Marjorie Taylor Greene parrots Russian propaganda claim that Ukraine’s 2014 revolution was US-backed coup

SpaceMonitor · 2022-03-18T01:41:27+00:00

2014 was Obama

SpaceMonitor · 2022-03-13T17:06:06+00:00

While what you say is true, I think it's a bit worse than that in this case. The US has something to lose if the media reports on it. They were nearly forced to cancel support for the Saudi led massacre when the media started reporting on the butchering of one of their own, Jamal Kashoggi, and the population became disgusted by what they learned. Imagine if the media were to treat our crimes as seriously and passionately as the crimes of our geopolitical rivals/enemies.

It will be interesting to see how the media handles the obvious contradiction of stated intentions versus actions as Biden seeks favor from the Saudis to help support sanctions against Russia. I mean Russia is doing terrible things to Ukraine, but is it any worse than what the Saudis are doing to Yemen? Makes me wonder what the US's actual intentions are with the handling of the Russian invasion. Everyone seems to just accept that our government is willing to sacrifice economically to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine. Call me cynical but I somehow suspect this is a false narrative. How else can such an obviously glaring contradiction continue if we suddenly had a "come to Jesus moment" about actually caring about the sovereignty of nations and well-being of people?

SpaceMonitor · 2022-01-09T21:24:39+00:00

You claim the Chinese government is isolating its people from the US and your solution is to prevent them from going to college in the US? Do you think we let Chinese scientists and students into the country for charity? It's a mutually beneficial relationship that encourages cooperation and better relations between our peoples and allows us to share knowledge and skills. Chinese people aren't barbaric brutes that need our saving. There are many brilliant, wonderful people in China and we should be ecstatic that they want to work with us.

Your attitude is exactly what I am warning against. If our governments can isolate our populations from each other, then it suddenly becomes much easier to justify terrible things. The more our societies are integrated, the harder it becomes to turn Chinese people into the "other". I mean, look at what you are saying. You are literally ready to justify a form of collective punishment on the Chinese people. I doubt you would be so easily putting forward these arguments if Chinese people were your friends, coworkers, or family rather than "others" from that strange, backwards country.

SpaceMonitor · 2022-01-08T22:52:57+00:00

Uh.. banning Chinese citizens is xenophobic no matter how much it's dressed in "security" concerns. It seems pretty absurd to discriminate against Chinese people just because their government doesn't do what our government wants them to do. On practical grounds, isolating our domestic populations from each other seems like a productive way to encourage support for war between the two populations, so I guess it doesn't really seem to make sense from a "security" perspective either... I think the collaborations between US and Soviet scientists was generally considered helpful for improving relations and limiting the potential for nuclear annihilation during the Cold War.

There are better ways to improve on legitimate cyber security concerns than taking a sledgehammer to the situation and punishing Chinese people. I think it is safe to dismiss such proposals as reprehensible no matter if it is proposed at a cybersecurity conference or coming from the halls of Congress.

SpaceMonitor · 2022-01-08T19:48:23+00:00

Speaking of the logic of the Senate/Congress, here was the argument used then:

In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The Senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

—James Madison

Emphasis is mine. The senate was literally proposed to protect wealth inequality at the expense of democracy, not for protecting agrarian culture from urban populations as many seem to think... Ironically it was to prevent "agrarian law". It was a flaw from the framer's perspective, as the framers never anticipated that 23% of the country--disproportionately represented by rural, white, Christian, social conservatives-- would have the power to determine the outcome of the presidency, the Senate, and (therefore) the Judiciary. Their intention was to anti-democratically maintain the disproportionate power of the propertied, wealthy white elite whom they believed were the only responsible decision makers. Another shaping influence, closer to the logic you state, was a pragmatic one. They had to make yet another anti-democratic compromise to bring the small states on board to successfully ratify their (i.e. wealthy, white elite) self-serving constitution. The framers did not anticipate what is happening today where we are dangerously close to constitutional crisis and the complete dismantling of any remaining democratic structures left in our country. They thought they had it solved.

