[Asia/Oceania] picking the low-hanging fruit of diplomacy, such as calls for peace

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Asia/Oceania] picking the low-hanging fruit of diplomacy, such as calls for peace

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(Thread IKs: fart simpson)

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

get that OUT of my face posted:

unrelated, i read somewhere that more people watched the Stanley Cup Final in China than in the US. that's pretty cool. i highly doubt the NHL pulls the same poo poo in 2022 that they did in South Korea

https://i.imgur.com/WfOX3nm_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

I can't figure out how to embed this on my phone.

cenotaph has issued a correction as of 18:48 on Jul 20, 2019

# ¿ Jul 20, 2019 18:46

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 10:56

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Chomskyan posted:

https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1342832155710275584

3 years

Los Angeles built a trolley system before they even had housing built. Kind of ironic with the way transportation is in CA now.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2020 23:28

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Ardennes posted:

Yeah, there was even a subway tunnel that led into downtown LA... and by the late 1960s they had made it unusable. Also, even if the argument was that streetcars weren't efficient of surface streets, there were a ton of right-of-ways that could been utilized and most of the system could have been save rather than dismantled. It is an old story, but instructive.

That said, if you look at the current state of public transit in the US, it really isn't that different than it was back then. Besides a few lights-rail projects, most of the US' major systems have been left to rot for decades at this point ( NYC Subway, DC Metro, SEPTA or MBTA etc). LA has been struggle to rebuild since the 1980s and the system is still skeletal.

In Scranton, the home of the first electric streetcars in the US, we had cool poo poo like parks at the end of lines just so people had somewhere to go on them. None of it exists any more. They also ripped up the Laurel Line between here and Wilkes-Barre to build the interstate and now it's overloaded with commuters all the time. They've expanded it as far as it can go because it's on the top of the mountain and it's still overloaded. Just an amazing system.

You can take a rail car from the inconveniently located trolley museum to a AAA baseball game, though!

# ¿ Dec 27, 2020 00:38

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Deified Data posted:

They're left-ish and it gave them pause, but yeah they do still think the revolts were largely justified, in which case my question would be - to who? The average Tibetan?

If you want to read something there's this Michael Parenti essay which I read a while ago and don't remember the exact content of but I do remember finding it pretty illuminating.

Also Losurdo's Non-Violence: A History Beyond the Myth has an entire chapter about Tibet. Some bits:

quote:

Violence invested all sectors of traditional Tibetan society. �[M]ilitary revolutions� and �civil wars� pitting different fractions of the dominant caste against one another were frequent.[9] But did the Buddhist religion, the monks and monasteries, at least form an oasis of serenity and non-violence? Let us once again give the floor to the eulogist of Lamaist Tibet: �The penalties for political offences are very strict. People still speak of the monks of Tengyeling who forty years ago sought to come to terms with the Chinese. Their monastery was demolished and their names blotted out.�[10] The punishment presumably inflicted on monks regarded as subversive is passed over here. Especially significant is the civil war that occurred as late as 1947. Despite the arrest of the leader who inspired them, �strong in their fanaticism, they [the rebel monks] refused to surrender and wild shooting began. It was not until the Government bombarded the town and monastery of Sera with howitzers and knocked down a few houses that the resistance ceased.�[11] To this admission, which might come as a surprise in Harrer�s pages, we can add the observation of a British historian: violence did not even spare the Dalai Lamas, �most of [whom were] eliminated during childhood for the convenience of Regency Councils.�[12]
In addition to enemies, violence also struck intruders. Having arrived on the roof of the world in September 1949 to meet the Dalai Lama, three CIA agents, who did not manage to get themselves recognized as such, or who in any event were suspect, were killed and decapitated (see chapter 8 �8).

quote:

