Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Author: Ian Welsh Page 69 of 436
A bill stating that TikTok must divest or sell TikTok or stop operating in the US has passed.
Commenter KT Chong pointed out the stakes for China and the US
This ban is NOT just about protecting America from China. TikTok has global reach OUTSIDE the US. TikTok is a most popular app in over a hundred countries in the world — including in the Global South where China’s influences are steadily rising while US is facing increasing hostility due to the US complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in West Bank. Once the US gets its hands on TikTok, the US government will definitely use it to spread anti-China and pro-US propaganda. That is the true purpose of forcing Chinese to sell TikTok to the US, so that that US can seize/steal a most popular media tool and then use its global influences against China. I would rather TikTok just gives up its US market (i.e., banned in the US) than to hand over its global influence to the US government.
By laws, the Chinese government can block the forced sale as ByteDance (the parent company of TikTok) has to follow Chinese laws. The CCP should absolutely NOT approve the sales. This is not just business. This is but a battle in the bigger war between the US and China over global influences and the new media. TikTok should NOT be handed over to the US and then be used as tool to expand US influence in the global market. I would rather TikTok just give up on the US market rather than to hand over TikTok influences on all those overseas markets to the US. I hope China is smart enough to realize what is at stake here.
This seems reasonable to me. It would be like China saying “the US must sell or divest Apple because Apple does business in China.”
I will point out that TikTok has been notorious or famous, depending on your view, for contradicting US propaganda on many issues, most recently on Palestine. The videos are often savage, and make politicians look like fools in a way that is much easier to do in video than with writing or audio only, and they are seen by millions. “A Modest Proposal” is famous because it’s so hard to be so savage and because there was no audio recording and transmission during the Irish Potato Famine.
Another issue is that America wants to force the sale of a successful internet/social media company: the most successful in recent years, and the first to make video work on social media.
If you can’t innovate: steal.
If the US was truly just concerned about damage to users, it could simply set up rules the US subsidiary has to follow, in the same way that China has specific rules for US internet companies that apply in China, but not elsewhere.
As for the fears of all user info being turned over to the Chinese government, that’s laughable, not because it might not happen but because governments mass gobbling such data happens all the time, and because some hacker group will inevitably crack every social media company and just sell data to everyone.
Anyway, China should definitely tell the US they don’t get to force a sale of a Chinese company. While they’re too polite to do so, it really should be accompanied with the metaphorical middle finger.
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I was asked this question by a friend today and I found myself uncertain if there would be a great power war or not.
My thoughts were roughly five:
- The US can’t win a war with China or Russia, in my estimation. Russia by itself is outproducing all of NATO by about 7:1 in terms of munitions. China has so much more industrial capacity that it’s insane. China won’t let Russia be taken out, if it has to it will intervene, in my estimation, because if Russia falls, it’s next. Russia provides the feed, fuel and mineral reserve it needs, in a form which can’t be interdicted by naval power.
- If there is going to be a war, the sooner it happens the better America’s chances, but right now, munitions are so depleted by Ukraine and Israel, that a war is essentially impossible. Since NATO can’t restore its munitions at current rates without years of effort, and has shown little ability to ramp up production, that means by the time the US/NATO is read for war, it’ll be even weaker comparatively.
- Western elites are incompetent idiots at anything but keeping power and accumulating wealth in their own nations. They continually blunder into wars they lose, they’ve shipped their industry to China, they’ve spent three generations systematically weakening their nations in pursuit of profit and power.
- Western elites also display breathtaking arrogance and assurance of their power and their ability push other people and nations around. They believe in their superiority and are isolated from any feedback which proves otherwise.
- Historically, great power transitions usually include large wars. Not always, but about two-thirds of the time. (Thucydides Trap, by Graham Allison goes into this in detail.)
Basically, the US is like Japan pre-World War II: powerful military, no way to keep up with losses during a war. Yamamoto famously noted that it was impossible for Japan to win against America, and was ignored. So the tiny island nation went to war with a continental power with far more manpower and industry than it had, and lost. America today is comparatively stronger than Japan was, but by less than people think, especially if China gets involved.
If there is a war, it could explode in any number of areas: Taiwan and the Lithuania/Estonia are possibilities, but if I had to lay a single bet I’d bet on Iran. Russia, China and Iran are currently conducting naval exercises together. Iran came to Russia’s aid in a big way during their war with Ukraine. Israel recently attacked Russia diplomatically, burning the good will there and Russia is hosting meetings between Palestinian factions to help them get over their differences so they are stronger. Iran has substantial industry, since it was blessed by American sanctions and is large enough to develop anyway. America is currently showing that its government is completely controlled by Zionist interests.
Iran is powerful, but it may look like a target America can win against.
