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The Politics Thread
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But on a separate point, it’s interesting to see how you define freedom. Because sure, you’re able to google whatever in Europe, but your freedoms are curtailed in other ways – like home ownership and the financial independence it provides is increasingly out of the grasp of regular people. If you don’t want to or can’t work and you aren’t rich, you’re damning yourself to subsistence living at best and starvation and death at worst. Under capitalism, between 8 and 12 million people die every year from preventable deaths – primarily starvation and treatable disease, leaving aside war, famine, genocide, natural disaster and accidents.
I’m not saying that China and the USSR’s authoritarian streak is good with all of this, but the idea that we need to be scared of the lack of freedom under a Maoist government (or nominally so in the case of modern China) is ignoring the massive problems we face that curtail our freedoms at home.
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They are going to look at pictures of Saigon and go “huh”.
Exactly, because on their maps it says Ho Chi Minh City.
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China isn’t Maoist anyway. The Maoist perspective is that developed nations no longer have a viable class struggle that would lead to socialist revolution because they are essentially too comfortable. That comfort though is built upon the developing nations so the real class struggles are between what back then was called the first world and the real working class of the third world.
so no matter their stated aims of democracy, prosperity and progress, the developed nations will always promote strife, turmoil and corruption in the undeveloped nations where our cheap products are made or our resources are mined to prevent any organized political opposition to global power.
it’s not a bad explanation based on the outcomes from South America to Eastern Europe, African Congo, and the Muslim world.
so the plan for a socialist revolution would entail organizing the developing world that would then make the middle and working classes in the capitalist powers increasingly uncomfortable so socialist movements would be more attractive.
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I wonder if in the collapse of the government of Afghanistan there is Chinese influence going on. We’re seeing a kind of tug of war right now I think with China gaining influence in a lot of places around the world.
I was reading a great article in Time a couple of years back about this.
It basically described how this ‘soft power’ push and pull of influences was a continuous ongoing battle between the US, EU and China. This was pre-Brexit so the UK with its commonwealth links was straddling the US and EU. The EU is the subtler of these players but on the map they produced their influence just as wide.
While we balk and belt and road it’s essentially a new player using the same tactics. I’m not saying I am a fan of their regime but sometimes when things are more ‘other’ we find similar actions to ours more threatening.
Say for example China set up a series of global radio stations in multiple languages, often against the wishes of the countries involved, that spread their perspective on the news. Then they set up in every major city a series of centres promoting the Chinese language and China in general plus expanded the campuses of their universities to overseas locations.
That’s the UK, with the BBC World Service, The British Council and they are building a University of Hull campus 10 miles from me. The World Service in fact was the only part of the BBC not funded independently from the license system but directly from the Foreign Office budget.
Would we feel threatened if our high streets were suddenly filled with Chinese fast food chains and our cinemas and TVs by their content? Probably yes but that’s what we’ve done for decades.
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Was Christ a Christian?
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Would we feel threatened if our high streets were suddenly filled with Chinese fast food chains and our cinemas and TVs by their content? Probably yes but that’s what we’ve done for decades.
I’d argue that China is absolutely an Imperialist power, but they’re more in the vein of the EU, where they’re all about economic and social power instead of military. We don’t need to worry about being invaded or anything while we’re using their factories. Note that their expansion into Africa is all financial investment as opposed to how Europe did things back in the day or how the US has handled their adventurism in Central and South America and the Middle East.
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the only real way to accomplish that is through nation building. Not that the US is capable of such a thing
I watched an episode of Leverage recently and they were going after Big Pharma. A line they used I think works well in this situation.
A Cure solves the problem. Medicine makes sure the customer has to come back month after month.
In Afghanistan, if you build a nation, you don’t need to have private contractors patrolling the country. Defense Contractors prefer unrest over peace.
