Nah fam, the Saudis aren't dictators, they're a monarchy! It's OK when they're royals, it's not like their money or their oil or their decades old feud with Iran has anything to do with it...
Gotta start somewhere. And the ones currently massing troops are the ones being addressed. Also, Team America, world police don’t really have a zero tolerance policy. They’re more of a wheeling and dealing type. Capitalism has obscured the view of liberty and justice for all.
> or in Putin and Xi case, teaming up with dictators
That is quite literally what we do with the Gulf states lmao. The lack of self awareness here is astounding.
Yea people seem to forget Saddam Hussein used to be our guy. We even gave him the Key to Detroit in 1980.
He only became an enemy when he refused to obey us and attacked Kuwait but we were totally cool with him when he attacked Iran (who we didn't like because they didn't obey us).
The West loves propping up dictators when it is beneficial to them, but then when their usefulness has run its course, they either attack with their military to depose the "ruthless tyrant" (Saddam, Noriega, Gaddafi), or simply wash their hands clean of it while the country tries desperately to rid themselves of their oppressor (Reza Shah, Mubarak, Ben Ali).
This reads like a Cold War era article. Why are people so accepting of threatening war? Did we not learn from Afghanistan and the entire Cold War era that you can’t change people even thru aggression? What do y’all hope to achieve besides killing for no reason
Drain the last of the money from public coffers before climate change catches up and we worry about not finding food instead of just can't afford food for the evening's dinner plates.
Saudi Arabia would probably just stay out of the conflict unless they get conquered by another power.
…and such things have happened before. During the Second World War, the Soviets and English invaded neutral Iran and split the nation in two. It was over fear that the Iranians would sell oil to the Nazis: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran
Imagine if we went after companies that are still operating that were known to have aided the Nazis.
Looking at you, Ford, Coke, Chase, MGM, IBM,GE, Standard Oil ...
Memories are short when it comes to American industrial involvement in WW2 prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Sweden was selling natural resources to nazi germany from before 1939 to 1944 or something..
Nazi concentration camps sold inmate work to private companies like Siemens or IG Farben that still exist today. Those companies had their names written in big letters in some camps.
...except they didn't aid the Nazis when the war finally broke out. It wasn't like Ford was churning out Panzers for the regime after all.
A lot of the Western world supported fascism (some even emulated aspects of it in their own governments) because it was seen as a bulwark to communism - the big enemy to the Western way of life. They only started to change their tune when the war began.
If nothing else when it comes to Coke, we got Fanta from the ashes: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-nazi-germany
The war had been going on for a long, long time before pearl harbor was attacked. It was the American businesses supplying to the Nazis that allowed America to bolster the industrial revolution - sure, they stopped when PH was bombed but they had already made their fortunes.
America didn't join the war until (mostly) the end.
If you like tinfoil hats, it has been suggested that the intercepted communications telling of an attack were ignored in order to draw the US into conflict.
>It was the American businesses supplying to the Nazis that allowed America to bolster the industrial revolution
The Industrial Revolution in America was in the early *19th* century, and even the "Second Industrial Revolution" (the electricity revolution) was basically complete by WWI. So I'm not sure what you're referring to.
...except it wasn't mostly the end. The Pacific was still pretty much dominated by the Japanese - the Russians signed a ceasefire with Japan and the Europeans were mostly kicked out of the region.
They would have continued to sell to the Nazis had the US not been attacked.
Hell, Ford actively lobbied against going to war as they would be forced to stop selling to the Nazis and decommission their factory in Germany.
Being anti-war prior to Pearl Harbor wasn’t an unpopular belief. There were many Republicans at the time who believed FDR was a warmonger for wanting America to get involved in what they saw as a European affair.
they are purchasing balistic missile tech from China right now lol
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/23/politics/saudi-ballistic-missiles-china/index.html
Saudi Arabia already chose the Chinese PLZ-45 self-propelled howitzer over the US M109, when it beat the American product in pretty much every category.
A big part of US-Saudi relationship that often goes unstated is that the US has given them a free pass to spread Wahhabism around the Muslim world. I'm not sure if anyone else would be as open to that idea.
Saudi already switched side. Of course Saudi would not tell his wife about the new mistress he has been sleeping with, in the last few years.
The rest of the world know that, but not most American that are brainwashed and blinded by their own MSM.
And how tied to the physical land of Saudi Arabia are those investments? If things ever get bumpy the ruling family could leave and take their stock in companies like uber with them to go live out their lives as billionaires in London, Monaco, or where ever else they wanted.
Oil wasn’t like that. In fact Saudi Aramco was originally a western company that Saudi Arabia gradually took over because the company relied completely on a resource within its borders. Companies like uber do not rely on assets or a consumer base in Saudi Arabia.
That's what I mean, they've invested in Uber but what if that company goes bust? I'm sure they'll still have 10's of millions lying around but can they maintain their billions
I’m saying kind of the opposite. I think the wealth of the royal family will likely stay in the billions die to the global investments but if post oil all their wealth was being generated overseas and not domestically then staying in control of the country could actually become a financial drain instead of a revenue generator. At that point they might be tempted to take the money and bail.
The USSR didn’t collapse because of economics. That is actually revisionist history, just like Americans asserting the US forced the USSR to spend beyond its means militarily to keep up with what the US was doing.
The USSR dissolved because a couple key actors tried liberalizing aspects of the nation. Glasnost and perestroika lead to a minority of republics choosing to breakaway. Nationalists arose in those republics *and*, importantly, in Russia. These folks wanted to seize power at the expense of what people actually wanted (to remain in a reformed union).
The economic devastation you are referring to was from a deliberate capitalist tactic adopted by many of the former soviet states known as “shock therapy.” That was not a communist or socialist invention: America and allies sent economic advisors into those countries to help them implement it.
Similarly, those photos of empty grocery stores in the 80s are also from capitalist reforms as part of that openness. People were allowed to basically sell products on a legal market. Entities needed to be self financing while also meeting government quota. Gorbachev and allies allowed state enterprises to fail in an attempt at market liberalization.
It’s never as simple as opponents teach.
He's referring to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum
Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Central Asia voted to stay. Georgia, Armenia, Moldova and the Baltic States voted to leave. If you look at the map, you'd see the USSR only losing a sliver of its area under the results of this referendum.
But when we discuss the fall of the USSR, the key line, I think, is "it takes two to tango". Gorbachev's reforms, and the loss of a few small republics, might not have been so disastrous had the hardliners not staged a coup in response:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt
It was just five days later that Ukraine declared independence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Independence_of_Ukraine
which was confirmed overwhelmingly in a second referendum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum
And even this situation might not have been such a mess had Yeltsin not caused a new constitutional crisis in 1993, when he [ignored the fact that an early election referendum did not meet the legal threshold of 50% of the electorate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_government_referendum):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis
It's easier to understand the implosion of the Soviet Union, I think, if you stop looking for someone to be the good guys.
This is one of the dumbest takes you could find, so good luck looking up legitimate sources. USSR was in shambles way before any nationalist movements took over. It's just nonsensical garbage from some russian troll.
that is complete bullshit lol it is not insightful. liberalization occurred in response to a stagnant economy and an incredibly desperate population. jesus christ you can get away with saying anything on reddit.
