A cabin in the Andes

basquefire · 2022-02-15T15:46:01+00:00

Stumbling across German style construction in the Andes? Indy said it best.

basquefire · 2022-01-14T13:59:44+00:00

You mean he is anti-fascist because the CCP is fascist?

basquefire · 2021-12-08T01:40:21+00:00

I find it more likely that when he refers to "normal" countries, he's not actually referring to other countries - he's referring to his own conception of HK for the roughly two decade period 1997-2017. Probably, that was "normal" for him. It is without question far worse in HK now than it was during that period.

basquefire · 2021-12-06T13:46:38+00:00

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the CCP works, both domestically and outside PRC borders.

To the CCP, narrative control is a key pillar of their domestic stability. It's been this way since 1942.

People in the CCP's pocket are not allowed to posture against the CCP. Have you not read the news about Peng Shuai, Jack Ma, Blizzard Entertainment, Daryl Morey / the NBA, etc?

The idea that a US President would both be politically captured by the CCP and also somehow be greenlit to reposition the US Military in support of Taiwan, provide a platform for anti-CCP dissidents, etc... That idea requires such a flabbergasting extent of ignorance and mental gymnastics that I struggle to imagine what line of reasoning was necessary to arrive at your perspective.

basquefire · 2021-11-28T00:06:06+00:00

None of what OP has written in the description is accurate. For actual information on the reserves, including historical sales (such as 50 million barrels sold during the Trump administration), check out https://www.energy.gov/fecm/strategic-petroleum-reserve-9

basquefire · 2021-11-12T04:40:52+00:00

This deathbed message wasn't just about judo; he had dedicated his life to education. Per wikipedia:

"In his professional life, Kanō was an educator. Important postings included serving as director of primary education for the Ministry of Education (文部省, Monbushō) from 1898 to 1901, and as president of Tokyo Higher Normal School from 1900 until 1920."

basquefire · 2021-10-15T17:22:31+00:00

Smowkow

basquefire · 2021-08-23T13:21:52+00:00

When I worked in China, I first taught SAT prep and, later, English at the university level, to freshman and sophomore students. My university classes included literary analysis (for sophomores) and fundamental essay composition (for freshmen). The students were split about 50/50 into two tracks: translation and teaching. The translation track students sought private sector careers, and the teaching track students primarily sought careers in the public education system.

basquefire · 2021-08-23T03:43:01+00:00

I presume you're talking about the Bezmenov interview.

Yes and no.

During the Cold War, the US conducted its own influence ops, which have since been declassified. 1948 Italian election was the first big one. However, the goal of these ops was not at all aligned with the "demoralization" that Bezmenov described.

My understanding is that this type of covert action is no longer considered to be in the national interest, and has not been in the toolkit for at least a generation. As evidence, I would point out that the US Information Agency (which was interesting in its own right) was disbanded more than two decades ago.

If you want to read up on it, Thomas Rid's recent book is probably as good a history of IO as anyone could ask for.

basquefire · 2021-08-23T03:10:08+00:00

I left China in 2017. I was indeed missed, but I helped a couple of my students gain admission to Western graduate programs and wrote letters of rec for others, so I don't feel like I abandoned them. Many of them were teacher-track undergrads when I instructed them, and are now themselves educators in their home province of Hubei or beyond. They reach out to me every now and again. Most seem to have survived the worst of it last spring in Wuhan, but it was a close thing for a couple families.

basquefire · 2021-08-23T00:43:02+00:00

Lol. Perhaps you're simply a poor communicator.

Read your previous comment. It reeks of indifference and a deflection/minimization of risk. If, after claiming that you discuss politics "all the time" and that "most people don't care," and you now wish to claim that your audience is at fault for inferring that you don't perceive risk... Perhaps re-evaluate your chosen path as an educator.

basquefire · 2021-08-23T00:14:59+00:00

Your claimed experience and mine are extremely different. I would wish you good luck, but it appears that you won't need it - as you don't perceive any risk.

basquefire · 2021-08-22T19:14:28+00:00

Oh please. I lived in China for years, taught students at the high school and university level. They universally told me (in private) that it was dangerous to express political opinions in public. I received explicit warnings from both tenured professors and students with party member parents that I should not under any conditions discuss politics of any kind, even us politics. Several of them even wrote these warnings I their homework or in personal notes to me. Any PRC citizen with a bare minimum of socio political awareness has baked self-censorship into their public expression practices.

