China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, uses the great firewall to attack tech companies in other countries, prints up to 282% of GDP [1] in order to buy their way into other countries real estate and companies, ignores human rights and free speech, creates artificial military island near neighboring countries, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb commerce with China.
This comment seemed familiar, so I looked at your comment history. You've left this comment over and over on different stories. In general, it is preferred you leave comments specific to the stories your are commenting on.
China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, uses the great firewall to attack tech companies in other countries, prints up to 282% of GDP [1] in order to buy their way into other countries real estate and companies, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb commerce with China.
The commerce with China is just about the only way to effect any of those humanitarian concepts. Given the government's perspective and intentions, there is little other than prosperity itself that would convince them to steer their country of 1.4 billion souls to do anything differently.
1.) artifically keeps dead and poisonous factories alive to produce massive pollutions that harms other countries
2.) has a great firewall that inhibits free speech, and use it to attack other countries
3.) is a authoritarian government
China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, uses the great firewall to attack tech companies in other countries, prints up to 282% of GDP [1] in order to buy their way into other countries real estate and companies, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb commerce with China.
I don't know if you realize it or maybe the sarcasm is lost in this medium. However many of the things you just said about China, with the exception of being an authoritarian government, could also be said about the US.
It's even worse than that. The u.s. has been in constant warfare for the last 25 years and have killed ~600,000 people in that time.
What countries have the Chinese been bombing, killing in that time?
The u.s. is fighting an ideological war while the Chinese are fighting an economic war. The u.s. doesn't care if they wipe out a population as long as they defeat their ideas, while the chinese want to develop economic ties.
I don't know what more to say. The u.s. will lose if they don't change their thoughts.
You can't be serious either; an authoritarian government is no way the same as a democracy. There are forced disapperances [1], outright censorship [2], state enrichment vs individuals [3], and on and on. US has courts and 3 separate branches of government and elections and debates. You can be cynical, sure, if the democracy isn't working well, but we still have a democracy. Do you honestly think a government controlled by a small secretive group of old men is better than elected government?
I would rather have US as an authoritarian government than China. I mean do you see how China treats it's own people? It's fucking horrid. the 500 mil Chinese pulled out of poverty line is classic propaganda CCP would love to have you spewing.
It seems pretty clear that china has done a better job in raising the overall circumstances of the poorest of its citizens than many other developing countries over a similar time span. I'm not just talking about a bunch of African basket cases either. Look at India; for all the progress they have made, the poorest of their people live in horrible circumstances, the likes of which one doesn't find in the same enormous magnitude. I'm sure china could have done much worse. I know which country I'd rather be destitute in. Now how much of that is attributable to something like the one child policy where the have essentially mortgaged their future in exchange for fantastic present growth? We will find out eventually.
India is different because they don't embrace the same communist party ideology and leadership structure. Unfortunately, the government has no power because all the money in India is flowing to private anonymous banking friendly countries and they can't tax it.
> I mean do you see how China treats it's own people?
Do you ? Because you seem to be mixing up China and North Korea. Today's China is not Mao's China. It's not the best thing ever, but to think that it's so different that the US is just wrong.
China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, uses the great firewall to attack tech companies in other countries, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb commerce with China.
The US superpower status has been hollowing out and China has begun to be able to project power in very impressive ways. The US sees China as its major threat right now. What the US government would like to do is 'contain' China by keeping it a regional force - so that it can't complete as a global power.
In anticipation of future conflict there has already been a large amount of anti-China sentiment creeping in America - suddenly all of the news about China has a negative spin. If they land on the moon its portrayed as scary rather than impressive. If they build islands in the middle of the Ocean (legally) it's a 'great mound of sand' rather than an incredibly impressive engineering feat. China's selling of air defense systems that thwart the US and the collisions of and mutual reconnaissance of our naval vessels aren't covered much - basically few real facts but lots of spin.
The US doesn't know whether it will be able to beat back China without having to resort to violence. If you watch the presidential speeches between candidates and Washington thinktanks they all have a stance on how they will deal with 'the China problem' (China is ambitious and there ain't room enough for the both of us). Jeb Bush basically said military might - Clinton wants to follow in line with (her) TPP.