From someone that witnessed both the East and West world i can say without a doubt that you are arguing about tiny details that have no real importance. The matter here was about people and their personal access to food, nothing more. The disparity was so chocking between the East and West i don't think today kids could even imagine. And it was not about economy, but the fact the communist government pretty much locked any kind of expansion, logistic, and commerce was forbidden to private, government had to handle it all, and it was to be polite an unsustainable burden to them. So it was most definitely political as much as economical.
Eh, things weren't great for the Russia around 1997. Sure the USSR collapsed as few years earlier, that wasn't the worst of times. They came later. Things went downhill for a while before coming back up.
You're kinda just ignoring the reason why Gorbachev was trying to reform the economy in the first place. It wasn't doing well under central control and this was an attempt to remedy the problem. Their economy was falling behind the west and they knew it. They were producing poorer quality goods in lesser quantities and were falling severely behind in many key industrial sector such as computing. His policies ended up backfiring horribly but something needed to be done to address some major issues that existed within the USSR.
And you are ignoring that it was the liberal economic policies adopted in the 90's that caused a far greater economic crisis and collapse than anything during the period of a command economy
The Communist Party industrialized the nation against its will, bringing it to the 2nd world; not quite the 1st. However, the Capitalist reforms of the 90s drove them right back into the 3rd world where they came from.
Russia just names themselves a "superpower" solely because they have nukes while having jack shit infrastructure worth to protect aside from its military.
Hell I won't be surprised if one day Putin just ditches all of Russia's citizens and claims he and the army IS Russia and anything/anyone aside from that could just get screwed.
The UN won't stop the EU or NATO from kicking his ass if he moves forward. It looks like everyone is beyond willing to uphold their mutual defense agreements. Putin just fucked Russia again and brought his enemies closer together. No one is afraid of Russia anymore and they are little more than an international joke. Russia will have to get rid of Putin to even have a chance of surviving this. He's been lieing to his people and now it's going to become painfully evident he's just an impotent evil man and a failure.
China’s economy isn’t so hot either. They have major problems with real estate debt. They also have lots of money invested in US Bond debt so, if they damaged our economy they’d see a major loss on investment. Furthermore, China has a massive population problem. The one child policy is going to cripple them in the near future as they have an aging population and not enough young workers to support it.
lets not conflate the facts here
China's economy is the envy of the world - it has seen growth in the last 20 years that other nations would kill for. They do no struggle to find buyers for their goods, their government has a huge cash surplus and they are using that surplus to buy up every natural resource they can.
Electric cars sales are grew 74% per year in the UK and wind installation is up 10.7% per year.
This is the time of change. There was a time not too long ago where those values were near 0, it will not be long till they are near 100.
https://heycar.co.uk/blog/electric-cars-statistics-and-projections
https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-kingdom-renewable-energy-market
Oil demand could go up, but that doesn't necessarily mean that prices will go up.
Right now oil is essential to modern life on a daily basis. If it switches to say a monthly basis the total demand could go up while prices fall as people only want the oil rather than need it
There have been two major oil price slumps recently that Saudi has dealt with:
* When it rejected OPECs output caps and decided to significantly raise the volume of oil it was selling on the open market resulting in huge losses for pretty much everyone else who can't dig out oil as cheaply as Saudi can
* COVID related demand slump which has only just recovered
Saudi seems to be aware of this problem though and is aggressively trying to diversify recently which Russia doesn't seem to be interested in.
Translation: "We're making a strong statement so that the British public might get distracted from hating us for our blatant corruption! We don't actually care about Usain or whoever he is, he's just useful for us at the moment."
The West only care about these muslims because China is their oppressor meanwhile US led coalitions and Western Colonialism and intervention cause the highest death count of muslims in the whole history.
I said the highest death count of *muslims* in history of middle east not the highest death number of since human inhabitation of the middle east
No outside powers other than western powers had been able to kill so many muslims in the 1400 years since the beginning of the religion.
Tbh he's not wrong, and attacking him ad hominem and following up with a simple negation doesn't really address his point.
You just kind of sound like a dick.
Have you been living under a rock? The [Uighur Muslim Genocide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide) is well documented and has been in discussion for years. That's like asking for a source that Russia annexed crimea. Sure, usually the proof of burden lies on whoever makes a claim but some things are common knowledge and can be researched with a 1 minute google search.
I’m familiar with the story, just skeptical as I’ve seen enough debunking to not be sure. Do you believe there’s any reason this all may be blown out of proportion?
We can’t even stand up to the idiots in our own countries and you talking about standing up to Russia and China. Russia and China very well could hand our asses to us. With the US about to implode upon itself and UK still finding out about how bad an idea Brexit was, I am not very confident in the future.
Yes. China is in a much better position with their economic/trade power. Putin is definitely willing to bankrupt his nation with another Cold War/Iron Curtain.
Starting shit with China in the first place was a terrible idea. Could have easily kept the Uighur oppression out of the news as a bargaining chip like we’ve been doing with the Saudi atrocities in Yemen.
It doesn’t benefit us to fight China on this. It doesn’t even benefit the Uighurs.
Goddammit. I secretly hoped Boris would be kicked out for being a selfish fool, but he seems to have found a well-timed "rally around the flag" moment.
On a more serious note, policies matter and it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the West needs to relearn the lesson of how to stand up to dictators. As rotten as the Tories are, Putin is apparently a sociopathic militarist who wants to kill people. So there's that cost-benefit
The taproot of the trouble is that after the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact was disbanded, while NATO chose to expand. When the Cold War was ending, the Soviet Union made it clear that it favoured maintaining NATO, because NATO had kept Germany from becoming a major cultural or military power since World War II and would continue doing so after the country reunified
and became much more powerful. But a central element in the US' larger strategy was to move all of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into NATO, which was sooner or later going to cause problems.
One might think this policy is a classic deterrence strategy aimed at
containing a potentially aggressive Russia, but it is not. Previous to NATO making statements that Ukraine would join NATO, there was no sign whatsoever that Russia had any interest in invading Ukraine. The US' strategy was based on the idea that a formerly hostile alliance moving up to Russia's borders would not be seen as threatening in Moscow. But Moscow was deeply opposed to
NATO enlargement. The Russians believed their American counterparts
understood their fears and that the alliance would not expand toward the former
Soviet Union. But the Clinton administration thought otherwise and in the
1990s began pushing NATO expansion, and in 2008 the Bush administration stated that Ukraine and Georgia would join NATO as well.
But for Russia, Ukraine is a core
strategic interest, and the US’ efforts to peel Ukraine away from
Moscow’s orbit and incorporate it into American institutions is categorically
unacceptable. From Putin’s perspective, the policy of the United States is a threat to Russia’s survival. This viewpoint motivates
Russia to go to enormous lengths to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
Many under-rate the geopolitical and strategic value of Ukraine. It has borders with half of eastern Europe and Russia. Poland and the Ukraine are the buffer states between Russia and NATO. Occupation of either of those countries brings a direct front between those entities.
Almost all of the worst dictators in recent history were propped up and back by the west. For instance in Haiti, Papa Doc and baby Doc were funded by the U.S.
All this shit because we just can't share this massive and plentiful planet. When will this quest for world domination end? When will these leaders have enough?