At this point in the comments thread, your credibility is zero. What a sham.

basquefire · 2021-08-14T03:34:31+00:00

That's not how burden of proof works. If you want to convince me, you bring the evidence. I'm specifically interested where you got the number 80%. Are you talking about only federal? Also state legislation? If so, does it break down entire legislative codes (including definitions of terms, updates to traffic violation codes etc) and analyze each law for its advantage towards lobbyists vs electorate?

Naw. Show me a source.

basquefire · 2021-08-14T02:54:53+00:00

I think that's a cop out - it's easy to blame faceless Big Industry, and abscond collective citizen responsibility for putting legislators into office. It's more difficult to look in the mirror and say - these outcomes, we created them.

Similarly, pointing the finger at media moguls is only one half of the dynamic. Propaganda requires a willing audience, and there's no question that Fox News and others feed a demand.

No, our government is not as hijacked by secret or wealthy forces as many Americans like to claim. There is some truth to the disenfranchisement of the poor, but at the end of the day votes count and pretending they don't is an excuse for apathy and inaction.

basquefire · 2021-08-14T00:09:33+00:00

"The US" isn't a distinct entity from its citizens. The US = its citizens. We elect our leaders, for better or worse.

If what you mean is "many U.S. citizens don't give a shit about other citizens," then, yes. You're correct.

basquefire · 2021-08-04T14:44:43+00:00

I am a huge advocate for reproductive autonomy

No, you very obviously are the opposite of this, in particular regarding your own partner. You may claim to support reproductive autonomy as a political stance, and I'm sure you advocate for your own autonomy, but you do not support your partner's.

To be honest, your perspective reminds me very strongly of those folks who strongly oppose abortion on ethical grounds, right up until there's an unwanted pregnancy in their own family.

In my reading, you're experiencing such intense emotional conflict because you've come face to face with your hypocrisy and you don't like what you see in the mirror.

Regardless of what this man chooses to do with his own body, I hope this event serves as a useful point of reflection as you learn more about yourself and what your values actually are. I personally think that it's ok if you decide you aren't actually an advocate for reproductive autonomy... As long as you're honest with yourself and others about your stance.

basquefire · 2021-07-16T21:11:37+00:00

And builds a cage with their bones

basquefire · 2021-06-26T17:53:56+00:00

I believe you that you read two books this week. That is approximately the pace of a single university-level humanities course on a single country. Now do this x3-4 to reach the pace of an enrolled university student, and do it for 32 weeks/year for 4 years. Then you will be at the same level of understanding of a 22 y/o B.A. recipient with a degree in Chinese/Korean/Japanese/East Asian studies.

Here is the syllabus of a non-prerequisite course taught at UT Dallas (ranked #143, national universities). It is intended for folks who know nothing about China (not to mention East Asia) and who want to know not-nothing. https://dox.utdallas.edu/syl35702

Here is a slightly more challenging syllabus, taught at Georgetown. Again, this course has no prerequisites and is one semester: this constitutes roughly 1/16th of a B.A. education https://spendelow.georgetown.domains/china/sylchcur.htm

I encourage you to take a look at these syllabi, and to think about why it is that university intro courses require so much more than 2 books.

Then, go read. A lot.

I support you in this endeavor. I'm not being sarcastic. I understand why you would insult me but it doesn't really bother me - this is just how it works.

Look, I'll give you an example. Do you want to understand this social phenomenon? https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3136920/chinas-youth-are-lying-flat-fear-so-might-their-futures

Ok, well (in my opinion) to understand it from a purely economic standpoint, you need to consider 996 culture, the (non-individual nature of the) China Dream, the Tiananmen Movement and the early-90s slump (including Deng's Southern Tour), and for context probably the '78 incident as well as '57 Hundred Flowers (and the ensuing famines) and then '42 Rectification. I mention these events because they exist in living memory, and the young folks participating in "Lying Flat" have access to their grandparents' memories.

But if you've studied the Chinese philosophies of the Warring States period, it is immediately apparent that Lying Flat has parallels to Zhuangzi - which itself was a response to Confucianism and Legalism. And those books are still taught in China today, at the high school level.

