China Sucks

[F250 28659]

6 hours ago, happyfunball said:

More Chinese nationals are being caught secretly working for the Chinese military
 

I'm pretty sure most people that work for the Chinese military are Chinese Nationals.

Ying Lin is a naturalized US citizen originally from China. She took packages from Chinese military officers assigned to China's United Nations mission in New York and put them on flights headed to China without the officers on board -- a violation of US air safety rules -- prosecutors allege.

In return, Lin received benefits including tax-exempt purchases of liquor, cigarettes and electronic devices, perks which US authorities said were "worth tens of thousands of dollars."

This is kinda like a plot from The Americans when Nina was reselling Russian caviar in the U.S. at a big markup and the FBI allowed it as long as she spied for them.

[happyfunball 481]

[happyfunball 481]

The US justice department on Tuesday charged a former GE engineer and a Chinese businessman with allegedly conducting economic espionage and conspiring to steal engine technologies that it said would benefit China.

Zheng Xiaoqing, a former engineer employed by GE Power & Water in New York state, was accused of stealing electronic files that contained engine designs and other pieces of engineering-related information related to GE gas and steam turbines.

The justice department accused Mr Zheng with emailing that information to Zhang Zhaoxi, a Chinese businessman who was operating as his business partner in China.

The indictments are the latest example of the US crackdown on Chinese espionage — a push that has included creating a new China-focused task force called the China Initiative at the justice department.

“The indictment alleges a textbook example of the Chinese government’s strategy to rob American companies of their intellectual property and to replicate their products in Chinese factories, enabling Chinese companies to replace the American company first in the Chinese market and later worldwide,” said John Demers, the justice department official who runs the China initiative.

https://www.ft.com/content/9cd85566-65fb-11e9-a79d-04f350474d62

[Parliament 14112]

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3008432/corporate-china-hit-worst-earnings-record-2018-trade-war

[happyfunball 481]

[YChang 3430]

Freaking commies

[WhatTheBuck 28700]

Russia gets away with it. Why shouldn't everyone else?

[F250 28659]

10 hours ago, happyfunball said:

 

Horse shit, every-fucking-body knows that China has been a major threat actor in this arena for decades. That dude's Twitter is peddling FUD to give credence to his self-appointed claims of expertise, probably as an attempt to generate business.

 

[bernorange 8346]

Fuck it.  I'm posting the following in this thread too.

Quote

...
This report provides a detailed description and analysis of a mobile app that police and other officials use to communicate with the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), one of the main systems Chinese authorities use for mass surveillance in Xinjiang. Human Rights Watch first reported on the IJOP in February 2018, noting the policing program aggregates data about people and flags to officials those it deems potentially threatening; some of those targeted are detained and sent to political education camps and other facilities. But by “reverse engineering” this mobile app, we now know specifically the kinds of behaviors and people this mass surveillance system targets.

The findings have broader significance, providing an unprecedented window into how mass surveillance actually works in Xinjiang, because the IJOP system is central to a larger ecosystem of social monitoring and control in the region. They also shed light on how mass surveillance functions in China. While Xinjiang’s systems are particularly intrusive, their basic designs are similar to those the police are planning and implementing throughout China.

Many—perhaps all—of the mass surveillance practices described in this report appear to be contrary to Chinese law. They violate the internationally guaranteed rights to privacy, to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and to freedom of association and movement. Their impact on other rights, such as freedom of expression and religion, is profound.
...

More:  https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/05/01/chinas-algorithms-repression/reverse-engineering-xinjiang-police-mass-surveillance

[Thetexashammer 1062]

Fantastic analysis from VDH.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/china-strategy-build-economic-military-technological-superiority/

Quote

The Chinese Communist government does not have so much a strategy to translate its economic ascendance into global hegemony as several strategies. All of them are brilliantly insidious.

On matters of trade, China is always flexible in responding to critics of its asymmetrical, 30-year mercantilism. In the initial stages of Westernization, China was exempted from criticism over serial copyright and patent infringement, dumping, and espionage. Western elites assumed that these improprieties were just speed bumps on the eventual Chinese freeway to liberalism. Supposedly the richer China got, the more progressive it would become. Huge trade deficits or military technological appropriation were small prices to pay for an evolving billion-person Palo Alto or Upper West Side.

