You can read his biography to see how he had his own dismal encounters with a system that he once believed in.
To me, these words mean nothing at all. It is someone's way of bashing some other government that they do not like, and perhaps cannot even understand. So you don't think there is something unique, in nazism or stalinism - or their close offsprings - that distinguish them for more standards dictatorships? I feel totalitarianism is pretty well defined. It's when everything is politicized and every aspect of life is meant to be subservient to the state. That's really not the case in China today.
I don't think that is correct. Friedrich and Brzezinski’s six traits of a totalitarian state (as opposed to merely authoritarian) are:
an official ideology
a single political party typically led by one man
a secret police
party control of mass communications
party control of the military
a centrally directed economy
China has all of those in spades.
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On July 20 2020 00:00 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 23:38 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2020 23:25 Biff The Understudy wrote:
China is an authoritarian country but isn't totalitarian whatsoever. Arguably it stopped to be in 1976 after Mao's death. The state control over private life of chinese citizen today doesn't even start to resemble with totalitarianism.
I think we should be careful about the words we use and the comparisons we make, or they risk losing all meaning. In the English language authoritarian/totalitarian are synonyms. The social credit system coupled with significant political oppression, Uighur "reeducation"/internments/concentration camps, forcibly relocating people for large infrastructure projects, strict curtailment of free speech and association, etc. China is pretty awful. Yeah they have more economic liberties now, but so did Chile under Pinochet. Hmm, are you sure about that? Totalitarian really mean something quite precise. You can't say that Hungary or Turkey are totalitarian even though they are clearly on the authoritarian side. Seems to me like an abuse of language. Totalitarian is 1984 level of state control or something approaching. In Nazi Germany, a teenage, high school student could get sued and guillotined for carrying flyers criticizing the regime.
The PRC's history of disappearing people who disagree with the regime is one of the best documented in the world. What line are you drawing here?
Here's the BBC in 2018, before Xinjiang became news and the crackdowns in Hong Kong even began.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45806904
China disappearances show Beijing sets its own rules
[...]
- The individual disappears and it takes days or weeks until there's word from authorities confirming that the person is being held and what they're accused of
- Eventually, there's a public confession and apology - although some people remain detained for years without any news emerging
- Usually there will be some form of further detention or jail time to serve - Fan Bingbing was instead hit with a massive fine of $129m (£99m).
The disappearances can target people from different walks of life: human rights lawyers, corrupt officials, officials who are targeted for political reasons, book-sellers who publish material that angers party leaders, or prominent people who fall foul of the party for one reason or another.
Since Xi Jinping took over as China's top leader in 2012, the space for dissent in China has shrunk - and activists say the crackdown is getting tougher and more systematic.
[...]
"It's the Chinese Communist Party really showing both China and the world that it sees its rules as dominant," said Isaac Stone Fish, senior fellow at the Asia Society's Center on US-China Relations.
"There's no sense they have to explain themselves or their decisions to anyone outside the system."
It seems very clear that Xi's goal is a totalitarian state. The social-credit system is as Orwellian as you could possibly desire, and backed by technologies that other totalitarian regimes throughout history could only dream of.
Now, it's also clear that central power in china is much more limited than it looks from the outside. Regionally there is enormous variation, but it seems wilfully ignorant to argue that the regime is not totalitarian because Shenzen exists. Xinjiang also exists, and the CCP is undoubtedly using extensive surveillance, extrajudicial detention and brainwashing to suppress dissent, and working to push these measures out as local politics permit.
I honestly don't know what definition of totalitarian you're working under if you can look at the Uighur detentions, the SCS and the developments in Hong Kong and think of anything else.
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On July 20 2020 08:19 Belisarius wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 00:00 Biff The Understudy wrote:On July 19 2020 23:38 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2020 23:25 Biff The Understudy wrote:
China is an authoritarian country but isn't totalitarian whatsoever. Arguably it stopped to be in 1976 after Mao's death. The state control over private life of chinese citizen today doesn't even start to resemble with totalitarianism.