Except that Russia and China aren’t likely to let that happen. If Iran looks like it will really lose, Russia might even intervene militarily.
But truthfully I don’t know. Americans would be insane to pick a great power war: the odds against them are way too high, even now.
But American elites are insane: completely out of touch with reality beyond their own inbred elite circle. They’ve been the world’s greatest power for as long as they can remember, feel entitled to the spot, and may not give it up without a fight.
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My hosting service is having some issues with the shared server I’m on. I’m not sure when it will be fixed (heck, as I write the site is loading fine, so it may be fixed now or it might not), but if you’ve been having trouble getting here that’s what’s going on. I’ve talked to them twice with no luck, if issues continue I’ll have another more forcible chat and may wind up moving to another hosting company, though I’d prefer to avoid that as I’ve been with the current one for 15 years and this is the first time I’ve had a problem which couldn’t be solved with one or two calls.
Do as thou will, so long as you increase biodiversity and biomass, reduce pollution and heat, and replace any resources used.
Want to live in the howling wilderness? OK. But only if you can increase the number and amount of lifeforms, and reduce pollution by being there. If you can’t do all three, you don’t get to live in the wilderness.
Freedom today is based on money. If you have enough money, you can do what you want, if you obey the law. The more money you have, the fewer laws apply to you: either they are laws which if violated are punished with fines, which you don’t care about, or they are laws which are effectively not enforced against the rich.
The Green Age, instead of having a zero tolerance policy for minor infractions, will have no tolerance for people who damage the ecosphere or the climate.
Likewise, you will need to replace the resources you’re using if you’re using them beyond any natural replacement rate. If you’re taking water from a river or an aquifer, you’ll have an amount you can use that is equal to natural replenishment. If you use any more, you’ll need to replace it. Chop trees, plant them, and since you also need to maintain biomass and biodiversity, that won’t mean tree farms and will require you to keep doing it and, most likely, to have done it in the past. (This will make clear-cutting very rare.)
This also means that you don’t get to do what you want if you use non-renewable resources. Mining and other forms of permanent extraction will be something that society has a strict limit on. Much will be assigned by government, and much will likely be divided and given to each member of society and when they buy something which uses a non-renewable resource, that account will be debited, with no credit except in life-saving emergencies.
The principle is simple: replace what you use if it can be replaced, make the ecology and the environment better because of your existence and use limited amounts of non-renewable resources. This is how we fix the environment and make an environment is healthier and far more enjoyable to live in. (Just as almost everyone wants to live on a street with lots of trees.)
Long term, if you want to use a lot of non-renewable resources, we will have to go into space, but taking masses from Earth will be verboeten.
These rules will apply to individuals and groups, including whatever replaces corporations as our primary private economic vehicle and to households. This will lead to the end of suburbs and exurbs as we know them. Most people will either be rural (working on food production and environmental projects) or will live in dense cities. If we want the privilege of living in low population density areas, we will have to earn it by figuring out how to do so in a way that doesn’t decrease biodiversity, biomass or renewable resources, and instead of those who make more money being allowed to do more, those who will be allowed to do more will be those who increase those environmental variables the most.
This is only the first of the Green Age articles, we’ll dive into the rest of the principles and some of the details of how such a society must be run as the series continues.
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As usual, just some links with takes. I bookmark more than I can write articles on, and some things aren’t worth a full article but are still worthy of comment.
Note: There is one article on Long Covid and vaccines. No vax comments will be allowed thru. If you want to talk about that, comment in the last open thread and link. Otherwise the comments will be swamped by anti-vax.
Swedish Unions Taking On Tesla. What’s important isn’t the direct strike, it’s that sympathy strikes are legal in Sweden. That explains much of the decline of unions in other countries, and that they have stayed strong in Sweden.
The Tesla strike has attracted secondary action from eight other unions and is threatening to spread to neighbouring Norway
Since that article, more unions have indeed started sympathy strikes. As for Musk, he’s virulently anti-union, and needs to be broken
The Atlantic Meridian Overturning Current (AMOC) could shut down anywhere from 2025 to 2075. Consequences?
In their model of the AMOC, London cools by an average of 18°F and Bergen, Norway by 27°F…
… Sea levels in the Atlantic would rise by a meter in some regions, inundating many coastal cities. The wet and dry seasons in the Amazon would flip, potentially pushing the already weakened rain forest past its own tipping point…
…it will severely disrupt the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America, and West Africa. It will increase storms and lower temperatures in Europe.
Long term readers will know that I have been particularly concerned with changes in rainfall patterns and the end of monsoons.
Vaccination appears to lower prevalence of Long Covid:
A new study based on 4,605 participants in the Michigan COVID-19 Recovery Surveillance Study shows that the prevalence of long COVID symptoms at 30 and 90 days post-infection was 43% to 58% lower among adults who were fully vaccinated before infection.
