I love the “60 Minutes” clip (I.e. free advertisement) of the “cheap autonomous drones.” Sooo impressive—a “swarm” of four drones attack a defenseless unarmored truck parked in the middle of an open field on a sunny day.
Why is it we never see propaganda for military equipment that feature their use in real world combat situations in which the air is filled with dust and smoke and aerosolized blood and body parts, and while the enemy is moving and evading and actually returning fire with automatic weapons and guided anti-drone missiles?
And, of course, by the time the Aussies get their “cheap autonomous drones” designed (and probably built in Taiwan by subcontractors), the Chinese military will already have either stolen the plans or will have already used their superior AI to design and build anti-cheap-autonomous-drone (ACAD) technologies. Or, even more likely, those clever Chinese Communist invaders will simply bring their best skeet shooters to the Battle of Canberra.
Exactly. "Battle tested" is the claim of weapons companies such as Elbit Systems, which sacrificial protestors here in the UK have been working to close down. But do you trust this information from me, Mr McClavin? Have you fully explored all my background and that of Palestine Action?
"Palestine Action have this morning shut down the Bristol Headquarters of Israel’s largest arms company, preventing operations at a key Elbit hub.
The site is being occupied by activists who have scaled the building and are currently on the roof. Other activists have used fire-extinguishers to cover the building in blood-red paint, signifying the Palestinian bloodshed from which Elbit profits.
Today’s action falls on the anniversary of the signing of the Balfour declaration, with Britain pledging support on November 2nd, 1917 for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people .. establishment of what became the Israeli state on Palestinian land
This occupation – as with all other Palestine Action actions – is being taken to end the ongoing British complicity in Israeli apartheid, which begun with the signing of the Balfour declaration."
Britain bears an especially heavy responsibility for their duplicitous and unjust midwifery of Israel.
I feel I understand the situation in Palestine much more completely than I do China. Having many of the same voices presume to inform me regarding China while shamelessly misleading me regarding Palestine gives me pause from jumping on their "Hey, let's go to war with China!" bandwagon.
I regard myself as confused and ill-informed regarding China. Some voices on the Left offer the Chinese government uncritical praise. Others of a Trotskyist bent such as WSWS have long memories and see it as an utterly repressive, Stalinist regime. I suspect the truth lies between. The popularity of the government is remarkably high and consistent - if we are to believe the few polls.
My gf is Russian and so we have access to Russian television here in the States by way of a German cable service. Their coverage of America is not incorrect, but as you might expect, lacks balance. I trust that this situation is mirrored here for the exact same ax-grinding reasons.
The left famously idolized the Soviet Union as a workers' paradise during the 30s. This was understandable in the early years as the depression spectacularly exposed Capitalism's failures.
I would be floored if a huge country with billions people DIDN'T have numerous shortcomings. But. And there's always a but. The democrats came into office lying about measly $2000 checks, but I'm supposed to follow a Pompeo-holdover sludge like Antony Blinken regarding China? No, thanks. Let's find areas of common interest and let the warmongers go hungry for once.
In short, let's address our enemies in Washington, London, Canberra, and Tel Aviv before worrying about the ones in Beijing.
I appreciate the reference, but after a lifetime in the States I've ingested enough Zionism through simple osmosis to last a lifetime without reading one more historical accounting of it.
I was surprised to discover that Jews comprise less than 3% of the American population, in seeming contradiction to the pivotal role that Israel is presented as occupying in the national political zeitgeist. I had assumed that number to be much higher, until I realized that politicians respond more to donations than to populations, combined with the fact that far from all Zionists are Jewish, while, contrary to the propaganda, not all Jews are Zionists.
That this topic represents a political third rail is reason enough to tear into it; justice, in its truest form, another.
They don't realize. China is WAY ahead of the west on drone tech. WAY ahead. Anything that works well for Oz will work vastly better for China. So the Ozzies bring a thousand drones to the battlefield. Cool. China brings 10,000. And they work better.