All Chinese parties were in agreement in 1951 that Tibet belonged to China. In his act of abdication of February 1914, the last emperor of the Manchu dynasty had called on the new rulers to guard the territorial integrity of the country, composed of �Manchus, [Han] Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans, and Tibetans.�[40] In fact, in answer to the British who called on him to take part in the slaughter of the First World War, so as to recover the territories taken from China by Germany, Sun Yat-sen, the first president of the republic born with the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, observed that Britain was even more ravenous: �now you want to come and take Tibet from us.�[41] The Dalai Lama himself seemed to join in this national consensus at first, before fleeing in 1959 to establish a �government in exile� in India.
What occurred thereafter and in fact in the months immediately preceding his flight? The Dalai Lama claims that he has always �led the Tibetan freedom struggle on a path of non-violence.�[42] The picture drawn by two books, whose author and co-author are (more or less senior) CIA agents, is very different. The former, who has collaborated with the Dalai Lama for decades and expresses admiration and devotion for �the Buddhist leader committed to nonviolence,� reports the viewpoint expressed by his hero as follows: �If there is a clear indication that there is no alternative to violence, then violence is permissible.� All the more so in that it is necessary to know how to distinguish between �method� and �motivation�: �In the Tibetan resistance against China the method was killing, but the motivation was compassion, and that justified the resort to violence.� Similarly, confining non-violence to the sphere of good intentions, the Dalai Lama cited and admired by the CIA agent justifies and, in fact, celebrates the United States� participation in the Second World War and the Korean War, where it was a question of �protect[ing] democracy, liberty, and freedom.� These noble ideals supposedly continued to inspire Washington during the Vietnam War, even though in this instance the results did not, alas, match intentions. We can understand that, on this basis, there is complete accord with the CIA agent, who has himself photographed with the Dalia Lama in a friendly and affectionate posture. In fact, he hastens to declare that, exactly like the venerable Buddhist master, he too does not like firearms, but is resigned to sanctioning them and endorsing their use when it proves unavoidable.[43] Reinterpreted thus, non-violence seems to have become the doctrine inspiring the CIA!

It is precisely the operatives of this agency who end up painting an objectively debunking portrait of the Dalai Lama. His flight from Lhasa in 1959 was the realization of an �objective of American policy for almost a decade� (in other words, since the imminence of Communist victory in China). When crossing the border between China (Tibet) and India, the Dalai Lama appointed one of the Tibetans who had aided him in his escape a general, while the other two, without losing any time, transmitted an urgent message to the CIA with the radio it had supplied to them: �send us weapons for 30,000 men by airplane.�[44] Despite the sophisticated training given to the guerrillas, the availability to them of �an inexhaustible arms warehouse in the sky� (the weapons parachuted from US planes), and the possibility of availing themselves of a secure rear over the Chinese border and, in particular, the bases of Mustang (in Nepal), the Tibetan rebellion, prepared prior to 1959 with the airdrop of weapons and military equipment in the most inaccessible areas of Tibet, failed.[45] In the words of a Canadian historian whom we have frequently cited: �the dissension in Tibet was insufficiently widespread to sustain a lengthy, open rebellion.� In fact, as �even China�s harshest critics are forced to concede, there was never a shortage of Tibetan volunteers� for the People�s Liberation Army.[46]

The commandos infiltrated from India achieved �generally disappointing� results; they �found little support among the local people.� The attempt to �sustain [. . . ] a large-scale guerrilla movement by air had proven a painful failure�; �by 1968 the guerrilla force at Mustang was aging� and unable �to recruit new men.� The United States was compelled to abandon the enterprise, causing the Dalai Lama serious disappointment: �[h]e ruefully noted that Washington had cut off its support for political and paramilitary programs in 1974.�[47]

What, then, are we to make of the continuity with Gandhi claimed by the Dalai Lama? The only vague analogy is with the first Gandhi, who engaged in recruiting Indian soldiers for the British army, hoping thereby to win the gratitude of the London government. In the case we are analyzing, the Tibetan exiles sought to achieve their return home and to power by allying with the United States in the Cold War and some of the armed conflicts that punctuated it. As is acknowledged by a book decidedly sympathetic toward the Dalai Lama, and which actually boasts a preface by him, the elder brother (and leading collaborator) of the exiled leader was in fact from the outset �closely linked to the CIA.�[48] Compounding the lethal embargo imposed by Washington, and the persistent sabotage and terrorist operations sponsored from Taiwan, in the plans of the US secret services the Tibetan rebellion was intended to �forc[e] Mao to divert his already stretched resources� and to induce the collapse of the People�s Republic of China. It is true that the objective was not achieved. Yet, in addition to weakening the Asian giant, the United States �benefitted from the intelligence gathered by the [Tibetan] resistance forces.� Furthermore, the CIA and the US army were able to experiment with �new kinds of equipment�aircraft and parachutes, for example� and �[n]ew communications techniques� and to gain precious experience for new wars; the �lessons learned in Tibet� were subsequently applied �in places like Laos and Vietnam.�[49] In other words, the struggle inspired by the Dalai Lama or, at any rate, waged in his name served as a dress rehearsal for the most barbaric colonial war of the second half of the twentieth century; for a war which, thirty years after the end of hostilities, counts �four million� victims with their bodies devastated by �agent orange,� the dioxin relentlessly sprayed from US planes on a whole people.[50] At this point, the contrast, even antithesis, with Gandhi becomes clear: in his later phase at all events, he was a leading representative of the world anti-colonialist movement.