I think we should be careful about the words we use and the comparisons we make, or they risk losing all meaning. In the English language authoritarian/totalitarian are synonyms. The social credit system coupled with significant political oppression, Uighur "reeducation"/internments/concentration camps, forcibly relocating people for large infrastructure projects, strict curtailment of free speech and association, etc. China is pretty awful. Yeah they have more economic liberties now, but so did Chile under Pinochet. Hmm, are you sure about that? Totalitarian really mean something quite precise. You can't say that Hungary or Turkey are totalitarian even though they are clearly on the authoritarian side. Seems to me like an abuse of language. Totalitarian is 1984 level of state control or something approaching. In Nazi Germany, a teenage, high school student could get sued and guillotined for carrying flyers criticizing the regime. The PRC's history of disappearing people who disagree with the regime is one of the best documented in the world. What line are you drawing here? Here's the BBC in 2018, before Xinjiang became news and the crackdowns in Hong Kong began. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45806904Show nested quote +- The individual disappears and it takes days or weeks until there's word from authorities confirming that the person is being held and what they're accused of
- Eventually, there's a public confession and apology - although some people remain detained for years without any news emerging
- Usually there will be some form of further detention or jail time to serve - Fan Bingbing was instead hit with a massive fine of $129m (£99m).
The disappearances can target people from different walks of life: human rights lawyers, corrupt officials, officials who are targeted for political reasons, book-sellers who publish material that angers party leaders, or prominent people who fall foul of the party for one reason or another.
Since Xi Jinping took over as China's top leader in 2012, the space for dissent in China has shrunk - and activists say the crackdown is getting tougher and more systematic.
[...]
"It's the Chinese Communist Party really showing both China and the world that it sees its rules as dominant," said Isaac Stone Fish, senior fellow at the Asia Society's Center on US-China Relations.
"There's no sense they have to explain themselves or their decisions to anyone outside the system." It seems very clear that Xi's goal is a totalitarian state. The social-credit system is as Orwellian as you could possibly desire, and backed by technologies that other totalitarian regimes throughout history could only dream of. Now, it's also clear that central power in china is much more limited than it looks from the outside. Regionally there is enormous variation, but the argument that the regime is not technically totalitarian because Shenzen exists seems very weak. Xinjiang also exists, and the CCP is undoubtedly using extensive surveillance, extrajudicial detention and brainwashing to suppress dissent, and working to push these measures out as local politics permit. I honestly don't know what definition of totalitarian you're working under if you can look at the Uighur detentions, the SCS and the developments in Hong Kong and think of anything else.
I am looking at these words historically, not in terms of definitions. You can define that word however you want, but for me it is more interesting how things got that way in certain languages. "Total" control is obviously an impossibility. At worst, governments control as many aspects of their subjects lives as they can. But originally, that word was used to describe Italian "fascism." Far from "total" control of anyone's life. There were many "freedoms" under the old Fascist government which are not even heard of today. And then came National Socialism and Communism.
Putting it in a historical perspective, the USSR was the most "primitive" of the European countries, but they were also the largest. No country which they overran because of WW2 liked the Russians at all, but they installed whomever they wanted in Eastern Europe.
Asian Communism is a different story. Let us call it Chinese, because it de-facto is. China has never had a democracy. Back in time, many Chinese people tried to learn Russian, until the Sino-Soviet split. At that point, China became best friends with the Americans. It served both countries at the time. The USA created a "second front" in the Cold War for the USSR.
One instance of those deep Russian-Chinese divides came on the occasion of Stalin's funeral. An argument broke out between Mao and Khruschev. Mao saw things in his Chinese way of "father knows best." That meant Stalin. Khruschev hated Stalin. He had constantly been humiliated by Stalin all his life. At Stalin's funeral, they bickered. Mao insisted that Stalin was a father figure to the entire communist world. Khruschev simply said that Stalin was a member of the Russian communist party, and the Russians would do with him as they saw fit.
This was the time when the USSR was the best friend of "Communist" China. Needless to say, the Sino-Soviet split advanced during Khruschev's time in power.
A rather humorous aside: halfapage.com
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On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:On July 18 2020 04:33 Nouar wrote:
Still, these kind of sanctions when there is no PROOF that Huawei hardware is rigged is over-the-top. The USA just threatened sanctions on TSMC (Taiwanese company) if they were to provide processors to Huawei.
Now, if there was proof, I'd argue differently. For now it just seems like a commercial war to push the US of A's own equipment to me. Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here. We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this? Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted. I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking? Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least.