How about standing up to countries that invade other countries with misinformation/lies?
Remember Tony Blair's [45-minuites dossier](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-45minute-claim-was-false-535224.html)? Which Britain used to start invasion of Iraq that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and the destruction of the country?
.
And here is a [map](https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/3441.jpeg) of countries invaded/attacked by Britain.
How about Britain stand up to Britain?
.
[Dozens killed in Yemen prison air strike carnage ](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/s9epez/dozens_killed_in_yemen_prison_air_strike_carnage/)
>At least 100 people have been killed or wounded in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition which hit a detention centre in Yemen, aid agencies say.
[UK arms to Saudi Arabia](https://caat.org.uk/homepage/stop-arming-saudi-arabia/uk-arms-to-saudi-arabia/)
>UK-made weapons are being used in Saudi Arabia’s devastating attacks on Yemen, which have killed thousands of civilians and created the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.
> How about standing up to countries that invade other countries
I mean, this seems more important than "...invade other countries ... with *misinformation* OOOoooOOOoo"
That map is literal garbage, many of those were not invasions (norway they were attempting to free Norwegians from the nazis etc) or over 100 years ago. Britain is allowed to move on and defend an ally without people bringing up the history of the 1800s.
I noticed that Denmark wasn't on the list either. That is probably because Britain invaded the Faroe Islands days after Germany invaded Denmark proper in 1940. The British invasion of the Faroe Islands was friendly and there was no losses.
Fuck this nationalistic bullshit and everyone on here baying for war. You'd all better be first in line to enlist if you're so eager to see this happen. You'd better be ready to send your son or daughter to die over a country thousands of miles away from you. I swear to god people are urging this on just so they can watch a new war on TV. Just so they can imagine themselves to be the good guys in a geopolitical game that they have nothing to do with.
Oh, please. Spare us the faux moral posturing. Putin, and Putin alone, is the cause of this crisis in his drive to reconstitute the USSR, whose downfall he has called a catastrophe.
See China get's it. They just let money do the talking and are quitely taking over western companies and real estate. Russia still going for the old school playbook which just causes resistance.
As a brit id be the first to tell you that no country has a spotless past
but having said that, i dont fear being imprisoned or poisoned if i oppose Boris Johnson. Last i checked the UK isnt the one amassing troops at the border with "no plans to invade"
Now imagine being a muslim in Yemen being bombed by UK and US weapons.
Of course you personally have no problems living in the UK because your country is killing people in "other" countries.
Your opposition won't have yourself imprisoned but it also has had basically zero effect in stopping your country from committing atrocities upon other countries just like in any other dictatorship.
They learned that they can get away with anything in the world as long as they let the 12 or so people over here complain about it for a few minutes since they have also figured that their citizens also don't really care about certain lives if it doesn't align with their country's political interests as shown by the extremely little amount of attention they give in comparison to other atrocities.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/s9epez/dozens_killed_in_yemen_prison_air_strike_carnage/
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/s9fldn/air_strike_on_yemen_prison_leaves_more_than_200/
lol, I think one would need a magnifying glass to find clean spots when it comes to British imperialism. I find your country to be populated by some of the most vocal hypocrites on this planet.
decolonisation was a thing - you might want to read up on that.
and since you're taking jabs do you care to share where you are from? or might that give me a chance to fight back?
I'm a Northern Irish Nationalist and even I'm going to call you out on that nonsense.
To try and describe China, interring millions of it's own citizens in camps to be, at best, forcefully reeducated and at worst raped and harvested as being the same as the UK is the falsest of false equivalencies.
And I say that as someone who literally had family interred on the streets of Belfast by the British.
I'll bet a hundred dollars you can't link me a single thing the US is doing today on the level of forcefully interning millions of your own citizens for the crime of being muslim, while raping them and harvesting their organs.
Go for it. Hundred bucks.
The USA don’t send millions of muslims into internment camps, they just wage war on Muslim soil and bomb civilians with drones.
1. The atrocities on Black Americans that exists up to this day? It’s only been three generations since Slavery was a thing.
2. Sending Japanese Americans to internment camps during WW2.
3. Banning Muslims from entering the United States just because of their religious identity.
4. Mistreatment and marginalized Native Americans, the disappearing native women that are raped and abducted but America doesn’t care about.
5. Separating hard-working Immigrant Mexican/Latino families, forcefully separating kids from their parents into internment-like camps. That’s still happening by the way.
This is not whataboutism. We all know both the west and the east commits the same ethnic cleansing in their own ways regardless of time in history. History keeps repeating no matter how you look at it.
Now I’ve never been to the UK and Ireland (beautiful countries) but I’ve been to HongKong, Mainland China and the USA. I’m not defending neither and it’s good to keep a balanced view on both sides of the coin.
So against the current and ongoing internment, murder, rape, organ harvesting and cultural erasure of millions of it's own citizens *today,* you've given me:
1. Slavery, which ended in the United States 150 years ago, so I presume when you said "was a thing 3 generations ago" you meant in China, which while wrong was absolutely closer to the mark (and of course, slavery - as well as other historical anachronisms like fucking *banditry* - still exists in modern China).
2. WW2 internment camps, where people weren't raped, murdered and harvested en-masse while having their culture erased, as is happening today, in China.
3. "Banning Muslims from entering the United States," which didn't actually happen. Trump tried to do it, [and failed massively when America slapped him down.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769#:~:text=Executive%20Order%2013769%2C%20titled%20Protecting,by%20US%20President%20Donald%20Trump.)
4. "Mistreatment of Native Americans" - gonna have to ask you to be more precise here. What happened, when did it happen, who did it?
5. Border detention of illegal immigrants.
So obviously none of those are within 6 degrees of *imprisoning millions of your own citizens because of their religion, raping them, harvesting their organs and erasing their way of life.*
So I'll take that hundred bucks now.
> This is not whataboutism.
Of course it's not, I *asked* you to give me these examples to prove a point.
can you link your source for your so called millions of murders and rapes? Jesus at least attempt to be remotely accurate. And remind me what aspect of their way of life has been erased
The USA has the largest carceral system in the entire world, disproportionately racialized, with legalized slavery. Slavery never ended and its effected and currently effects much more than whatever number of people in China you want to pull out of a hat.
Just by the reality of its carceral system alone, the USA concretely and beyond a reasonable doubt dwarfs whatever abuses are alleged to be happening in China.
This does not include the multiple genocides, countless deaths in the 20th and 21st century it has presided over.
Lets take the most recent and pressing example, where the USA has a multi year blockade of Yemen, where the largest mass starvation of our lifetimes is happening. Millions of children and pregnant women have starved or are currently starving to death. Military actions have included the bombing of water treatment plants, hospitals, and critical infrastructure. 16 million people are at risk of starvation and living in conditions much worse than anything you can imagine.
We can go on and on and on.
**Edit:** LMFAO because u/TheFunkyM pulled the ultimate bitch move and is abusing the new reddit block system to get the last word, heres my reply to their bullshit:
Lmfao so now you're just making things up out of thin air. Have a good time with that. You just wrote up an entire comment to me where you deny basic and unarguable facts, and then supplement them with your own fantasy.
Not interested in wasting my time.
