General News Discussion Thread

[Zerses]

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/04/biden-yemen-war-lgbtq-rights-465910

Biden's first major foreign policy speech. This is somewhat ironic given the fact that Biden himself supported the Saudis during the Obama administration, at which time he didn't bother to speak out against, not even on arms sales. Almost a quarter of a million people have died in Yemen's war and it literally took almost 7 years to realize that logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi regime has only aggravated the humanitarian crisis in the country. I wonder if he's going to do the same here in Venezuela at some point.

On arm sales,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-freezes-u-s-arms-sales-to-saudi-arabia-uae-11611773191

"U.S. officials said it isn’t unusual for a new administration to review arms sales approved by a predecessor, and that despite the pause, many of the transactions are likely to ultimately go forward."

Well, they are certainly trying to limit their role in some way.

 

[lilyhollow]

https://theintercept.com/2021/02/06/ice-covid-threat-asylum-deportation/

 

[Zerses]

A few people have asked me about the situation in Venezuela. These reports may serve as good information to those who are not familiar with the situation, more specifically on sanctions implemented by the US, which have only exacerbated the crisis in the country and have proven to be of no help whatsoever, as those who have nothing to do with politics end up being the most affected. Can't expect much from Biden's foreign policy, but I hope they make the best decisions and try to avoid interventionism this time. Here's a recent US GAO report on the impact of US sanctions:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1358850198760542208

Also, today ended the visit of a UN human rights expert here in Venezuela, who was sent by the UN Human Rights Office itself, here's what she said on the situation: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26749&LangID=E

Preliminary findings: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26747&LangID=E

 

[BP]

Sorry for bumping this thread I just really wanted to post this news source. I'm well aware this may be biased coverage but because the Olympics just ended i figured I would show it.

Basically a lot of Chinese outlets are upset on the way different countries politicized the Olympics in one way or another.

 

[lilyhollow]

that is not news, that is a far right youtube channel completely dedicated to shitting on china/communism in the most sensationalist way possible. it looks no different from trump shit

like...... come on

 

[BP]

that is not news, that is a far right youtube channel completely dedicated to shitting on china/communism in the most sensationalist way possible. it looks no different from trump shit

Yea but its shitting on China so like I enjoy it.

 

[lilyhollow]

?

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

?

Don't play stupid, that's cherry picking gaslighting, check other sources

You can't just associate criticism with groups of people You don't like to encourage infighting, that's actual bullshit

 

[TheMantyke]

This is veering pretty off topic but I want to address this. I suppose it’s somewhat in line with the rest of the thread as a warning to make sure you’re not just consuming news through YT videos.

Yea but its shitting on China so like I enjoy it.

I would warn you to be very careful with how you consume this sort of thing. The Chinese government is an abhorrent authoritarian nightmare state absolutely deserving of condemnation for its atrocities. I’d also agree with the general sentiment that these horrors (along with lots of non-China related fucked up shit) doesn’t get as talked about as it should thanks to corporate interests.

A random YouTube channel sharing a clip of something embarrassing an athlete did doesn’t really do the reasons to oppose the Chinese government justice. Instead, it mostly just condenses it into a bite sized piece of culture war with a very agreeable perspective that the CCP has done and is doing some awful stuff. That doesn’t seem too bad on a surface level, but then this channel is also pushing some wild shit like what lilyhollow screencapped. Comparing the every day boot stomping the people of north korea suffer to not being able to say the n-word without social repercussions or whatever anti feminism crap it’s pushing is such horse shit.

It’s a pipeline to make people wandering with the algorithms more agreeable with far right talking points, just barely veiled behind some captivating general sentiment they’re talking about without much genuine depth. This is the sort of thing that lead gamergate to solidifying the alt right back a half decade ago. It’s dangerous and leads to some nasty radicalization.

Hateful people will use a spoon of relatablility to make people swallow some absolute doozies of horrid beliefs. I have had people close to me go from cheering on the Gawker law suits to championing Holocaust denial through these sorts of skin level outrage youtube rabbit holes.