The antithesis also emerges in another key respect. We shall see the Indian leader referring to �Hitlerite methods� and �Hitlerism� in connection with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (see chapter 10 �6). And now let us open Corriere della Sera for 15 May 1998. Next to a photograph of the Dalai Lama with his hands joined in prayer, there is an article whose meaning is clear from its title, �The Dalai Lama Sides with New Delhi: �They too are entitled to atomic weapons��in order (so it is subsequently clarified) to counterbalance China�s nuclear arsenal. (Naturally, silence is maintained on the much larger US nuclear arsenal, which the modest Chinese nuclear arsenal is designed to defend against.) The position taken by the Dalai Lama is fully in line with the militant attitude adopted during the Cold War. Placed in a special corps (Special Frontier Force), the Tibetan guerrillas fought under the leadership of New Delhi�s army during the brief Sino-Indian border war in 1962 and then during the Indo-Pakistan war some years later. In two photographs from June 1972, we see the Dalai Lama, along with the Indian general Sujan Singh Uban, reviewing and haranguing the Special Frontier Force, to whose engagement in the war against Pakistan he had given his �agreement� some months earlier.[51]
If it is rather difficult to read constant, unconditional fidelity to the principle of non-violence in Gandhi, it is utterly senseless to construe the Dalai Lama in this manner. It is true that he continues to celebrate �the Tibetan people�s peaceful uprising� or �the peaceful uprising of March 10, 1959.�[52] However, the phrase used here is manifestly an oxymoron. Harrer writes that during his escape the Tibetan independence leader was accompanied by �suicide troops� (400 men), ready to fight to the death.[53] Meanwhile, in his autobiography the Dalai Lama himself refers as follows to the conversation he held with insurgents and guerrillas during his escape: �By then, I could not in honesty advise them to avoid violence . . . I only asked them not to use violence except in defending their position in the mountains.�[54] On closer examination, rather than a paradox, the discourse on �peaceful uprising� turns out to be a mythological construct.

quote:

However, the attempt to introduce modernity painlessly was doomed to failure. The noble oligarchy�s resistance and influence were too strong. Let us read Harrer: �The doctors of the British and Chinese Legations were the only qualified medical men in a population of three and a half million.� In medicine, as in every other aspect of life, �the whole power was in the hands of the monks, who criticized even government officials when they called in the English doctor.�[80] The only medicines permitted were the �holy spittle� of lamas, or �the urine of some saintly men� mixed with �tsampa and butter.� �Peaceful liberation� made great efforts to prevent the outbreak of conflict, as clearly emerges from a circular emanating from the Communist Party during the Dalai Lama�s visit to Peking in 1954, which called for respect for the traditions just referred to. Hence: �the lama defecated into a gold-plated receptacle from which the feces were returned to Tibet to be made into medicine.�

cenotaph has issued a correction as of 22:55 on Jul 3, 2021

# ¿ Jul 3, 2021 22:52

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Throatwarbler posted:

The concept for the P90 magazine dates back to the 1960s. Forgottenweapons has a good video on the topic. The P90 was designed around a cartridge, the 5.7mm, that was made from the ground up to feed through its weird operating mechanism. One characteristic of the 5.7mm cartridge is that it has a completely flat cylindrical casing, with no taper or neck, so it can stack evenly inside the straight magazine. The HK G11 had a similar system and it used a rectangular cartridge with the bullet entirely encased in propellant.

All commonly used rifle cartridges that I know of are tapered with a neck, some more heavily than others, hence an AK has a longer, more curved "banana" magazine than an M16, because the 7.62x39mm cartridge is a shorter thicker casing with more taper than the 5.56mm.

So no common rifle caliber would work with the P90s feed mechanism, and a rifle cartridge with no taper or neck may have problems properly chambering and sealing inside the chamber that a tiny pistol cartridge like the 5.7mm wouldn't. It's likely an engineering dead end.

IIRC, the p90 cartridges are also pre lubed at the factory. A lot of weird stuff goes into making it run properly.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2021 23:41

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Judakel posted:

the enemy is both powerful and weak

My first thought as well.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2021 22:18

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Cao Ni Ma posted:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/25/asia/china-russia-naval-flotilla-circles-japan-intl-hnk-ml/index.html

This is it, basically a dnd/gbs poster. Point how he's turning into a pretzel and he'll tell you its a whataboutism

Look, the norms are that the US can do whatever it wants. Why do you not support this?

