"Peace through strength" is a slightly too simplistic and naive statement, oddly reminding us about "arbeit macht frei"or "peace in our time"...
What these (claimed) intentions are specifically lacking is ethics and coherence.
That (military) strength is merely one leg of a stool; if all the other "legs" of your country are empowering and financing those hostile and despotic states threatening democracy and #humanrights globally e.g. through trade and business.. isn't it the very definition of madness infused with greed and indifference? 🤯
I have watched our oh so noble and democratic countries empower and finance hostile dictatorships like #CCP #china and #russia for three decades since (and despite!) the Tiananmen massacre and the nominal end of Cold War (note: the CCP refused to receive that memo!).
There can be no real "peace through strength" with morals so weak.
We need to start favouring democracies globally instead of empowering our enemies. If we'd done that all along... 🤷🏻♂️
#MarkRutte #EuropeanUnion #NATO #UnitedNations #Ukraine
On #trump 2.0 ― an inconsequential European view:
I see lots of previously sprouting if belated plans to tackle global issues unraveling, and lots of nooses tightening.
I could explain 2016 as sheer ignorance, albeit stemming from malignant seeds.
2020 gave #America an opportunity to leave the maga derangement era behind, or at least to render it less harmful but for the absolute freedom to lie combined with the sociopaths' control of key media networks (esp. in the "swing states").
This was created by Rupert #Murdoch (congrats?) in crucial collaboration with pro-fascism American (and South African) billionaires and boosted by hostile foreign disinfo and propaganda networks.
The 'honorary' collusion awards go to the legacy media networks for their incessant sanewashing and bothsideism; and the post-neo-con former Republican Party for not even attempting to fight its fascism within.
🥂
The biggest winners: #putin, #CCP, the kim dynasty, #netanyahu, trump cronies, American regressives and most every current and aspiring autocrat and despot across the planet; corruption and sycophancy.
💩
The biggest losers: US civil society, #Ukraine, #Taiwan, human rights globally, environment, climate change, the eponymous "rules-based world order" and any hope to rebuild a truly effective "coalition of democracies" which the US Democrats knew to be necessary to stop the global slide towards autocracy and "might over right" free-for-all... Despots will be further emboldened to target their subject populations without fear of consequences from the USA.
I'd be tempted to say "Fuck you America. We trusted you", but... oh wait I'm totally saying it!
(I'm pro-EU but recognize that similar forces are at work knee-capping EU ethics and decision-making and the "Fuck EU" types are aligned with the maga)
The magas might be (read: are) still a minority in the USA, but so are the decent people standing up for democracy 💔
. The large deciding third of the indifferents won the argument.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing."
― Edmund Burke
Some say you can tell peoples' character by how they treat their animals.
I'd argue you can also tell their character by how they treat their neighbours.
#genocide #imperialism #colonialism #Ukraine #Ukrainewar #Tibet #Tibetan #EastTurkistan #Uighurs #SouthMongolia #russia #china
It's such a brutally basic question.
Would you buy plastic nazi trinkets? Cheap nazi electronics?
Would you watch nazi satellite "news"? Play computer games by nazis?
Would you use nazi apps that can access all your private data? (their own networks being only accessible to the nazi party)
Would you send nazis your industrial base and your bankers to finance it?
From the point of view of #Tibetans, #Uighurs, #SouthMongolians, #Hongkongers and most of their current neighbours worried about pesky "#lebensraum issues", the Chinese dictatorship are like nazis, just without the express corporeal extermination programme.
Yet nearly everyone merrily does business with them. Even the Jewish state... They have full WTO access to abuse as they will. Those they trust with passports go on foreign holiday tours. Unlike those denied exit...
Kindly explain to me why.
It's not 1945. They overthrew their republic in 1949 and went on to commit atrocities they've erased from their subjects' memory, and apparently from the memory of most free people as well. The key thought driving them forward is "biding time and hiding strength" until they can erase *#democracy* — the one thing that they fear and hate more than anything. They're buying off (not only) developing country elites at a pace that would make the East India Company blush.
I suppose Lenin's lightbulb moment of "selling capitalists the rope with which to hang them" didn't go the waste after all.
#CCP #PRC #China #chinazi #dictatorship #zeitenwende #HandelOhneWandel #greed
another example of Autocracy Inc - autocrats working together:
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2022/12/15/china-is-helping-zimbabwe-to-build-a-surveillance-state
@anneapplebaum@journa.host
If democracies don't finally begin pulling together and fighting the spread of #autocracy everywhere, more and more developing democracies will fail and fall into a pit of #surveillance #dictatorship where civil society will be deprived of any possibility of organizing opposition again.
We know which regime is driving these "developments", but bankers and industrialists from democracies are still queueing up to kowtow its Leader while lobbying at home to ensure business continues as usual.
One sometimes wonders what #Tibetans, #Uighurs, #SouthMongolians, #Hongkongers and all the other silenced subjects of repressive regimes (read the article) might think about the ethics and moral backbone of #democracies.
@hanse_mina@mastodon.social #India, the world's biggest democ..... autocracy devoid of ethics.
Somehow continuing a post-communist pact with russian psychos works for the Indian hindu nationalists.