Snip

Condemning a skewed source of information about china’s reaction to something is not excusing the CCP in any capacity. I don’t get where your post came from

 

[BP]

random YouTube channel sharing a clip of something embarrassing an athlete did doesn’t really do the reasons to oppose the Chinese government justice

The YouTube video is not about Chinese athletes at all. It's about the Chinese government and its outlets responding to other media outlets sbout how they've "politizied" the Olympic games. The athletes in the clip are great and while the thumbnail may be misleading it isn't what the video is about. I would recommend watching the video. I do appreciate your in depth response however as it was a good and legitimately insightful read.

 

[MrHands]

The US pulls out of Afghanistan and they collapse... almost immediately.

Honestly fuck it. We've been there for 20 years and offered them every possible opportunity to be a functioning nation. The Afghan soldiers abandoned their position to allow the Taliban in. They made their choice. Hope it works out for them.

Maybe now we can spend this money on a national healthcare system?

 

[DISTROBRO]

Hope the Taliban burns the Afghan poppy fields
Biggest and main source of heroin on the planet
Maybe that's why there were so many military interventions?

 

[Ace Emerald]

The US pulls out of Afghanistan and they collapse... almost immediately.

Honestly fuck it. We've been there for 20 years and offered them every possible opportunity to be a functioning nation. The Afghan soldiers abandoned their position to allow the Taliban in. They made their choice. Hope it works out for them.

Maybe now we can spend this money on a national healthcare system?

Yeah those Taliban are bad news, I wonder how they got their start? Oh yeah.....

Honestly, this entire situation is just tragic. The cold war set the entire Middle East back 1000 years, and we've spent the last 30 years fucking around and doing nothing to actually help people. For the record, I think it's really messed up to blame the Afghan forces for folding. They were never going to win without US support, and they were offered mercy to surrender. I guess I'm glad we're no longer throwing money down the drain to drone strike hospitals, but I'm just depressed at how meaningless it all was.

 

[DISTROBRO]

For the record, I think it's really messed up to blame the Afghan forces for folding.

"The true number of soldiers was likely way over inflated because generals would basically claim the wages for 'ghost' soldiers that didn't exist and that this has been going on for years which means that while the Afghan army was supposedly something like 300,000 men, it was actually way way smaller and all that's happened is that all those US supplied weapons are now in Taliban hands.
Corruption in the regime meant money stopped flowing to the police and enlisted men about six months ago and apparently no one was telling the US."
Source (1:23)

 

[MrHands]

Yeah those Taliban are bad news, I wonder how they got their start? Oh yeah.....

That's kind of oversimplifying global politics. The US-Saudi-Pakistan-supported Mujahideen fought the Soviets who were, at the time, a much larger global obstacle than a handful of foreign fighters. The Mujahideen were actually a minority group following the Soviet withdrawal and didn't become the Taliban until 1994 (5 years after the Soviets left). The following civil war eventually led to a Taliban victory. The Taliban allowed al-Qaeda to use its training camps despite not officially working together. tl;dr 9/11 happened and the US demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden. The Taliban actually accepted this request, but required he be tried in a "neutral" Afghan court which obviously the US refused. NATO / the UN sided with the US and the invasion began. The Taliban was crushed, al-Qaeda leadership virtually annihilated, and then... we were left with a leaderless Afghanistan. So we helped form a government, funded their police and army, and helped change national laws to allow women to be educated and so on. For 20 fucking years we held their hand waiting for them to walk on their own. But unfortunately ideals are stronger than bullets and bombs. The Afghans never took their independence seriously and when the Taliban tried to come back they let it happen.

But simplifying the whole situation as "the US funded the Taliban LOL" kind of misses the several decades of dominoes that had to fall to lead us to where we are.

For the record, I think it's really messed up to blame the Afghan forces for folding. They were never going to win without US support, and they were offered mercy to surrender.

Uhh, no. The Afghan security force was trained and equipped by the US and NATO. We poured hundreds of billions into giving them every possible opportunity to hold their country together. They have an air force. They have tanks. They have thousands of armored vehicles. They (were) 300,000 strong against the much more lightly armed and 60,000 strong Taliban. They were also fighting on the defense which should have offered them every possible advantage.