After a time, the now-worrisome huge trade deficits and Chinese cheating were further contextualized as “our fault.” The Tom Friedman school of journalism chided our clumsy republican government as lacking Chinese authoritarian efficiency that could by fiat connect new planned utopias by high-speed rail and power them with solar-panel farms. The Wall Street–investor version of this school saw flabby, pampered Americans getting their just deserts as more productive and deserving Chinese workers outhustled and outproduced us. In such tough-love sermonizing, the more Michigan or Pennsylvania rusted, the quicker culpable Americans would either emulate China or die. China of course again agreed.

Then there came a third phase of Chinese contextualization — one of Western arrogance that confused China’s emulation with supposed admiration. We were not to worry about China, because they love buying our rich homes, visiting Stanford, and going to Disneyland. In short, they love being us.

Somehow, we forgot that nations that copy the West do not do so out of empathy or veneration. More often, they pick and choose what to buy, steal, or copy, entirely in their own interest. They often see superior Western science arising despite, not because of, Western freedom, and therefore they think it can be improved upon when grafted to a properly authoritarian or totalitarian root.

 

[F250 28659]

That was a terrible analysis on China. Victor Davis Hanson, the former globalist Neocon turned Trumpkin protectionist. Conservatives really need to pick a fucking ethos and stick with it.

 

 

[Zavala 1384]

On 5/27/2019 at 5:00 PM, F250 said:

That was a terrible analysis on China. Victor Davis Hanson, the former globalist Neocon turned Trumpkin protectionist. Conservatives really need to pick a fucking ethos and stick with it.

 

 

why? Got any analysis that you like or just gonna name call?

[F250 28659]

30 minutes ago, Zavala said:

why? Got any analysis that you like or just gonna name call?

Well, the entire article reads like fan fiction that isn't based on factual evidence. Like a lot of his other articles, Hanson creates a historical analogy and then addresses the analogy and not the reality of the topic. It's like psuedo-science, drop the term quantum a few times and then someone's ramblings sound scientific.

In the article he creates a strawman regarding proponents of free trade and the embracing of free market concepts by China. China hasn't been deceitful in there attempts to emulate Western liberal free markets. China is still a Communist nation and under Xiaoping decided to follow Bukharinism by liberalizing their previous centralized market and transition to an exporting nation. While proponents of free markets and free trade have claimed that liberal markets require liberal governments, this isn't the same thing as saying China will become a liberal democracy. It's more like saying in order to continue to thrive in a free market system, China will need to liberalize their government.

He also repeatedly drops the Trumpian "deficit" canard. I'm not going to go into capital inflow and balance of payments regarding the trade deficit but you can't really discuss one without the other. Anytime someone brings up the deficit without the other they are being disingenuous or are just ignorant. He also attempts to conflate the IP issue with the deficit. The problem with IP theft is a real problem but not tied to the deficit.

Anyways, the article is a political propaganda piece and not an actual analysis of China and international trade.

 

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

1 hour ago, Zavala said:

why? Got any analysis that you like or just gonna name call?

Just curious where the name calling is in F250's statement. 

[Zavala 1384]

10 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

Just curious where the name calling is in F250's statement. 

 

On 5/27/2019 at 5:00 PM, F250 said:

That was a terrible analysis on China. Victor Davis Hanson, the former globalist Neocon turned Trumpkin protectionist. Conservatives really need to pick a fucking ethos and stick with it.

 

 

 

15 minutes ago, F250 said:

Well, the entire article reads like fan fiction that isn't based on factual evidence. Like a lot of his other articles, Hanson creates a historical analogy and then addresses the analogy and not the reality of the topic. It's like psuedo-science, drop the term quantum a few times and then someone's ramblings sound scientific.

In the article he creates a strawman regarding proponents of free trade and the embracing of free market concepts by China. China hasn't been deceitful in there attempts to emulate Western liberal free markets. China is still a Communist nation and under Xiaoping decided to follow Bukharinism by liberalizing their previous centralized market and transition to an exporting nation. While proponents of free markets and free trade have claimed that liberal markets require liberal governments, this isn't the same thing as saying China will become a liberal democracy. It's more like saying in order to continue to thrive in a free market system, China will need to liberalize their government.