Because if we weren’t there to build a better nation, it’s just admitting we were there to blow shit up and funnel tax money to defense contractors.
the Naive approach to this is say just that and demonize Haliburton and Blackwatch and their competitors. The US Military does not take a hit unless someone asks why we had private contractors but then they look bad for attacking “our boys in Blue” also the khaki, drab green, and other assorted colors.
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The world will have to just see how the Taliban governs.
Honestly we don’t know. Afghanistan could end up safer and more stable with no foreign interference.
Unless sanctions are imposed but that would be hypocritical at this point.
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They’ll probably try to be a bit more like regimes like Saudi Arabia and Qatar that are “Western allies”. There’s not much difference except those gulf states are much much richer and pretend to be against terrorism
Now this is where we agree. I think the noises coming out of the Taliban suggest that kind of thing. They’ll appear chummy while beneath it all supporting the terrorist actions.
I wouldn’t quite lump Qatar in with Saudi Arabia though, all those rich countries in the middle east have appalling human rights records but SA is far more insidious in the way it exports its Wahabi extremism around the world. To me it’s pretty simple that the most dangerous actor on the world stage in the last 40 years is Saudi Arabia. The existence of Islamic terrorism all stems from their money and ‘education’ systems.
Places like North Korea make a lot of noise but what actual harm have they done outside their own borders? Nothing really.
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I just did an online opinion poll that was clearly by and for the Labour Party. Some interesting questions about whether I like Keir Starmer or not but I just don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this bit:
I’d already clearly stated in the survey that I had previously but probably wouldn’t again vote for Labour, and yet in asking why that is, pretty much everything on this list is a right wing talking point used by people that will never vote for them to hammer the party. There’s barely any acknowledgement that the problem might be with them moving to the right.
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I like how “there are too many left-wing people in the party” is an option, but “there are too many right-wing people in the party” isn’t.
But I’m sure there’ll be another purge in a week or two and this time it’ll sort things.
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There were questions after this regarding feelings about Corbyn having the whip removed and potentially having it restored, which feels like might be their sop to the Labour left, if it doesn’t upset enough of the right.
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They are so badly organised and obsessed with internal politics and image, it’s the Judean People’s Front stuff continuing forever. That checklist directed by the Daily Mail it seems.
If it were me in charge I’d just sit all the factions down and get a checklist of what they all agree on and just push it through, effectively what the Tories do.
I think most of the left/right stuff isn’t actual policy most of the time but perception and image. They talk about how far left Corbyn was but his actual manifesto was pretty much status quo in Thatcher’s 3rd term. No university fees, his proposed tax rate was actually lower than then, the ‘far left thing’ I think was mainly his hat and beard. Nothing policy wise has significantly changed under Starmer other than he looks smarter in a suit.
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Larry Elder Under Fire for Resurfaced Comments From 2000 About Women Voters
Well, he wouldn’t be the first Republican candidate to say outlandish shit and still get elected.
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Now comes the hard part: The tedious task of governing a war-torn country. I’m sure there will be plenty of backstabbing, double dealing, and corruption within the leadership group. They will also have to deal with warlords who control the poppy fields. Russia and China will be sucking up to them to try to make deals that will favor them, not the Taliban and Afganistan. I wouldn’t be surprised if international drug cartels come in to try to exploit the situation. I’m sure some corporations will try to find ways to wet their beaks there, too.
The opium problem is a big unknown. The Taliban and its allies in Iran and Russia and all throughout Eurasia strongly oppose the drug trade – in the Taliban’s case not just due to Islamic prohibitions or the massive drug problem it faces (along with all its neighbors), but also that their enemies are also in charge of the opium trade.
So, I don’t trust reports that the Taliban will immediately start making money off of it – I could see its enemies coming in to make deals with the opium warlords against the Taliban or American interventionists looking to use it as an excuse to go back in or bomb the country.
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It would mean in the EU that countries like Germany would have to build up their military to defend against Russia. Probably get nukes to stop Russia from rolling into the Baltics and Poland.
France already has nukes.