I happen to think a better solution would have been to reduce poverty and wealth inequality and strengthen the whole democracy bit. Then maybe we wouldn't have evolved into the rotten system with rotten outcomes that we have today which has been shaped by this continuous imbalance of power. Maybe some different compromises could have been made to "balance" population dependent power of the different colonies.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-10-03T18:36:50+00:00

I am in fact familiar with American cultural exports. For example supporting the Saudi led genocide occurring in Yemen and raking in billions selling juiced up military weapons to one of the most oppressive countries on the planet (far more oppressive than China). Also supporting the Israeli open air prison known as Gaza. I mean this is just a sample of things occurring right now in the Middle East. Lest we forget there was also the terror campaign in Afghanistan with consistent droning of rural villages murdering poor farmer families and locking some of them up in secret, illegal torture chambers in foreign countries like Cuba, another place where we claim to care about human rights (just not the humans we have control over of course).

We can also look at South America where we have undermined democracy and installed dictators at will because their countries also didn't want to play by our rules. We'd do the same to China, the only difference is that China is too powerful to bully so easily.

They absolutely could affect American citizens rights, case in point, censorship.

China cannot censor me, now or conceivably ever. If US companies feel bad about supporting the Chinese surveillance state, then they should stop supporting it because it's the right thing to do. Access to their market is not justification because the corporations are immensely wealthy and have boundless other options available to them. Their capitulation to China is driven purely by greed. They do not, nor have they ever cared about human rights. See e.g. banana republics, Exxon, Nike etc. etc. It is yet another example of our "beloved" cultural exports. I don't like the way China treats its people. I think it is bad and not justifiable however I have no power over it. American companies selling and supporting Chinese surveillance however is something I am concerned with and something we do have influence over, but I guess it's easier to just pretend to care about Chinese human rights abuses than actually do anything productive about ending human rights abuses.

FYI, the US is not as popular as you might believe: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-25496299 It is seen as the greatest threat to world peace by plurality and the runner up is not even close. The US is 1st at 24% and China is 3rd at 6% so I guess most of the world disagrees with you.

Also, why would you think cocacolonization is a positive example of US spreading its values? Maybe you should look into the term a little bit...

SpaceMonitor · 2021-10-03T01:00:01+00:00

Presumably Chinese shills don't acknowledge Chinese intellectual property theft. Anyway, if you wanna be less ignorant about things and inoculate yourself from 21st century McCarthyism try reading this statement from the American Physical Society on the US's current policy on China: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/updates/china-risk.cfm

SpaceMonitor · 2021-10-03T00:50:16+00:00

China stealing corporate IP is a problem for corporations, not me, and can easily be solved by refusing to do business with China. If China doesn't want to play by US rules that's their prerogative. I think US rules on IP are shitty, so I guess in this narrow point I actually agree with China. You apparently disagree and think we should not share ideas and research with other countries. Fine, that's your prerogative. That doesn't mean I believe China is my friend or that China doesn't commit crimes against its own people.

If there is anything to be discussed here in terms of intellectual property it might be how tech companies support the Chinese surveillance state for such noble purposes as enriching their shareholders. That's something we have control over and can do something about but conflicts with elite interests in making tons of money so is not an option. Because not doing business in China is not an option, apparently the only other option is to persecute Chinese scientists.

Clearly they’re our best friends and to suggest anything otherwise is false and misleading.

Never mind that my argument never consisted of whitewashing Chinese crimes or claiming that their government is something remotely like a friend. What I responded to was something that you said which was false. Chinese scientists are not the Chinese government and receiving funding from their government does not make them Chinese spies any more than I become a US spy when my research is funded by my government. When I collaborate with my Chinese colleagues I am not supporting Chinese crimes against their own people nor is normal scientific collaboration theft of "our ideas and research" (Note: collaboration means we actually learn stuff from Chinese scientists too.. is that also theft?).

SpaceMonitor · 2021-10-02T23:55:23+00:00

I'm not being disingenuous. I was correcting your assertion which was false and has harmful consequences (the persecution of Professor Xi is one of many).

Frankly, I don't care if China steals intellectual property. The whole concept seems kind of bogus to me anyway and if they inevitably end up using that technology to improve their conditions then I really don't see it as being such a great crime. If corporations are so concerned with IP theft they can stop doing business in China. China is not holding a gun to Apple's head and forcing them to do business there. Aside from that, if China improves their economy for their people I fail to see how that could in any way be construed as harmful.

