Zoom says China asked it to censor pro-democracy activists in US and it obeyed

[Arika]

8 hours ago, StDragon said:

The US has its own interests, and an obligation to serve its own people.

 

 

Sure the US has it's own interest, sure as hell isn't for the interest of it's people though

[StDragon]

7 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

I think that was for industrialization, not communism.

Yeah, you obviously don't know your history.

 

Communism is THE ideology responsible for those deaths. You can read a long list of choice quotes from Mao and others within the party.

 

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The US also bears significant responsibility for the millions killed by the Nazis because the US heavily-sponsored Hitler and the Nazis' rise to power

That is BS and a lie. The US helped liberate and save Europe. And also helped rebuild it through the Marshall Plan.

 

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the US is actually much more of an ongoing detrimental influence in the world for a lot more people than China is

That's a 50 Cent Party talking point.

 

The US as a super power is the only one keeping China and Russia in check. They would not hesitate for a second to expand as empires. And yes, US is basically an empire too, but there's no question which one most people on Earth would rather have around. But, you're going to get one whether you like it or not. Nature abhors a vacuum of power.

 

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That's a nice sentiment. But that's really all it is.

The lack of education in that statement makes me weep for the future of humanity.

 

Sovereign nations, specifically democratic ones, are founded primarily to serve its own people. There is no "world government" or "planetary obligation". To think otherwise is claptrap. Nations do however work together on common mutual goals via diplomatic means. But without question, a nation's modus operandi is to service the interest of its own people first and foremost. If they're totalitarian regimes, it's to service the leaders. 

[StDragon]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

Sure the US has it's own interest, sure as hell isn't for the interest of it's people though

It's said that an uprising is a form of re-calibration. Same as it ever was.

[spartaman64]

31 minutes ago, StDragon said:

 

the government in china today is basically as different from the government back then as germany today vs germany in ww2. china is no longer communist except in name. and also the deaths were largely caused by disorganization and incompetence rather than malice unlike some other countries that we respect and like today

[StDragon]

43 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

the government in china today is basically as different from the government back then as germany today vs germany in ww2. china is no longer communist except in name. and also the deaths were largely caused by disorganization and incompetence rather than malice unlike some other countries that we respect and like today

No. It's still communist as a command and control structure. The politburo is very much intact.

 

Economically, things changed with Deng Xiaoping in the 1970's. So from a hard-line ideological standpoint, there's some merit to your statement, but it's all relative.

[Delicieuxz]

2 hours ago, StDragon said:

Communism is THE ideology responsible for those deaths. You can read a long list of choice quotes from Mao and others within the party.

Thanks for the link.

 

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That is BS and a lie. The US helped liberate and save Europe. And also helped rebuild it through the Marshall Plan.

What I said about that is true.

 

Long before becoming Germany's Chancellor, Hitler called Henry Ford, who published weekly anti-Jew writings in the US, his "inspiration" and kept a life-sized bust of Ford next to his desk. Hitler vowed, “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany”, referring to Ford's anti-Jew writings. In 1937, Ford become the first US citizen to receive the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, an award created by Hitler. By 1942, 1/3rd of all the Nazis' vehicles used in WW2 were made by Ford.

 

That's just Ford. But even after 1942, many US companies continued to supply the Nazis until the end of the war, including GM, Ford, and Standard Oil (today's Exxon and Chevron).

 

Ford and the Führer

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler

"The contribution made by [United States] to German war preparations can only be described as phenomenal. It was certainly crucial to German military capabilities.... Not only was an influential sector of American business aware of the nature of Nazism, but for its own purposes aided Nazism wherever possible (and profitable)--with full knowledge that the probable outcome would be war involving Europe and the United States."

 

The US assisted defeating the Nazis only after the US had critically sponsored the Nazis' rise to power and their war preparations, and after it was obvious that the USSR had defeated Germany. But the US played and profiteered on both sides of the war: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible" - Harry Truman

 

The US helping to rebuild Europe meant the US could profit on the other end of the war, too. So, the US profited on the creation of the war as well as during the war, and then profited on repairing the damage after the war, getting stronger economically and influential-wise on both ends of the war while Europe was destroyed and then had to start rebuilding - and that is how the US came to be a superpower relative to other countries.

 

2 hours ago, StDragon said:

Sovereign nations, specifically democratic ones, are founded primarily to serve its own people. There is no "world government" or "planetary obligation". To think otherwise is claptrap. Nations do however work together on common mutual goals via diplomatic means. But without question, a nation's modus operandi is to service the interest of its own people first and foremost. If they're totalitarian regimes, it's to service the leaders. 