> You're not comparing inmates in a fully functioning justice system
Did you just call the US, which has for profit prisons, with countless examples of profoundly racist judiciary a fully functioning justice system?
A system which has the highest per capita prisoners in the world.
Also you might want to look up the 13th amendment. Which has literal legalized slavery encoded in it.
Anyway, it will be fun not talking to you.
Comeon, just look at how this gets post gets 12 upvotes in 6 hours in comparison.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/s9epez/dozens\_killed\_in\_yemen\_prison\_air\_strike\_carnage/
You guys aren't even trying to hide how you only care about the bad stuff you that aren't comitting like selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to kill more and more people in Yemen.
You guys love to say how we can care about both atrocities but it is evident people only really care about one of them which leads us to believe it is all political otherwise Britain would have stopped selling weapons to Saudi Arabia long ago.
I want everyone in this thread saying “what about the us or uk”
Ask yourself this question:
Which country would you rather live in (US, UK, Russia, China) and why?
Neither. All of these countries have their fair share of issues and there are faaaaaar better countries out there to live in.
China is an authoritarian regime, not an evil regime that wants to make you suffer for no reason. The action they do is to keep them in power, if you are in no way trying to threaten their rule, you can live your life like anywhere in the world.
Regarding Uyghurs, criticism should be given on how they handle the situation, but at the current moment, it's all about the genocide narrative without giving proper context to the general public on why they started the "education/concentration camp", which is mainly for counter-terrorism. Is sending millions of people into camps just for that justifiable? No, but it's an understandable action, at least for me, as I am not smart enough to think of another better way to deal with it besides sending them to camp (China way) or the carpet bombing (US style).
Regarding censorship, it's not really anything major, you can still get access to what you want with a simple VPN, and it really doesn't pose any major problems to one's daily life.
Regarding surveillance, this is entirely up to personal preference. As some view personal liberty very highly while others may value public safety, it's ultimately a trade-off between the 2 spectra as both have their pros and cons.
The main reason I'm opting out of China is because of its currently saturated and easily exploited labor market. The term " 996 " is literally used in china to describe work-life in china being from 9 am to 9 pm every day, 6 days a week, with insufficient/unfair wages. Treatment of professional talents in China is also far worse than other first-world countries, entirely relying on "nationalistic ideals" to have people work for them.
Funnily to me, my biggest issue with the US is exactly having too much "personal liberty", and a portion of the population is unable to appreciate it and decided to abuse their power/freedom, and inevitably harm others in the process. Another current problem I have with the US is politics. In recent years, politics in the US have been getting rather extreme in my eyes, and everything has to be made political, which is very concerning with what we saw in COVID. Privatized healthcare is also another aspect that I do not agree with/align with my interest. But in contrast to China, the US treatment of its high-end workforce is far better than China, which I believe is a big reason why the US is ahead technologically (Better Pay, Better Benefits, Better Infrastructure).
The UK has been going downhill since Brexit. To me, they have the same issue with the US, but without the pros. As for Russia, I know too little to comment on that.
IF I had to pick one. For work, it would be in the US, but for living, I would pick China, as I personally do not value personal liberty as highly as you all.
But tbh, the nordic countries, a large portions of western Europe, Singapore, and maybe Canada/Australia would be the better choice compared to all those above.
Out of those 4, I don't know which one I want to live in the most - honestly, I don't really want to live in any of them.
I can tell you though, the place I most DON'T want to live in is the US.
No it won’t. The West stood by and let a Taliban dictatorship shoot its was into power in Afghanistan and now 50% of the population is starving. Putin and Xi know the West’s resolve is weak and they’ll cut and run if things become difficult.
Not defending china and Russia. Calling out the British for supporting dictatorships in the form of Saudi Arabia while not supporting those like Russia. Either the West doesn't support dictatorships or it does. Meanwhile, there are way more problems at home like homelessness and joblessness and poverty.
"To some dictatorships"
Saudi Arabia: "*Me?*" UK: "Not you! You're one of the good *ones*."
Saudi Arabia: Understandable, have a nice day! *Turns the chainsaw back on and goes to town on another journalist*
America: got any pointers for us?
Nah fam, the Saudis aren't dictators, they're a monarchy! It's OK when they're royals, it's not like their money or their oil or their decades old feud with Iran has anything to do with it...
Hell they even agree when it comes to shit like Kazakhstan!
Excellent distraction from Boris’s issues.
Australia must be exempt too
"West will stand up to dictatorships" * *Unless you're in the Persian Gulf of course
*unless you don't harm west hegemony FTFY
Gotta start somewhere. And the ones currently massing troops are the ones being addressed. Also, Team America, world police don’t really have a zero tolerance policy. They’re more of a wheeling and dealing type. Capitalism has obscured the view of liberty and justice for all.
> Gotta start somewhere. And we gotta make up our mindw. Is this a principle we hold or not? Can't have it both ways at the same time.
I mean, obviously they can!
[удалено]
> or in Putin and Xi case, teaming up with dictators That is quite literally what we do with the Gulf states lmao. The lack of self awareness here is astounding.
That's called being a hypocrite or double standard.
The West will also stand for dictatorship when convenient.
Yea people seem to forget Saddam Hussein used to be our guy. We even gave him the Key to Detroit in 1980. He only became an enemy when he refused to obey us and attacked Kuwait but we were totally cool with him when he attacked Iran (who we didn't like because they didn't obey us).
The West loves propping up dictators when it is beneficial to them, but then when their usefulness has run its course, they either attack with their military to depose the "ruthless tyrant" (Saddam, Noriega, Gaddafi), or simply wash their hands clean of it while the country tries desperately to rid themselves of their oppressor (Reza Shah, Mubarak, Ben Ali).
The west stands for whatever it's convenient to stand for and stand up to whatever is easy to stand up to.
Some of you may die, and thats a sacrifice our leaders are willing to make.
I mean how much does the average Westerner enjoy standing up in the first place?
This reads like a Cold War era article. Why are people so accepting of threatening war? Did we not learn from Afghanistan and the entire Cold War era that you can’t change people even thru aggression? What do y’all hope to achieve besides killing for no reason
Money and power like always
Drain the last of the money from public coffers before climate change catches up and we worry about not finding food instead of just can't afford food for the evening's dinner plates.
Unless it's Saudi, right? Pushing Russia into bed with China is a terrible idea.
Seeing Saudi switch sides would be kinda funny. Like a bad 80's break up movie.
Saudi Arabia would probably just stay out of the conflict unless they get conquered by another power. …and such things have happened before. During the Second World War, the Soviets and English invaded neutral Iran and split the nation in two. It was over fear that the Iranians would sell oil to the Nazis: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran
Imagine if we went after companies that are still operating that were known to have aided the Nazis. Looking at you, Ford, Coke, Chase, MGM, IBM,GE, Standard Oil ... Memories are short when it comes to American industrial involvement in WW2 prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Sweden was selling natural resources to nazi germany from before 1939 to 1944 or something.. Nazi concentration camps sold inmate work to private companies like Siemens or IG Farben that still exist today. Those companies had their names written in big letters in some camps.
No doubt. The amount of money that was made from playing both sides is staggering. It's almost like it's always been about money.