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I really don’t see any of the major powers ever actually using a nuke for the very simple reason that it would be bad for business.
We have a global economy where everyone is connected and dependent on each other. COVID-19 revealed that truth. Hell, a goddamn ship stuck in a canal fucked EVERYBODY up. Countries are no longer self-sufficient. A nuclear exchange is something you don’t recover from. It hurts you as much as it hurts your enemies. Cyber and economic warfare are how you fight today. To be honest, terrorists are really behind the curve in causing mayhem with bombs and shootings.
Nukes really are like a mint condition Action Comics #1 in a slab. You’ll show it to everybody but NEVER take out and actually read it. It’s all for show.
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Nukes really are like a mint condition Action Comics #1 in a slab. You’ll show it to everybody but NEVER take out and actually read it. It’s all for show.
10/10 analogy.
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Poland is still in the EU though, If NATO fell apart or contracted, why would the EU nations not set up a mutual defence pact, or why would NATO not just become a pan-EU and pals organisation?
There has been talk of an EU army for years but I didn’t expect it would ever happen, it was just another bogeyman for the Daily Mail to rant about. But if NATO falls apart and is replaced by a pan-EU military force, the Brexit lobby are going to be so happy
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Without the US it would be quite difficult I think. they would have to spend quite a bit more on the military and that is politically difficult. Also I think it is inevitable Germany would have to take a leading role, and other EU countries would probably not like that. Also Germany stationing troops on the Russian border could get Russia really upset and threatening to close gas pipelines.
That doesn’t explain why you think any of this though. Like why do you need to spend more in the military in the first place? We don’t need to replace the US military presence in Europe, we have a fairly massive collection of armies in Europe as it is. And it also assumes that the UK won’t assist in the defence of Europe in a hypothetical war.
Russia is expansionist in its ambitions, although admittedly invading Poland isn’t going to happen anytime soon. But they could screw with the Baltics like they do with Ukraine and Georgia.
I don’t see it as expansionist though. It’s more a case of staking out the former USSR as their turf.
And like Todd points out, the tendrils of business are so intertwined these days that no major war is going to happen anyway, because it would be horribly bad for the economy in a way that the wars of the 20th Century couldn’t even imagine. All we’re going to see for the forseeable future is the kind of maneuvering we’ve seen in the last few decades while the US fucks around in the Middle East and Russia does the same in their immediate vicinity – precisely because these are markets that aren’t too deeply integrated yet.
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And it also assumes that the UK won’t assist in the defence of Europe in a hypothetical war.
Yes which I would consider highly unlikely.
Dislike of the EU as an institution in the form of Brexit is actually quite far removed from that scenario because the people most in support of it find nothing more to take pride in than the UK’s role in WW2.
If the US ever did depart from NATO (which in itself is unlikely – Ron or Rand Paul is never becoming President, Trump murmured about it but did nothing) I couldn’t see any scenario with the current players where the UK would too.
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UK’s role in WW2
Does this refer to target practice for V2 rockets or being a landing strip/boot camp for USistan?
(I’m being cheeky, I know there was a lot more to it.)
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And like Todd points out, the tendrils of business are so intertwined these days that no major war is going to happen anyway, because it would be horribly bad for the economy in a way that the wars of the 20th Century couldn’t even imagine. All we’re going to see for the forseeable future is the kind of maneuvering we’ve seen in the last few decades while the US fucks around in the Middle East and Russia does the same in their immediate vicinity – precisely because these are markets that aren’t too deeply integrated yet.
China is basically the world’s biggest manufacturer. The last thing they want is for anything to disrupt their business. It’s why the conspiracy theories that COVID-19 was intentionally released is such bullshit. You don’t want to kill your customers.
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Ron Paul isn’t a dummy but if he gets his way I think the US would be out of NATO and that would mean the international liberal order would quickly collapse. It would mean in the EU that countries like Germany would have to build up their military to defend against Russia. Probably get nukes to stop Russia from rolling into the Baltics and Poland.
