Maximo Roboto posted:

Sure but it's not as if native Indian polities haven't tried to unite the subcontinent before. I mean look at how big the Maurya Empire was if Ashoka is to be believed

Some Guy TT posted:

https://twitter.com/teddyboylocsin/status/1389021071785881600

quote:

MANILA — China on Tuesday told Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. to mind his "basic manners" following his recent expletive-laden tweet demanding Beijing's ships to leave Philippine waters.

"We hope that [a] certain individual from the Philippine side will mind basic manners and act in ways that suit his status," Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in a regular press briefing in Beijing, when asked by a reporter about Locsin's remarks.

On Monday, Locsin tweeted: “China, my friend, how politely can I put it? Let me see… O…GET THE F*** OUT" as the foreign office protested China's illegal presence in the West Philippine Sea.

The top Filipino diplomat on Tuesday apologized to China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi for supposedly hurting his feelings, emphasizing that he was only sending his apologies to "him alone."

Palace spokesman Harry Roque said Locsin also personally apologized to Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian.

Despite the development, however, Wang reiterated that some features in the West Philippine Sea belonged to their country.

Beijing does not recognize the 2016 ruling of an arbitral tribunal in The Hague, which junked its "historical" claims to almost the entire South China Sea, within which is the smaller West Philippine Sea, the country's exclusive economic zone in the disputed waters.

Wang also urged Philippine authorities to stop its maritime drills there, most especially in the Scarborough Shoal, or what they call Huangyan Island, as these areas are supposedly "under China's jurisdiction."

"China urges the Philippine side to earnestly respect China's sovereignty and jurisdiction, and stop taking actions that may complicate the situation. Facts have proven time and time again that megaphone diplomacy can only undermine mutual trust rather than change reality," he said.

He added that Beijing would "remain committed to properly handling differences" and through "friendly consultation" while boosting its ties with Manila despite the maritime dispute.

"Just as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said, the differences and disputes between the two countries on some issues should not affect the overall friendship and cooperation, which is also an important consensus reached by China and the Philippines on many occasions," the Chinese official pointed out.

"China... will continue to provide assistance within its capacity to the Philippines in its efforts to fight the epidemic and resume economic development."

The Philippines has so far received 3.5 million COVID-19 shots from China's Sinovac, 1 million doses of which have been donated by Beijing for the country's virus response.

Duterte has said the Philippines owes China a debt of gratitude for making vaccines available to the country.

Meanwhile, Chinese Coast Guard vessels remained in the country's waters as of April 22, the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS) earlier said.

The Philippine Coast Guard and Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in late April conducted maritime drills in the disputed areas, even as Chinese ships have been sighted there since early March.

The deployment of additional vessels and aircraft in the area aims to intensify operations against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and to "increase safety of life at sea operations," the NTF-WPS earlier said.

gradenko_2000 posted:

The Philippines doesn't really have a long and proud martial tradition so we have to do things like this, where we glom onto our participation in US-led wars.

Some Guy TT posted:

have the phillipines been getting any vaccines from us the article kind of makes it sound like theyre scared of running out

SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:

There are some good arguments for that in India tbh. North and South India have been historically very different

Benagain posted:

the manchurian peninsula.

Throatwarbler posted:

mila kunis posted:

pretty stunning that we have vaccine scarcity issues a year into this thing. i asked in the covid thread if there were genuine production bottlenecks or it was because of IP strangulation and got the impression it was the latter but I haven't found any good sources on it.

stephenthinkpad posted:

The Nehru's India and subsequent Congress party adopted a pretty loose system to govern and let remote states run by local parties that have very different ideologies and different land reform agendas! It's significant that local states can use 3 different language to teach. I think grade school with mother tongue, middle school with Hindu and high school with English (something like that, India has different school tiers)

I think had Myanmar adopt a similar loose relationship between local and center they wouldn't have cyclical military rules.