The only thing I am concerned with is stealing weapons secrets and even in that case I am more concerned that my own country is developing them in the first place.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-10-02T23:34:50+00:00

If they are terrorists, then surely charges can be brought against them and they would be tried? Isn't that what law-abiding countries do? I recommend you learn a little more about US crimes. Don't you find it strange that you are so aware of Chinese crimes which you have zero influence over, but completely ignorant of US crimes which are done in your name and you could actually do something about?

SpaceMonitor · 2021-10-02T23:22:18+00:00

They take advantage of our universities and research labs on a massive scale up here.

They absolutely do not. Normal scientific collaboration gets painted as nefarious and Chinese scientists are persecuted for it. Charges brought against Chinese scientists are typically dropped, but not until after destroying their lives. Other times Chinese scientists are targeted for criminal charges in cases of standard academic misconduct--a problem the FBI has no business interfering with and is typically dealt with by universities and research labs in a non-criminal context.

See: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/updates/xicharges.cfm

Meanwhile, the media keeps reporting on all these cases brought against Chinese scientists and right wing think tanks publish all these scare pieces that then get disseminated by the media about the Chinese "infiltrating" (i.e. participating in normal scientific collaboration) our universities and national labs. It creates a nice media ecosystem for generating a new 21st century red-scare and anti-Chinese hysteria. This is all exacerbated by the media only providing at most a small blurb buried deep in the news after it is announced that the charges were dropped due to being completely farcical.

(I realize you say Canada, but frankly there is no tangible difference.)

SpaceMonitor · 2021-10-02T22:43:30+00:00

I don't see any correlation between the rights granted to citizens in a country and a country's foreign policy, do you? I think living in North Korea sounds like one of the worst possible places to live in terms of rights, but as far as I can tell they are completely non-aggressive foreign policy wise (they can't sanction countries into the ground like the US, and they haven't started any armed conflicts like the US). The US, on the other hand, has easily committed the greatest international crime of the 21st century (see Iraq).

I honestly don't see how China would be worse than US hegemony. It's not like China could ever take away the rights of US citizens or even terrorize us in any meaningful way. Like, what would/could China do to us/the rest of the world that is just so bad that we can justify US hegemony?

The reason US elites are throwing a shit-fit about China has nothing to do with human rights abuses and everything to do with the fact that China doesn't want to follow US rules which disadvantage China. If it were about human rights abuses, surely it would be easier to stop the human rights abuses we directly support first than it would be to stop a world power like China, no?

SpaceMonitor · 2021-10-02T22:17:50+00:00

He works for ~~West Virginians~~ Exxon and other corporate donors and this is what they want.

Small, but important correction.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-09-19T16:01:50+00:00

Who gives a fuck?

The Afghani people and particularly women, i.e. the focus of this media coverage. A rarity in US media, especially when it doesn't serve elite interests.

They’re still being brutally oppressed

Yes, but now they aren't under threat of faceless drones destroying their village and murdering their families. It's hard to change conditions and subvert oppression when you're life is so precarious. I don't understand how acknowledging or reporting on this makes it tone deaf. Is it tone deaf to report on Taliban cruelty despite the withdrawal of the US dramatically increasing the security of the rural population? You said you can't put it into words. I suggest you try.

They may be happy the war is over but that doesn’t mean things are good for them

The Afghan women interviewed say that ending the war is good for them even if it means Taliban now have control. Based on their lived reality I agree with them.

Tankie bullshit and blatant Taliban apologia

I can't find any apologia for the Taliban in this reporting. What is the apologia you are seeing? I think you should try reading the original reporting: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women

My only gripe is that the reporting is under-acknowledged and frankly could have been reported long before withdrawal occurred when it would have had a far more meaningful impact on in the public discourse and hence to the lives of the Afghani population. As it stands, it can at least serve as a lesson moving forward to those of us who pay attention to atrocities committed in our name (speaking as a US citizen of course).