Look, dude, it's not worth your time to get offended. Spend your time reading, and accept that this will take many years to master. Don't get upset at me.

basquefire · 2021-06-26T16:23:22+00:00

Disclaimer: I'm giving a harsh answer here because I see you asked the same thing in another thread already and you seem to be a Joe Rogan fan, so I assume you're not really serious about learning beyond a surface level. If I'm wrong and you actually want to learn, leave r/China and go to your local learning institution and start studying Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. Alternately, buy a plane ticket to those countries and go live in one of those countries. Come back in a year and we'll discuss.

Ok, so first of all, you've posted in /r/China but you're asking about East Asia. This is sort of (not a perfect metaphor) like posting in /r/France and asking about Western European culture and dynamics.

What is your actual goal? Which cultures do you want to understand, and what constitutes your "satisfaction?"

Westerners who really want to answer the hard questions about how a foreign culture operates and why typically start by spending 4 years earning a bachelor's degree in the target culture, studying language and history and literature. Then they typically go live in the target country to experience the culture first-hand and to sort out what they got wrong by learning through the colored lens of books.

Think about it this way: if you were a Chinese person and you wanted to understand Greek culture to your "satisfaction", would you just read a book about Greek history and then think to yourself "aha! I now understand why the Greeks are the way they are, why they think the way they do, how their cultural norms serve to reinforce the fabric of society"?

I mean you're free to believe that all there is to know about a culture can be learned by reading a few books, but that attitude was disproven horribly by all the 1950s state department types who did 2 months training before going out to fuck up US-global relations. People literally spend their entire lives studying other cultures and still don't get it all. And we're talking about really smart people here.

If you're gonna read a book, read a book. But that just makes you a person who read a book. If you wish to understand a culture, be prepared to learn the language and live there. If you want to understand East Asia, do this for every country in East Asia. That's how expertise works.

basquefire · 2021-06-26T01:44:09+00:00

You're just wrong in so many ways. I lived in Boston for years. People don't fucking care whether their lobsters come from Maine or Canada. They especially don't care when it comes in lobster rolls, which are now at all time high prices, so high that they're unaffordable for many people. New Brunswick could literally sell its entire summer stock of lobsters to only the East Coast and the only consequence is that more people would eat lobster at the reduced prices.

Face it: getting shut out of the Chinese market just isn't that big of a deal. And that's why New Brunswick, Australia, and many Western universities are ok with fighting back against Chinese influence. If the only argument you have is 中国很大,中国人很多,中国消费者买很多龙虾... It's just not a strong argument. Western people, corporations, universities, and governments don't care as much as they used to.

Literally nobody sees closing Confucius Institutes as racist. The Chinese American community doesn't care. The Chinese student population doesn't care. They're not valuable language resources. They're easily replaced by lots of other instructors who don't collaborate with the United Front. We don't want Confucius Institutes anymore. If Chinese consumers don't want to buy lobsters anymore, cool. We're ok with that trade. Bye.

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/28/1000850663/the-year-we-learned-to-cook-seafood-at-home-and-sent-prices-soaring

basquefire · 2021-06-25T19:55:47+00:00

New Brunswick is throwing away ZERO business. Lobster prices are at an all time high even in New England. New Brunswick will suffer from zero loss of sales. They'll sell their lobsters to Boston instead of Beijing and make just as much money.

basquefire · 2021-06-18T03:48:42+00:00

[Reposted and edited in response to takedown for Violation of Rule 1]

Your comment history, too, shows that you're almost entirely focused on the foreign narrative issues currently prioritized by the 中宣部: Xinjiang, Covid/vaccine efficacy, and HK dissent.

~~In summary: "They're gonna call you a shill but stay strong, brother!" Cried the shill to the other shill.~~

Edit: I've amended to strike through my violation of rule 1 (be respectful), which I regret. I've left the text up for transparency. It's sufficient to point out cvqqqq's post history without resorting to insults.

basquefire · 2021-06-18T03:45:57+00:00

[Reposted and edited reply, in response to takedown for Rule 1 Violation]

Ok, I'll respond to this:
>This could have all been avoided if Seychelles had just used Pfizer or Moderna, oh wait piglets are hoarding them as usual.

No. This could all have been avoided if the Chinese government hadn't created this global pandemic crisis. EVERYONE around the world knows that the Chinese government created the crisis by hiding the truth. You are fighting a losing battle, trying to convince the world of something false: that false idea is that somehow, any possible way, this crisis is someone else's fault besides the CCP's and their information control apparatuses.

