Crime stats are easy to juke. I haven’t dived into these numbers. Got a degree in criminology though, heavy focus on stats and program evaluation.
I note that the largest social and economic disruption in US history began three years ago and obviously crime was gonna go up after that. I find it more useful to compare present stats to early to pre-2020 numbers. And generally, I’m just not impressed by slight increases with an obvious cause. Especially when they are offered as evidence by people with no sincere interest in reducing crime, such as people advocating for more police, more prisons, three strikes laws, mandatory minimums, truth in sentencing laws, asset forfeiture, disenfranchisement, incarceration cost restitution, or other such “tough on crime” “law and order” bullshit, which obviously cause more poverty and familial and community instability, and thereby serve only to cause more crime. Anyway that’s my rant.
It:s a shame because supplying that gear to Ukraine would have helped China’s reputation on the international stage and bolstered trade. It would have not been well received by the Kremlin but a losing army can’t invade anyone else.
China and Russia are working together to overthrow the relatively democratic, rules-based US-Euro hegemony. That’s why they announced their super duper special forever friendship shortly before Putin started his latest genocidal land grab.
People are going on AliExpress and buying stuff. This is neither new nor illegal. Chinese companies live in a capitalist market just like everyone else.
the difference is in Taiwan’s case america would be directly involved and have already committed to this, it is likely Japan would also and some other countries are likely to contribute to. china wouldn’t have a hope
Lol, I highly doubt china will be desperate enough to use consumer level drones and scopes to take over Taiwan given how many soldiers they have with real military equipment.
But even if they are desperate, what makes you think they won’t just seize the factories and pump out 20x the number being shipped to Russia and Ukraine, and the rest of the world? Not to mention, I don’t think China is dumb enough to go to war while Russia is busy at a completely different war, so I really don’t think a couple thousand shitty drones will make a difference 5-10 years from now
Russia’s military strength has been degrading since the war began. How long do you wait with your ally losing strength? Sure, you could prop him up but then that’s a drain on your economy. If you postpone indefinitely, the situation may change to be even more unfavorable.
China has waited centuries to get Hong Kong back and decades for Taiwan. What’s another 10 years? Why would they do some reckless shit like invasion when they’re still in the process of courting neighbors? All the superpowers are observing this war right now to see each other’s abilities, and the war hasn’t been finished yet. There’s no material benefit to invading anyone right now
Generally speaking, China benefits from stalling for as long as possible. The power of the imperial core is waning, so if China can navigate things such that the US – due to its own economic dependency on imperialism – crumbles to a much lower stature without the US launching nukes, then its influence in the world will become a shadow of what it was and reunification without firing a shot may be viable.
I was just talking about this today. China is leading towards a multi-polar world very effectively, but the US is the only nation to have used nukes in history. Really puts things in stark relief.
Plus the leadership in DC are senile psychopaths who have at best a loose grasp on world affairs. And that’s just the Democrats. The GOP are increasingly all fascists completely divorced from reality. Real “Sick old man” hours, except unlike the Ottomans DC has enough nukes to flash-fry the planet if the wrong corpse-lich has a stroke at the right time.
I wonder if this’ll lead to any sort of action against China. Generally people have thought that China wouldn’t outright support Russia with war materials because they can’t afford to be sanctioned by “the West”, as they’re much more reliant on trade with the EU and US
Russia has been a third world nation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Politicians just like to use the Russian boogeyman to scare people who remember the Cold War. Putin may be a monster, but China is the real threat.
America collaborates well enough with the rest od the countries. Americas system is bullshit but China is having even more control and is even more destructive. Both are shit but China is more of a threat
No no no, they liberate the country from dangerous potential socialist values, a perceived will of the country to distance themselves from the US, or, you know, because they can.
Thats why I hate america too, and its capitalist system. They are mostly jerks. But they chrisitan way of not knowing what to do except of bombarding is really weird.
But at least its cooperating eith EU and some counctries.
It’s the opposite. China is the one better at collaboration. I don’t think they even sanction anyone unlike America. Standard communist regime behaviour of helping everyone to mess with hardworking capitalist nations and prevent them from making profits.
Maybe, but the housing crisis and shrinking population gives me pause. Not to mention I think there is more internal dissent in China than people like to talk about. China still hasn’t caught up to the US militarily and the gap is no longer closing in.
Do Abkhazians and Ossetians really count themselves stolen Georgian citizens? Do they really count their land as Georgian land stolen by Russians? Your post is ridiculous.
Russia is certainly a regional threat but countries invade and dominate other countries in their sphere of influence all the time. Russia does not have what it takes to dominate on a world stage like they did after World War 2. Their economy is weak, as is their military.
It’s all about money and power, mate. Not race. The US and the Soviet Union are both predominately Caucasian and they were at odds for the better part of the 20th Century. Race has nothing to do with it.
The fact that you think you countered it with logic really highlights the fact that you’re not very good at logical thought. The fact that westerners are racist doesn’t preclude them from hating other systems such as USSR for other reasons. The fact that you don’t understand this shows you lack any capacity for logic. You keep pretending racism isn’t the reason westerners hate China, but the fact is well documented. So in addition to not being capable of understanding basic logic, you’re either a liar or just deplorably ignorant.
Edited: aside from Taiwan, Hong Kong, several other nations in the east. My question was more in the context of China as a threat to anything in the western hemisphere. They are the eastern version of the US, no doubt about it.
With India on the rise as well I think we are transitioning into a pre-WW1 like multipolar balance of power which could slide into WW3. Safest option would be China and the US dominate everyone else and we get another Cold War, but we will see.