There are three kinds of enemies: those that are real; those that are profitable; and those who pretend to be on your side but are actually on their own side. I'm leaning heavily toward the latter two in this instance.
"Liberal democracy". Hilarious. It's looking increasingly like Australia won't even be worth saving even if China does invade. And that's laughable too. Australia's government would more than likely wave the PLA through Sydney harbour.
I know that it's not in China's interest to hit San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Sidney, all cities demographically on the way to being a part of Asia. I just hope China forgets the USA slaughters and enslaves inside its border on a massive scale, and kills it's own citizens without judicial review at whim even in other legal jurisdictions. It's the China based assets of the Western Elites that held back their servants in Uncle Sam MIC-IMATT from full throated flinging of expensive, profitable weapons. However, Industrialists in the MIC-IMATT are learning from their own masters in Wall Street/London that they can get ten dollars for one from the Fed if they simply blow up all their plants. https://youtu.be/Ghx0sq_gXK4
I expect the American urge to fling nuke will only grow. with or without OZ, so why become a target?
What a world of metaphor, when "poking the panda" equals "screwing the pooch."
The worry is that US hegemony remains dependent on war tech made in Taiwan. The US could get this done in Carolina, too, but there's a learning curve and labor problems.
Congress diversifies weapons production to different congressional districts to assure local support as a jobs program. It's actually pretty clever, if you take the wasteful moral horror out of it.
Sounds like Molan's positions with the Lowy Institute and Australian Strategic Policy Institute are secure. Does 60 Minutes Australia have a relationship with Defendtex?
Molan repeatedly asserts that Australia is a "liberal democracy." Recent events prove him wrong.
True, though an honest appraisal would surely conclude Australia is both more liberal and more democratic than is China. After all, how many journalists does Australia have in prison today? China has, according to Reporters sans frontières, 47.
You take Reporters sans frontières at face value given the evidence that virtually all Western corporate media are corrupted by elite globalist money? Is not Julian Assange in prison? Is not Serena Shim dead along with several non-embedded journalists killed during the Iraq War? Daniel Dumbrill is far more credible than 60 Minutes Australia or Reporters sans frontières.
"You take Reporters sans frontières at face value"
From the RSF website today: "@RSF_inter
06/28/2021
As Julian Assange's 50th birthday approaches, I'm joining the call to #FreeAssange. The case against him should be dropped and he should be immediately released. Let this be the last birthday he spends in prison! #HappyBirthdayAssange"
Is that false as well? I certainly don't agree with everything RSF claims. But there are numerous other organisations with evidence showing that China routinely imprisons journalists and bloggers who reveal what the government wants kept secret. The Committee to Protect Journalists, for example:
"In its annual global survey, the Committee to Protect Journalists found at least 274 journalists in jail in relation to their work on December 1, 2020, exceeding the high of 272 in 2016. China, which arrested several journalists for their coverage of the pandemic, was the world’s worst jailer for the second year in a row. It was followed by Turkey, which continues to try journalists free on parole and arrest new ones; Egypt, which went to great lengths to keep custody of journalists not convicted of any crime; and Saudi Arabia...
... Within the United States, no journalists were jailed at the time of CPJ’s prison census, but an unprecedented 110 journalists were arrested or criminally charged in 2020 and around 300 were assaulted, the majority by law enforcement."
Your cynicism reminds me of something CS Lewis once wrote about people who claim to see through everything eventually see nothing at all. In your rightful desire to support Mr Assange and to expose the egregious state crimes of Australia, USA and the UK, you run the risk of ignoring the often-equal or worse crimes of other governments. It's entirely possible to condemn repression wherever it occurs.