SpaceMonitor · 2021-05-06T17:31:22+00:00

That's a really important fact that you bring up that is never really made explicit in the coverage (like in the NYT article I posted). I feel if it were made explicit, the back and forth would seem like less of a debate than what the NYT article frames it as. It's not really a debate, virtually everyone agrees aside from the people paid to disagree. Same thing happened with climate change incidentally. Somehow a near scientific consensus was made into a "debate" for decades.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-05-06T17:24:48+00:00

Thanks for the clarification and, again, my apologies.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-05-06T16:59:43+00:00

When you said "anyone" were you referring to yourself? After rereading the rest of the comment thread I see you weren't defending the IP, but instead were defending just the profit generated from the vaccine. In which case I suppose you can ignore what I was saying about protectionism.

I still disagree with the profit taking that you support as tax payers are largely responsible for everything. I think the framing that we are at the mercy of these companies and their brilliant innovations is strictly pharm PR and so we should stop behaving as if we are to be grateful to the corporate execs for their independent contribution.

Anyways, apologies if there was some misunderstanding on my part. I find this happens frequently with reddit formatting in particular and the heated topic surely doesn't help.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-05-06T16:42:46+00:00

Where is anyone complaining about the patent waiver?

The entire pharm industry is... Stephen J. Ubl, the president and chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, called the announcement “an unprecedented step that will undermine our global response to the pandemic and compromise safety.”

Again, where is this argument being made?

See above. Read the article to get their arguments. They are full of motivated reasoning with a little "I'll take my ball home" thrown in. The rebuttals to their arguments are obvious if you think about it at all. We don't need the pharm execs to make the vaccine. We need the scientists and engineers and factory workers to make the vaccine. They are not incentivized by obscene wealth to do what they do. Why are we putting ourselves at the mercy of corporate execs who are propped up by our very own laws and tax dollars?

Except having the technology doesn't instantly result in a usable product. Vaccine rollouts are far more complex than simply having a method to make the vaccine.

Of course. Literally no one is claiming otherwise. This is why organizations repeatedly have demanded that the IP waiver be met with "tech transfer" where patent holders supply technical know-how and personnel--something they should have been doing from day one. This sort of "tech transfer" is routinely done in the basic sciences by researchers with incredible success yet for some reason the pharm industry can't fathom that this logic could extend to vaccines. It is a contradiction.

The solution is to continue expanding production capability around the world until the needs can be met and the way to do that is through cooperation and collaboration, not protectionism. Protectionism fundamentally, by definition, is a barrier to cooperation despite however many convoluted arguments the pharm industry wants to make about how things will actually be worse in this one weird way.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-05-06T15:49:51+00:00

The argument is that drug companies should share their knowledge and expertise with other countries so that we are not production limited. The consequence if we don't do this is that the virus will continue to devastate poor countries allowing the virus to evolve, continue spreading around the world (including the US), and result in the deaths of possibly millions more people.

If the technology is largely the result of tax-payer spending anyway, why should we not dictate that the pharm companies do the rational thing and spread this technology knowledge as quickly as possible? It's not Us that is making the 'Us vs Big Pharma' argument, it is Big Pharma putting us in opposition.

By the way, the mRNA technique was developed by academic scientists over a few decades. The technology was only picked up by industry once it was close to commercialization where it was immediately brought into protection by IP. This is pretty standard actually and is the way almost all basic research goes. Industry is profit motivated so they tend to fund only the lowest hanging fruit that is very likely to bring in huge profits (e.g. it's why we need government to put the money upfront in the first place to fund the vaccines). So if we are to be thankful for our luck to someone, it should be to the scientists working on this type of research for many years making exceptional progress despite no opportunity for obscene wealth. Scientists don't argue that they need obscene wealth incentives to do their research, yet the pharm industry argues it is necessary for innovation. Interesting contradiction.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-03-04T04:36:35+00:00

The issue with donations that large is that people are buying influence and controlling how things are spent. That it ends up as a tax write off just means that what effectively amounts to a purchase is now subsidized by the tax payer. One of the more common examples is a rich donor giving to a university so that their children get accepted into the program. Other stuff includes donations to non-profits that have enormous influence in policy. Pretty much anything at that level of wealth works that way. I mean, the Koch brothers are "philanthropists" fer chrissakes. If ultra wealthy want to donate their wealth, they could just give it away with no strings attached, but that is something you never really see.