 He also repeatedly drops the Trumpian "deficit" canard. I'm not going to go into capital inflow and balance of payments regarding the trade deficit but you can't really discuss one without the other. Anytime someone brings up the deficit without the other they are being disingenuous or are just ignorant. He also attempts to conflate the IP issue with the deficit. The problem with IP theft is a real problem but not tied to the deficit.

 Anyways, the article is a political propaganda piece and not an actual analysis of China and international trade.

 

I'm just wondering how much of their economy is built from stolen secrets, since their companies are integrated with their military. 

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-five-chinese-military-hackers-cyber-espionage-against-us-corporations-and-labor

Do you have a better analysis of the economic situation from China that comes from a different source? 

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

You find being called a Trump protectionist a bad thing? I mean I agree, but it is an interesting thing coming from a Trump protectionist. 

[Judge Roybeanbag 11796]

3 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

You find being called a Trump protectionist a bad thing? I mean I agree, but it is an interesting thing coming from a Trump protectionist. 

He gets his snowflake fee fees hurt whenever he perceives a slight or criticism of anything Trump or Republican (redundant I know).

[Zavala 1384]

6 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

You find being called a Trump protectionist a bad thing? I mean I agree, but it is an interesting thing coming from a Trump protectionist. 

haha you got me! trolololo! great one! maybe try reading the bold part, sound it out

On 5/27/2019 at 5:00 PM, F250 said:

That was a terrible analysis on China. Victor Davis Hanson, the former globalist Neocon turned Trumpkin protectionist. Conservatives really need to pick a fucking ethos and stick with it.

 

 

 

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

I used your bolded part. You now have a problem with parcing of statements? Should I highlight the irony of that for you too?

[F250 28659]

10 minutes ago, Zavala said:

haha you got me! trolololo! great one! maybe try reading the bold part, sound it out

 

Actually, I was addressing his flexible beliefs. He has always been an advocate of the supremacy of Western thought similar to the Straussian construct. Then in the early 2000's he jumped on the neoconservative train. He seems to have reversed course away from the idea of exporting democracy and the expansion of globalization by becoming an advocate of protectionism. I used those terms in the literal sense and not the pejorative.

 

[F250 28659]

34 minutes ago, Zavala said:

 

 

I'm just wondering how much of their economy is built from stolen secrets, since their companies are integrated with their military. 

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-five-chinese-military-hackers-cyber-espionage-against-us-corporations-and-labor

Do you have a better analysis of the economic situation from China that comes from a different source? 

Well, considering China has gone from being a poor nation with a command economy to an export nation over the past 40 years and is currently just starting to transition away from being an export nation, I'd take a wild guess and say it was their massive manufacturing industry that primarily contributed to their recent wealth. David Ricardo out front should have told you.

 

[Zavala 1384]

 

5 minutes ago, F250 said:

Actually, I was addressing his flexible beliefs. He has always been an advocate of the supremacy of Western thought similar to the Straussian construct. Then in the early 2000's he jumped on the neoconservative train. He seems to have reversed course away from the idea of exporting democracy and the expansion of globalization by becoming an advocate of protectionism. I used those terms in the literal sense and not the pejorative.

I don't think exporting democracy was ever going to work in China. Maybe this particular neocon realized that globalism isn't healthy when your competitors don't play by any rules. 

So he's literally a Trump supporting little person?

[Zavala 1384]

6 minutes ago, F250 said:

Well, considering China has gone from being a poor nation with a command economy to an export nation over the past 40 years and is currently just starting to transition away from being an export nation, I'd take a wild guess and say it was their massive manufacturing industry that primarily contributed to their recent wealth. David Ricardo out front should have told you.

So when they transition away from being a manufacturing and export nation, what do they transition into? African colonialists? 

They are going to have a tough time with innovation without IP protections and state controlled corporations. 

[F250 28659]

9 minutes ago, Zavala said:

 

I don't think exporting democracy was ever going to work in China. Maybe this particular neocon realized that globalism isn't healthy when your competitors don't play by any rules. 

So he's literally a Trump supporting little person?

No offense but this gibberish.

[Zavala 1384]

1 minute ago, F250 said:

No offense but this gibberish.

None taken. You said you used Trumpkin literally rather than pejorative.

[F250 28659]

4 minutes ago, Zavala said:

So when they transition away from being a manufacturing and export nation, what do they transition into? African colonialists? 

They are going to have a tough time with innovation without IP protections and state controlled corporations. 

