quote:

So its completely US and Europe's fault for not throwing vaccines around while they themselves aren't vaccinated yet? For which their taxpayers funded and invested on those research, materials and infrastructure. Totally their fault for not being saviors while China who made the virus now sell an overpriced vaccine that requires shady business dealings as condition.

See, you are demanding and throwing tantrums just like an entitled spoiled brat. What have you contributed for those vaccines? The US and EU is right not to prioritize Chinese lapdog governments and instead focus those vaccines on neighbor states like Canada and Mexico whom they share a border with. Logically the next would be Japan, Australia, India and Taiwan.

The vaccination problem is inter-related to the fact that Sinovac isn't a trustworthy company and has a track record for bribing regulatory officers. That's what drives thinking Filipinos not to take those Sinovac shits.

Yes, I'm confident that a non-Duterte successor will do a better job at convincing not only population but also Pfizer and Moderna to provide more jabs as investments here since a clear pivot away from China would mean a more stable and strategic ally worth being given those precious resources. By that time next year, the manufacturing and logistics would be further improved and a lot more would be available. By then perhaps the US and Europe will end your crying about the vaccines not given to you and apologize personally.

Ailumao posted:

this is funny cuz they just recently opened a cheesecake factory in downtown shanghai and everyone complains the portions are so big every dish for like 4 people. there has been one next to disneyland for a few years but that was thought of as a weird novelty and I guess people didn't know that's just how it is.

they do have the weight of each dish tho and when i went one of the smallest entrees was like a 750g burrito lol.

their cheesecake tho is legit as gently caress and worth going for.

gradenko_2000 posted:

quote:

So its completely US and Europe's fault for not throwing vaccines around while they themselves aren't vaccinated yet? For which their taxpayers funded and invested on those research, materials and infrastructure. Totally their fault for not being saviors while China who made the virus now sell an overpriced vaccine that requires shady business dealings as condition.

See, you are demanding and throwing tantrums just like an entitled spoiled brat. What have you contributed for those vaccines? The US and EU is right not to prioritize Chinese lapdog governments and instead focus those vaccines on neighbor states like Canada and Mexico whom they share a border with. Logically the next would be Japan, Australia, India and Taiwan.

The vaccination problem is inter-related to the fact that Sinovac isn't a trustworthy company and has a track record for bribing regulatory officers. That's what drives thinking Filipinos not to take those Sinovac shits.

Yes, I'm confident that a non-Duterte successor will do a better job at convincing not only population but also Pfizer and Moderna to provide more jabs as investments here since a clear pivot away from China would mean a more stable and strategic ally worth being given those precious resources. By that time next year, the manufacturing and logistics would be further improved and a lot more would be available. By then perhaps the US and Europe will end your crying about the vaccines not given to you and apologize personally.

Atrocious Joe posted:

i thought kpop was mostly in the style of genres that originated in the west like rap and pop. better produced than europeans or americans do most of the time, but still that style.

is there any traditional korean music that has influenced kpop.

crepeface posted:

i don't think the... flowery embelishments undermine the central point that nitobe had a motive to sell japan as a "modern" colonial power to an intended western audience.

interesting. what's the source? it seems to diminish nitobe influence in favour of tetsujiro while still supporting the idea that the image of bushido and samurai was a constructed one but what's the conclusion in the paper? that it wasn't state sponsored?

Some Guy TT posted:

trot music

Bot 02 posted:

I had to google this because the notion of super influential trotskyist music was absolutely baffling to me

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/Ghani3atif/status/1405230187256631298?s=19

Hell yeah

DesertIslandHermit posted:

We will never leave

quote:

That the same massive political bias displayed earlier in the coverage of Popieluszko and the hundred religious victims in Latin America continues today is suggested by the media's usage ofthe word "genocide" in the 1990s, as shown in the accompanying table. "Genocide" is an invidious word that officials apply readily to cases of victimization in enemy states, but rarely if ever to similar or worse cases of victimization by the United States itself or allied regimes. Thus, with Saddam Hussein and Iraq having been U.S. targets in the 1990s, whereas Turkey has been an ally and client and the United States its major arms supplier as it engaged in its severe ethnic cleansing of Kurds during those years, we find former U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith stating that "while Turkey represses its own Kurds, its cooperation is essential to an American-led mission to protect Iraq's Kurds from renewed genocide at the hands of Saddam Hussein."28 Turkey's treatment of its Kurds was in no way less murderous than Iraq's treatment of Iraqi Kurds, but for Galbraith, Turkey only "represses," while Iraq engages in "genocide."