I do wonder what happens when Modi kicks his bucket. I'm afraid that the hindu supremacist project won't simply disintegrate away.
@hanse_mina@mastodon.social Of course it bears remembering that all other democracies have merrily continued doing business with the Chinese dictatorship which, on top of all its other crimes, after invading Tibet in 1950 used that military occupation as a platform to also invade India in 1962 (annexing Aksai Chin and more) and again in 2020 along the "line of control".
Some (actual) democracies still want to do business with the russian regime too, even in Europe! (incl. tourism)
#India's hypocrisy and collaboration with the russian regime is at least partly rational cynicism in response to lack of ethics by everyone else. 😔
Will we ever learn? We also need to stop empowering the despots not immediately across our own borders because their victims deserve to survive too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksai_Chin
#ccp #china #russia #EuropeanDefence
"Peace through strength" is a slightly too simplistic and naive statement, oddly reminding us about "arbeit macht frei"or "peace in our time"...
What these (claimed) intentions are specifically lacking is ethics and coherence.
That (military) strength is merely one leg of a stool; if all the other "legs" of your country are empowering and financing those hostile and despotic states threatening democracy and #humanrights globally e.g. through trade and business.. isn't it the very definition of madness infused with greed and indifference? 🤯
I have watched our oh so noble and democratic countries empower and finance hostile dictatorships like #CCP #china and #russia for three decades since (and despite!) the Tiananmen massacre and the nominal end of Cold War (note: the CCP refused to receive that memo!).
There can be no real "peace through strength" with morals so weak.
We need to start favouring democracies globally instead of empowering our enemies. If we'd done that all along... 🤷🏻♂️
#MarkRutte #EuropeanUnion #NATO #UnitedNations #Ukraine
On #trump 2.0 ― an inconsequential European view:
I see lots of previously sprouting if belated plans to tackle global issues unraveling, and lots of nooses tightening.
I could explain 2016 as sheer ignorance, albeit stemming from malignant seeds.
2020 gave #America an opportunity to leave the maga derangement era behind, or at least to render it less harmful but for the absolute freedom to lie combined with the sociopaths' control of key media networks (esp. in the "swing states").
This was created by Rupert #Murdoch (congrats?) in crucial collaboration with pro-fascism American (and South African) billionaires and boosted by hostile foreign disinfo and propaganda networks.
The 'honorary' collusion awards go to the legacy media networks for their incessant sanewashing and bothsideism; and the post-neo-con former Republican Party for not even attempting to fight its fascism within.
🥂 The biggest winners: #putin, #CCP, the kim dynasty, #netanyahu, trump cronies, American regressives and most every current and aspiring autocrat and despot across the planet; corruption and sycophancy.
💩 The biggest losers: US civil society, #Ukraine, #Taiwan, human rights globally, environment, climate change, the eponymous "rules-based world order" and any hope to rebuild a truly effective "coalition of democracies" which the US Democrats knew to be necessary to stop the global slide towards autocracy and "might over right" free-for-all... Despots will be further emboldened to target their subject populations without fear of consequences from the USA.
I'd be tempted to say "Fuck you America. We trusted you", but... oh wait I'm totally saying it!
(I'm pro-EU but recognize that similar forces are at work knee-capping EU ethics and decision-making and the "Fuck EU" types are aligned with the maga)
The magas might be (read: are) still a minority in the USA, but so are the decent people standing up for democracy 💔. The large deciding third of the indifferents won the argument.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing."
― Edmund Burke
Some say you can tell peoples' character by how they treat their animals.
I'd argue you can also tell their character by how they treat their neighbours.
#genocide #imperialism #colonialism #Ukraine #Ukrainewar #Tibet #Tibetan #EastTurkistan #Uighurs #SouthMongolia #russia #china
It's such a brutally basic question.
Would you buy plastic nazi trinkets? Cheap nazi electronics?
Would you watch nazi satellite "news"? Play computer games by nazis?
Would you use nazi apps that can access all your private data? (their own networks being only accessible to the nazi party)
Would you send nazis your industrial base and your bankers to finance it?
From the point of view of #Tibetans, #Uighurs, #SouthMongolians, #Hongkongers and most of their current neighbours worried about pesky "#lebensraum issues", the Chinese dictatorship are like nazis, just without the express corporeal extermination programme.
Yet nearly everyone merrily does business with them. Even the Jewish state... They have full WTO access to abuse as they will. Those they trust with passports go on foreign holiday tours. Unlike those denied exit...
Kindly explain to me why.
It's not 1945. They overthrew their republic in 1949 and went on to commit atrocities they've erased from their subjects' memory, and apparently from the memory of most free people as well. The key thought driving them forward is "biding time and hiding strength" until they can erase *#democracy* — the one thing that they fear and hate more than anything. They're buying off (not only) developing country elites at a pace that would make the East India Company blush.
I suppose Lenin's lightbulb moment of "selling capitalists the rope with which to hang them" didn't go the waste after all.
#CCP #PRC #China #chinazi #dictatorship #zeitenwende #HandelOhneWandel #greed
demi7en 🎗
🇪🇺