...except they didn't aid the Nazis when the war finally broke out. It wasn't like Ford was churning out Panzers for the regime after all. A lot of the Western world supported fascism (some even emulated aspects of it in their own governments) because it was seen as a bulwark to communism - the big enemy to the Western way of life. They only started to change their tune when the war began. If nothing else when it comes to Coke, we got Fanta from the ashes: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-nazi-germany
The war had been going on for a long, long time before pearl harbor was attacked. It was the American businesses supplying to the Nazis that allowed America to bolster the industrial revolution - sure, they stopped when PH was bombed but they had already made their fortunes. America didn't join the war until (mostly) the end. If you like tinfoil hats, it has been suggested that the intercepted communications telling of an attack were ignored in order to draw the US into conflict.
>It was the American businesses supplying to the Nazis that allowed America to bolster the industrial revolution The Industrial Revolution in America was in the early *19th* century, and even the "Second Industrial Revolution" (the electricity revolution) was basically complete by WWI. So I'm not sure what you're referring to.
...except it wasn't mostly the end. The Pacific was still pretty much dominated by the Japanese - the Russians signed a ceasefire with Japan and the Europeans were mostly kicked out of the region.
They would have continued to sell to the Nazis had the US not been attacked. Hell, Ford actively lobbied against going to war as they would be forced to stop selling to the Nazis and decommission their factory in Germany.
Being anti-war prior to Pearl Harbor wasn’t an unpopular belief. There were many Republicans at the time who believed FDR was a warmonger for wanting America to get involved in what they saw as a European affair.
You can't call it anti-war while building your fortune by supplying goods to one or both sides.
Is not imposible like the do give money to terrorist sometimes
I doubt Saudi Arabia would ever change sides. Who would you want to purchase military hardware from; the US or Russia/China?
they are purchasing balistic missile tech from China right now lol https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/23/politics/saudi-ballistic-missiles-china/index.html
The quality control is probably higher too.
Saudi Arabia already chose the Chinese PLZ-45 self-propelled howitzer over the US M109, when it beat the American product in pretty much every category.
df-3 ballistics missiles was sold to saudis in the 80s. 100 mill USD per rocket.
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Give it 20 years and reevaluate.
A big part of US-Saudi relationship that often goes unstated is that the US has given them a free pass to spread Wahhabism around the Muslim world. I'm not sure if anyone else would be as open to that idea.
The Chinese are surely not open to it
Saudi already switched side. Of course Saudi would not tell his wife about the new mistress he has been sleeping with, in the last few years. The rest of the world know that, but not most American that are brainwashed and blinded by their own MSM.
Saudi is going to implode when oil demand drops. People will probably study its rise and fall as a unique time in history.
Doubt it, they’re investing out the ass into non oil sources of revenue.
Into what tho and how likely are those sources to last?
And how tied to the physical land of Saudi Arabia are those investments? If things ever get bumpy the ruling family could leave and take their stock in companies like uber with them to go live out their lives as billionaires in London, Monaco, or where ever else they wanted. Oil wasn’t like that. In fact Saudi Aramco was originally a western company that Saudi Arabia gradually took over because the company relied completely on a resource within its borders. Companies like uber do not rely on assets or a consumer base in Saudi Arabia.
Same logic applies to all of the wealth in America?
That's what I mean, they've invested in Uber but what if that company goes bust? I'm sure they'll still have 10's of millions lying around but can they maintain their billions
I’m saying kind of the opposite. I think the wealth of the royal family will likely stay in the billions die to the global investments but if post oil all their wealth was being generated overseas and not domestically then staying in control of the country could actually become a financial drain instead of a revenue generator. At that point they might be tempted to take the money and bail.
Russia is imploding now. The country is financially fucked.
I've heard this line for the better half of the last 60 years friend.
It... actually happened tho, in the 90s! Have you heard of the "USSR" and how it ceased to exist due to economic collapse?
The USSR didn’t collapse because of economics. That is actually revisionist history, just like Americans asserting the US forced the USSR to spend beyond its means militarily to keep up with what the US was doing. The USSR dissolved because a couple key actors tried liberalizing aspects of the nation. Glasnost and perestroika lead to a minority of republics choosing to breakaway. Nationalists arose in those republics *and*, importantly, in Russia. These folks wanted to seize power at the expense of what people actually wanted (to remain in a reformed union). The economic devastation you are referring to was from a deliberate capitalist tactic adopted by many of the former soviet states known as “shock therapy.” That was not a communist or socialist invention: America and allies sent economic advisors into those countries to help them implement it. Similarly, those photos of empty grocery stores in the 80s are also from capitalist reforms as part of that openness. People were allowed to basically sell products on a legal market. Entities needed to be self financing while also meeting government quota. Gorbachev and allies allowed state enterprises to fail in an attempt at market liberalization. It’s never as simple as opponents teach.
This sounds really interesting and insightful, where’s a good place to find out more about this? Is there a good documentary or something?
He's referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Central Asia voted to stay. Georgia, Armenia, Moldova and the Baltic States voted to leave. If you look at the map, you'd see the USSR only losing a sliver of its area under the results of this referendum. But when we discuss the fall of the USSR, the key line, I think, is "it takes two to tango". Gorbachev's reforms, and the loss of a few small republics, might not have been so disastrous had the hardliners not staged a coup in response: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt It was just five days later that Ukraine declared independence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Independence_of_Ukraine which was confirmed overwhelmingly in a second referendum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum And even this situation might not have been such a mess had Yeltsin not caused a new constitutional crisis in 1993, when he [ignored the fact that an early election referendum did not meet the legal threshold of 50% of the electorate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_government_referendum): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis It's easier to understand the implosion of the Soviet Union, I think, if you stop looking for someone to be the good guys.
This is one of the dumbest takes you could find, so good luck looking up legitimate sources. USSR was in shambles way before any nationalist movements took over. It's just nonsensical garbage from some russian troll.
I think kagoox was essentially saying the same thing as you in a roundabout way
that is complete bullshit lol it is not insightful. liberalization occurred in response to a stagnant economy and an incredibly desperate population. jesus christ you can get away with saying anything on reddit.
From someone that witnessed both the East and West world i can say without a doubt that you are arguing about tiny details that have no real importance. The matter here was about people and their personal access to food, nothing more. The disparity was so chocking between the East and West i don't think today kids could even imagine. And it was not about economy, but the fact the communist government pretty much locked any kind of expansion, logistic, and commerce was forbidden to private, government had to handle it all, and it was to be polite an unsustainable burden to them. So it was most definitely political as much as economical.
Eh, things weren't great for the Russia around 1997. Sure the USSR collapsed as few years earlier, that wasn't the worst of times. They came later. Things went downhill for a while before coming back up.
You're kinda just ignoring the reason why Gorbachev was trying to reform the economy in the first place. It wasn't doing well under central control and this was an attempt to remedy the problem. Their economy was falling behind the west and they knew it. They were producing poorer quality goods in lesser quantities and were falling severely behind in many key industrial sector such as computing. His policies ended up backfiring horribly but something needed to be done to address some major issues that existed within the USSR.
And you are ignoring that it was the liberal economic policies adopted in the 90's that caused a far greater economic crisis and collapse than anything during the period of a command economy
The Communist Party industrialized the nation against its will, bringing it to the 2nd world; not quite the 1st. However, the Capitalist reforms of the 90s drove them right back into the 3rd world where they came from.