I think there is a bit of a paradox here. If the United States wasn’t so ready to illegally use military force, nations like Russia and China probably wouldn’t be wasting so much of their resources on expansion of their territorial influence and military. It’s the general paranoia on each side that the other is moving in on them that forces these reactions.
At the same time, however, it seems like Russia and China’s military actions are generally in their own sphere while the USA is sending forces all over the world. If the United States actually behaved lawfully, I’m not certain that Russia or China would be as willing or ready to risk increasing their aggressive action. Russia and China both have much greater internal problems to deal with.
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we have a fairly massive collection of armies in Europe as it is
Well with reserve personnel Russia has about a 3 million strong military, so we’ll need about a dozen Finnish sharpshooters to get them all.
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Does this refer to target practice for V2 rockets or being a landing strip/boot camp for USistan? (I’m being cheeky, I know there was a lot more to it.)
I know you’re joking but the various film depictions like Saving Ryan’s Privates do tend to not reflect that less than half of the troops at the Normandy landings were American.
The American landings had 73,000 troops. The British and Canadian offensive 83,000 (62,000 of which were British).
Of course the correct answer as to which country decisively turned the tide of the war is Russia.
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we have a fairly massive collection of armies in Europe as it is
Well with reserve personnel Russia has about a 3 million strong military, so we’ll need about a dozen Finnish sharpshooters to get them all.
Manpower isn’t the decisive battlefield force any more, it’s artillery (both tube and missile) and air power. And from what I’ve read, the Russians are finding it very difficult to maintain a lot of their top-end hardware.
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That is the irony really that the Finnish snipers point is maybe not that far from reality. Okay not a dozen shooters but it would be about information and precision rather than numbers.
We won’t face that kind of warfare again in highly developed countries. In WW2 Russia did use enormous manpower really to get their victory and march on Berlin, the summary of that eastern front is they lost a lot of troops but just kept sending more. Faced with the same scenario today we’d be able to see these massed forces on satellite and send in war drones to bomb the shit out of them.
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That is the irony really that the Finnish snipers point is maybe not that far from reality. Okay not a dozen shooters but it would be about information and precision rather than numbers.
We won’t face that kind of warfare again in highly developed countries. In WW2 Russia did use enormous manpower really to get their victory and march on Berlin, the summary of that eastern front is they lost a lot of troops but just kept sending more. Faced with the same scenario today we’d be able to see these massed forces on satellite and send in war drones to bomb the shit out of them.
It’s also a lot easier to do massed waves of people in a defensive war than on the offensive from a logistics perspective. You don’t need to carry as much fuel or food, and your supply chain is much shorter because you can resupply from friendly locals.
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if Germany had nukes and Russia went into Estonia, they would actually be crazy to nuke Russia.
We have nukes. I mean, technically, they’re the US’s, but we have them.
Personally, I would nuke somebody for Estonia. It’s a fucking cool country.
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Afghanistan demonstrates (multiple times) that overwhelming military force is ineffective against a committed local resistance. Ironically, if Europe is afraid that Russia will expand Westward in any military capacity, it’s an idea that benefits the United States. Most everyone comes from a culture that exists because it overcame a massive military power at some time in history.
However, military intervention is costly. Russia is stuck in a worse position with the Ukraine and Crimea and the Caucuses than they were with Afghanistan. It’s an exceptional expense just to hold on to buffer zones. Europe is afraid Russia will expand into its territory and Russia is afraid Europe will creep right up to its borders when really neither side wants to get involved in any costly conflicts.
I think it is probably pretty absurd to think that US power is the only thing keeping the Russian Army out of Poland or Germany. US presence in the EU and NATO is pretty much exactly why Russia spends money it doesn’t have maintaining a military it doesn’t want to use.