And yet they didn't fire a single shot. They let the Taliban in and surrendered immediately. They chose this. To them the Taliban taking over is an acceptable fate. Their sisters and mothers living under Shari'ah law was not worth fighting against. Their daughters never getting an education was not worth fighting for. Their brothers and sons having no access to vaccines, internet, or freedom of any modern form was not worth fighting for.

The Taliban was outnumbered, outgunned, and still the Afghan army just gave them the country. They chose their fate. I hope the 20 years of western education their children were given will one day lead to modernization of the country but for now it seems they got what they wanted all along. I feel bad for the victims but it's hard to feel bad for a nation that doesn't want to protect itself even when given decades of opportunities to do so.

 

[faint]

that is not news, that is a far right youtube channel completely dedicated to shitting on china/communism in the most sensationalist way possible. it looks no different from trump shit

View attachment 364773




View attachment 364771



like...... come on

wrt to the first image, if you showed me that and asked me to identify the political alignment of the group that posted it, I would not guess it was from the far right. they are very clearly directing the blame at the CCP and not Chinese people or communism as a whole. it's extremely concerning to me that online "leftists" have turned criticism of China into a modern red scare. you can be critical of the CCP, and should be, while still being an advocate for progressive causes and socialism/communism. the Chinese government without a doubt withheld information on COVID until it was too late. was it created in a lab as a bioweapon? no, but the government still failed to do their job in protecting their own citizens and others abroad.

 

[Ace Emerald]

But simplifying the whole situation as "the US funded the Taliban LOL" kind of misses the several decades of dominoes that had to fall to lead us to where we are.

...


The Taliban was outnumbered, outgunned, and still the Afghan army just gave them the country. They chose their fate. I hope the 20 years of western education their children were given will one day lead to modernization of the country but for now it seems they got what they wanted all along. I feel bad for the victims but it's hard to feel bad for a nation that doesn't want to protect itself even when given decades of opportunities to do so.

So you want to call me out for over simplifying, but then proceed to write a paragraph trivializing a complicated civil conflict? Yeah, I'm sure it was that simple, the US trained troops were just that cowardly, or bad, or stupid. Seriously, I don't know how you could feel comfortable jumping to those conclusions, much less concluding "they deserve it" or whatever. The lack of empathy is astounding.

 

[lilyhollow]

wrt to the first image, if you showed me that and asked me to identify the political alignment of the group that posted it, I would not guess it was from the far right.

exactly. it is their intent that people who consider themselves left/liberal read this sort of criticism as coming from a 'reasonable' place, and not just some fucked up guy who really hates china/communism. eventually they get to the point where they actually take seriously a youtube channel that is 100% dedicated to only shitting on china, for literally every video apparently? and to apparently see that as normal. themantyke pretty much covered this idea already though

the government still failed to do their job in protecting their own citizens and others abroad.

this is very divorced from reality and i'm unsure how to respond

 

[az]

"the government still failed to do their job in protecting their own citizens and others abroad."

this is very divorced from reality and i'm unsure how to respond

care to clarify this?

 

[lilyhollow]

It's unfortunate to me that people are allowed to say/imply stuff like "the us tried to help afghanistan and the terror it wreaks across the world is actually all benevolent. afghanistan is an embarrassment for not taking advantage of such amazing gracious help, and i dont really have sympathy for them." mindbogglingly, that really is treated as okay, but if someone says "hm maybe there should be a rule against such evil statements so we can finally handle people who regularly imply bloodthirsty things like that through the rules themselves instead of being constrained to 'debating' them," that's some huge no-no. The rules are such that I could say some unbelievably diabolical stuff and just totally get away with it. there really should be an open place to discuss this kind of thing bc the last time i discussed this with a mod, it went 'fine' but also went 'nowhere'

care to clarify this?

China's response has been extremely strong, so the original statement is the opposite of true. More than that: capitalist countries, even rich ones with tons of resources like the US, have largely failed to protect their own citizens to an enormous level. It is actually scary to me that there are people who do not acknowledge this. So not only is it the opposite of true to say that China failed to protect people, it is also a bizarre rejection/reversal of the very apparent reality we all have in front of us.