The part which I was disputing in your comment was the claim that the US government has an obligation to serve its own people. Those in the US government serve the corporations and special interests that sponsor them.

[StDragon]

51 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

Long before becoming Germany's Chancellor, Hitler called Henry Ford, who published weekly anti-Jew writings in the US, his "inspiration" and kept a life-sized bust of Ford next to his desk. Hitler vowed, “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany”, referring to Ford's anti-Jew writings. In 1937, Ford become the first US citizen to receive the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, an award created by Hitler. By 1942, 1/3rd of all the Nazis' vehicles used in WW2 were made by Ford.

Ford has a questionable past to say the least. But the way I understand it, that quote was regarding his method of assembly line and mass production as modern industrialism.

 

I'm pretty sure that Ford in that regard led to the foundation of Volkswagen in 1937.

[Brooksie359]

On 6/12/2020 at 8:15 PM, Delicieuxz said:

The US does the exact same thing all the time, though - intimidating others into doing what the US wants or face repercussions, especially sanctions - and has been doing it for far longer than we've been hearing about China doing it. Maybe China is just learning from the US.

 

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These are very different things tbh. China is asking the banning of people who talk about their past misdeeds from a service they don't even allow in their own country. That is beyond petty compared to the US putting pressure on countries for decisions that actually effect people. I mean one is just speech while the other is voting on things that will have large effects. If the US banned all negative speech then I would see I reason to compare the two but as far as I am aware they have not. 

[Soppro]

On 6/14/2020 at 1:36 AM, StDragon said:

The CEO of Zoom is Eric Yuan . Either he's a shadow CCP member, or he's being blackmailed in order to protect family members at home. Pure conjecture. But if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck....

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he has been contacted by China's Ministry of State Security or Cyberspace Administration of China. In other documented attacks on American technology companies, the MSS has planted Chinese individuals to conduct nefarious affairs from the inside. Here are just 2 analyses of operations MSS (or other arms of the Chinese government) has conducted: Operation Wocao and Turbine Panda. 

 

As you said, Cold War 2 has quite literally begun (well, has been going on for some time now)

[straight_stewie]

17 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

But the US played and profiteered on both sides of the war

These statements are always loaded.

You can't view all countries as a black box where the government and the industries are inextricably tied together, one and the same for all eternity. All weapons producers in the US are private (in the sense that they are not owned by the government, however many are publicly traded) businesses.

 

There are also many facets of the United States government, and they seldom work well together. For example, in 1976 some agencies approved, largely under cover of darkness, the exportation of F-14's to Iran. The move may have saved Grumman and helped curtail coldwar Russian operations in Iran, but when Congress found out they deemed this a long term strategic error. Hence:

ITAR: International Traffic in Arms Regulations (in the very same year that the exportation of F-14s to Iran was discovered even), seeks to limit not only the proliferation of advanced, superior, or strategically advantageous weaponry of US origin, but also the knowledge of how to make such weaponry, and places control of such activity into the US legislative bodies, rather than solely with the President.

Which also neatly explains why you can kind of just go buy old Russian ICBM's, possibly with warheads still attached, while you would disappear in the night if you even implied that you wanted to acquire such weaponry to anyone in the US with the power to actually get them to you.

 

To blame the Nazi war machine on the US is to grossly oversimplify how things actually work while ignoring actual history in the process.

 

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As you said, Cold War 2 has quite literally begun (well, has been going on for some time now)

@Soppro Cold War 2? The first one never ended in the first place...

[StDragon]

5 hours ago, straight_stewie said:

@Soppro Cold War 2? The first one never ended in the first place...

I suppose in a few hundred years looking back, future historians will probably agree with you in that there was really only one Cold War with a long hiatus in the middle. But for now, arguably the original Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union in 1991.

[straight_stewie]

3 hours ago, StDragon said:

I suppose in a few hundred years looking back, future historians will probably agree with you in that there was really only one Cold War with a long hiatus in the middle. But for now, arguably the original Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union in 1991.

My point was that there wasn't ever really a hiatus.

Both countries have kept pushing against each other in Middle Eastern countries. Both countries have kept spending unimaginable amounts of money on new weapons systems in obvious direct competition with each other. Both countries have kept making incursions into each others airspace. Both countries have kept having little run ins with their navies at sea. Both countries have kept posturing against each other on the world stage.

The Cold War may have calmed down slightly, but the only real hiatus was in US media coverage.

For example, from June 17th 2020: US fighter jets intercept 8 Russian warplanes near Alaska for 4th time in a week