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Edit Admin
The privacy question is tricky. Should people have the right to trade their "profile" in exchange for "free" Facebook and Google? If it's made illegal, isn't that taking away rights?
Regarding sinophobia - sorry that's just the type of naive stuff which drives people crazy and makes them vote for trump. The idea that being suspicious of the Chinese communist party, is somehow racist, is stupid. (Not that I expect professionalism from the new administration 🤣) CCP is the enemy of Chinese people, enemy of Americans and the USA as a whole, and in fact, it's the enemy of the world.
But yes, i agree with the main point of the article. Sometimes I hear conspiracy theories and they're so outlandish, that is almost like they tried hard to contort logic to come up with them. My favorite one, bar none, is flat earth. It is entertaining and very educational to watch flat earth debunk videos. My guilty pleasure 🤣
Admin
Why would you think the CCP is an enemy of anyone? What precisely have they done to deserve this label? I am genuinely curious.
I mean yes, there was their involvement in Korea, the conquest of Tibet and the war with Vietnam in the 70's. But that's it. For the last 50 odd years China has been doing nothing but peacefully trading and expanding its economic reach. And the CCP has been the peaceful head of all this.
Compare this to OTAN and Russia both whose list of sins involve in no particular order invading and bombing sovereign nations in violation of UN charters, carving out new countries in Europe on a whim using military force, using sanctions to cripple countries they dislike resulting in humanitarian disasters, supporting and actively instigating Jihadist movements, civil wars, revolutions and coups, fighting proxy wars in Africa and Asia, fighting proxy wars in Europe (seriously, bloody Europe. This is supposed to be a safe continent not a colonial battleground!) etc.
Frankly, China and the CCP have are the one and only major power in the last century that has NOT engaged in world raping colonialism and imperialism. So how are they the enemy of anyone?
Admin
Whilst every social media company may be in business to spy on users and sell eyeballs to advertises, not every social media system does. Try Mastodon for example.
Admin
My favourite is the one where "planes don't need fuel to stay in the air, just for take off and landing".
Sir George Cayley would be turning in his grave...
Admin
My favourite is the one where "planes don't need fuel to stay in the air, just for take off and landing".
Sir George Cayley would be turning in his grave...
Edit Admin
I personally find it funny, that it's a big deal in the US. The EU-US privacy shield treaty died years ago, because the US has laws that not only violates the privacy of EU citizens but also those of it's own citizen. So in other words, they ain't any better than China in that regard, just less technically sophisticated. And if you don't believe me, you just have to go to China and see how fast you get excepted as a foreigner from local rules without doing anything, just because they identify you with super neat pattern matching after a while.
Now sorry, if you care about privacy then the EU is the only block in the world that provides a somewhat working framework that doesn't violate the right to privacy. Somewhat because GDPR, DSA, DMA are also far from perfect and the practical control is deeply flawed. But at least there is something while all other countries have their fingers deep in the surveillance business and don't even hide it in laws or application.
Admin
Off the top of my head: broken promises in Hongkong, treatment of Uyghurs, continued elimination of Tibetan culture, 1989 Tiananmen massacre, expansion in the China sea. Lemme guess, those are all internal matters, right? So if I annex some country, none of what goes on in there is anybody else's business?
Edit Admin
Considering that a fair number of articles on this site are because management didn't listen to their experts, I'm surprised that anyone here needs to be told this.
Edit Admin
Add to that the debt entrapment and neo colonialism in Africa and some other regions; support for various evil regimes around the world, like Iran, north Korea, etc; flagrant theft of IP and unfair trade practices, etc.
Russia is terrible, too. NATO is up and down, but overall, it's a force for good.
The CCP is the enemy of the world.
Addendum 2025-01-21 08:54: CCP treats the han Chinese like crap, too. I guess it's not a bad for them as it is for Tibetans and Uyghurs, but it's still very very bad.
Edit Admin
Wait, is that a part of the flat earth ideology i missed? Or it's a different idea altogether? What are they getting at, air resistance doesn't exist? I need more details 🤣
Addendum 2025-01-21 09:00: ChatGPT to the rescue: "A fringe belief sometimes referred to as the “Jet Fuel Hoax” (or “Airplane Fuel Hoax”) claims that airplanes do not actually need fuel to remain aloft—only to taxi, take off, and land. Proponents argue that planes use hidden or suppressed technology (like free energy, antigravity, or some kind of air compressor system) to stay airborne, and that the aviation industry perpetuates a conspiracy to hide this “fact.” "
Up until now, I thought flat earth was the dumbest idea, but this one is a strong contender!!!
Admin
What happens between a country and its citizens is of no concern to any third party. Arguments to the opposite are the root of all evil in world politics as they are the eternal excuse used by imperialists to justify their policy of pillage as somehow being good for the conquered. Only if they are abandoned will we ever have world peace.
As to what you mentioned, out of all of those the only external matter, and therefore the only one worthy of consideration, is the part where they are making tiny islands in the sea to expand their control. Which, fair enough, is something of a dick move. But than again, so is setting the middle east on fire. Or feeding a proxy war in Europe. Or invading and tearing off pieces of sovereign countries, IN BLOODY EUROPE. And last time I checked only one side of that equation involves feeding people to the slaughterhouse of modern industrial war.
My point is, that frankly China is the LEAST of all the evil empires on the world today. And that it is deeply hypocritical of any of its piers, especially america to be judging it. Let he who has no sin cast the first stone and all that. Only in this case, the crowd throwing stones is made of literal demons.
Admin
I am surprised they didn't just claim aircraft glide most of the way. I mean, they don't, but it's far more plausible than any of what you cited.