Funny, I don't recall ever writing that *nothing* claimed by RSF (or HRW or AI or CPJ etc) was ever true. What I suggested is that no such Western NGOs should be taken at face value without question. What they claim should always be evaluated based on their inherent biases and incentives, their past record of truthfulness or falsity, alternative on-the-ground sources from within the country in question, whether what they reveal is an "admission against interest," etc. Your default appears to be to believe everything you read in corporate media unless proven otherwise. Perhaps the following link will help: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/gell-mann-amnesia-dissonance-and
You and I believe exactly the same, only that I apply that principle also to state propaganda by the governments of China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey et al. Are you still claiming that those governments are not imprisoning journalists, and in conditions likely to be much worse than the vile conditions being endured by Mr Assange right this moment?
There is only so much we as ordinary citizens can do to check if information is true. There is a danger that you will pass into the complete cynicism of anti-vaxxers, climate science deniers and so forth.
Because China is such a repressive state, there is not the same level of information available from relatively objective sources. The Chinese government routinely closes down parts of the internet to avoid socially-divisive or politically-embarrassing news or debates. Are you denying this? For example, perhaps this is completely untrue:
"Former world No 1 tennis star Naomi Osaka has joined the growing calls for answers on the whereabouts of Chinese player Peng Shuai, who has not been heard from publicly since she accused the country’s former vice premier of sexually assaulting her... Peng’s post went viral on Chinese social media, despite it being taken down by censors within minutes. Subsequent posts and reactions, even keywords such as “tennis”, also appeared to be blocked, and numerous references to Peng were scrubbed from China’s internet."
I have little idea what's going on in "China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey et al," and don't pretend to know based on reports in Imperial media. This is especially true for designated enemies like China. Our MIC and the bankers that fund the Pentagon need an enemy. Both neo-cons and neo-libs love to play that game for the MIC, and are paid well for their services at think tanks. Corporate media is also on the take through military and Big Pharma ad revenues.
I see you drink the swill of "anti-vaxxers" and "climate science deniers." I had little distrust of vaccines before 2020, but the lies the CDC, WHO, FDA and NIH told, to generate fear and panic, opened my eyes. There's nothing cynical in that or in questioning climate "science," unless of course you believe that even the dissidents are FOS.
Oh, "The Chinese government routinely closes down parts of the internet to avoid socially-divisive or politically-embarrassing news or debates?" Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't, because we surely can not trust reports in our own corporate press. But why are we throwing stones? Our own government uses the monopolies it has encouraged like Facebook, Twitter and Google (which owns YouTube) to do exactly the same thing to suppress dissent from its own narratives. Say, whatever happened to UK Channel and Del Bigtree on YouTube? Why was the NY Post crippled on Twitter just before the 2020 election? You want to talk about conditions? A few years back, a Florida inmate was scalded to death by prison guards, and the UK can't trust the US prison system not to kill Assange, just like they did Epstein, or do you believe they drove him to suicide? We have political prisoners languishing in a DC jail for misdemeanors.
You do read Caitlin's essays, don't you? The Guardian is one of the worst. So bad that some dissidents felt compelled to start the Off-Guardian to expose its lies and distortions.
I don't want to see any reporter locked up, but how many corrupt politicians, military war criminals, and CEOs does America have in prison today? What does this say about us?
My entire problem with China is that what I'm being told largely comes from those who have an unbroken track record of lying in service of a murderous global empire -- and, gee whiz, it just so happens that China supposedly wants the exact same thing.
We were told Islamic terrorists were our mortal enemies; now we're arming them in Syria. When shameless liars do what we're told to fear from our "enemies", it's time to take a step back and think, particularly when those liars have access to well-stocked bunkers.
Call me shallow, but I'm unwilling to burn to death for such people.
There is a difference, I believe, in recognizing a government's repressive nature and going to war with it, which is what the current call to arms amounts to.
We managed to navigate a detente with the Soviet Union without sugarcoating their leadership, because we recognized areas where we shared common interests. I'm not seeing much of that now. Detente may not have been a perfect arrangement, but at least we're all still around to argue its merits.