The table shows that the five major print media surveyed engage in a similar biased usage, frequently using "genocide" to describe victimization in the enemy states, but applying the word far less frequently to equally severe victimization carried out by the United States or its allies and clients. We can even read who are U.S. friends and enemies from the media's use of the word. Thus, with the United States and its NATO allies warring against Yugoslavia in 1999, allegedly in response to that country's mistreatment of the Kosovo Albanians, official denunciations of that mistreatment flowed through the media, along with the repeated designation of he abuses as "genocidal." The same pattern applies to the Iraqi regime's abuse of its Kurdish population-after it had ceased to be a U.S. ally -an enemy state, official denunciations, harsh sanctions, and parallel media treatment

On the other hand, Turkey and Indonesia have long been U.S. allies and client states and recipients of military and economic aid. In consequence, and Just as the propaganda model would predict, the media not only gave minimal attention to the severe abuse of the Kurds by Turkey throughout the 1990s, and to the Clinton administration's lavish help to Turkey's implementation of that ethnic-cleansing program, they rarely applied the word "genocide" to these Turkish operations.

Similarly, the word was not often applied to the Indonesian mistreatment of the East Timorese, who were subjected to another wave of terror as Indonesia tried to prevent or defeat a U.N.-sponsored referendum on independence in 1999. The United States, after helping Suharto take power in 1965 in one of the great bloodbaths of the twentieth century, and after supporting his dictatorship for thirty-two years, also gave him crucial military and diplomatic aid when he invaded and occupied East Timor from 1975. 31 In 1999, as Indonesia attempted to prevent the independence referendum in East Timor by violence, the United States maintained its military aid programs and refused to intervene to stop the killing, on the ground that what is happening "is the responsibility of the government of Indonesia, and we don't want to take that responsibility away from them" (as stated by Defense Secretary William Cohen in a press conference of September 8, 1999). This was long after Indonesia had killed thousands and destroyed much of East Timor. Shortly thereafter, under considerable international pressure, the United States invited Indonesia to leave the devastated country.

We have shown elsewhere that in 1975 and later the U.S. media treated the East Timorese as unworthy victims, saving their attention and indignation for the almost simultaneous killings under Pol Pot in Cambodia. The victims of Pol Pot, a Communist leader, were worthy, although after he was ousted by theVietnamese in 1978, Cambodians ceased to be worthy, as U.S. policy shifted toward support of Pol Pot in exile.32 The East Timorese remained unworthy in the 1990S, as the table suggests.

As the leader of the faction insisting on harsh sanctions against Iraq following the 1991 Persian GulfWar, the United States itself was responsible for a very large number of Iraqi civilians deaths in the 1990s. John and Karl Mueller assert that these "sanctions of mass destruction" have caused the deaths of "more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction [nuclear and chemical] throughout all history."33 A large fraction of the million or more killed by sanctions were young children; UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy pointed out that "if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998."34 However, as these deaths resulted from U.S. policy, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared on national television that these 500,000 child deaths were "worth it" we would expect the U.S. media to find these victims unworthy, to give them little attention and less indignation, and to find the word "genocide" inapplicable to this case. The table shows that this expectation was realized in media practice.

Lostconfused posted:

It's from "Bushido: The Creation of a Martial Ethic in Late Meiji Japan" by Oleg Benesch

Honestly I stopped reading the blog post half way through since it kept citing Benesch, so I decided to just not waste my time and go straight to the source.

I only got through the introduction but it clearly establishes that a certain "Way of the Warrior" mythology did exist since around the 1600s and it was always used by the ruling class to justify it's existence and privilege.

Nitobe is responsible for creating the image of "Bushido" that exists in the West, but the bourgeoisie in Japan were already establishing their own version based on their interests.

quote:

Nitobe's "fear of what (Japanese) readers might think" proved sound when Bushido: The Soul of Japan received heavy criticism in Japan. However, Nitobe soon found himself under attack as well. Many Japanese scholars accused the author of being unqualified to write on bushido, questioning his expertise on Japanese history and culture.

quote:

Just decades after ousting the samurai, the Japanese government would find a new use for its former ruling class. Despite military victories abroad, Japanese officials felt troops lacked confidence and fighting spirit. Bushido's image of honorable samurai fighting to the death provided the solution (Oshii). The ideology that changed the West's perception of Japan would now serve to fuel fascism and the Japanese war machine.

According to Nitobe, Japan came from a long line of honorable, brave, and capable warriors that could be extended to all classes. He wrote, "In manifold ways has bushido filtered down from the social class where it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral standard for the whole people" (Nitobe).

Trickle down bushido meant even the lowliest citizen could aspire to and attain the glory and honor of a samurai. The warrior spirit was ingrained in the Japanese soul. By taking bushido mainstream, the Japanese government looked to boost its soldiers' and citizens' confidence by applying the ideology among its military and citizenry.