This does not mean that vaccines may not also cause harm, calm down anti-vaxxers (and remember, no comments on anti-vax in this thread, put them in the open thread.)
Economic Damage to Israel As Of Late February:
Tourism in Israel decreased by 70-75%, 7% of citizens became internally displaced and 14% of dual citizens left the occupied territories.
Not precisely a surprise, and the internal displacement quantifies the damage Hezbollah is doing: that’s almost all from the norther settlements they are shelling and hitting with missiles.
How Much Damage Can Hezbollah Do To Israel In A War?
Well, according to Israel’s Haaretz (screen shot since they are subscription gated):
I’ve been saying this for a long time, but it’s good to put numbers to it. To go further, this means Israel will be hit as hard as Lebanon. Hezbollah has been very clear about this: if Israel bombs Lebanon indiscriminantly, Hezbollah will destroy as much of Israel as it can.
It should also be noted that Israel needs airfields, and they can be targeted by Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s missiles, on the other hand, are much harder to find and destroy.
Apparently China has rest station for delivery and sanitation workers.
This is interesting, because a couple years ago Beijing cracked down on abuse of delivery workers, forcing the delivery firms to increase wages and improve conditions. But apparently they didn’t just do that, the government stepped in to help them directly.
It’s both gladdening and dismaying to see that China can and will do things like this, and we don’t. Anyway, the thread is worth reading. Please do.
Understanding Chinese Ship and Naval Build Capacity
This is one shipbuilding yard in Shanghai in 2019. The Chinese are building one carrier and six destroyers simultaneously.
For comparison, that is equivalent to the French navy. Not equivalent to French naval construction, but to the main part of the French surface fleet. pic.twitter.com/oH1cCHhtuQ
— Accidental Tokyoite (@Wilfrie77917027) March 4, 2024
Not much to say. The Japan analogy is excellent. The US has, in many ways, a great military. But they can’t replace losses or even manufacture enough ammunition.
I made this criticism for the first time in the 90s, with regards to smart munitions. All very nice, but in a real war the US would soon be using dumb munitions. Nowadays, the US and NATO can’t even make enough dumb munitions to fight a real war.
It’s an oversimplification to say that oil sanctions on Russia had no effect. It’s not just about price, but quantity and a lot of price is determined in bulk deals. The Chinese did not pay Russia well for their bulk deal. Still, it’s clear that anti-Russia oil sanctions haven’t done what their creators hoped:
And that concluded Quick Takes, though I’ve still got a lot of saved articles, so there may be another one soon.
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In fact, no evidence of even a single rape.
I noted, repeatedly, that I doubted these rape claims and was correct, as usual.
Now if you believed them you need to think very carefully about why. Every war always includes reports of fake atrocities and this is especially true at the start of the war, in order to gin up support. My “favorite” is that when Iraq invaded Kuwait, we were told that Iraqi soldiers were bayoneting babies in incubators.
Never happened.
Note that the primary purveyor of the mass rape claims was the New York Times, who also were the primary purveyors of fake nuclear weapon scares in the lead-up to the Iraq War.
The New York times is Hasbara from the top, intensely dedicated to Israel and the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing and genocide. I cannot recall any war it didn’t support. It also has a record of intensely political editorial decisions: for example in the 2004 election it decided not to publish revelations of mass spying on American citizens, against the law, because it would effect the election (hurt Bush, help the Democratic candidate.)
If you believe the New York Times without running what they claim thru a common sense filter (do they have reason to lie about this or to twist it?) you’re a fool. This applies to the media in general.
The fact is that whatever you think of Hamas, they were first elected because they had a reputation for incorruptability, as opposed to the PLO, which had becoming a sewer of corruption as well as servants of the Israeli state. They have no record of using rape as a weapon, none, and no reason to mass rape. We even had eye-witness reports from Israelis that they had treated women well, from October 7th and 8th.
There was a possibility that a few rapes had occurred, but even that turns out to not be true.
If you fell for it originally, you should have become suspicious quickly, because there was so little evidence. Haaretz noted that they couldn’t find any hospital admittances, there was no flood of claims (which there would have been) and so on. There was virtually no evidence to back up a very few claims from extremely biased sources.
If you trust the media, you are a fool. That’s understandable. You were brought up to think that authority figures were trustworthy (even though they’re the ones who do almost all the harm in the world). But at some point you have to grow up and notice that the much of the media is your enemy, just like most corporations, rich people and governments. They want your support, they want to take as much from you as they can, and they want to use you for their purposes and most of them don’t care how much you are hurt as a result.
Don’t be a fool.
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