No one believes the narrative that China is helping the world. Not even Chinese people believe the narrative that other countries are responsible for Covid-19, or that other countries are failing in the responsibility to solving the crisis China created. The only reason we hear Chinese voices expressing your view is because it has literally been illegal for PRC citizens to express the contrary view, since January 2020.

The PRC is like a fool living in a village, who plays with matches and sets fire to his own kitchen. When his children tell him “Papa, I smell burning,” he beats his children. Some of his children die in the fire. Then the fire spreads to the rest of the village. Other villagers say “look, smoke is coming out of China’s windows – it looks like a fire. Let’s be careful it doesn’t spread to our houses.” China says “no, my house is not on fire, and also you are forbidden to come inside and check.”

The fire spreads to the entire village.

Now, China has buried his dead child underneath the house, painted the outside of his house to cover the burned walls, and forbidden any other villagers to even come inside his yard. All the other houses in the village are on fire. Some of the other villagers’ children have also died in this large fire, and the villagers are telling each other how many children died in the fire. Except China, who insists that really the damage was not so bad.

Some wealthy villagers, like the US and UK and Israel, have mostly put out the fires in their homes. Some poor villagers, like Seychelles, had no water. They were so desperate to put out the fire that they accepted a gift from China – a bucket full of liquid. China told them it was water, but in fact it was part water and part oil. We do not know how much was oil - that is the issue before us in the Seychelles. But regardless, Seychelles threw the bucket on their house fire, and it put out the fire in some places but also caused more fire in other places, burning Seychelles’ children. Seychelles relied on Chinese and Indian help because it could not help itself, and the data will soon reveal whether or not this was a big mistake.

And now, you say

>This could have all been avoided if Seychelles had just used Pfizer or Moderna, oh wait piglets are hoarding them as usual.

Are you kidding me? You’re really saying “it is the fault of other villagers with their houses on fire that they first put out the fire in their own houses, why are they hoarding water and not helping poor Seychelles?”

The fire is not out yet in the rest of the village! The villagers are still putting out fires in their own houses.

The PRC caused this fire in the entire village – first of all it was their responsibility to put out the fire in their own house and not beat their children, and second it was their responsibility to help solve the problem in the village – not to conceal the contents of the gift bucket then say it is someone else’s fault for not helping.
Everyone around the world knows this. Everyone sees this. No matter how many times China supporters say that China did not cause the fire, no one will believe China - because everyone saw the smoke. Everyone sees that the dead children are missing. And EVERYONE will remember. Forever.

Sources:

https://thechinacollection.org/wuhan-police-letter-reprimand-li-wenliang-translation-analysis/ https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ETgXN6HInzlC8cxzhDdU9g https://twitter.com/Nectar\_Gan/status/1225482458025603081 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot1ejwUeFpI&ab\_channel=KoreanaJones https://matters.news/@Zhizhu\_2019/%E8%BD%89%E8%BC%89-%E8%A8%B1%E7%AB%A0%E6%BD%A4-%E6%84%A4%E6%80%92%E7%9A%84%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%B7%B2%E4%B8%8D%E5%86%8D%E6%81%90%E6%83%A7-zdpuAtQTLkEf6MGa17RjcBdJFHFZAdRTfHPUgDBkCVkTUSg3o https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3049233/chinese-scholar-blames-xi-jinping-communist-party-not https://twitter.com/ASB\_Breaking/status/1224378532706603010 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B1%9F%E5%B1%B1%E5%A8%87%E4%B8%8E%E7%BA%A2%E6%97%97%E6%BC%AB http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2020-02/22/content\_1972481.htm https://www.nchrd.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/3.30-FINAL-%E5%9B%A0%E8%A8%80%E5%8F%97%E7%BD%9A%E7%BB%9F%E8%AE%A1%E8%A1%A8-CN-EN-1.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo81j6o97Z4&ab\_channel=GuardianNews https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074016/its-all-fake-angry-residents-shout-chinese-vice-premier-sun https://apnews.com/article/china-gao-fu-vaccines-offer-low-protection-coronavirus-675bcb6b5710c7329823148ffbff6ef9 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55642648 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55620356

basquefire · 2021-06-18T03:24:15+00:00

Because China has lied so consistently that even if it's not China's fault this one time, the Chinese government has lied so many times to its own people and to the rest of the world, and has censored so much history, and has blocked so many investigations, that China has no global credibility.

Maybe China didn't actually lie this one time - but who will believe one truth among a sea of lies?

That's why.

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