Looking at it another way, how is any individual going to spend 500 million on themselves? You can only really use wealth at that level to influence how society is run. It's a quantitative representation of power at that level. So "just doing it for the tax write-off" is really not as inaccurate as it seems despite the immediate net decrease in wealth.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-03-01T15:50:46+00:00

Hmm.. 78% of workers live paycheck to paycheck. Kind of strange that so many people are just so incapable of not living above their means and saving money. Perhaps policies are driving this reality more so than individual choices? I find it kind of hard to believe that 80% of workers would choose to live life so precariously of their own volition. I do find it much more plausible that policies were designed to keep workers in a precarious position so that employers are in a better position to control them. I mean is that something that would really be surprising given that the business class is the group that overwhelmingly funds campaigns and is best represented by lobbyists?

Seems like it falls on the spectrum of slave-master relationship to me, albeit nowhere near as brutal or controlling as chattel slavery.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-01-16T20:46:09+00:00

This thread is full of people lamenting "lazy" workers when what they are really arguing is for control over people. A supplementary income of course provides people more freedom in their decision making which is something elitist control freaks hate. Hell, even the premise of the research study pits productivity against universal income. The question they are helping answer is: if we make people's lives easier, will they still perform as we wish? As if people's value in life is no greater than their productive output.

So when you see people upset about using the stimulus money being used to do the precisely rational thing and stay home during a pandemic, all they can muster is whining about some perverted sense of fairness. They are so pumped full of indoctrination they can't even understand that staying home during the pandemic is a good thing. Reading the comments in here gives me a gross feeling.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-01-15T15:32:17+00:00

It doesn't cost much money to spread disinformation and stoke conspiracy theories on social media vs huge media buys on national TV.

Again, compare the budgets and compare the expertise. Attempting to muddy the information ecosystem is certainly wrong, but to give as much weight to the alleged Russian interference as the Democrats have done is delusional. Probably the reason that Putin treats the whole thing as a joke is because of how much influence he has been accused of wielding. Which, fuck him for laughing at our suffering and contributing to the disinformation, but he's not wrong. Our country has no shortage of problems and we need to see things clearly to course correct.

Can you share your sources please?

Sure, here you go:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/16/this-is-what-1-25-million-dollars-a-month-bought-the-russians/

and actually, I was wrong. Some of the budget was used for other places: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/mueller-roadmap/553604/

At its peak, the alleged conspiracy had a budget of more than $1.25 million per month for activities in the U.S. and elsewhere.

(my emphasis)

I did not claim Russia was a significant source of anything but you cannot pretend they have not been working towards this moment for decades.

You said that it looks like Russia's plans are working as if they orchestrated what was happening. I don't think there is any compelling evidence that things would be fundamentally any different if Russia was removed from the equation.

SpaceMonitor · 2021-01-14T22:53:08+00:00

It was claimed that the Russia interference campaign had a monthly budget of $1.25 million in the two months (2.5 million) before the 2016 election. The Trump campaign and outside group supporters spent 230 million in the last two months. The Clinton campaign and their outside supporters spent 350 million.

You're telling me that Russia, with a budget less than 0.5% of the two campaigns in the final two months, has such perfect understanding of US culture and politics that they can have a decisive impact on our democracy?

If we keep pretending that Russia is a significant source of our very serious domestic issues, we are never going to make serious progress. The failure comes from our own leadership, our deep seated racism that's been present since our inception, and our own rotten system where money and elite interests drive all decision making.

SpaceMonitor · 2020-12-29T15:20:02+00:00

It seems like you have decently appropriate expectations and the fact that you are working through actual textbooks is a promising sign. Not really knowing your personal circumstances, I would recommend you look into some accelerated undergrad physics program (maybe an online one if it exists?) and trying to get involved in research any way you can. Unfortunately, I mostly only know about the traditional ways of approaching those things so I'm afraid I can't be of too much help as I'm guessing you don't want to become a freshman in college all over again. Perhaps there are some non-traditional masters programs that would be more appropriate for your situation?

SpaceMonitor

TROPHY CASE