The one thing that I think is true about the criticism of China's covid response is that "there were some flaws in the initial response." I don't doubt that! It is a very difficult position to be in; that there would be mistakes is not that surprising. But whenever there's a small grain of truth, of course westerners who are obsessed with criticizing china will treat it like precious gold, as it's an opportunity to elevate it, exaggerate it, and reinterpret it in any way they please.

So in China's initial response, if they tried to stop people from posting misinformation about the virus on social media, that was "cracking down on whisteblowers."

If they took the time to go through proper channels when alerting others of the existence/nature of the virus, that one's easy, that's "suppressing information."

We've seen this all the time after the initial response, too. If there's a small outbreak, it's treated as if there's pure chaos over there. If they give vaccines to other countries, it's supposedly just a power move. And of course shit like this lol.

It's quite difficult, due to this constant lying and exaggeration, to fully understand how well China responded to the virus in the beginning. What is exceedingly clear is that the US would have done infinitely worse. There is ample evidence of this, it should really be obvious to everyone imo. But nobody cares because they've latched onto the gimmick idea that China totally botched things because they are psychotically evil, and also somehow extremely concerned about saving their people's lives, uh, because they're authoritarian which makes them even more evil I guess? People here seem to just believe it all as a matter of course. Then they get to call it the "Chin-uhhhh I mean CCP Virus" and pretend that it's not just their own racist/anti-communist fears coming out

 

[faint]

China's response has been extremely strong, so the original statement is the opposite of true. More than that: capitalist countries, even rich ones with tons of resources like the US, have largely failed to protect their own citizens to an enormous level. It is actually scary to me that there are people who do not acknowledge this. So not only is it the opposite of true to say that China failed to protect people, it is also a bizarre rejection/reversal of the very apparent reality we all have in front of us.

okay but nobody said the US or other capitalist nations did better

It's quite difficult, due to this constant lying and exaggeration, to fully understand how well China responded to the virus in the beginning. What is exceedingly clear is that the US would have done infinitely worse.

so which is it? it sounds more like you want to deflect any criticism of China to how the US responded to the virus. both countries could have failed in their response to the virus and my statement wouldn't be untrue. i apologize that a leading authoritarian government, known for severe human rights violations, is not at the top of my "trusted sources" list. you are quick to call any media response to China an exaggeration while simultaneously saying it's difficult to know the truth because of a lack of credible information. we are never going to get a credible investigation into things like the origin of the virus because of China. that is just a fact. if China truly cared about how to prevent this from happening again, which every country in the world would want, they would be fine with an independent investigation not directly overseen by the very country that obfuscated the initial reports. if you want to believe anyone calling for that information is racist or anti-communist, that's on you.

 

[lilyhollow]

okay but nobody said the US or other capitalist nations did better

And yet here you are, ultimately defending the idea of calling covid the "CCP virus."

 

[faint]

And yet here you are, ultimately defending the idea of calling covid the "CCP virus."

???

Wait hold on that was actually literally you though! youre directly defending that in this post right here! I didn't even notice that until just now oh my god ;_;

respectfully, i think you completely missed my point

 

[lilyhollow]

Wait hold on that was actually literally you though! youre directly defending that in this post right here! I didn't even notice that until just now oh my god ;_;

edit: i'll go ahead and let others judge that for themselves i guess!

 

[MrHands]

Wait hold on that was actually literally you though! youre directly defending that in this post right here! I didn't even notice that until just now oh my god ;_;

edit: i'll go ahead and let others judge that for themselves i guess!

Yeah most people have already figured out that the Chinese govt is objectively awful. Numerous human right abuses, political manipulation, tons of border conflicts etc. Deflecting to bUt tHe Us dId tHiS doesn't change the fact that China has millions of people in camps right now, hid the truth about Covid until it was a global pandemic, and is threatening to militarily absorb Taiwan. Or maybe you can talk about their rampant censorship, weird social credit system, crackdown on human rights activists, aggressive treatment of Tibet, tiananmen square massacre, and Hong Kong protest violence. This is only a fraction of what they've done just in the past few decades.

You can, rightfully so, call attention to US issues but that doesn't change the fact that the Chinese government is horrible.