# ¿ Oct 26, 2021 00:09

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

DiscountDildos posted:

https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1460314086449860609?s=20

Bad boys

Watcha gonna do?

# ¿ Nov 15, 2021 21:11

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

I'd sure hate to live in a country where I didn't need a respirator to get my groceries, yessiree

# ¿ Dec 17, 2021 03:23

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Some Guy TT posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/nytimes/status/1474456355163488268

Dicknosing at the genocide oath party.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2021 07:26

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

# ¿ Dec 29, 2021 21:44

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

# ¿ Dec 29, 2021 21:52

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Many sides

# ¿ Dec 29, 2021 21:55

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Serf posted:

its 2 days into 2022, how are we gonna top this

Midterms are this year.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2022 01:59

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Stumbled on this article about Soviet board games via boardgamegeek. No in depth descriptions of the games but the covers are sick.

https://www.rbth.com/history/334599-militaristic-patriotic-board-games-ussr

# ¿ Jan 4, 2022 03:37

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Meanwhile the CPIM tweets out Christmas greetings every year.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2022 05:28

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

I'd rather live in a country where I might run afoul of a lock down policy during a personal health emergency than one where I've been written off as an acceptable casualty from the start because of being immunocompromised.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2022 23:31

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Danann posted:

don't worry pete buttigieg as president of the united states in 2032 will counter china's fusion power plants by enforcing mass bitcoin usage on the country

He'll put more solar panels directly into the highway which will somehow not get hosed up by being driven and precipitated on.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2022 04:34

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

comedyblissoption posted:

eminent domain is invoked in the us to bulldoze residences with people living in them to build a casino

# ¿ Jan 8, 2022 07:39

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

endocriminologist posted:

it owns so hard you can call any chinese embassy and get a free book and flag

Which book did you get?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2022 23:30

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

HiroProtagonist posted:

Oh, right, you technically didn't attack Appelbaum, you attacked her former associates, so it doesn't count as ad hominem.

But whatever, it's enough to see your use of language --- "Ukrainian famine" --- to know that the proper response to anything you say is to tell you to go gently caress yourself with your icons of Stalin.

Reasonable people base their arguments on Hearst newspapers and Nazi propaganda, not primary sources.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2022 01:57

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Doctor Jeep posted:

This is also more or less what Vijay Prashad, the director of an internationalist organization called Tricontinental and a Marxist intellectual who did an event with Qiao in May 2020, told me when I asked him about the Uyghurs. �The �cultural genocide� charge is one that I�m not entirely sympathetic to,� said Prashad, who has visited China numerous times but has not been to Xinjiang. �Education policy is a big part of poverty alleviation,� he added. �The fact is that most modern societies have forced people to have an education.� In his telling, what is happening to the Uyghurs is analogous to what countries like the United States and Australia did to their Indigenous populations, or what the British Empire did in his native India�but somewhat to my surprise, he didn�t mean that in a bad way. �That�s the price that people pay,� Prashad told me. �You can�t preserve some cultural forms and alleviate or eradicate absolute poverty.�

i bet that "in his telling" is covering for that not being what he said at all

Not Uyghurs, but I'm sure this woman would be really happy if her ethnic group had no modern education.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv7gVH2Wij4&t=401s

# ¿ Jan 11, 2022 23:11

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1480931455568076807?s=20

# ¿ Jan 11, 2022 23:14

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

DiscountDildos posted:

This reminds me of one of the BBC's alleged expos�s of the "cultural genocide" or whatever from last year. It was about evil CCP officials going to villages in Xinjiang and tearing Uyghur women away from their families and sending them off for forced labor. The BBC guy had a cut up video the article was largely based on that he tweeted out and billed as "the video the CCP doesn't want you to see."

IMO, the version of the video he tweeted out was pretty benign but making incendiary claims while trusting most of your audience won't analyze your evidence is basic strategy.

However, after just a tiny bit of research, I found out that this "video the CCP doesn't want you to see" was an excerpt from a much longer video that CGTN had literally posted to YouTube like 4 years prior.

https://youtu.be/07NjqkQAgs8

Basically party members went to remote villages to recruit people for a work program. Most of the video focused on them trying to convince the family of one young adult woman that she should be allowed to work. I haven't watched the whole video in like a year but basically they were eventually convinced, she went to a city to work for a few months or something, then came back with livestock and money.