There will be more anti-China slant. The interests of China and the US are at odds and becoming ever more so.
This poster is either part of a spin machine or has fallen for the naive and simplistic narrative of good-versus-evil.
All in all though, by all accounts, China and the US are set to butt heads and already have been.
The China boogieman is already disappearing. They will have their hands full with domestic problems as their population demands a more Western lifestyle. As long as the current allies remain together The West is nigh untouchable, sorry.
It is interesting you think the China boogieman is disappearing. Luckily for us the relatively near future will inform us who is right so we don't need to hash out the principles.
It's also interesting to see that what I'm doing in the prior comment is laying out the case made by Washington and the defense contractors and of global strategy reports of allies - i.e. I'm merely mirroring official standings and policies in my comment. Washington is wrong often, let's see if they are wrong again.
China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb commerce with China.
Much further from the reality. The US has huge flaws and gaping failures with these matters, but still compared to China it is objectively way less authoritan, and has a much better track record with respecting free speech and human rights.
...and watch China flood the US with dollars (it has a few of those, y'know?), halt all Apple smartphone production and lobby hard and successfully to finally replace the petrodollar?
Maybe all-out war is not the fitting answer to what was, realistically, a tempest in a teapot.
"Mainland universities have been ordered to steer clear of seven topics in their teaching, including universal values, press freedom and civil rights, two university staff said, offering an insight into ideological control under the new Communist Party leaders."
"China’s Maoist ideologues are resurgent after languishing in the political desert, buoyed by President Xi Jinping’s traditionalist tilt and emboldened by internal party decrees that have declared open season on Chinese academics, artists and party cadres seen as insufficiently red."
China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. We need to curb commerce with China.
> "China’s Maoist ideologues are resurgent after languishing in the political desert, buoyed by President Xi Jinping’s traditionalist tilt and emboldened by internal party decrees that have declared open season on Chinese academics, artists and party cadres seen as insufficiently red."
This doesn't seem in keeping with what he's actually been doing vis-a-vis China's "reds", which is mostly suppressing them. For example Bo Xilai, formerly mayor of Chongqing, is probably the most prominent neo-Maoist in China [1], and Xi Jinping had him arrested. There's more generally been a crackdown on leftists across China, especially those attempting to organize within trade unions, who are seen by the leadership as potentially dangerous. In addition to certain pro-western things being taboo in universities (like supporting multiparty democracy), so are certain leftist things (like criticizing the corporate-lackey nature of the official PRC trade unions, or highlighting dangerous working conditions in factories).
Bo Xilai was deposed eight months before Xi Jinping took over. The corruption crackdown that ensued under Xi overwhelmingly targeted officials who were not "Second Generation Red." After Bo, other princelings made sure they got off scott-free by making a media spectacle of scapegoated fall guys: corrupt up-and-comers from "commoner families".
If you old people would stop working and retire, the young people would have work to do. What's that? you didn't save anything after the best financial boom time in history? You have to work until you're 80? Well, then stop complaining.
To be fair, a lot of market-based savings schemes were wiped out in 2008.
My in-laws, who diligently spent their entire lives working boring jobs in banks (as accountants and such, not wall street), who prepared for their retirement by paying off their modest $250,000 home (in Nashville, it's nicer than the dollar amount makes it seem), found themselves screwed when they went to retire, as their 401Ks were now worth fractions of what they'd expected.
So they're still working, extending their retirement in the hopes that their portfolios will recover, or that they can continue earning enough while they're healthy that they can offset it.
It literally never occurred to me until your comment that someone might resent them for trying to earn a living for themselves without burdening the rest of society.
I gotta wonder, what were they invested in? I just checked my records, and my investments went down about 35% in 2008, and have long since recovered. I'm not a particularly good investor or anything. How do they manage to have their investments drop to fractions, implying much greater than 50% loss, and still have not recovered in 2015?
Not trying to judge or anything, just wondering what the deal is, because from everything I've seen around me, that is far from typical.
In the case of my dad's 401k: The company's fund manager actively traded shares on the way down, repeatedly moving the balance from declining symbols to those that seemed more stable but were really just slightly behind the curve. ...Then did the same thing when things started recovering, trying to target the stocks that seemed to be going up the fastest. Quite literally decimated their retirement.