You mentioned cynicism. What is more cynical than being handed a hammer by those who conveniently only see nails, but never their own? We hear regularly from the warmongers; just where the hell are the diplomats?
Very true. We have a standoff between much of the Left which refuses to admit anything bad being done by the Chinese government because it fears being associated with the Right which is, as you rightly point out, wanting what could become a global thermonuclear war. It's possible to recognise the repression and lack of democracy in China whilst also recognising the West's hypocrisy and its own crimes.
Nice to know all the reports of totalitarian measures in Australia are just made up. With the exception of a week or two "flattening the curve," at the very start in Wuhan, I see no reports that China has resorted to such totalitarian measures.
LOL, Australia just calls them spies. Odd, isn't it that the CIA can now put it's own staff directly in the employ of US and Australian News corporations, and that's democratic shape. The penetration is nearly 100%, yet the reporters sent to China would never be CIA assets, would they. Nah, never happen.
Shakes head wondering what school graduated the dolt, so he can warn parents not to send their kids there.
Well then Mr I Know Better than everyone else, perhaps you could point me to a Chinese political comment site which is free and independent of government interference. I'm waiting...
so called journalist blocked me from her medium posts because I called her out for not addressing the scamdemic while her home country is going full Orwell....go get you covidiot booster shots....fool
I love the “60 Minutes” clip (I.e. free advertisement) of the “cheap autonomous drones.” Sooo impressive—a “swarm” of four drones attack a defenseless unarmored truck parked in the middle of an open field on a sunny day.
Why is it we never see propaganda for military equipment that feature their use in real world combat situations in which the air is filled with dust and smoke and aerosolized blood and body parts, and while the enemy is moving and evading and actually returning fire with automatic weapons and guided anti-drone missiles?
And, of course, by the time the Aussies get their “cheap autonomous drones” designed (and probably built in Taiwan by subcontractors), the Chinese military will already have either stolen the plans or will have already used their superior AI to design and build anti-cheap-autonomous-drone (ACAD) technologies. Or, even more likely, those clever Chinese Communist invaders will simply bring their best skeet shooters to the Battle of Canberra.
The Gaza Strip is where such weapons are regularly tested, usually on children, but you'll have to ask the government of Israel for the footage.
Exactly. "Battle tested" is the claim of weapons companies such as Elbit Systems, which sacrificial protestors here in the UK have been working to close down. But do you trust this information from me, Mr McClavin? Have you fully explored all my background and that of Palestine Action?
"Palestine Action have this morning shut down the Bristol Headquarters of Israel’s largest arms company, preventing operations at a key Elbit hub.
The site is being occupied by activists who have scaled the building and are currently on the roof. Other activists have used fire-extinguishers to cover the building in blood-red paint, signifying the Palestinian bloodshed from which Elbit profits.
Today’s action falls on the anniversary of the signing of the Balfour declaration, with Britain pledging support on November 2nd, 1917 for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people .. establishment of what became the Israeli state on Palestinian land
This occupation – as with all other Palestine Action actions – is being taken to end the ongoing British complicity in Israeli apartheid, which begun with the signing of the Balfour declaration."
https://palestineaction.org/bristol-balfour/
Britain bears an especially heavy responsibility for their duplicitous and unjust midwifery of Israel.
I feel I understand the situation in Palestine much more completely than I do China. Having many of the same voices presume to inform me regarding China while shamelessly misleading me regarding Palestine gives me pause from jumping on their "Hey, let's go to war with China!" bandwagon.
I regard myself as confused and ill-informed regarding China. Some voices on the Left offer the Chinese government uncritical praise. Others of a Trotskyist bent such as WSWS have long memories and see it as an utterly repressive, Stalinist regime. I suspect the truth lies between. The popularity of the government is remarkably high and consistent - if we are to believe the few polls.
My gf is Russian and so we have access to Russian television here in the States by way of a German cable service. Their coverage of America is not incorrect, but as you might expect, lacks balance. I trust that this situation is mirrored here for the exact same ax-grinding reasons.