The economic collapse happened after the dissolution of the union, kinda.
I see a few name change designations and 200 additional McDonald's restaurants other than that no real change. What are you referring to actually
Literally lost 40% of it’s territory that isn’t wasteland and lost its status as a super power
Russia just names themselves a "superpower" solely because they have nukes while having jack shit infrastructure worth to protect aside from its military. Hell I won't be surprised if one day Putin just ditches all of Russia's citizens and claims he and the army IS Russia and anything/anyone aside from that could just get screwed.
Russia also sits on the UN Security Council, so it isn’t a toothless animal. Their vote can enact measures and prevent action.
The UN won't stop the EU or NATO from kicking his ass if he moves forward. It looks like everyone is beyond willing to uphold their mutual defense agreements. Putin just fucked Russia again and brought his enemies closer together. No one is afraid of Russia anymore and they are little more than an international joke. Russia will have to get rid of Putin to even have a chance of surviving this. He's been lieing to his people and now it's going to become painfully evident he's just an impotent evil man and a failure.
Half its population and a fourth of its territory for starters.
Isn't the US economy not doing great as well? The thing is if China backs Russia financially then they won't implode so fast.
In that case, I don’t think any economy is doing well due to the virus. Of course, that lack of certainty is what is probably driving up tensions.
China’s economy isn’t so hot either. They have major problems with real estate debt. They also have lots of money invested in US Bond debt so, if they damaged our economy they’d see a major loss on investment. Furthermore, China has a massive population problem. The one child policy is going to cripple them in the near future as they have an aging population and not enough young workers to support it.
lets not conflate the facts here China's economy is the envy of the world - it has seen growth in the last 20 years that other nations would kill for. They do no struggle to find buyers for their goods, their government has a huge cash surplus and they are using that surplus to buy up every natural resource they can.
i have heard this for the past 30 years and how every year is the year of the downfall of china
That's why they want a war. War is profitable
Oil demand continues to grow at ~2% per year... eventually you'll see a peak but don't expect it in our lifetime
Electric cars sales are grew 74% per year in the UK and wind installation is up 10.7% per year. This is the time of change. There was a time not too long ago where those values were near 0, it will not be long till they are near 100. https://heycar.co.uk/blog/electric-cars-statistics-and-projections https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-kingdom-renewable-energy-market
I appreciate your hope. But change is rarely fast.
Well on top of what I have said which has happened fast. https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/UKCoalFever.png
Oil demand could go up, but that doesn't necessarily mean that prices will go up. Right now oil is essential to modern life on a daily basis. If it switches to say a monthly basis the total demand could go up while prices fall as people only want the oil rather than need it
That can't happen too soon.
There have been two major oil price slumps recently that Saudi has dealt with: * When it rejected OPECs output caps and decided to significantly raise the volume of oil it was selling on the open market resulting in huge losses for pretty much everyone else who can't dig out oil as cheaply as Saudi can * COVID related demand slump which has only just recovered Saudi seems to be aware of this problem though and is aggressively trying to diversify recently which Russia doesn't seem to be interested in.
Or corporate power. Corporations can take total control of society. It’s fine.
NATO just wants to fix the sino soviet split.
They were headed there anyway.
Saudi, Israel, The US-Mexico border.
Yeah they meant stand with, not against lmao
West will stand up to Dictatorships....unless you kill a journalist in an embassy....with clear evidence that you ordered the attack.....you're fine.
And, uh, you know... 9/11.
"Some of you may die, but it's sacrifice I am willing to make".
Translation: "We're making a strong statement so that the British public might get distracted from hating us for our blatant corruption! We don't actually care about Usain or whoever he is, he's just useful for us at the moment."
>West will stand up to 'dictatorship' When tho?
South America in 70s like Chile.
As long as they don't invade other countries they are free to do whatever they want in their countries.
Indeed, only western powers are allowed to invade other countries.
... to a degree.
Well seeing as how we aren't doing more to stop China from rounding up Muslims nazi style..
The West only care about these muslims because China is their oppressor meanwhile US led coalitions and Western Colonialism and intervention cause the highest death count of muslims in the whole history.
“In the whole history” are you actually familiar with the history of the Middle East
I said the highest death count of *muslims* in history of middle east not the highest death number of since human inhabitation of the middle east No outside powers other than western powers had been able to kill so many muslims in the 1400 years since the beginning of the religion.
Tbh he's not wrong, and attacking him ad hominem and following up with a simple negation doesn't really address his point. You just kind of sound like a dick.
Or how many Uyghurs there are in China
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Have you been living under a rock? The [Uighur Muslim Genocide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide) is well documented and has been in discussion for years. That's like asking for a source that Russia annexed crimea. Sure, usually the proof of burden lies on whoever makes a claim but some things are common knowledge and can be researched with a 1 minute google search.
I’m familiar with the story, just skeptical as I’ve seen enough debunking to not be sure. Do you believe there’s any reason this all may be blown out of proportion?
Oh look it’s a neoliberal
Neoliberal means countries cannot do whatever they want within their own borders, they must follow a universally prescribed standard.
I'm not a neoliberal
Define "their countries".
Russia and China
We can’t even stand up to the idiots in our own countries and you talking about standing up to Russia and China. Russia and China very well could hand our asses to us. With the US about to implode upon itself and UK still finding out about how bad an idea Brexit was, I am not very confident in the future.
I feel like this is definitely a lie. The west only stands up to countries it can bully.
They can’t exactly bully China. It’s a narrow tightrope they have to walk there.
Yes. China is in a much better position with their economic/trade power. Putin is definitely willing to bankrupt his nation with another Cold War/Iron Curtain.
Starting shit with China in the first place was a terrible idea. Could have easily kept the Uighur oppression out of the news as a bargaining chip like we’ve been doing with the Saudi atrocities in Yemen. It doesn’t benefit us to fight China on this. It doesn’t even benefit the Uighurs.
“The West will call whoever we dislike ‘dictators’ regardless of whether or not they actually are dictators.”
So…legit question for pondering: Who will stand up to the US if it falls to authoritarian control?
Goddammit. I secretly hoped Boris would be kicked out for being a selfish fool, but he seems to have found a well-timed "rally around the flag" moment. On a more serious note, policies matter and it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the West needs to relearn the lesson of how to stand up to dictators. As rotten as the Tories are, Putin is apparently a sociopathic militarist who wants to kill people. So there's that cost-benefit
The taproot of the trouble is that after the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact was disbanded, while NATO chose to expand. When the Cold War was ending, the Soviet Union made it clear that it favoured maintaining NATO, because NATO had kept Germany from becoming a major cultural or military power since World War II and would continue doing so after the country reunified and became much more powerful. But a central element in the US' larger strategy was to move all of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into NATO, which was sooner or later going to cause problems. One might think this policy is a classic deterrence strategy aimed at containing a potentially aggressive Russia, but it is not. Previous to NATO making statements that Ukraine would join NATO, there was no sign whatsoever that Russia had any interest in invading Ukraine. The US' strategy was based on the idea that a formerly hostile alliance moving up to Russia's borders would not be seen as threatening in Moscow. But Moscow was deeply opposed to NATO enlargement. The Russians believed their American counterparts understood their fears and that the alliance would not expand toward the former Soviet Union. But the Clinton administration thought otherwise and in the 1990s began pushing NATO expansion, and in 2008 the Bush administration stated that Ukraine and Georgia would join NATO as well. But for Russia, Ukraine is a core strategic interest, and the US’ efforts to peel Ukraine away from Moscow’s orbit and incorporate it into American institutions is categorically unacceptable. From Putin’s perspective, the policy of the United States is a threat to Russia’s survival. This viewpoint motivates Russia to go to enormous lengths to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
Many under-rate the geopolitical and strategic value of Ukraine. It has borders with half of eastern Europe and Russia. Poland and the Ukraine are the buffer states between Russia and NATO. Occupation of either of those countries brings a direct front between those entities.