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That’s a clever chess move. “We are only beligerent to our neighbors because the US defends them. If the US would fuck off we would be nicer!” ;)
However, that is the justification the US uses for interfering in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Korean conflicts and maintaining nukes in Europe. But just based on recent history, between the US, China and Russia, which nation is more likely to actually use its military power on a weaker country?
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That’s a clever chess move. “We are only beligerent to our neighbors because the US defends them. If the US would fuck off we would be nicer!” ;)
However, that is the justification the US uses for interfering in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Korean conflicts and maintaining nukes in Europe. But just based on recent history, between the US, China and Russia, which nation is more likely to actually use its military power on a weaker country?
By recent history, you mean the last 200-odd years, right?
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And the only force really keeping liberal values in place, is the US
The US has never upheld liberal values.
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And the only force really keeping liberal values in place, is the US
The US has never upheld liberal values.
Well I disagree. As much as the US has done bad things, we wouldn’t have a free Europe today without the US.
That’s literally American propaganda. The Germans lost WWII as soon as they invaded the Soviet Union.
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It is not the same United States as in 1945 nor the same UK, Russia, Japan, Europe or anywhere in the world. The United States today is not the same country that fought in World War 2 or even the same country that occupied Europe after the war. Russia absolutely is not the Soviet Union. None of us were even alive then and most of the people who were involved in the war and post-war are dead. A lot of them, obviously, were dead even before the war was over. Nothing from World War 2 is relevant today, and often, the mistake nations make is essentially that they are fighting the last war without realizing that.
At the same time, most of the lessons carried over from the war are the wrong ones or outright incorrect. The USSR actually had a better army than the Germans. Hell, even the French had a better army than the Germans. The German advantage was speed. Had the French counterattacked or held their ground, they would have stopped the German advance. It was because they saw forces far ahead of where they expected that they assumed the German force was much larger and closer in effectiveness than it actually was.
The first year of their invasion into Soviet territory, the Germans were inflicting heavy casualties on Russian Army forces, but by the second year, they were at parity and in the third year, the Russians were at the advantage. It wasn’t the Russian winter that beat the Germans, it was Russian military effectiveness. Unfortunately, it was the Cold War that obscured that, and it took the fall of the Soviet Union before Western military historians could get the actual information to revise their assessments. However, there are 40 years of academic research that paints an incorrect picture.
Again, though, the Russian army today is not the Soviet army. The US military today is not the same military from the 40’s, 50’s or 60’s. At the same time, though, a lot of the basic principles of both armies are based on the same principles as World War 2 even though no one has fought a war like that since and everyone has tried to rig a military designed for that kind of combat to fight wars like Vietnam, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan that are nothing like that.
The sort of militaries that we have are based on the industry that grew up during the Cold War which essentially is “production not meant for use.” Our militaries are designed for deterrent effect rather than for how they are actually used or for any realistic objectives when they are implemented. It’s more based on the market principles rather than any political or diplomatic policy.
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The European theater was always by design meant to be fought primarily by the European powers. American manpower was going to be focused on the Pacific and what the Allies needed most in Europe was American production capacity for weapons and supply – not soldiers. American soldiers were formidable once they got into Europe, but weapons, air power and supply lines were more important to fighting effectiveness.
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The American effort was impressive – significant support for two actions on three fronts – but the British Army had been fighting in North Africa a couple years before America joined with actual soldiers on the ground and it took a while before American support was felt (mainly in the air). Around a million more British served in WW2 by the end of the war and it wasn’t all about the home front. They were fighting all over the British Empire from Africa to China well before the United States got involved.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, the United States really had very good reasons not to get involved in the conflict and if other leaders had been in power, likely they would have stayed out of it. As it was, even FDR was adamant that the price for his support in the war would be that the colonial powers would basically give up their empires. Of course, since he died before the post-war reconstruction, both the UK and France reneged on that commitment. Had FDR survived, I think we may have avoided many of the conflicts that sprang up from Algeria to India to Vietnam as those nations would have earned their independence peacefully with US support.