The left famously idolized the Soviet Union as a workers' paradise during the 30s. This was understandable in the early years as the depression spectacularly exposed Capitalism's failures.
I would be floored if a huge country with billions people DIDN'T have numerous shortcomings. But. And there's always a but. The democrats came into office lying about measly $2000 checks, but I'm supposed to follow a Pompeo-holdover sludge like Antony Blinken regarding China? No, thanks. Let's find areas of common interest and let the warmongers go hungry for once.
In short, let's address our enemies in Washington, London, Canberra, and Tel Aviv before worrying about the ones in Beijing.
I appreciate the reference, but after a lifetime in the States I've ingested enough Zionism through simple osmosis to last a lifetime without reading one more historical accounting of it.
I was surprised to discover that Jews comprise less than 3% of the American population, in seeming contradiction to the pivotal role that Israel is presented as occupying in the national political zeitgeist. I had assumed that number to be much higher, until I realized that politicians respond more to donations than to populations, combined with the fact that far from all Zionists are Jewish, while, contrary to the propaganda, not all Jews are Zionists.
That this topic represents a political third rail is reason enough to tear into it; justice, in its truest form, another.
They don't realize. China is WAY ahead of the west on drone tech. WAY ahead. Anything that works well for Oz will work vastly better for China. So the Ozzies bring a thousand drones to the battlefield. Cool. China brings 10,000. And they work better.
There are three kinds of enemies: those that are real; those that are profitable; and those who pretend to be on your side but are actually on their own side. I'm leaning heavily toward the latter two in this instance.
"Liberal democracy". Hilarious. It's looking increasingly like Australia won't even be worth saving even if China does invade. And that's laughable too. Australia's government would more than likely wave the PLA through Sydney harbour.
The boom in US coal prices is a beautiful example of why it pays to have a partner feeding one
info from the State Department. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/coking-gold Australia really is being played for the sucker.
I know that it's not in China's interest to hit San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Sidney, all cities demographically on the way to being a part of Asia. I just hope China forgets the USA slaughters and enslaves inside its border on a massive scale, and kills it's own citizens without judicial review at whim even in other legal jurisdictions. It's the China based assets of the Western Elites that held back their servants in Uncle Sam MIC-IMATT from full throated flinging of expensive, profitable weapons. However, Industrialists in the MIC-IMATT are learning from their own masters in Wall Street/London that they can get ten dollars for one from the Fed if they simply blow up all their plants. https://youtu.be/Ghx0sq_gXK4
I expect the American urge to fling nuke will only grow. with or without OZ, so why become a target?
it all depends on what we the people do about the war profiteeers and their war criminal minions. the odds are 50/50.
Scary scrary shit
What a world of metaphor, when "poking the panda" equals "screwing the pooch."
The worry is that US hegemony remains dependent on war tech made in Taiwan. The US could get this done in Carolina, too, but there's a learning curve and labor problems.
Congress diversifies weapons production to different congressional districts to assure local support as a jobs program. It's actually pretty clever, if you take the wasteful moral horror out of it.
Sounds like Molan's positions with the Lowy Institute and Australian Strategic Policy Institute are secure. Does 60 Minutes Australia have a relationship with Defendtex?
Molan repeatedly asserts that Australia is a "liberal democracy." Recent events prove him wrong.
True, though an honest appraisal would surely conclude Australia is both more liberal and more democratic than is China. After all, how many journalists does Australia have in prison today? China has, according to Reporters sans frontières, 47.
You take Reporters sans frontières at face value given the evidence that virtually all Western corporate media are corrupted by elite globalist money? Is not Julian Assange in prison? Is not Serena Shim dead along with several non-embedded journalists killed during the Iraq War? Daniel Dumbrill is far more credible than 60 Minutes Australia or Reporters sans frontières.