I understand your sentiment but as a history major I need to clarify that Russia is literally the Second World Nation. As in, the First, Second, and Third categorization emerged to describe pro-NATO, pro-Warsaw Pact, and unaligned countries.
Such goods are classified as dual-use, meaning they also have civilian purposes, allowing China to skirt international sanctions and claim that it conducts only legal trade with Russia
A large majority of the world engaging in sanctions and not the usual suspects regularly framed in the press as the “international community.” It’s framed that way to imply that the entire world is doing it besides a few “rogue states” like China, North Korea or Venezuela, as if they were handed down by the UN or the world is united in agreement with the western sanctions regime. What would be far more accurate than “international sanctions” would be “western sanctions.”
For a more immediate example of how framing effects perception, look at all the people in this thread upset about China giving Russia weapons. No weapons are listed, just drones, helicopters, and metals. Upon opening the article you’ll see the drones arrived before the war and are presumably consumer electronics, and there are six undefined types of helicopters. Some posters even mentioned attack helicopters, as if the Telegraph would not be screaming about attack helicopters and not helicopters if that was the case.
It’s a complete nothingburger and like all nothingburgers it plays with language to let you fill in the gaps using the context they have provided. Russia is being “armed” with some consumer drones, six personal helicopters, and metal, and the whole world is in uproar about it.
But, this is about as international as sanctions get. These are among the largest sanctions in history, in fact. Under your definition, no such thing as international sanctions ever happened. And the word “international” doesn’t imply global, planetary or a majority.
But, this is about as international as sanctions get.
Not true, North Korea is sanctioned by everyone via the UNSC with more specific sanctions from other countries and bodies like the EU.
And the word “international” doesn’t imply global, planetary or a majority.
Right, when they say the international sanctions by the international community they’re definitely not trying to imply anything. I wonder in that case what they mean when they mention the rules based international order.
For those interested, the dual use loophole is how the yanks supplied Saddam when he fought Iran and used chemical weapons against the Kurds. A conbination of dual use and swaps through intermediaries. Nowadays the US didn’t give as much of a fuck and instead manufactures reasons for why it’s okay to ship direct.
Although there is quite a gap between saying metals are dual use, and playing coy about specific chemicals that are most useful as precursors for advanced chemical weapons being dual use
A ceasefire at this point would benefit Russia militarily.
And “should”? “preferably”? Are you going to bend reality by the force of moral imperatives?
Russia is unwilling to hold peace talks that involve Ukraine being sovereign and having its territorial integrity intact. According to the Chinese list itself, it’s Russia that needs to make the next step towards peace – by fucking off to behind its own borders.
My brother in Christ, Ukraine is unwilling to hold peace talks with Ukraine being sovereign. The last time they were close to a peace deal Boris Johnson flew his orangutan ass into Ukraine like Marry Poppins and killed the peace deal. Sovereign nations really do get to have Boris Johnson have final say in all decision making.
I’m very keen on the war to end quickly. I’ve said so from the start. Given that the war is not going to end before Russia loses, there’s no other option than to support Ukraine. On top of that it’s Ukraine which has the righteous cause.
I’ve had a gazillion of hexbears try to dunk on me here for a day now, and none of you had any better idea on how to end the war quickly. The best I’ve heard bogs down to “invite the Kremlin for talks and sing Kumba Ya”. That’s wishful thinking.
So, pray tell, what is your idea on how to end the war quickly?
It’s their own righteous cause and they continue to fight so they think it’s worth it, yes. If the people actually wanted to give up they’d say so.
Who are you to decide such things for them?
When the Taliban rolled over Afghanistan I wasn’t there, saying “But you should fight for your freedom!” – nah, people have to want it on their own accord. In that case all I could was to throw up my hands in despair, seeing a country fall from occupation into tyranny. Ukraine? Least I can do is defend it morally against vulgar pseudo-pacifists like you, who’d rather see Ukrainians brutalised and exploited by the Russian Mafia.
Thank you for sharing the link comrade. I should have done it, but I had just 420 blazed it and it would have taken forever for me to find. No 69 unfortunately 🥲
I mean it’s a pretty vacuous statement but what else do they expect? It’s just them trying to please both sides, they cannot exactly make a precise potential peace arrangement without getting everyone together.
Would those unspecified metals be of good quality or is there a risk they might be the sub-par stuff that is said to be exported by unscrupulous Chinese companies?
Probably not for long given the state of the Rouble and the economy. Tech-wise Russia has nothing to offer and when it comes to the stuff China might be interested in, such as ores and oil, well you’d have to not send miners to the front to continue producing them. That Russia of all countries is importing metals should make you stop and think.
Yeah, but that was the Soviets. These are capitalists. Capitalists suck at war economics and I’m not even sure it’s plausible under modern finance capitalism. I agree they’re not likely to run out of troops any time soon, but I don’t think we’re likely to see economic gains like WWII.
I also don’t think we’re going to see industrial development on par with WWII. My point is that during WWII:
The USSR suffered something like 25 million deaths, orders of magnitude above even the wildest propaganda about current Russian losses
They still had the labor power to not only run their industrial base, but to build much of it from scratch
It’s a country of around 143 million, and I saw an (undoubtedly cautious) estimates of 11 million+ military age men. They had something like 1.2 million military personnel before the war.
Just a basic understanding of demographics and even one historical example should tell anyone that “they are so short on people they can’t even run their industry” is absurd.
Oh no, their Twitter and Facebook exports are too low. They’ll have to scrape by on checks notes one of the world’s largest supplies of oil, precious metals, and other natural resources. Surely, the Russian economy will collapse any second now!
telegraph.co.uk
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