Everything points to a service based economy like all of the other wealthy nations. They are losing their advantage in manufacturing so that really isn't a sustainable model as their economy grows.

The colonialism charge is a bit much. They are attempting to secure resources similar to the West but it's definitely not colonialism. Not that I think all of their work in Africa is being done out of benevolence, Africa will still get fucked.

I don't doubt China is seeking to be a regional hegemony but nothing indicates they desire to be a global hegemony like the article claims. They continually abstain from stepping into the role that has traditionally been  carried out by the United States despite having the opportunity. They also never embraced proletarian internationalism like the Soviet Union did.

As mentioned in the Trade thread. It's my opinion that China will struggle to thrive due to the recent changes happening under Jinping. The market reforms were responsible for their wealth, their move away from liberalization will cause stagnation.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

9 minutes ago, F250 said:

their move away from liberalization will cause stagnation.

This is their biggest roadblock to becoming a true superpower (economic and military).   The intense concentration of power and corruption in their closed system keeps their true potential locked away. 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

34 minutes ago, F250 said:

Everything points to a service based economy like all of the other wealthy nations. They are losing their advantage in manufacturing so that really isn't a sustainable model as their economy grows.

The colonialism charge is a bit much. They are attempting to secure resources similar to the West but it's definitely not colonialism. Not that I think all of their work in Africa is being done out of benevolence, Africa will still get fucked.

I don't doubt China is seeking to be a regional hegemony but nothing indicates they desire to be a global hegemony like the article claims. They continually abstain from stepping into the role that has traditionally been  carried out by the United States despite having the opportunity. They also never embraced proletarian internationalism like the Soviet Union did.

As mentioned in the Trade thread. It's my opinion that China will struggle to thrive due to the recent changes happening under Jinping. The market reforms were responsible for their wealth, their move away from liberalization will cause stagnation.

It's modern day colonialism.  They don't need to occupy (nor do they want to) they just need contracts for exclusive rights to plunder.

[Bama Chick 28596]

I don’t understand 80% of what F250 has said in this thread but I can smell when someone gets owned.

[F250 28659]

2 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

It's modern day colonialism.  They don't need to occupy (nor do they want to) they just need contracts for exclusive rights to plunder.

 

I believe you are referring to neocolonialism which is an interesting concept that has historically been the far left's criticism of Western capitalism, international trade and globalization. I never really was sold on the concept but I'm a free trader and globalist. I find it interesting that the concept has made it's way into conservative circles as a criticism of capitalism, free trade and globalization. Interesting times we live in.

 

 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 minute ago, F250 said:

 

I believe you are referring to neocolonialism which is an interesting concept that has historically been the far left's criticism of Western capitalism, international trade and globalization. I never really was sold on the concept but I'm a free trader and globalist. I find it interesting that the concept has made it's way into conservative circles as a criticism of capitalism, free trade and globalization. Interesting times we live in.

 

 

  It's the same end result as colonialism at a much cheaper investment. One nation takes the resources from another nation for it's own benefit.

 It's not really a concept IMO, it's the new reality.  Why waste money on military conquest, that would be soundly criticized by the world community when you can just buy your way into the same end result, fuel for your nations economy.  Raw materials are much more valuable for a nations growing economy instead of buying manufactured goods.

Unchecked capitalism deserves a lot of criticism.

[F250 28659]

6 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

  It's the same end result as colonialism at a much cheaper investment. One nation takes the resources from another nation for it's own benefit.

 It's not really a concept IMO, it's the new reality.  Why waste money on military conquest, that would be soundly criticized by the world community when you can just buy your way into the same end result, fuel for your nations economy.  Raw materials are much more valuable for a nations growing economy instead of buying manufactured goods.

Unchecked capitalism deserves a lot of criticism.

I know what it is, as I said this been a criticism of Western capitalism for over 50 years. I just find it interesting that conservatives are using the same criticism when they argued against it for so long.

This isn't a case of unchecked capitalism, you sound like AOC.

 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

2 minutes ago, F250 said:

I know what it is, as I said this been a criticism of Western capitalism for over 50 years. I just find it interesting that conservatives are using the same criticism when they argued against it for so long.

This isn't a case of unchecked capitalism, you sound like AOC.

