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MR HOWARD S MARKS's avatar

China does have its virtues but those virtues can be deeply overshadowed by their human rights issues. That said the USA with over 2 million prisoners over 90% of whom never had a trial is in no position to judge and economically cannot afford to do so.

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MR HOWARD S MARKS's avatar

Whenever I get the usual Trump is a Nazi line from a archetypal Clintonite Dem and I challenged them with the bi-partisan record of crushing millions of people in other countries with sanctions and bombs and try to force them to face up to Obama and Clinton and Biden crimes...

"You are so ridiculous, geopolitics is complicated..." is what I get back. Especially on HRC's nation destruction and racial genocide in Libya. The targeted sub-Saharan Black African minority are just not Black Lives that Matter in the eyes of Clinton voters.

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MR HOWARD S MARKS's avatar

"The rules of internet discourse say that if you don't think nuclear-armed nations should be imperiling the world with propaganda-fueled cold war games it means you love the government of Russia and/or China and think everything they've ever done is awesome."

I think this is an intellectually failure on your part Caitlin. The statement in itself is fine on the surface but it falls into too many traps.

Quite frankly what I find more offensive is that most of the liberal and Youtube based lefty media constantly put Russia and China in the same turn of phrase as if they are similar types of societies. This plays directly into the hands of the lie that Russia is not a free country. China is a very ultra controlled society and every time Russia and China are mentioned in the same breath it paints Russia with a China brush. Thus Tulsi Gabbard would use the phrase "Russia & China" all the time and it would never take an interviewer more than a few seconds to get her to concur that there is nothing good about Vladimir Putin. In Gabbard's ignorant mind that is no less poisoned with archetypal Western ignorance and in fact bigotry toward Russia it is simply not possible that President Putin could actually have any virtues let alone outstanding qualities. Which also made her position on Syria rather shallow and two-faced. She never once criticised Joe Biden for his crimes in Ukraine and like Bernie Sanders voted for sanctions on Russia based on the very crimes that Biden and McCain the authors of the bill had themselves committed in Ukraine. That included installing Fascists and Neo-Nazis into power and unleashing the Donbass War. Chris Hedges who has a show on RT America and is simply two-faced had no problem recently allowing and encouraging a young woman an archetypal DEM who invited him onto a Youtube show to reinforce the notion in her mind that there is absolutely nothing good about Vladimir Putin. If Hedges thinks that way then he would have more credibility not to have a show on RT America. The fact is the ignorance about Russia is so deep among Western lefties it does not even extend to basic human empathy or cultural curiosity. Western lefties know absolutely nothing about Russian civil society nor even popular culture, plenty of which is right there on Youtube. Ironically RT is partly to blame for this because they totally fail to promote popular Russian culture to their international audience.

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Bill Jackson's avatar

Russia and China DO share the fact that they are both targets of US aggression, so generalizing by Tulsi isn'that far off.

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MR HOWARD S MARKS's avatar

Her position of not starting wars with either country was good but her mindset revealed that in her language she conjoined them as two peas in a pod. She had and has no real empathy for the other she just wants Americans not to be fighting endless wars or risking nuclear war. The latter is a fine and good position in itself but she fails to see that the road to a nuclear war end is built precisely on the lack of knowledge and empathy of other lands and people. Also President Putin has reached out many times for arms control talks and treaties to resume but is rebuffed even ridiculed as a matter of policy. Precisely by the Biden gang to whom both Tulsi and Bernie have surrendered.

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Bill Jackson's avatar

They are 2 peas in a pod in the mindset of the US military industrial complex.

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MR HOWARD S MARKS's avatar

Yes. All the more reason to push back at that distortion.

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Tarun's avatar

And maybe China ain't so bad either!! Two peas, just not in the same pod!!

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Tarun's avatar

Tulsi has it rough. Being accused of being a Putin puppet by the neo-con left, and not being friendly enough with Putin by you. So who in American politics is friendly enough with Putin?? Not Trump unfortunately!

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MR HOWARD S MARKS's avatar

Being better informed on other countries would enable her or anyone to speak from a stronger position and have the ability to have knowledge based nuanced positions. The issue is not her friendliness or lack of, but one of respect and knowledge.

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Tarun's avatar

I think she is hemmed in by what is even marginally acceptable in the Democratic Party. She's not an independent journalist with no restrictions on speech.. In her position as a well known dissenter, any deviation from the war narrative is taken very seriously. So she says many times that there are many tyrants in the world but we don't do well when we topple them... not quite correct, but maybe all that her audience can bear... do you know anyone in congress who is more honest about American foreign policy??

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Olestra's avatar

Nasa isn't military, never has been. quite a bit of debates and efforts over 50 years or more to keep it that way.

whether a civilian science agency is used to further US imperialism or not is worth debating, but listing NASA installations as 'military bases' is just... ill-informed

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Joe Peshi's avatar

It is totally funded by defense government agencies , then it is a military base!

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MR HOWARD S MARKS's avatar

ALL space activity in the USA is governed by Pentagon authority including SPACEX and other private companies. This extends to recruiting staff as Elon Musk explains here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIvtiNpKEY0

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Ron Chandler's avatar

They are imminently considering a vast new naval base at HMAS Stirling or offshore, near Perth, at which to base an entire new fleet, titled the First Fleet (somewhat sacrilegious considering our forebears arrived in a legendary First Fleet, but I'm sure that won't be a problem).

God help the million citizens of Perth, which is also close to a NUCLEAR MAGAZINE where the US nuclear attack subs keep their payloads for a second strike on China.

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MR HOWARD S MARKS's avatar

Here is an example of that Youtube available popular Russian culture. The host of this "apartment" concert series is Russia's leading bluesman Evgeny Margulis

Episode starring Polina Gagarina

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM8dm3cKFcA

Episode starring Leonid Agutin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQdSLYjlT-U

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