Zmej posted:

don't worry "we" are just stay-behind private contractors and intelligence networks

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/Ghani3atif/status/1405230187256631298?s=19

Hell yeah

crepeface posted:

the blog post goes into japan's reception at the time:

it wasn't until later when it was useful to imperial japan did his interpretation gain state backing and popularity.

crepeface posted:

i should really finish metal gear revengence

gradenko_2000 posted:

mila kunis posted:

yes if only the philippines would suck the west's dick harder they'd definitely provide more vaccines out of the kindness of their hearts

how're the vaccine IP waivers biden was talking about going i wonder

gradenko_2000 posted:

It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a decent conversation about this because the libs are convinced that the only, THE ONLY reason why we're not swimming in Pfizer is because the Health Secretary sabotaged filing the proper paperwork for buying several million doses at the start of the year.

And he did that deliberately, so that we'd be "forced" to use Sinovac, because Duterte is a Chinese puppet.

If you bring up that even a liberal administration that manages to get voted into office next year is going to have trouble sincerely and genuinely trying to get Pfizer and Moderna from the US because they're hoarding it, you're accused of being a Duterte supporter because you're shifting blame away from Duterte.

quote:

Democracy, the “Great Debates,” and China
29 September 2016

The US, with the most advanced mass culture and mass info-technology in the world, has created this baleful system that is in the process of making the US ungovernable, its policies increasingly ineffective, its citizens angry, its foreign policies incoherent. Yet as the US democratic order becomes increasingly dysfunctional, we already see revolts taking place. But revolts the world over historically often lead to greater autocracy, dictatorship or even revolution from the left or right. Wise men have of course grappled with this problem for centuries. The US Founding Fathers tended to believe that day-to-day democracy should be insulated from the volatile passions of the people through more indirect government; the “wiser heads” of the Senate were supposed to balance the popular impulses as represented in the House. Presidents were elected “indirectly” through ostensibly “wiser” electoral colleges.

Now let’s look at the other end of the spectrum. Today China is creeping back again, this time from the disasters of Chairman Mao towards a semblance of order and rationality in governance. Now, I don’t want to live in China particularly. But consider the daunting challenges of running this country: one that was left behind in the last century or so, invaded by English and Japanese imperialists, massively misruled under fanatic communists (not all were fanatic) for fifty years, and now presides over a population approaching 1.4 billion people. China’s leaders operate on the razor’s edge: meeting pent-up demand after decades of deprivation, managing the transition of millions of peasants who want to come to the cities, feeding and housing everyone, maintaining industrial production while trying to reverse the terrible environmental damage wrought in earlier decades, to maintain stability, law and order while managing discontent that could turn violent, and to maintain the present ruling party in power to which there is no reasonable alternative as yet. That’s quite a high-wire act.

So if you were running China today, what would you advocate as the best policies and system to adopt? Chances are few of us would simply urge huge new infusions of democracy and rampant capitalism. The delicate balance of this frail recovering system needs to be guided with care. But it is basically working—as opposed to looming alternatives of chaos and poverty.

And, as world gets more complex, there is less room for radical individualism, whistle blowing, and dissent. Vital and complex infrastructural networks grow ever more vulnerable that can bring a state down. The state moves to protect itself. The strengthening of the state against the individual has already shifted heavily since the Global War on Terror and even more so under Obama.

I’m not suggesting that China is the model to be emulated. But we better note how it represents one rational vision of functioning governance of the future—under difficult circumstances—at one end of the spectrum. The US lies at the other. Is there anything that might lie somewhere between these two highly diverse systems of governance?

quote:

Corona: Thoughts on End Times
March 21, 2020

The Corona experience, like nothing previous, dramatizes the extremely delicate and complex character of our world. What kind of governance will the world adopt to manage future such non-military global crises? China’s apparent quick recovery after an initial failure to deal with the initial crisis strongly suggests that its centralized authoritarian order may be one of the most effective ways to manage large and complex societies. China was of course initially slow off the mark in recognizing the threat—a failure we see widely across many western nations. Some observers optimistically point to democratic South Korea’s fairly successful response at handling Corona—or Taiwan or Japan— as demonstration that a democratic response to such crisis can succeed. But it is important to remember that all these Asian nations also operate within an internalized and quite self-disciplined framework of Confucian origin, producing a kind of tractable and deferential social order not remotely comparable to the impassioned individualism of the US which responds in part by denial—or by buying more guns. Debate over the relative merits of political systems will grow, rather than recede, with time. And China and America are not the only potential models.

