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Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#391

Post by klodolph »

rackjack wrote: post #363
JackeJR wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some think that if the US extended their protection to Taiwan, Beijing would not attempt to take Taiwan. Let's just assume for a moment that the US will fight off attacks by China to take Taiwan. And that US successfully ward off an attack. What next? What is there to prevent China from trying again and again and again? Will the US be prepared to ward off attacks after attacks after attacks? This is unlikely to happe…

> Let's just assume for a moment that the US will fight off attacks by China to take Taiwan. And that US successfully ward off an attack. What next? What is there to prevent China from trying again and again and again? Will the US be prepared to ward off attacks after attacks after attacks? This is unlikely to happen. America did this in Korea and it split the country in half. > With this, lets again assume that Chin…

> America did this in Korea and it split the country in half.

That is not even close to what happened. Korea was divided at the end of WWII into Soviet and US occupation zones after the Japanese surrender. Prior to that, it had been occupied by Japan.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#392

Post by lazyninja987 »

radu_floricica wrote: post #390
billiam wrote: post #228

Heartbreaking. I can't even talk about Tiananmen with Chinese -born friends under 40 in the US or Europe. TikTok and WeChat has achieved their goals of driving historical memory from their brains. And if I even mention Taiwan within seconds I am hearing the term "renegade province." It seems for now possible to create a true virtual totalitarian state in the 21st century. It's chains are forged out of "Xi thought" ap…

TikTok is 2 years old, WeChat is... 10? Communist china is well over 50 now. The apps are tools, nothing more. Just like Twitter is for the western left, btw.

so true. when i point out that twitter is a tool for western imperialism, people get very touchy.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#394

Post by howaboutnope »

inglor_cz wrote: post #374
howaboutnope wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turned out alright for Nazi Germany. As a German, I'm absolutely grateful the Nazis were crushed militarily, rather than, you know, still reigning.

A question out of curiosity: would you prefer DDR to be crushed militarily as well, instead of just giving up the ghost in 1989? As a fellow European, I can see that communists are somehow still considered better than the Nazis, and part of the difference might be that their gulags were never conquered by an external force and photos of their skeletal prisoners never made it to the media. They mostly dismantled them…

> would you prefer DDR to be crushed militarily as well, instead of just giving up the ghost in 1989?

Why are you assuming I wouldn't have prefered the Nazis to have "given up the ghost" as well? Are there any signs of the CCP "giving up the ghost" anytime soon? Given the choices that actually existed, I prefer, as the White Rose put it in one of their leaflets, an end with terror rather than terror without end. Human mortality is a given either way, the dignity that comes with agency and intellectual integrity is what the struggle is about. I don't ask for how long someone lived, but as who they lived.. or as Hannah Arendt put it:

> Once upon a time, there was a happy time when people were free to choose; better to die dead than to be a slave, better to die standing than to live on one's knees. Once upon a time there was a wicked time when imbecile intellectuals declared that life was the highest of goods. Today the terrible time has come, when it is proved every day that death begins its reign of terror exactly when life has become the highest good; that he who prefers to live on his knees dies on his knees; that no one is easier to murder than a slave. We the living have to learn that one cannot even live on one's knees, that one does not become immortal by chasing life, and that when one no longer wants to die for anything, one dies even though one has done nothing.

-- Hannah Arendt via DeepL

> As a fellow European, I can see that communists are somehow still considered better than the Nazis

That's still like saying something with a lethal dose of 50g is better food than something with a lethal dose of 5g. I don't see the point of even ranking them.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#395

Post by shkkmo »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #382
bakuninsbart wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore does not significantly differ in its authoritarianism from the PRC. They are however much richer, much smaller, and decided to follow a "capitalist" model, so they get less hate in our political discourse.

That is the most ridiculous hyperbole I have ever heard. Yes, Singapore does have strict limitations on freedom of speech, but at the same time have separation of powers, free elections and a national identity separate to the PAP.

Singapor only has "Free Elections™" where the opposition is strictly controlled and not allowed to win more than a token number of seats. See also: Nicaragua, Venezuala, etc...

> That is the most ridiculous hyperbole I have ever heard.

That's an ironically hyperobolic statment itself.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#396

Post by PakG1 »

hker wrote: post #379
JackeJR wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some think that if the US extended their protection to Taiwan, Beijing would not attempt to take Taiwan. Let's just assume for a moment that the US will fight off attacks by China to take Taiwan. And that US successfully ward off an attack. What next? What is there to prevent China from trying again and again and again? Will the US be prepared to ward off attacks after attacks after attacks? This is unlikely to happe…

> Some think that if the US extended their protection to Taiwan, Beijing would not attempt to take Taiwan. > What next? What is there to prevent China from trying again and again and again? > The only way the regime can be changed is from the inside. Worth noting that the Chinese Army “may not be willing to fight” (‘pay the bill’ for the aggressive stance of the Foreign Ministry). [1] If the Chinese Army did not scor…

War is tough and horrible. Any person can see that. There are many complex reasons why the larger Afghan army could not stand up to the Taliban, and while the situation is not comparable at all to the Chinese military, my point is that around the world, there are military units that aren't prepared or willing to fight the wars that their politicians wage.

