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Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

economist.com

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Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#701

Post by CRConrad »

pphysch wrote: post #639
ericjang wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I ask pro-CCP people the question "what might change your mind", I often hear a variant of what you just said - "consider the motives (of the American hegemony), it explains our observations". But that doesn't answer my question (2). Would you please answer it directly? Either there is some hypothetical evidence that would change your mind, or there is no hypothetical that could change your mind. Providing the a…

If you insist: how about the Uyghur population decreasing instead of increasing? That would be a good indicator that a genocide is actually taking place. Anyways, please don't dismiss my comment. What is Beijing's supposed motive here?

> Anyways, please don't dismiss my comment. What is Beijing's supposed motive here?

Oh yes, I'll gladly dismiss it: You introduced it with a carefully weasel-worded "a good start would be"... So even if you got an iron-clad motive in reply, you'd just go on quibbling, because it was, after all, "just a start". So: Dismissed!

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#702

Post by CRConrad »

pphysch wrote: post #640
DangitBobby wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, there is a very clear motive for why Washington would spread misinformation about Beijing. And the rest of the world? Why is the free press of the entire world conspiring against China? Or the free press in the US? Does Washington own that? Anyway, we can only speculate on the motive. Ethnic cleansing? Perceived threat of religious beliefs? Who knows. You're gonna have to do better than "I don't…

Do you even consider the possibility that you are being tricked by the same warmongers who tricked you into thinking Saddam Hussein was about to use WMDs against the West?

I don't know where you were twenty years ago -- maybe too young to really follow the news? -- but pretty much nobody outside far-right cults like evangelical fundamentalists bought that bullshit line even at the time.

So fuck knows who this "you" (who was tricked by that) that you think (or pretend to think) you're talking to might be

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#703

Post by CRConrad »

Aeolun wrote: post #269
ezconnect wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming you are the good guy, that's not how the world works.

Everyone assumes they are the good guy. That’s exactly how the world works, right?

Yeah, it can be a rough awakening: https://youtu.be/hn1VxaMEjRU

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#704

Post by CRConrad »

k__ wrote: post #355

To me, the story of China and Taiwan sounds strange. It's like if the confederates lost the war, but simply kept Florida or if Nazi Germany lost, but kept Austria. I don't know how bad the Chinese nazionalists were back in the days, but I can kinda understand why the rest of China is unhappy about them.

> It's like if the confederates lost the war, but simply kept Florida or if Nazi Germany lost, but kept Austria.

Kind of a good analogy, but the wrong way around. China vs Taiwan is more like if the confederates won the civil war, but the Union kept Florida; or if Nazi Germany won WW2, but the Allies hung on in Austria.

The communists never were the good guys.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#705

Post by CRConrad »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #491
mschuster91 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't, we have exposed ourselves way too big with China over the last decades. Especially us Germans are a major part of the problem, given that our car industry has their only growth market in China - Europe and the US are saturated, South America, large parts of Asia and Africa are too poor (corrupt elites aside), and Arabia wants luxury cars that our car makers don't have - so the amount of influence from the c…

> and Arabia wants luxury cars that our car makers don't have Doesn't VW own Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche? I think Mercedes has a pretty solid market in Arabia too.

> Doesn't VW own Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche?

Yup. And BMW owns Rolls Royce.

> I think Mercedes has a pretty solid market in Arabia too.

I'd imagine it's their Maybach sub-brand's biggest market not only in percentage of total local car sales, but in absolute numbers. (Hm... Unless the latter is China.)

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#706

Post by CRConrad »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #555
whimsicalism wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyprus is a much better example than Catalonia.

And in fact nobody calls it a country. I mean, I understand that in US Taiwan is recognized as a country, in Italy Palestin is recognized as such too, but they are not officially sovereign countries and protest from mainland are to be expected because it's a very complicated international matter and of course China uses all the tools they have to support their position, just like the US. Do you remember what happened…

> And in fact nobody calls it a country.

Cyprus?!? Everyone calls Cyprus a country! Because it is.

So yeah, that's a much better analogy to Taiwan. Because that's a country too.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#707

Post by CRConrad »

neom wrote: post #395
whimsicalism wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> need to be discussed equally, No, they absolutely should not be discussed equally. Darfur was an actual genocide, ie. a killing fields genocide. Native Americans were also killed at high rates, the "cultural genocide" came later. Equating the killing of millions of people from a certain ethnic group with prohibiting certain practices (like France prohibiting the burqa or public expression of religion, like attempts…

Well it's wrong in your book, but it's not in mine, so where does that leave us? Reasonable people cannot disagree? I'm a dimwitted plebeian? Shall we reach for the white gloves? Last I checked, folks were welcomed to their perspectives around here, we don't typically just go around telling people their opinions are "wrong".

> we don't typically just go around telling people their opinions are "wrong".

But sometimes we should, because some are.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#708

Post by CRConrad »

stirfish wrote: post #396
toomim wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cultural genocide" should be called "memocide". At the point that you are only using the word "gene" metaphorically, it's time to switch to the word that already exists for that purpose: the "meme".

But meme already means something culturally, and we don't want people saying that genocide is a "meme"

That's just because the purveyors of stupid pictures-with-text have hijacked the term: The GP's usage is the original meaning of the word "meme".

Ignorance like you're displaying here just helps further this trivialization of the word. Please educate yourself and join the resistance in stead.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#709

Post by the_only_law »

CRConrad wrote: post #708
stirfish wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But meme already means something culturally, and we don't want people saying that genocide is a "meme"

That's just because the purveyors of stupid pictures-with-text have hijacked the term: The GP's usage is the original meaning of the word "meme". Ignorance like you're displaying here just helps further this trivialization of the word. Please educate yourself and join the resistance in stead.

There’s no ignorance here. The parent is 100% that the word colloquially has a completely different meaning than originally intended.

You can try to “resist” cultural shifts in language, but I promise you’ll lose.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#710

Post by CRConrad »

dang wrote: post #609
tomp wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry. I said it partially tongue-in-cheek. What would be an appropriate response to someone who's posted several comments to the same top-level post, all of which are grossly misleading and/or complete strawmen? Obviously I don't have evidence of "abuse" (is this even abuse? obviously people can be trolls without being big-co/gov funded) but I'd like to point out the above fact to other commenters who might not have…

In terms of posting to HN itself, an appropriate response would be to refute bad arguments with better arguments and/or incorrect information with correct information—or alternatively, to remember that to a first approximation, everyone is wrong on the internet, and just let it go. You don't need to do more than that for other commenters; they can take care of themselves. If an account is behaving badly, such as by r…

> an appropriate response would be to refute bad arguments with better arguments and/or incorrect information with correct information

Isn't that just demanding that everyone surrender to a shill's Gish gallop?

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