These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first:
- Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon.
- I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon.
- "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described.
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On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:On July 18 2020 04:33 Nouar wrote:
Still, these kind of sanctions when there is no PROOF that Huawei hardware is rigged is over-the-top. The USA just threatened sanctions on TSMC (Taiwanese company) if they were to provide processors to Huawei.
Now, if there was proof, I'd argue differently. For now it just seems like a commercial war to push the US of A's own equipment to me. Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here. We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this? Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted. I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking? Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described.
On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.org
In terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts."
The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about.
I did not say anything about the "Financial union."
There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment.
Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures.
As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path.
The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home.
Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com
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On July 20 2020 07:07 GreenHorizons wrote:What things?
Did you watch the video?
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On July 20 2020 16:14 sharkie wrote:Did you watch the video?
GH has a good point here. When you post a video, it is your duty to give us a summary about what you think is interesting in that video. The reason for this is twofold: A lot of people read the forum in a situation where they can read text, but can't/don't want to watch a video with sound (like at work, for example)
And secondly, it takes a lot less effort to post a link to a video then watching a video. This leads to a degenerate discussion where everyone just posts videos and demands that other people watch them and somehow extracts their point from them, and no discussion happens.
Edit: Also see the mod note at the top.
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The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about.
By sink you mean not giving the UK everything it wants?
Because the UK, while in the EU, had the best deal of any country, by far. But it wasn't enough because the brittish Press and Politicians rather blamed all their issues on the EU, no matter if the EU had anything to do with it or not.
Why should the EU grant the UK so much more than any other "trade partner"?
I would be really interested in an actual answer to this, that doesn't just come down to: "The EU naturally should break its core rules because the UK is the UK and if the EU doesn't the UK will blame the EU for being spitefull."
Because strangely, no one in the EU actually cares how the british tabloids and Boris want to sell this.
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On July 20 2020 16:18 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 16:14 sharkie wrote:On July 20 2020 07:07 GreenHorizons wrote:What things? Did you watch the video? GH has a good point here. When you post a video, it is your duty to give us a summary about what you think is interesting in that video. The reason for this is twofold: A lot of people read the forum in a situation where they can read text, but can't/don't want to watch a video with sound (like at work, for example) And secondly, it takes a lot less effort to post a link to a video then watching a video. This leads to a degenerate discussion where everyone just posts videos and demands that other people watch them and somehow extracts their point from them, and no discussion happens. Edit: Also see the mod note at the top.
Ok fair enough:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-53463242/china-s-ambassador-challenged-on-treatment-of-uighurs
This video shows a BBC interview with the Chinese ambassador in the UK asking him about video footage where dozens of Uighurs are blindfolded and led to trains. And the ambassador keeps avoiding to answer the question and talks about how Western intelligence cannot be trusted and how the OFFICIAL policy of China is in favour of equal rights of all ethnicity. But obviously China cannot control everything and single cases can happen.
The BBC presenter is actually comparing it to Nazi-Germany.
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I saw the drone video, it's disturbing there's no question about this. However, saying its uyghurs being deported needs backup that I didnt see afaict (I didn't go for research on this topic so if they are, I'll be more than please to see them).
There's some shit happening with uyghurs, there's no doubt about this, but that's not a reason to accept all documents as proof without digging.
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On July 20 2020 08:53 MoltkeWarding wrote:
I am looking at these words historically, not in terms of definitions. You can define that word however you want, but for me it is more interesting how things got that way in certain languages. "Total" control is obviously an impossibility. At worst, governments control as many aspects of their subjects lives as they can. But originally, that word was used to describe Italian "fascism." Far from "total" control of anyone's life. There were many "freedoms" under the old Fascist government which are not even heard of today. And then came National Socialism and Communism.
What freedoms do you have in mind?
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On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:On July 18 2020 04:33 Nouar wrote:
Still, these kind of sanctions when there is no PROOF that Huawei hardware is rigged is over-the-top. The USA just threatened sanctions on TSMC (Taiwanese company) if they were to provide processors to Huawei.
Now, if there was proof, I'd argue differently. For now it just seems like a commercial war to push the US of A's own equipment to me. Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here. We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this? Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted. I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking? Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place.
I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK.
People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem.
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EPT