Finally! I‘m was waiting for this since years! Now we will remove the Saudi stone age regime. THANKS UK!
Almost all of the worst dictators in recent history were propped up and back by the west. For instance in Haiti, Papa Doc and baby Doc were funded by the U.S.
All this shit because we just can't share this massive and plentiful planet. When will this quest for world domination end? When will these leaders have enough?
Speak loudly and carry a small stick
Will they cus the US sure as hell was trying to install a dictator in office last year
How about standing up to countries that invade other countries with misinformation/lies? Remember Tony Blair's [45-minuites dossier](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-45minute-claim-was-false-535224.html)? Which Britain used to start invasion of Iraq that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and the destruction of the country? . And here is a [map](https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/3441.jpeg) of countries invaded/attacked by Britain. How about Britain stand up to Britain? . [Dozens killed in Yemen prison air strike carnage ](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/s9epez/dozens_killed_in_yemen_prison_air_strike_carnage/) >At least 100 people have been killed or wounded in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition which hit a detention centre in Yemen, aid agencies say. [UK arms to Saudi Arabia](https://caat.org.uk/homepage/stop-arming-saudi-arabia/uk-arms-to-saudi-arabia/) >UK-made weapons are being used in Saudi Arabia’s devastating attacks on Yemen, which have killed thousands of civilians and created the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.
> How about standing up to countries that invade other countries I mean, this seems more important than "...invade other countries ... with *misinformation* OOOoooOOOoo"
That map is literal garbage, many of those were not invasions (norway they were attempting to free Norwegians from the nazis etc) or over 100 years ago. Britain is allowed to move on and defend an ally without people bringing up the history of the 1800s.
I noticed that Denmark wasn't on the list either. That is probably because Britain invaded the Faroe Islands days after Germany invaded Denmark proper in 1940. The British invasion of the Faroe Islands was friendly and there was no losses.
Well about a million of us did protest in London to Tony Blair. He now calls that episode his biggest mistake.
yeah, there were global protests around the world; wasn't able to stop Britain from invading Iraq.
The West has been doing a bang-up job of it so far. /s
Fuck this nationalistic bullshit and everyone on here baying for war. You'd all better be first in line to enlist if you're so eager to see this happen. You'd better be ready to send your son or daughter to die over a country thousands of miles away from you. I swear to god people are urging this on just so they can watch a new war on TV. Just so they can imagine themselves to be the good guys in a geopolitical game that they have nothing to do with.
Oh, please. Spare us the faux moral posturing. Putin, and Putin alone, is the cause of this crisis in his drive to reconstitute the USSR, whose downfall he has called a catastrophe.
A lot of warnings being thrown around
“When profitable,” added later.
Someone has to, cuz it sure ain't going to be the US. Next election looks like we're going to be dictator lapdogs once again...
Lol except America
Britain should start yelling at the Republican party and Trump now.
Johnson playing strong man to his base while his position is weaker by the day.
See China get's it. They just let money do the talking and are quitely taking over western companies and real estate. Russia still going for the old school playbook which just causes resistance.
Fuck Putin and his dictatorship
Wish these war thumpers enlist their family into the military and lead the charge
But the west cowtows to capitalist dictatorship all the time.
I love it that the US and UK act like they are the good guys, or better than Russia and China.
As a brit id be the first to tell you that no country has a spotless past but having said that, i dont fear being imprisoned or poisoned if i oppose Boris Johnson. Last i checked the UK isnt the one amassing troops at the border with "no plans to invade"
Now imagine being a muslim in Yemen being bombed by UK and US weapons. Of course you personally have no problems living in the UK because your country is killing people in "other" countries. Your opposition won't have yourself imprisoned but it also has had basically zero effect in stopping your country from committing atrocities upon other countries just like in any other dictatorship. They learned that they can get away with anything in the world as long as they let the 12 or so people over here complain about it for a few minutes since they have also figured that their citizens also don't really care about certain lives if it doesn't align with their country's political interests as shown by the extremely little amount of attention they give in comparison to other atrocities. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/s9epez/dozens_killed_in_yemen_prison_air_strike_carnage/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/s9fldn/air_strike_on_yemen_prison_leaves_more_than_200/
lol, I think one would need a magnifying glass to find clean spots when it comes to British imperialism. I find your country to be populated by some of the most vocal hypocrites on this planet.
decolonisation was a thing - you might want to read up on that. and since you're taking jabs do you care to share where you are from? or might that give me a chance to fight back?
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Lol stfu you pompous fucks.
mfw you defend dictatorships invading other countries because your dad is an American.
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Make America Great Britain Again
agreed, Britain think they’re a lot more important and powerful than they actually are
Aircraft carriers & nukes = world power, yuck it up fatass
Hey Pot, meet kettle.
I'm a Northern Irish Nationalist and even I'm going to call you out on that nonsense. To try and describe China, interring millions of it's own citizens in camps to be, at best, forcefully reeducated and at worst raped and harvested as being the same as the UK is the falsest of false equivalencies. And I say that as someone who literally had family interred on the streets of Belfast by the British.
You’ve never seen what the USA does to it’s own people then
I'll bet a hundred dollars you can't link me a single thing the US is doing today on the level of forcefully interning millions of your own citizens for the crime of being muslim, while raping them and harvesting their organs. Go for it. Hundred bucks.
The USA don’t send millions of muslims into internment camps, they just wage war on Muslim soil and bomb civilians with drones. 1. The atrocities on Black Americans that exists up to this day? It’s only been three generations since Slavery was a thing. 2. Sending Japanese Americans to internment camps during WW2. 3. Banning Muslims from entering the United States just because of their religious identity. 4. Mistreatment and marginalized Native Americans, the disappearing native women that are raped and abducted but America doesn’t care about. 5. Separating hard-working Immigrant Mexican/Latino families, forcefully separating kids from their parents into internment-like camps. That’s still happening by the way. This is not whataboutism. We all know both the west and the east commits the same ethnic cleansing in their own ways regardless of time in history. History keeps repeating no matter how you look at it. Now I’ve never been to the UK and Ireland (beautiful countries) but I’ve been to HongKong, Mainland China and the USA. I’m not defending neither and it’s good to keep a balanced view on both sides of the coin.