Some Guy TT posted:

im struggling trying to figure out how america the good country which loves the philippines is giving them less vaccines than china the bad country that hates the philippines despite america having far more vaccines to give away to begin with

AnimeIsTrash posted:

This is incorrect. If you're going to school that associated with the CBSE in India hindi/english are mandatory languages to learn. Otherwise you'll be learning whatever the native tongue is, english, and probably an ancient tongue (I had just started sanskirt in elementary school before we moved to the states).

stephenthinkpad posted:

I read a conspiracy in the Philippines sub that supposedly Durterte had a chance to sign some paper work and get some Pfizer vaccine but never signed them. But that deal was "offered" by Pompeo so I figure it must have come with a string of causes. There is definite some oddities in the traditional "Team US" vs "Team BRI" vaccine diplomacy. Like how Taiwan was not able to secured any Pfizer.

edit: taking a quick look at the Pfizer country list, I think almost all of them have US military bases. Also HK is getting some Pfizer but it's through a greater Chinese market licensing deal and the vaccine is not branded as "Pfizer".

quote:

The agreement between BioNTech and Guo’s Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co. gives it the right to distribute the vaccine in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, Fosun says. Taiwan has been pursuing its own supplies directly from BioNTech, but sees a diminishing chance of securing an agreement, the health minister said this week, after claiming in February “political pressure” scuppered a deal for 5 million doses from the German developer. While hugely successful at containing Covid, Taiwan has struggled to procure vaccine supplies and is falling behind on inoculation.

In response to Guo’s comments, Chuang Jen-hsiang, a spokesman for Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center, said that the government had spoken directly to all vaccine providers including BioNTech. “There is no message from BioNTech to us saying that we should talk to Fosun instead,” he said.

mila kunis posted:

pretty stunning that we have vaccine scarcity issues a year into this thing. i asked in the covid thread if there were genuine production bottlenecks or it was because of IP strangulation and got the impression it was the latter but I haven't found any good sources on it.

gradenko_2000 posted:

stephenthinkpad posted:

Yeah I only remember Vinay Lal said 3 different languages in one of his lectures. And I realized it didn't quick make sense to teach Hindi in south India. Maybe Modi will fix that!

stephenthinkpad posted:

I read a conspiracy in the Philippines sub that supposedly Durterte had a chance to sign some paper work and get some Pfizer vaccine but never signed them. But that deal was "offered" by Pompeo so I figure it must have come with a string of causes.

quote:

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines would have secured the delivery of 10 million doses of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines as early as January next year had Health Secretary Francisco Duque III worked on the documentary requirements needed for the deal.

This was according to Senator Panfilo Lacson, who was able to talk to Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Romualdez about the official who “dropped the ball” on the Pfizer vaccine deal.

According to Lacson, the negotiation between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. as arranged by Romualdez started in July this year, which would have allowed the country to acquire the Pfizer vaccines as early as January 2021.

“They could have secured the delivery of 10 million Pfizer vaccines as early as January next year, way ahead of Singapore but for the indifference of Sec. Duque who failed to work on the necessary documentary requirement namely, the Confidentiality Disclosure Agreement (CDA) as he should have done,” Lacson said in a message to reporters.

“The country representative of Pfizer was even following up on the submission of such documentary requirements,” he added, noting that Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has assured both Locsin and Romualdez that funds would be “made available” for the vaccines.

“As we now know, Singapore has the vaccines and we don’t,” the senator further said.

In an earlier media forum, Duque said that the negotiation with Pfizer for its vaccines is ongoing and that “there is no such thing as dropping the ball.”

“If you look at the statement, the negotiations are ongoing and the DOH (Department of Health) went through the process of iteration,” he said.

The health secretary emphasized that the department is still reviewing the conditionalities and provisions stated in the confidentiality non-disclosure agreement (CDA) of Pfizer.

While Duque’s statement that the Pfizer deal is ongoing is “true,” Lacson said that, according to Romualdez, it is a “renewed initiative after they missed the bus the first time.”