It is already growing clearer that when— and if— life eventually returns to “normal,” it cannot truly ever get back to what it was. The deep failings of our /American social order—the impoverished “gig” worker, the huge rich-poor gap, the lack of fundamental social safety nets, the morbid fear of “government” doing anything as opposed to privatization of everything, the reckless continuing of mining and consuming fossil fuels—does Corona hopefully suggest we cannot now go back to that?

Will the our conviction in America as “the exceptional nation”—exempt from the rules of international law and conduct, and our pervasive sense of superiority in all things perhaps be just a bit humbled as the country sinks ever deeper by so many measurements against most industrialized nations of the world? Will our extreme capitalism and worshipful laissez-faire economic policies perhaps now take a hit of realism from the rest of the world?

quote:

The Democracy Trap
Dutton (January 1, 1992)

Several years ago, Fuller and Francis Fukuyama (see above) were colleagues at RAND Corp. When the latter's notorious ``The End of History?'' was published in The National Interest, Fuller (a sometime Foreign Service officer and CIA aide who's still employed at RAND) felt obliged to draft a response to his friend's controversial 1989 article. Despite its progressive aura, this political manifesto betrays profoundly anti-democratic sentiments. Absent the articles of faith attendant to the existence of a Communist threat, which could be used to explain away societal failures, the author argues, postindustrial America is confronted by challenges that may produce greater uncertainty and moral anxiety than ever did ongoing battles against Soviet-style totalitarianism. Among other urgent items on the domestic agenda, Fuller identifies ethnic unrest, racial anger, the growth of an underclass, a cultural context that encourages a widespread sense of entitlement, environmental issues with geopolitical implications, and a lack of national purpose. Positing an underclass in the U.S. as more or less inevitable, the book calls for state-run work programs to "recruit out of it those individuals who show the necessary talent and will." Fuller scoffs at "more money for education as the means to bandage all our social wounds." He caricatures the ecology and animal rights movements in terms of "misplaced sentimentality." He suggests the introduction of "sin taxes" on "socially harmful . . . media" like pornography or romanticization of drugs, with screening to be done by state-elected review boards.

gradenko_2000 posted:

It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a decent conversation about this because the libs are convinced that the only, THE ONLY reason why we're not swimming in Pfizer is because the Health Secretary sabotaged filing the proper paperwork for buying several million doses at the start of the year.

And he did that deliberately, so that we'd be "forced" to use Sinovac, because Duterte is a Chinese puppet.

If you bring up that even a liberal administration that manages to get voted into office next year is going to have trouble sincerely and genuinely trying to get Pfizer and Moderna from the US because they're hoarding it, you're accused of being a Duterte supporter because you're shifting blame away from Duterte.

Atrocious Joe posted:

https://twitter.com/yashalevine/status/1405580377553391625?s=20

Atrocious Joe posted:

https://twitter.com/yashalevine/status/1405580377553391625?s=20

Atrocious Joe posted:

https://twitter.com/yashalevine/status/1405580377553391625?s=20

stephenthinkpad posted:

AFA I know only US and Israel received excessive amount of mNRA vaccines. Even EU countries had to rely on AZ in the first few months. Also Singapore got decent amount of Pfizer because they became an early investor.

Lostconfused posted:

What's counts as excessive?

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-hea...ne-rollout.html

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Big lol that all the anti-ussr propaganda that influenced our politicians kept him out of the club.

stephenthinkpad posted:

Don't confuse ordered number and delivered number.

I am pretty sure Canada just stopped doing AZ and start administering Pfizer about 3-4 weeks ago. I remember an Canadian caller stated it on a program.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

What really kept Putin out of the club was his rejection of neoliberalism forced under Yeltsin and the repatriotization of Russian capital.

Lostconfused posted:

What am I confusing here?

Edit: These would be the ordered numbers?





The website doesn't list the totals further than that date, so I a assume there's more to come later.

stephenthinkpad posted:

They have 37 million population, so they need about 70 million doses. Canada actually ordered 400+ millions. If your info is correct they have received 30+ millions doses. They are going to do vaccine diplomacy with the remaining vaccines.

But the thing is, the Canadians are not getting the extra vaccines, because everybody is doing vaccine diplomacy. So at the end of the day, only countries that has actually production capacity and good pandemic control are actually doing vaccine diplomacy. China was the only counties doing it; India did a little in South Asia and stopped after April. Now US is doing it, but not as much as they promised. Japan also is doing some because they are making some AZ but they don't shoot AZ anymore.

Anyway, not of these has anything to do with my original point, which is: Philippine was not getting the Pfizer unless they became an early early investor of Biontech. China's Pharma company (Fusan?) became an early investor of Biontech a month before Pfizer. They ordered 100 million doses and they have only received a few million to use in HK and Macau.

genericnick posted:

Not sure that's fair to say. It's still neoliberalism if you just disagree about who's supposed to get the loot.