At heart, America never should’ve been an empire and in many ways because the United States were allies with Imperial powers against the Soviet Empire’s influence on their colonies, it ended up becoming a defacto enforcer of imperialism when as a nation we are much more comfortably isolationist. On the other hand, because we ended up on the world stage, it forced a lot of positive changes in the culture like Civil Rights. If not for the Cold War and the obvious fact that Nazi policies against Jews and other races were based on American Segregation and Eugenics Pseudoscience, it’s unlikely that we would have made any progress. If not for the massive ramping up of industry and manufacturing increasing the labor demand, we’d likely have made no progress in worker’s rights or women’s rights.
No one event can really be good or bad for a country. Every terrible thing happening now will have positive consequences and every good thing will end up hurting a lot of people in the end.
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Not necessarily, at best the USSR would have captured more of Germany while the UK advanced through France – but assuming they still lost too much manpower trying to conquer the USSR while wasting their fleet and air force against Britain, D-Day would likely have still happened either on a smaller scale or at a later date.
They probably would’ve taken the rest of Germany sooner or later though.
Also, there was the Marshall Plan, which helped reconstruct stabilise a democratic Europe – and obviously especially Germany.
You know, back when it was clear to the US that in order to build a nation you had to invest a lot of manpower, time and effort.
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Hell, if the rebuilding was at a slower pace, would a Europe without America have militarised as much as they did for the Cold War?
You think it’s a bad thing Europe beefed up their military to deter the Warsaw pact?
You think the Warsaw Pact would have beefed up their military if they didn’t need to defend themselves from America?
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The Taliban now got a whole lot of American stuff left over from the Afghan military.
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I just heard Biden say, “There was no sign Afghanistan was going to fall this quickly. We though they had at least until the end of the year.”
Isn’t this logically ridiculous? If you think you are going to lose three months from now, why would Afghans go on sacrificing soldiers for a lost cause? I kinda understand soldiers thinking “fuck this” and going home.
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Isn’t this logically ridiculous? If you think you are going to lose three months from now, why would Afghans go on sacrificing soldiers for a lost cause? I kinda understand soldiers thinking “fuck this” and going home.
It is ironic, but it also indicates just how little anyone in the US government really cares about Afghanistan. The people over here who are most upset are the weapons dealers.
Honestly, Biden is just lying. There is no way he would not have known that the Taliban was going to take over immediately. I remember reading that it would probably happen a year or more ago when Trump started the pull out plan.
However, really, Biden is just getting out of Afghanistan to ramp up action on Somalia. It’s not like we’re going to stop spending all that money any time soon.
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Seeks to evacuate? How about, I don’t know, evac first then announce you’re legging it?
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This picture is one of several that highlights how Afghanistan has changed:
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There are a few photos you can Google and they go beyond the more obvious element of women’s attire. A lot of the 1970s photos of Afghanistan look very much like any part of the world then, guys in flares with big moustaches shopping in a market. It’s a brief slice of normality before 40 years of continual conflict.
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Watching some fox news stuff on youtube, I get the impression these folks actually want there to be a hostage crisis in Afghanistan so the right can use that against Biden. If I had to guess I think the Taliban will allow people who want to leave.
It seems the right wing is split about this. Some people say the US should have stayed, others say we needed to get out or we never even should have interfered, I think there is even admiration for the Taliban, for fighting for traditional values.
Fox News 100% wants as much chaos as possible that they can pin on Biden and liberals. You think they’d be pushing any kind of anti-vaccine talk if a Republican was president right now, for example? No way. They would have been praising the wonderful vaccine only made possible by the almighty Trump if he were still in office. Much like they largely glossed over the four years of endless chaos that was the Trump administration. They’re out to push a very simple agenda. Which is essentially that liberals will destroy the world with their ideas and policies. Most of the time they just hayto make stuff up. War on Christmas, cancel culture, border crisis, Obama in a tan suit, AOC saying words of any kind. So any even semi-legitimate chance they have to highlight a Democrat’s screw up makes them downright giddy. I’ve no doubt they hope for it. I’m fairly certain they would love an actual terrorist attack on US soil right now. Because that would fuel them, and the GOP, for the next 20 years.