Admin
I think you've missed the mark on conspiracy theories. While what you said is true, in my view conspiracy theories are popular specifically because - as you note - the experts are not trustworthy.
I am not sure why I have never seen this theory proposed, but it seems obvious to me that NASA directly caused the resurgence in Flat Earth conspiracies by putting out "fake" photos of the Earth every year. What people expect is that a satellite far enough away took a photo of the Earth as a whole, but instead the photos are all collages and artistic renderings that don't even look similar from year to year. Insisting that they are a "photo of the Earth" is absolutely not true. Doubling down on this lie is insane. This is the kind of shit that makes people lose trust in experts, when they not only lie, but double down on a very silly lie. This only gets dumber when the "experts" are on record saying one thing and later say another, and are not willing to explain why they changed their mind or even entertain the idea that they did so.
The average person does not decide whether the Earth is flat or not by weighing all the evidence. It's true that most people don't know how things work, and why should they? Unfortunately, I believe this sort of exploitation/capture of experts is simply the nature of mature systems.
Edit Admin
This can be summed up as "Be aware of (and recognise) your own ignorance."
Admin
A little humility goes a long way.
Admin
But also be aware that a) it's not a theory when they openly discuss on video with the right people, or documents; b) some people have a lot to gain in creating the right narrative, no matter how self-contradictory and evidence free it is.
I'm not elaborating because I don't have time to die in those mountains on the wrong place. Great article in general, though, but it's going to keep getting worse until it craters.
Edit Admin
That's perhaps true if the government is democratically elected, the citizens get what they asked for. But if an autocracy is violating the human rights of their citizens, they deserve the concern of the rest of the world.
Everyone deserves basic human rights -- there's a limit to cultural relativism. Some things, like genocide, should be unthinkable. You can't excuse the Uyghur situation as "That's just China being China".
Saying that it's not our business is like saying twe should look away if a parent is committing child (or elder) abuse -- it's a family matter.
Edit Admin
1, regarding "internal affairs", that's not true - bad internal policies inevitably lead to crises, which is often addressed by a foreign intervention. See russia and its attack on Ukraine. That's on top of the fact that just from morality perspective, CCP is absolutely evil and we shouldn't just "brush that under the rug" because it's internal. That actually is racist - basically, it's like saying, yeah, CCP oppresses and murders the Chinese, but who cares about those, AMIRITE? Sorry, no.
2, "But than again, so is setting the middle east on fire." how is that the "west's" fault? Have you read anything about the history of Jews being exiled multiple times through millenia? Or about the history of Islam, and its barbaric conquest and internal fighting?
3, "Or feeding a proxy war in Europe. Or invading and tearing off pieces of sovereign countries, IN BLOODY EUROPE." What are you even talking about here?
"China is the LEAST of all the evil empires on the world today" You are either completely ignorant about world affairs, or are somehow financially motivated to spew pro-CCP propaganda.
Admin
Really? You really think that anything a government does inside its own borders should be ignored by outsiders? As much as I hate to go to this extreme example, you're saying that there are no examples in, say, the 1930s, between a government and its citizens which might have been worthy of outside intervention?
Edit Admin
Applying live electricity to somebody's genitals is evil no matter whether they are your citizen or not.
When you argue that internal affairs should be of no concern to us because
you are arguing we should sit by and let people suffer horrifically because somebody in the past did something bad. That doesn't wash. In fact it's moral cowardice.
That said, we have to let China be because there is nothing else we can do that doesn't involve things like world wars or armageddon.
Edit Admin
Bizarrely, I have more confidence that the Chinese government will not do anything bad with my private information than I do that Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk will, even though the Chinese government is far from benevolent.
I do not understand how Americans can take their distrust of government to unhealthy extremes and yet have such a blind spot where their corporations are concerned.
Edit Admin
When it comes to corporations, people understand what they want and "how it works": corporations want money, so in the case of big tech, it's tailored advertising, etc.
Do I wish that people cared more about their privacy? Yes, of course. But, most people don't - they're fine getting targeted ads and all that, in exchange for "free" Gmail etc.
Now, I do think US needs more laws around mandatory disclosure; there are some regulations, but it becomes "fine print" which most people don't read before accepting, and it should be made more explicit.
Edit Admin
The CPP just had it's easy of doing things in a more indirect, sneaky way. Take colonialism. They don't do it directly, they do it economically over a long agenda timeline such as the Belt and Road Initiative which is locking down countries in their grasp in exchange for economical "favors". As for not invading countries, I think Tibet and Hong Kong would differ on that. Again it's more of a passive aggressive long term approach. And it's clearly working with Hong Kong and the entire South Sea.
Edit Admin
I'd argue trust in experts has never been there, since the dawn of humanity. Many times through history, science has been placed in the background when not convenient, and often silenced entirely when it did not align with what the controlling elite desired.
It's hard to trust experts as, for people who don't know better, there's no difference between someone who actually knows what they are taking about, and some fraud who just happens to be charismatic -- and often the former person will be incomprehensible whereas the fraud one will know how to make an appealing discourse.
Admin
The only thing I can say is welcome to the beginning of the end.
Admin
The reference to conspiracies reminds me of this quote:
“Once you’re crazy and know nothing about numbers, the chances of finding something psychotic and hateful in a scrabble factory explosion are hovering just around 100%.”
Admin
"what good is it to listen to experts if it doesn't lead to good outcomes?"
I don't think that's the problem. There were, and are, plenty of experts warning us to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions or reduce waste or do something to ensure animals don't go extinct. The problem is that governments don't listen to those experts, and the people don't vote for people that do (although you can't really blame them there, there are very few in government who do the right thing).
Edit Admin
Blaming shadowy conspiracies for things is one small step up from blaming them on the gods. But it amounts to the same thing.