“The more important question is, how many lives would be saved between January and when (if at all) the vaccines may be made available again to Filipinos,” the lawmaker added.

quote:

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 21)— Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro “Teddy Boy” Locsin Jr. on Monday confirmed it was Health Secretary Francisco Duque III who had “dropped the ball” in the country’s COVID-19 vaccine negotiations with American drug maker Pfizer.

Locsin, however, said the public “can’t keep on blaming,” noting that he is more “interested in results” moving forward.

“I’m not interested in recriminations, I’m interested in results,” Locsin said in an interview with CNN Philippines’ The Source. “We can’t keep blaming.”

The issue first came to light last week after Locsin shared that he and Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel "Babe" Romualdez were able to secure millions of Pfizer vaccine doses to arrive in the country by January 2021, but the plan did not push through as “someone dropped the ball.”

In a later statement, Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson then pointed to Duque, claiming the embattled Health chief failed to work on the necessary documents, particularly on signing the confidential disclosure agreement on time.

Defending himself from the claims, Duque, in an earlier interview with CNN Philippines, said there were no 10 million doses to speak of, saying the papers that reached his office only consisted of "generalities" representing the early steps of supply negotiations.

Locsin also earlier said that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has already committed to help the country secure and “get back” some coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer following issues on the deal.

“We’ll get what we can, and also we’ll get what we are prepared to receive,” the DFA secretary noted.

AnimeIsTrash posted:

There is a north/south divide but it's not that clean. Almost every state in the east has it's own unique language, you got punjab in the west, even in modi's home state of gujarat, hindi isn't the primary language.

genericnick posted:

Me neither, unsourced twitter claims all the way down. Having said that, I do find the claim credible that we couldn't produce vastly more MRNA vaccines even without IP, since the lipid binding seems to be both technically difficult and not widely used before the vaccines were a thing. That's not true for any of the other vaccines of course. I've seen a claim in an English language Indian newspaper that the state owned manufacturers are not producing any covid vaccines, but no idea where the link to that is.

stephenthinkpad posted:

About manufacturing, India's Serum Institute supposedly can increase output from 2.5 billions to 3 billions per year. This is all for the AZ/Covidshield vaccines. So that's like 1.5 billions people or spread it to 3 billions if you do what Philippine does. But I have no idea how well AZ does against the Indian double-mutant variant. I know its quite useless against the SA variant.

For China production capability, from my memory it was half billion doze for 2019 and can increase 1 billion in 2020. So basically their output can barely cover their own population. The inactive styled vaccine is also hard to produce.

The whole world needs simpler vaccines, hopefully the 1 shot variant. If this world is run by competent leaders, they should buy out a simple and easy to make vaccine through UN and release the IP for free.

stephenthinkpad posted:

edit: taking a quick look at the Pfizer country list, I think almost all of them have US military bases. Also HK is getting some Pfizer but it's through a greater Chinese market licensing deal and the vaccine is not branded as "Pfizer".

gradenko_2000 posted:

This doesn't really make much sense when you consider that the US hasn't been exporting Pfizer doses to ANYONE, but propaganda is strong, and this particular incident is chalked up as the ONE SINGULAR REASON to as to why our vaccina procurement is so bad. This is not to say that our Health secretary probably did gently caress up the paperwork, but it's very difficult to believe that we'd have millions of Pfizer doses by now even if he did everything right.

Greg12 posted:

holy gently caress china watchers please do some critical thinking

mila kunis posted:

the gpcr saved the world??

https://twitter.com/JWMason1/status/1389564717862166532

mortons stork posted:

Pfizer is somewhat widely available in Europe, since it does apparently have some plants over here. Italy did get enough to vaccinate its medical personnel for instance, and also enough for a lot of 80+.
I think it is more precise to say that none of the vaccine manufactured in the UK or US gets outside the borders, and this is a policy notably unchanged with the arrival of biden, who is basically blue maga foreign policy wise

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

https://twitter.com/exMalwa/status/1389422091015888897