 

Are you aware of some of the things the Chinese have done in Africa, and to the oceans ?  It's pretty bad in most cases. My conservatism and capitalism extends only as far as it doesn't rape the world, so yeah what they're doing is unchecked capitalism, as it's exploiting the natural resources of Africa, and other places around the globe.

It's not a conservative or liberal issue. It's a respect for the planet, and the natural world issue.

[F250 28659]

1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Are you aware of some of the things the Chinese have done in Africa, and to the oceans ?  It's pretty bad in most cases. My conservatism and capitalism extends only as far as it doesn't rape the world, so yeah what they're doing is unchecked capitalism, as it's exploiting the natural resources of Africa, and other places around the globe.

It's not a conservative or liberal issue. It's a respect for the planet, and the natural world issue.

[YChang 3430]

Are you aware of some of the things the Chinese have done in Africa, and to the oceans ?  It's pretty bad in most cases. My conservatism and capitalism extends only as far as it doesn't rape the world, so yeah what they're doing is unchecked capitalism, as it's exploiting the natural resources of Africa, and other places around the globe.
It's not a conservative or liberal issue. It's a respect for the planet, and the natural world issue.

Respect for the planet? You must be one of those smelly Euro Green Party types!

[Zavala 1384]

SIAP

 

[Parliament 14112]

"Shorter wait times at the hospital" Nice.

Hey, if Communism is a viable form of government, it should use this, and be successful with it.  

[EMAWesome 101]

Kind of sad that I am the first one to bring this up and I am a day late.  Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Tienanmen Square.  This is an old article but still appropriate.

 

https://atlassociety.org/objectivism/atlas-university/deeper-dive-blog/3962-can-there-be-an-after-socialism

 The goal of socialism was to reap the cultural, scientific, creative, and communal rewards of abolishing private property and free markets, and to end human tyranny. Using the command of the state, Communism sought to create this socialist society. What in fact occurred was the achievement of power by a group of inhumane despots: Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro, Mengistu, Ceausescu, Hoxha, and so on, and so on.

We are invited now to discuss what follows these tyrants, and what lessons we have learned from them, and what sort of world might emerge from the loss of belief in Communism. There is one problem, however: the bodies.We are surrounded by slain innocents, and the scale is wholly new. This is not the thousands killed during the Inquisition; it is not the thousands of American lynching. This is not the six million dead from Nazi extermination. The best scholarship yields numbers that the mind must try to comprehend: scores, and scores, and scores, and scores of millions of bodies. 
All around us. If we count those who died of starvation during Communists' experiments with human interactions—twenty to forty million in three years in China alone—we may add scores of millions more. Shot; dead by deliberate exposure; starved; and murdered in work camps and prisons meant to extract every last fiber of labor from human beings and then kill them. And all around us, widows and widowers and orphans.

No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag Archipelago: "No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into."  Until that happens, there is no "after socialism."

The West accepts an epochal, monstrous, unforgivable double standard. We rehearse the crimes of Nazism almost daily, we teach them to our children as ultimate historical and moral lessons, and we bear witness to every victim. We are, with so few exceptions, almost silent on the crimes of Communism. So the bodies lie among us, unnoticed, everywhere. We insisted upon "de-Nazification," and we excoriate those who tempered it in the name of new or emerging political realities. There never has been and never will be a similar "de-Communization," although the slaughter of innocents was exponentially greater, and although those who signed the orders and ran the camps remain. In the case of Nazism, we hunt down ninety-year-old men because "the bones cry out" for justice. In the case of Communism, we insisted on "no witch hunts"—let the dead bury the living. But the dead can bury no one.

Therefore the dead lie among us, ignored, and anyone with moral eyes sees them, by their absence from our moral consciousness, spilling naked out of the television and movie screens, frozen in pain in our classrooms, and sprawled, unburied, across our politics and our culture. They sit next to us at our conferences. There could not have been an "after Nazism" without the recognition, the accounting, the justice, and the remembrance. Until we deal with the Communist dead, there is no "after socialism."