I do wager that China's PLA would win a war that involves Taiwan, just due to sheer numbers and resources, but that the experience would be so bitter that the PLA would lose morale in various respects. This is partly because they don't actually have real war experience in the modern era.

Even armies with real war experience can get bitter. Armies without real war experience that suddenly get thrown into the fire, I'd wager that they would get even more bitter. PTSD and suicides would only be par for the course, the real issue would be inexperienced soldiers starting to question "what are we really doing and why am I killing people, do I really believe in what I'm doing?" I wager it would create cracks in what is currently a fairly unified country in China.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#397

Post by Aunche »

yunohn wrote: post #385
Aunche wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We wouldn't be trading with China if it didn't benefit us. A sanction damages the participants as much as its target. This doesn't matter if your target is a smaller country like Iran or even Russia, but China is way to big an exporter to sanction. >Their political and religious prisoners are very often put to work in factories (if not sent to work camps or tortured in prison) So you want them to shut down the factor…

> So you want them to shut down the factories, in which case they'll be sent to be sent to labor camps or rot in prison instead What do you think a labor camp is, actually? It’s forced manual labor, done for the benefit of the non-imprisoned populace. I don’t believe there’s much of a difference between being forced to manufacture goods versus rotting in a prison - both are horrible. Mass shutdown of factories might…

>It’s forced manual labor, done for the benefit of the non-imprisoned populace.

From what I understand, when the media talks about an Apple supplier exploiting Uighurs for example, they're talking about a factory that employs willing people and others who are forced to find a job or else they'll be sent back to a detention camp. This is terrible, but it's not comparable to being sent off to a laogai camp.

>Mass shutdown of factories might actually spur some protest from the general populace and shed light on the plight of the imprisoned.

Someone desperate for work won't give a damn about the plight of others. This goes for the Chinese who will angry at what they perceive as western hegemony, and the people who would lose their jobs at home.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#398

Post by stickfigure »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #211
jollybean wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would not be able to stop it though. By the time it was announced, it would already be done. The only real option China would have would be 'force' and a frontal war with China is a really big deal. That said, US-provided nukes for Taiwan would be a major escelation and fingers would be pointed in the direction of the US for 'blame' etc.. A lot of people would throw a fit over that. It might be better to just pu…

Your presumption of unity is doing a lot of work here. I, for one, would absolutely oppose going to war against China for the sake of Taiwan, instead preferring that that money go to humanitarian causes that would help Taiwanese suffering under a CCP regime. War, especially nuclear war, is abhorrent and I would not stand for it.

> I, for one, would absolutely oppose going to war against Germany for the sake of Jews, instead preferring that that money go to humanitarian causes that would help Jewish suffering under a Nazi regime.

Neville Chamberlain, is that you?

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#400

Post by yunohn »

Aunche wrote: post #397
yunohn wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you want them to shut down the factories, in which case they'll be sent to be sent to labor camps or rot in prison instead What do you think a labor camp is, actually? It’s forced manual labor, done for the benefit of the non-imprisoned populace. I don’t believe there’s much of a difference between being forced to manufacture goods versus rotting in a prison - both are horrible. Mass shutdown of factories might…

>It’s forced manual labor, done for the benefit of the non-imprisoned populace. From what I understand, when the media talks about an Apple supplier exploiting Uighurs for example, they're talking about a factory that employs willing people and others who are forced to find a job or else they'll be sent back to a detention camp. This is terrible, but it's not comparable to being sent off to a laogai camp. >Mass shutd…

> they're talking about a factory that employs willing people

Prisoners forced to choose between harsh detention or menial factory work, are not “willing”.

This is the same argument made by people against minimum wage increases - “why do low wage workers do such jobs, they have a choice”.

The USA also has the same kind of prison labor, and inmates are forced to work for the profit of companies and the state, while receiving barely any wages in return. In fact, most of them cannot get any real work after release either.

> Someone desperate for work

I’m talking about the general global populace waking up to the fact that their goods are made by (essentially) slaves, as a result of labor shutdowns. This would be really beneficial to the worker class, and harm the ruling class.

And from the previous comment:

> importers demanding razor thin margins

Western companies that “believe” in human rights could just as well manufacture goods with a conscience and demand fair-trade supply chains; instead of just profit. But obviously, reality shows us otherwise.

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