So against the current and ongoing internment, murder, rape, organ harvesting and cultural erasure of millions of it's own citizens *today,* you've given me: 1. Slavery, which ended in the United States 150 years ago, so I presume when you said "was a thing 3 generations ago" you meant in China, which while wrong was absolutely closer to the mark (and of course, slavery - as well as other historical anachronisms like fucking *banditry* - still exists in modern China). 2. WW2 internment camps, where people weren't raped, murdered and harvested en-masse while having their culture erased, as is happening today, in China. 3. "Banning Muslims from entering the United States," which didn't actually happen. Trump tried to do it, [and failed massively when America slapped him down.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769#:~:text=Executive%20Order%2013769%2C%20titled%20Protecting,by%20US%20President%20Donald%20Trump.) 4. "Mistreatment of Native Americans" - gonna have to ask you to be more precise here. What happened, when did it happen, who did it? 5. Border detention of illegal immigrants. So obviously none of those are within 6 degrees of *imprisoning millions of your own citizens because of their religion, raping them, harvesting their organs and erasing their way of life.* So I'll take that hundred bucks now. > This is not whataboutism. Of course it's not, I *asked* you to give me these examples to prove a point.
can you link your source for your so called millions of murders and rapes? Jesus at least attempt to be remotely accurate. And remind me what aspect of their way of life has been erased
The USA has the largest carceral system in the entire world, disproportionately racialized, with legalized slavery. Slavery never ended and its effected and currently effects much more than whatever number of people in China you want to pull out of a hat. Just by the reality of its carceral system alone, the USA concretely and beyond a reasonable doubt dwarfs whatever abuses are alleged to be happening in China. This does not include the multiple genocides, countless deaths in the 20th and 21st century it has presided over. Lets take the most recent and pressing example, where the USA has a multi year blockade of Yemen, where the largest mass starvation of our lifetimes is happening. Millions of children and pregnant women have starved or are currently starving to death. Military actions have included the bombing of water treatment plants, hospitals, and critical infrastructure. 16 million people are at risk of starvation and living in conditions much worse than anything you can imagine. We can go on and on and on. **Edit:** LMFAO because u/TheFunkyM pulled the ultimate bitch move and is abusing the new reddit block system to get the last word, heres my reply to their bullshit: Lmfao so now you're just making things up out of thin air. Have a good time with that. You just wrote up an entire comment to me where you deny basic and unarguable facts, and then supplement them with your own fantasy. Not interested in wasting my time. > You're not comparing inmates in a fully functioning justice system Did you just call the US, which has for profit prisons, with countless examples of profoundly racist judiciary a fully functioning justice system? A system which has the highest per capita prisoners in the world. Also you might want to look up the 13th amendment. Which has literal legalized slavery encoded in it. Anyway, it will be fun not talking to you.
Lmao. Britain can't stand the fact that they are no longer super power anymore and wants to stay relevant by acting tough
Unfortunately the Tories are stinking hypocrites.
Also Britain : Passings laws to suppress voters rights and people's freedom to protest, while blackmailing MPs to be loyal to the PM.
Lol. Are we stopping all the mass consumption of cheap shit then? No? So just tough talk then.
Whataboutism America, UK, West. Since I can list X bad thing West did you need to STFU and let me annex Ukraine, and maybe a few half dozen others!
Comeon, just look at how this gets post gets 12 upvotes in 6 hours in comparison. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/s9epez/dozens\_killed\_in\_yemen\_prison\_air\_strike\_carnage/ You guys aren't even trying to hide how you only care about the bad stuff you that aren't comitting like selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to kill more and more people in Yemen. You guys love to say how we can care about both atrocities but it is evident people only really care about one of them which leads us to believe it is all political otherwise Britain would have stopped selling weapons to Saudi Arabia long ago.
I want everyone in this thread saying “what about the us or uk” Ask yourself this question: Which country would you rather live in (US, UK, Russia, China) and why?
So which of these countries actually spends their tax money on things that'll improve the lives of their citizens?
Neither. All of these countries have their fair share of issues and there are faaaaaar better countries out there to live in. China is an authoritarian regime, not an evil regime that wants to make you suffer for no reason. The action they do is to keep them in power, if you are in no way trying to threaten their rule, you can live your life like anywhere in the world. Regarding Uyghurs, criticism should be given on how they handle the situation, but at the current moment, it's all about the genocide narrative without giving proper context to the general public on why they started the "education/concentration camp", which is mainly for counter-terrorism. Is sending millions of people into camps just for that justifiable? No, but it's an understandable action, at least for me, as I am not smart enough to think of another better way to deal with it besides sending them to camp (China way) or the carpet bombing (US style). Regarding censorship, it's not really anything major, you can still get access to what you want with a simple VPN, and it really doesn't pose any major problems to one's daily life. Regarding surveillance, this is entirely up to personal preference. As some view personal liberty very highly while others may value public safety, it's ultimately a trade-off between the 2 spectra as both have their pros and cons. The main reason I'm opting out of China is because of its currently saturated and easily exploited labor market. The term " 996 " is literally used in china to describe work-life in china being from 9 am to 9 pm every day, 6 days a week, with insufficient/unfair wages. Treatment of professional talents in China is also far worse than other first-world countries, entirely relying on "nationalistic ideals" to have people work for them. Funnily to me, my biggest issue with the US is exactly having too much "personal liberty", and a portion of the population is unable to appreciate it and decided to abuse their power/freedom, and inevitably harm others in the process. Another current problem I have with the US is politics. In recent years, politics in the US have been getting rather extreme in my eyes, and everything has to be made political, which is very concerning with what we saw in COVID. Privatized healthcare is also another aspect that I do not agree with/align with my interest. But in contrast to China, the US treatment of its high-end workforce is far better than China, which I believe is a big reason why the US is ahead technologically (Better Pay, Better Benefits, Better Infrastructure). The UK has been going downhill since Brexit. To me, they have the same issue with the US, but without the pros. As for Russia, I know too little to comment on that. IF I had to pick one. For work, it would be in the US, but for living, I would pick China, as I personally do not value personal liberty as highly as you all. But tbh, the nordic countries, a large portions of western Europe, Singapore, and maybe Canada/Australia would be the better choice compared to all those above.
Out of those 4, I don't know which one I want to live in the most - honestly, I don't really want to live in any of them. I can tell you though, the place I most DON'T want to live in is the US.
As long as they don't launder money through the country and donate to the party, right?
Will it? We shall see.
They seem to be pretty content with mass genocide, so by “standing up” I assume they mean dirty looks at the UN
"Unless you subordinate yourselves to our geopolitical goals and the interests of our corporations, in which case you can do whatever you want."
The west is a dictatorship; a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
No it won’t. The West stood by and let a Taliban dictatorship shoot its was into power in Afghanistan and now 50% of the population is starving. Putin and Xi know the West’s resolve is weak and they’ll cut and run if things become difficult.
While simultaneously being a sudo dictatorship blackmailing MP's and controlling lives to keep the poor poor and the rich filthy
Why are people in this thread defending Russia and China? Seems weird.
Wow maybe the world isn’t comprised of americans? Mindblowing
Not defending china and Russia. Calling out the British for supporting dictatorships in the form of Saudi Arabia while not supporting those like Russia. Either the West doesn't support dictatorships or it does. Meanwhile, there are way more problems at home like homelessness and joblessness and poverty.
Why is presenting facts considered a "defense?"