Our artists rightly obsess on the lesser but still immeasurable Holocaust, which lasted several years, and when we watch Night and Fog, Shoah, Schindler's List, and almost countless other films, we weep, we lament, and we rededicate the humane parts of our souls. The greater Communist holocaust, which lasted decade after decade—the great charnel house of human history—educes no such art. Its one tender, modest film, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, based on Solzhenitsyn's novel, is almost never replayed and cannot be found for purchase. The Communist holocaust should have brought forth a flowering of Western art, and witness, and sympathy. It should have called forth an overflowing ocean of tears. Instead, it has called forth a glacier of indifference. Kids who in the 1960s had portraits of Mao and Che on their college walls —the moral equivalent of having hung portraits of Hitler, Goebbels, or Horst Wessel in one's dorm—now teach our children about the moral superiority of their political generation. Every historical textbook lingers on the crimes of Nazism, seeks their root causes, and announces a lesson that should be learned. Everyone knows the number "six million." By contrast, it is always "the mistakes" of Communism or of Stalinism (repeated, by mistake, again, and again, and again). Ask college freshmen how many died under Stalin's regime, and they will answer, even now, "Thousands? Tens of thousands?"

The record is truly plain. Socialism, wherever it actually had the means to plan a society, to pursue efficaciously its vision of the abolition of private property, economic inequality, and the allocation of capital and goods by free markets, culminated in the crushing of individual, economic, religious, associational, and political liberty. Its collectivization of agriculture alone led to untold suffering, scarcity, and contempt for property as the fruit of labor. It was, at its best, the ability, through horror and servitude, to build Gary, Indiana once, without the good stuff, and without the ability even to maintain it.

To be moral beings, we must acknowledge these awful things appropriately and bear witness to the responsibilities of these most murderous times. Until socialism—like Nazism or fascism confronted by the death camps and the slaughter of innocents—is confronted with its lived reality, the greatest atrocities of all recorded human life, we will not live "after socialism."

It will not happen. The pathology of Western intellectuals has committed them to an adversarial relationship with the culture—free markets and individual rights—that has produced the greatest alleviation of suffering; the greatest liberation from want, ignorance, and superstition; and the greatest increase of bounty and opportunity in the history of all human life.

This pathology allows Western intellectuals to step around the Everest of bodies of the victims of Communism without a tear, a scruple, a regret, an act of contrition, or a reevaluation of self, soul, and mind.

The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one's breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry "caste." In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either "poverty" or "consumerism." In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry "alienation." In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry "oppression." In a society of boundless private charity, they cry "avarice." In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the "exploitation" of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry "injustice." In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like "liberty" in quotation marks when these refer to the West.

Ironically, of course, the main traditions of socialism and Communism both claimed Marxist credentials, and the Marxists surely had one argument right: we should judge human systems, in the final analysis, not as theories and ideal abstractions, but as actual history and practice. In ineffable bad faith, they applied that measure to everything except what allegedly mattered the most to them. From one end of the earth to the other, Marxist intellectuals, propagandists, professors, and apologists never contrasted the existing "socialist world" with the more or less liberal societies of Western Europe and North America. They contrasted, instead, a fictional perfect society that never was to an existing imperfect society that had accomplished actual wonders. Marxists were fond of denouncing such antirealism as "philosophical idealism" when they condemned it in others. It was they, however, who feigned an ideal world of their own spinning—it was they, that is, who were always the most antirealist of all. It is fitting, now that historical evidence has taken everything away from Marxism, that its heirs—the anti-Western postmodernists of the cultural Left—should embrace that antirealism explicitly, as a chosen cast of mind.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE OCCURRED "AFTER SOCIALISM"?
The list is long: An anti-Communist epiphany. A festival of celebration. A flowering of comparative scholarship about them and us. A full accounting of the Communist reality—political, economic, moral, ecological, social, cultural, and so on. (What wouldn't one want to know?) A rededication to the principles that underlay—from our side—the differences. A set of profound, anguished, and soul-searching mea culpas from all of those who, without malice, had been tragically wrong. An acute sensitivity to the nature and policies of persisting Communist regimes. A revision of curriculum. A recognition of the ineffable value of a truly limited government.

Indeed, it is precisely to avoid the re-vivification of classical liberal principles that our teachers, professors, information media, and filmmakers ignore the comparative inquiry that the time so urgently demands. Indeed, it is precisely because of the lessons that would be taught by knowledge and truth that no revision of the curriculum occurs. For at least a generation, intellectual contempt for liberal society—as a civilization, a set of institutions, and a constellation of ideals—has been at the core of the humanities and soft social sciences. This has accelerated, not changed, despite the fact that now there is no intellectual excuse for ignoring certain verities.