"You take Reporters sans frontières at face value"
From the RSF website today: "@RSF_inter
06/28/2021
As Julian Assange's 50th birthday approaches, I'm joining the call to #FreeAssange. The case against him should be dropped and he should be immediately released. Let this be the last birthday he spends in prison! #HappyBirthdayAssange"
Is that false as well? I certainly don't agree with everything RSF claims. But there are numerous other organisations with evidence showing that China routinely imprisons journalists and bloggers who reveal what the government wants kept secret. The Committee to Protect Journalists, for example:
"In its annual global survey, the Committee to Protect Journalists found at least 274 journalists in jail in relation to their work on December 1, 2020, exceeding the high of 272 in 2016. China, which arrested several journalists for their coverage of the pandemic, was the world’s worst jailer for the second year in a row. It was followed by Turkey, which continues to try journalists free on parole and arrest new ones; Egypt, which went to great lengths to keep custody of journalists not convicted of any crime; and Saudi Arabia...
... Within the United States, no journalists were jailed at the time of CPJ’s prison census, but an unprecedented 110 journalists were arrested or criminally charged in 2020 and around 300 were assaulted, the majority by law enforcement."
https://cpj.org/reports/2020/12/record-number-journalists-jailed-imprisoned/
Your cynicism reminds me of something CS Lewis once wrote about people who claim to see through everything eventually see nothing at all. In your rightful desire to support Mr Assange and to expose the egregious state crimes of Australia, USA and the UK, you run the risk of ignoring the often-equal or worse crimes of other governments. It's entirely possible to condemn repression wherever it occurs.
Funny, I don't recall ever writing that *nothing* claimed by RSF (or HRW or AI or CPJ etc) was ever true. What I suggested is that no such Western NGOs should be taken at face value without question. What they claim should always be evaluated based on their inherent biases and incentives, their past record of truthfulness or falsity, alternative on-the-ground sources from within the country in question, whether what they reveal is an "admission against interest," etc. Your default appears to be to believe everything you read in corporate media unless proven otherwise. Perhaps the following link will help: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/gell-mann-amnesia-dissonance-and
You and I believe exactly the same, only that I apply that principle also to state propaganda by the governments of China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey et al. Are you still claiming that those governments are not imprisoning journalists, and in conditions likely to be much worse than the vile conditions being endured by Mr Assange right this moment?
There is only so much we as ordinary citizens can do to check if information is true. There is a danger that you will pass into the complete cynicism of anti-vaxxers, climate science deniers and so forth.
Because China is such a repressive state, there is not the same level of information available from relatively objective sources. The Chinese government routinely closes down parts of the internet to avoid socially-divisive or politically-embarrassing news or debates. Are you denying this? For example, perhaps this is completely untrue:
"Former world No 1 tennis star Naomi Osaka has joined the growing calls for answers on the whereabouts of Chinese player Peng Shuai, who has not been heard from publicly since she accused the country’s former vice premier of sexually assaulting her... Peng’s post went viral on Chinese social media, despite it being taken down by censors within minutes. Subsequent posts and reactions, even keywords such as “tennis”, also appeared to be blocked, and numerous references to Peng were scrubbed from China’s internet."
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/17/naomi-osaka-expresses-shock-over-missing-chinese-tennis-star-peng-shuai
That level of censorship is simply not the case in the West. It is possible and indeed desirable to expose and oppose repression wherever it occurs.
No, we do NOT believe in the same thing.
I have little idea what's going on in "China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey et al," and don't pretend to know based on reports in Imperial media. This is especially true for designated enemies like China. Our MIC and the bankers that fund the Pentagon need an enemy. Both neo-cons and neo-libs love to play that game for the MIC, and are paid well for their services at think tanks. Corporate media is also on the take through military and Big Pharma ad revenues.
