591–600 of 694 posts
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Uhh what about European or the Middle east or any other part of the world
What about them? GP is conveying the scale of just wars, this isn't including natural disasters that have ripped through China. What are some comparable things to happen in europe and the middle east?
Absolutely mind boggling.
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> This is a typical orientalist take. Yes. As I mentioned these ideas are not mine but advanced by 3 books which explain the Chinese perspective. These books are bipartisan and multinational and explain this principal. * Henry Kissinger's on China (Republican) * Destined for War by Graham T. Allison (Democrat - Joe Biden recommended book) * The China Dream by Liu Mingfu (Chinese PLA General)
You should look up what "orientalist" means before embracing the label. It is not a compliment.
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Honestly, Microsoft could purchase TikTok in its entirety and I still wouldn’t believe that it’s anything more than a front for the Chinese government. MS has a reputation for being exceedingly cozy with governments. No matter how they try to spin off or rebrand this product or abandon ties to the old parent company, I’d never trust it as much as something entirely new. If the NSA tried putting out a social media net…
> If the NSA tried putting out a social media network, nobody would trust it. How ironic to see this statement on HN, when almost every American trusts Google or Facebook despite them being PRISM partners and subject to the control of the NSA.
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> there are no checks and balances for this area of government activity Of course there are. Congress can pass laws limiting executive actions. And the courts can constrain it.
Okay, so in theory maybe there could be checks and balances in place. In practice, however, there are instead secret court orders, subpoenas, or "national security letters".
None of which apply to this action, which has been publicly promulgated and will be publicly enforced and challenged.
Also, secret courts and NSLs are an abomination. Subpoenas are legal demands for information.
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The short answer is that he can't. The president has no power to ban TikTok. The president also has no control over how the app is distributed or its connectivity. He can say whatever he wants, and he can strongarm the agencies he has some control over (like the FCC), but there's simply no mechanism by which a ban can be enforced, legal or technical. Unless Google and Apple decide to voluntarily remove it from their…
> The president has no power to ban TikTok This is the #1 mistake people have made over and over with Trump. “He can’t...”, “He won’t...”, “He wouldn’t...”, “He’ll never...”. He doesn’t play by any rules. You have to assume anything and everything is on the table. If he really wants to ban TikTok he’ll either get it done or scorch the earth trying. Do you really think once someone says, “Mr. Trump there’s no mechanis…
History suggests otherwise - more often than not he neither gets it done nor scorches the earth trying:
■ Trump wanted to change the date of the election, or suspend it entirely.
■ Trump wanted to send the military in to quell domestic riots.
■ Trump wanted to force states to reopen on his timetable.
■ Trump wanted to force American companies to manufacture domestically.
■ Trump wanted to repeal DACA.
■ Trump wanted to repeal Obamacare.
■ Trump wanted to ban Muslim immigration.
■ Trump wanted to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.
The list of things Trump has tried to make happen, only to be sent whimpering back into the corner like a whipped dog, far outstrips his actual accomplishments.
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And what exactly prevents the US government from creating any kind of subpoena they'd like? They don't even have to defend it anywhere, because "national security" trumps the normal judicative process. The targets of the subpoena aren't allowed to talk about, and the original owners of the data sought by the government will never even see the subpoena.
Look, if you don’t believe in the western systems of checks and balances despite the long, long track record of it performing with greater regard for human dignity than any regime without checks and balances, we’re just not going to be able to have a conversation here. No sensible person would suggest the American system is perfect. But to suggest that an imperfect system of checks and balances is tantamount to an ac…
Also, I've never stated that the entire US governmental system was "tantamount" to a dictatorship - this is a straw man you're putting up there. I named very particular legislation that I indeed consider equivalent to what it is you're suggesting the Chinese government is doing. If you want to rebuke that argument - fine, I'm listening! But please stop putting up straw men just because it turns out that it's kind of hard to defend the existence of such opaque and unchecked pockets of power if your entire argument builds on the superiority of a system that is designed to balance and limit individuals' power over one that just lets those in power reign over anyone else.
Also, abbub brought up a great point here that I want to emphasize: "checks and balances" that are weak in practice and depend on those in power to "just behave" are ineffective and shouldn't be considered equal to actual, enforceable limitations. I was stunned how close a US president can get to a dictator in terms of effective powers if he just decides to stop caring about morals, political conventions and other "soft limits". This experience seems to be an argument against the concept of "let's just trust everyone to play nice" and a clear indicator for the need of actual, effective and enforceable limitations to power. Those regulations that I criticized now are the exact opposite of this.
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The difference between the West and China is that China has been able to maintain its civilization state and it has a continuous history. The West's history is discontinuous
There have been plenty of rises and falls of civilization in China in the intervening thousands of years. It's way reductionist to claim that this is all the same one unflagging continuous empire. In a way, you're doing Chinese history a huge disservice by making it a lot less interesting than it actually is when you claim that it's all just one empire persisting steadily through time. And anyway, "the west" has a co…
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It‘s a question of distribution power. If the power is granted to the executive branch, they can do it. It‘s part of decisions on their own country. I consider it much more questionable to exert power over allied countries to stop extraterritorial infrastructure projects (i.e. Nordstream 2), because the US wants to sell fracking gas to europe. I‘m sure that using such power will lead to losing it long-term and former…
> I consider it much more questionable to exert power over allied countries to stop extraterritorial infrastructure projects (i.e. Nordstream 2) Nordstream 2 is a great example. Sanctioning a country that was literally the wall between you and the East is such an extremely stupid move. Just confirms Merkels sentence: "Europe can not rely on the US any longer". German here and I have to, say: You lost me there, buddy.…
As for your last comment, the one insisting sanctions against the US: Merkel might have her foot on the throat of the rest of Europe, but we’re not going to see the day when Germany finally builds the empire of their dreams.
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Putin is going to use NordStream to exert pressure on Germany. There’s no doubt about it. They use gas pipelines as a pressure point with Ukraine and Belarus all the time.
How would that even work, exerting pressure by merely providing another pipeline?
Basically: grow dependence, extract concessions. The same way a crack dealer on a street corner does.