We know that voluntary exchange among individuals held morally responsible under the rule of law creates both prosperity and an unparalleled diversity of human choices. Such a model also has been a precondition of individuation and freedom. By contrast, regimes of central planning create poverty and occasion ineluctable developments toward totalitarianism and the worst abuses of power. Dynamic free-market societies, grounded in rights-based individualism, have altered the entire human conception of liberty and of dignity for formerly marginalized groups. The entire "socialist experiment," by contrast, ended in stasis; ethnic hatreds; the absence of even the minimal preconditions of economic, social, and political renewal; and categorical contempt for both individuation and minority rights. Our children do not know this true comparison.

As for the mea culpas, we await them in vain from those who claim not to have known or who still choose not to learn. Let Western intellectuals repeat the phrase of "Requiem," a work written during the Stalinist terror by Anna Akhmatova, the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century: "I will remember them always and everywhere, I will never forget them no matter what comes." The bodies demand an accounting, an apology, and repentance. Without such things, there is no "after socialism."

[hpslugga 4039]

Oh boy, there's the S-word and the C-word again.

[ChickenSandwich 9797]

“No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. “

History loves to repeat itself. 

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

I know right? All those wars and tyrants from the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden.......

[Dbeasy 14953]

The impact of government censorship on people’s views on their own freedom. China citizens feel free. Poor dumb bastards.

[F250 28659]

4 hours ago, EMAWesome said:

Kind of sad that I am the first one to bring this up and I am a day late.  Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Tienanmen Square.  This is an old article but still appropriate.

 

https://atlassociety.org/objectivism/atlas-university/deeper-dive-blog/3962-can-there-be-an-after-socialism

 

 

I'm not really sure that article is relevant. China is an authoritarian nation for sure but what's going on today isn't the same as what's addressed in that article.

What is interesting is that China through its embrace of capitalist practices has created a  very visible state of economic inequality. Not surprising since there are always winners and losers in capitalism. However because China has been an emerging economy based on exports and manufacturing, there have been really big winners and big regional losers. Its like America at the turn of the 20th century. Where things get interesting is China has generations of people that have been indoctrinated in communism. It seems like a no brainer that people would turn to the official ideology of the state that is predicated on empowering the exploited worker against the capitalist class. However, the Chinese government isn't cool with that kind of shit.

Check out what's been happening to young enthusiastic Marxists in China.

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/21/669509554/in-china-the-communist-partys-latest-unlikely-target-young-marxists

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

25% is an insane number but plausible because the population is so concentrated in a geographic area. 

[DigglerontheHoof 21022]

I bet the port o potty to protester ratio was horrible.

[F250 28659]

This is an intimidating flow of humanity.

 

 

[gsoda3 3234]

been interesting to watch which one of my fb friends living in hk have been outspoken and which ones haven't posted anything in three weeks.  

[WhatTheBuck 28700]

7 hours ago, gsoda3 said:

been interesting to watch which one of my fb friends living in hk have been outspoken and which ones haven't posted anything in three weeks.  

How so? Don't hog the interesting. 

[F250 28659]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

How so? Don't hog the interesting. 

[Rimbo 25752]

U.N. Secretary General Assumes Someone Already Doing Something About Uighur Internment Camps

Spoiler

NEW YORK—Speculating that there were probably dozens of people out there who had a handle on the situation, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres assumed Wednesday that someone was already doing something about the one million Uighur Muslims currently detained in Chinese internment camps in Xinjiang Province. “I presume there’s a group of some sort that stepped up after seeing China imprisoning a million of their own Muslim citizens for religious reeducation,” said Guterres, surmising that given the severity and scope of the situation, there were most likely several powerful world leaders and maybe even an international governing body dedicated to taking care of the whole thing before it escalated further. “Frankly, it would be weird if somebody didn’t see a Muslim minority being rounded up without trial and immediately jump into action by signing some sort of accord. Or maybe the whole Uighur thing was already wrapped up—I haven’t really looked into it recently. I mean, it started back in 2014, so there’s been plenty of time. Either way, there’s no chance in hell the world would just turn its back on a clearly oppressed people like this, right?” At press time, U.N. officials were reportedly delighted to hear China had already volunteered to sort out the issue themselves.