I see you drink the swill of "anti-vaxxers" and "climate science deniers." I had little distrust of vaccines before 2020, but the lies the CDC, WHO, FDA and NIH told, to generate fear and panic, opened my eyes. There's nothing cynical in that or in questioning climate "science," unless of course you believe that even the dissidents are FOS.
Oh, "The Chinese government routinely closes down parts of the internet to avoid socially-divisive or politically-embarrassing news or debates?" Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't, because we surely can not trust reports in our own corporate press. But why are we throwing stones? Our own government uses the monopolies it has encouraged like Facebook, Twitter and Google (which owns YouTube) to do exactly the same thing to suppress dissent from its own narratives. Say, whatever happened to UK Channel and Del Bigtree on YouTube? Why was the NY Post crippled on Twitter just before the 2020 election? You want to talk about conditions? A few years back, a Florida inmate was scalded to death by prison guards, and the UK can't trust the US prison system not to kill Assange, just like they did Epstein, or do you believe they drove him to suicide? We have political prisoners languishing in a DC jail for misdemeanors.
You do read Caitlin's essays, don't you? The Guardian is one of the worst. So bad that some dissidents felt compelled to start the Off-Guardian to expose its lies and distortions.
I don't want to see any reporter locked up, but how many corrupt politicians, military war criminals, and CEOs does America have in prison today? What does this say about us?
My entire problem with China is that what I'm being told largely comes from those who have an unbroken track record of lying in service of a murderous global empire -- and, gee whiz, it just so happens that China supposedly wants the exact same thing.
We were told Islamic terrorists were our mortal enemies; now we're arming them in Syria. When shameless liars do what we're told to fear from our "enemies", it's time to take a step back and think, particularly when those liars have access to well-stocked bunkers.
Call me shallow, but I'm unwilling to burn to death for such people.
See my reply to anti-republocrat below. Don't let your rightful scepticism about the media and NGOs become cynicism.
There is a difference, I believe, in recognizing a government's repressive nature and going to war with it, which is what the current call to arms amounts to.
We managed to navigate a detente with the Soviet Union without sugarcoating their leadership, because we recognized areas where we shared common interests. I'm not seeing much of that now. Detente may not have been a perfect arrangement, but at least we're all still around to argue its merits.
You mentioned cynicism. What is more cynical than being handed a hammer by those who conveniently only see nails, but never their own? We hear regularly from the warmongers; just where the hell are the diplomats?
Very true. We have a standoff between much of the Left which refuses to admit anything bad being done by the Chinese government because it fears being associated with the Right which is, as you rightly point out, wanting what could become a global thermonuclear war. It's possible to recognise the repression and lack of democracy in China whilst also recognising the West's hypocrisy and its own crimes.
What repression and lack of democracy?
"We hear regularly from the warmongers; just where the hell are the diplomats?" in China.
Nice to know all the reports of totalitarian measures in Australia are just made up. With the exception of a week or two "flattening the curve," at the very start in Wuhan, I see no reports that China has resorted to such totalitarian measures.
LOL, Australia just calls them spies. Odd, isn't it that the CIA can now put it's own staff directly in the employ of US and Australian News corporations, and that's democratic shape. The penetration is nearly 100%, yet the reporters sent to China would never be CIA assets, would they. Nah, never happen.
Shakes head wondering what school graduated the dolt, so he can warn parents not to send their kids there.
Well then Mr I Know Better than everyone else, perhaps you could point me to a Chinese political comment site which is free and independent of government interference. I'm waiting...
Hi Mr. ASPI What absolutism. Nothing more to say, it's an echo chamber in there.
Can you read mandarin?
so called journalist blocked me from her medium posts because I called her out for not addressing the scamdemic while her home country is going full Orwell....go get you covidiot booster shots....fool
I had my Novovax booster vaccination yesterday. No-one forced me.
still no mention about the scamdemic? lies by omission
You don't have your own blog? Ah, lazy shiter trying to coast of the work of others. Must be white.
it's like the 1930's and Japan and the scrap-metal embargo right before WWII broke out...