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I’ve no doubt they hope for it. I’m fairly certain they would love an actual terrorist attack on US soil right now.
It happened on January 6, 2021. But that’s okay, because the terrorists were pro-Trump.
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Granted, the Georgia political landscape is a shit show:
A Herschel Walker candidacy is a total nightmare for Senate Republicans
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No one can realistically criticize anyone else when they don’t adhere to their own principles.
Well no country is perfect, that doesn’t mean a country that has its own problems can’t criticize someone else. But I agree somewhat in that you can’t criticize another country when you do the same things.
However I doubt China will listen to anyone, wether they’re angels or devils. The only thing tthat might get China to listen is economic consequences.
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One of the things that bothers me is the idea that Taliban are an Islamic militia or political organization rather than a terrorist organization. The Taliban was the most deadly terrorist group in 2019, with 1,375 terrorist attacks. They just don’t do attacks in Western countries and they don’t kill Western civilians, they do it in Afghanistan. So it doesn’t make the news here.
edit: Jesus, just as I posted this I saw a bomb had gone off
We can, at least in part, thank Trump and Pompeo for helping give the Taliban some level of legitimacy in that regard. For a country that loves to spout off about not negotiating with terrorists, Trump and Pompeo were giddy as hell about their “peace” deal with a big ol terrorist organization. And up until about 10 days ago, the whole GOP was happy to tout it too.
Definitely not enjoying the way the media is handling all this either. 2019 saw the most terrorist attacks in Afghanistan in nearly a decade. That never got coverage. Americans were there the whole damn time, but now suddenly all the media gives a shit again because it’s a more sensational story finally.
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The weird thing is, we’re becoming like China. In criticism of the treatment of Ughurs, people have pointed out it’s an Orwellian surveillance situation. And I don’t really doubt that, China is fucking crazy. But we’re going mad ourselves with surveillance and mass herding of people in the covid pandemic. The scary thing is, maybe the elite thinks what China is doing works. And maybe we should follow their example. Some EU countries, I think Greece and Hungary, that are participating in the belt and road initiative and have cultivated good relations with China, have refused to sign on an EU condemnation of China. I think this will spread.
It’s an interesting area. I think it is important not to be tempted into black and white views here, as you say criticising US policy doesn’t mean Assad and Putin are good guys. As the Carrier catchphrase goes, it can be two things.
With China’s success, there are elements where that is very true and one is the lack of democracy. If you look at a less extreme example in Singapore, they have a quasi democracy. There are elections but the system basically rigged, the media issued licences that are revoked if they don’t do what the government wants them to. That does mean though the leaders are not caught up in the short-termism we get in the west. They draw up 20 year development plans and often deliver on them. While democracies often do thing like promise tax cuts with no actual plan to ever make up the deficit and hand a problem down to the next guy.
With regard to surveillance and restrictions. I am prone to believe this is an ‘exceptional circumstances’ situation in the majority of cases when it comes to Covid. You see in individualistic countries like the UK and the US they are probably too far on the side of lifting them before it’s logically sensible. We had mask wearing and limiting contact in 1917/18 to combat Spanish flu and they didn’t stick around after it had left. In 1940s Britain a ration book controlled what you could buy every week but once that supply crisis had passed it was done away with.
On the other hand there is a general drift towards it in the tech we use. Apple’s latest thing to combat child pornography very much seems to overstep the line in being able to access everything you have. Nobody rational wants child porn but surrendering more and more privacy to do that is a slippery slope. Governments push for more access into those systems, I can’t message a friend of mine who moved to work in the UAE on whatsapp anymore as it’s banned because they don’t like its encryption policies. They want to be able to read his messages.
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