Genocide on a disturbing scale. The true reality that the Communist Regime in Beijing won't tell you about.

I watched this and when one of the women said they wanted to bring their family over it reminded me of all the stories I've heard about my ancestors and the people that came over in the same wave of immigration from Europe to the USA. I know it's not completely analogous, but working age males coming to work in the mines, ironworks or the railroads to make money and bring over the rest of their families was very common. All their descendants learned English and we lost our original languages. My great grandfather was born in a factory town (thankfully he got out of the mines ASAP) and his son, my grandfather, did doctoral work at UPenn. These people clearly have better conditions and more freedom than that, along with bilingual education instead of complete assimilation. One is an American success story. The other, well...

# ¿ Jan 12, 2022 00:36

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Spergin Morlock posted:

i love the increasingly weird brand names I keep seeing on Amazon

I got a hand vac that you can also put a tube on the back of to use as a blower and the thing is like a million times better than whatever black and decker crap I had before. It's got one of those gibberish names and the manual is clearly written by someone who sort of knows English and I couldn't give a single gently caress because of how good it is.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 01:18

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

fits my needs posted:

ahahaha holy poo poo he had to cancel the book after 'the author's past' came up. guess u should figure out if someones a racist nazi before you publish their book.
the crowdfunding platform cancelled it cuz of terms of service.
lmao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymu5S6zbIvc

Cancel Culture strikes again.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2022 06:53

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Tankbuster posted:

Imagine wanting to watch Curling.

I don't have to imagine it, buddy.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 06:13

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Cpt_Obvious posted:

I love how every act by any Chinese official is perceived as sinister. I'd imagine that Xo eating a sandwich would provoke comparisons to Hitler

*Xi pets a dog* You know who else loved dogs???

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 22:38

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Buck Wildman posted:

me! I feel so seen!

So you admit that you're a hitler? This is so easy :smuggo:

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 22:58

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Some Guy TT posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/isaacstonefish/status/1490878787893956611

state mediaishly boosting american news content about international sports camaraderie for nefarious purposes

That was a genuinely nice moment at the end of that curling match.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2022 08:36

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

I like to pan roast sprouts with olive oil, some garlic powder and thyme. Throw some thin sliced carrots if I have any.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2022 00:34

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

HiroProtagonist posted:

I was just texting a friend about this and autocorrect turned what would have been a bog standard joke into something incredible

lol

# ¿ Feb 11, 2022 01:41

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

I have started reading Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners by Roland Boer and it's a banger.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2022 00:01

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Interesting stuff.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2022 05:46

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Best Friends posted:

that’s my past 15 years. I went from standard dnd style lib in the military and applying (and failing) to get into state, to having it dawn on me in stages that literally everything the good liberal framework predicted would happen in the world did not ever come true. what broke me completely was all the mainline dems suddenly becoming very politically competent when it came to ending any possibility of Medicare for all, mainline liberal press rallying around the far right Bolivia coup, and realizing all those positive incremental progress “everything is getting better in the developing world under capitalism“ metrics only worked if you included china.

I don’t have super coherent politics right now but the contradictions of progressive liberalism basically shattered my mind. it took a while though

You already got some good reading recommendations, but if you really want to dig into precisely how hosed up liberalism is, read Liberalism: a Counter History by Domenico Losurdo.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2022 21:12

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

We must deploy the tiger mom to Ukraine!

# ¿ Feb 15, 2022 03:29

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

This is something I had to struggle with a bit in the maturation of my thought. I'm fairly no-frills and have a tendency towards universalizing my impulse against ostentation and towards, if not asceticism, simplicity of dress, etc. However, the above clearly correct and most people you encounter (even some self-declared communists!) don't seem to understand it.

Bernie Panders

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 01:50

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

This is from much earlier in the book but it made me laugh out loud and has become an intrusive thought. Imagine, basing your policies in objective reality! They're beating us right out of the gate!

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 01:58

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

crepeface posted:

can you post what the reference is called is about demsocs and 'social capitalism'? (Gao 2007)

Gao, Fang. 2007. Bainian lai kexue shehuizhuyi yu minzhu shehuizhuyi guanxi de yanbian – jian tan ‘zhiyou shehuizhuyi minzhu caineng jiu Zhongguo.’ Lilun xuekan 2007 (6): 15–22.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 02:50

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 10:56

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

pissinthewind posted:

what book?

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners by Roland Boer.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 03:09

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Asia/Oceania] picking the low-hanging fruit of diplomacy, such as calls for peace

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