Do you believe Huawei is spying on it's western users? And other related and non related stuff.

Lounge
87

I have no intention or interest in playing down the nasty stuff done by China but just a few bulletpoints to show that “rule of law” is very much dependent of the rule and the law. So in itself worth very little.

  • War criminals pardoned (mercenaries, not even proper soldiers)
  • The refusal of acknowledging international law regarding war criminals
  • The whole illegal dragnet surveillance exposed by Snowden
  • The legal loop hole of Guantanamo Bay. Legal in only the most technical sense.
  • Waterboarding as somehow legal because “it’s not torture when we do it”
  • The discrepancy in Police and state repression of demonstrations depending on political views rather than risk assessments and intelligence.
  • Gerrymandering, legal but outrageously antidemocratic

The list could of course go on forever.

It’s been proven so many times that the law is a pretty supple and flexible thing and always in the hands of the powerful and the nation state. So are human rights and political freedoms.

I forgot an interesting thing with the US situation. Private companies can be used to circumvent limitations on state powers. Parking apps used by ICE to track immigrants etc. The agencies are allowed to buy what seems be be any data for sale as long as they don’t do the collecting themselves. When like in US and perhaps China the state and police have such insanely high budgets the lines between private and state get real blurry, furry and cozy. The two countries are similar in that way.

1 Like
88

Amen. USA is a living proof of how democracy is actually fragile even in 21. st. Something that we thought we nailed by now in the west is being challenged. Mostly by the emergence of new technologies.
We’re in a new and unexplored digital age that we can’t point to any history to learn from and it seems we always have to learn the hard way.

It always seems that with every new thing people first try to take advantage of it, then society collapses and then we rebuild on a newly found knowledge and implement rules to “ensure” for it to never happen again. And even if the breakdown of society is predictable, it’s only just a theory until it actually happens.

It’s the same thing with everything. Atomic bomb, chemical weapons, slavery, exploration, pollution, food industry, deforestation, banking, trading, holocaust, eugenics, Internet.

Basically we’re now in the age of information warfare and I don’t mean Alex Jones and Infowars but this is a real military term. Our minds are being influenced in all kids of ways online. To make money, to get votes, to get support, to deny support, to love, to hate, to confuse, to scare and most importantly to misinform.
Basically anyone with an agenda and money can start achieving his goals by influencing world’s society trough social media and the rest of the web. And if he’s crafty even news channels will pick it up and go with it.

One day, if we’re not careful, this will lead to a collapse of western society. Could be moral, could be political, could be economic etc. But I guarantee you it’ll happen because everyone is more focused on taking advantage and wielding the power than containing it, regulating it and focusing it on good.

And we can predict the outcome, but nobody will lift a finger until it actually happens and when, in the famous words of William Daniel Jones, shit hits the fan.

Does anyone watch series The Expanse? It’s as SciFi series where Earth, Mars and the asteroid belt colonizers couldn’t find a common language and were so divided that they stared to fight for it’s independence and then force its rules upon each other depending on who was stronger at the time.
If we continue on this path politically and morally, I’m afraid we’re heading for that kind of future if we can even get to that.

In the past these large divides would be solved with a world war and a large destruction after which everyone grows closer and comes together. Only problem is, the next one would likely be nuclear. We would all be wiped out. So it probably won’t happen. Then again where does this human tension and divide go? It’s bound to release itself somewhere. I just hope it won’t be at you or me.

89

That sounds not good. I thought you’re in UK or the US. It seems that I was wrong. All I can say is be careful. I think Mao Zedong was more horrible than Stalin, my grandfather was dead beause of him about 70 years ago. Mao gave orders to kill about 1500 thousands of people at that time, my grandfather was of those people. Even my father had never seen my grandfather. And my grandfather had nerver seen hisown father too, beause hisown father died of the civil war. It’s inconvenience to talk about the more detail. I’ll try to change the world in the future.

90

I think I’m politically in a better spot then US or UK are at the moment. We’re not so “woke” so everybody is very humble. You really have to o something horrible to someone for them to hate you. In US/UK I think everybody hates everybody, even if they see each other lol. Idk, I’m hoping someone here from US can say that that’s not true. They are stronger economically but lack in everything else. Culturally and geographically I think I’m in a perfect spot.

It’s about small things. I wake up every day and drink perfectly healthy water from the tap in my home. How many Americans or UK persons can say that? I go into the town and I know everybody. Wherever I go is clean and untouched. But I don’t earn nearly enough as I would in the US/UK with the same or even much worse job. That’s one downside.

Just changing your country will do I think :joy:

91

I don’t know much about your country.
If I don’t criticize our so called goverment, pretending nothing has happened, I would live being happier like many other people in China.

92

I enjoyed the Expanse but its heroes are still simplistic and actually survive. In the real world, the real heroes aren’t and don’t. Those in power always get their way. In the true north, we supposedly have excellent values and are a place worth immigrating to. Little do people realize we have zero accountability for anything. There is not a time when anyone truly owns up to their mistakes. I am not just talking about the government and organizations; this is endemic in the populace as well. Sorry is an excuse not an apology. Nothing happens after a sorry and usually you don’t even get to hear the sorry. It is just business as usual, or worse, more oppression now that someone broached the matter.

We in the West are a laughing stock to the rest of the world. While our morality is technically sweet, our lives don’t reflect the freedom and harmony promised. In fact, our words ring hollow. DT only exposed that for my southern neighbours. And what do our nations say? Once we get rid of DT and his ilk from our countries, things will be peachy!? Well, no. You’ll end up with people who will hide the truth rather than flaunt it with other truths, albeit good. Anyway, I went down the rabbit hole. Sorry.

93

I agree with you absolutely.

94

China is pretending to be the biggest friend to my country right now. They are trying to enter EU trough us but Germany said NO, so China is shifting to Serbia. But then Trump said NO. I’m amused to see what they do next xd

1 Like
95

Yeah, I agree. Trump and Biden are left and right boot. They always stay together (morally speaking).

Left doesn’t offer conservatives a way out. Conservatives offered leftists a way out the last elections and they won despite Trump. But Trump was a terrible president with terrible advisors and you just can’t fix that. He’s an old, bored showman with an Slovenian arm candy, what does he care about the country lol. He shouldn’t have been in office.

Then again. As a tech concious person I’d never vote for Hillary just b/c of those emails. "What do you mean wiped it? Like…um…with a rag? :smirk: " lol

I’ve been trough the cables and it’s gross. The amount of intelligence that was leaked is staggering. Even found some on some people that I know lol, that’s how much it was collected and went trough her and leaked.

Then again Trump was leaking everything on Twitter lol. US is in deep **** with their politicians if those are the best the can offer lol. Even now, Biden should be on a beach somewhere, not in office. I don’t think, at his age, that he really cares about politic anymore. I’d guess he’s there for the same reason as Trump. Just to say that he was a president of the USA. Maybe they should outsource their politics to China :stuck_out_tongue:

Call me an idiot but I wish Obama could have ran again but having learnt from his mistakes. I think if Obama wasn’t using executive orders to get his way and if he had been more presidential with Israel, he would have been the absolute perfect president. Still a part the establishment but I’d like him a lot more. But in a way he started this whole thing with executive orders and “I have a pen and a phone” to do whatever I want mentality.

96

I’m not saying the US invented human rights, but when compared to China and other communist states there are some fundamental differences worth noting.