1. World class food. There is no way you can get the same quality of chinese,japanese,korean,indian,french,italian,californian,thai,vietnamese in Cleveland.
2. People creating things in coffeeshops on the weekends, instead of wasting life watching TV or drinking beer. You only get one life in this great country.
3. It's not ice freezing cold
4. It's not superficial (like LA), not money worshipping (like NY), not power hungry (like DC), not gun/football crazy (like Texas), not corrupt (like Florida)
5. Diversity
6. Tech, Venture networks
7. Silicon Valley people are great people. The entrepreneurs are supportive of each other, since they know how much pain it is to start a company. The people who take risks moving across country to here are brave and adaptive and optimistic. (instead of rotting away on a couch in midwest complaining about lack of jobs)
We should not compare Silicon Valley to Cleveland. Why don't we compare it to Chicago? The reason the Cleveland comparison is somewhat unfair is that Cleveland is a small city, so we are not comparing apples to apples
Maybe it's because engineers have a mentality of 'teardown' and 'rebuild'. Bankers and corporations infiltrated the US government? Teardown everything. Rebuild. Screw the women and children. Destroy America. We need to start from scratch.
What these people don't realize is you can change from within. We have elected government officials for a reason. Guess what? 85% of congress people are white and male (and many of them old). I'm gonna guess most of the bankers are white and male (and old). You want change? vote some women in. vote some minorities in. They're not part of the boy's network. They will take care of the disadvantaged.
US is the best country for a reason. We have a good system of representatives and freedoms of speech and protest. People on this board seem to love Russia and China. Guess what? Russia is ruled by a dictator, and China is ruled by a group of men. China's gdp per capita is $6000, with endless pollution. In Russia, entrepreneurs get jailed and poisoned and their companies get stolen away. You love those countries so much? go move there.
"Beijing-based computer maker Lenovo has reportedly been blacklisted for years by spy agencies worldwide, as concerns about government-sanctioned Chinese hacking persist. According to the Australian Financial Review, Australia, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and the US have all rejected Lenovo machines for their top-secret networks since the mid-2000s, though the computers can be used for lower-security tasks that don't involve sensitive information" [1]
Why buy a laptop from a company that has ties to the Chinese government [2], an authoritarian government that supports dictators in Africa and totalitarian government in Russia, oppressing women and children in those countries?
Why buy a computer from a company that has ties to the US government, an authoritarian government that supports dictators in Africa, the Middle-East, South America, and East Asia, including torture, drug smuggling, misogyny, and has itself engaged in abduction, detention without trial, and in relation to this case, illegal interception of communications?
2.) In the way that a company can be compelled to comply with an order from the government, including the requirement that the company may not disclose to anyone the nature of that order or the gag order, and that there is effectively no way to challenge such orders in a court of law.
>Have you actually lived in a country that has no elected representative?
> Favourable to or characterized by obedience to authority as opposed to personal liberty; strict, dictatorial.
It's certainly reasonable to argue about whether this actually applies; but I don't think that it represents a useless dilution of the word to think that it might. (Well, not 'dictatorial', but the rest of it.)
> It's certainly reasonable to argue about whether this actually applies
literally that it is reasonable to argue, i.e., that neither position is obviously irrefutably true; and also I think I've created enough of a de-rail already here; but, if I had to make an argument for authoritarianism, I think that I would claim that the concept of free-speech zones instantly implies, for some parts of US government at some times, more respect for authority than personal liberty.
You know, you can have "elected" "representatives" and still be authoritarian. You can make sure the ballot only has people you like on it, you can ignore what the representatives have to say, you can lie to the representatives so their decisions are compromised, you can restrict the flow of information to the electorate so their decisions are compromised... All of the above happen in the US. Hell, China has elected representatives - they're just all from the same party.
"Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos." - Homer J. Simpson.
Why buy a laptop from a company that has ties to the Chinese government [2], an authoritarian government that supports dictators in Africa and totalitarian government in Russia, oppressing women and children in those countries?
Also (presuming grandparent is American, which may be incorrect) the US supports dictators and totalitarian governments that oppress women in Saudi Arabia.
Well because they were making darn good hardware. I had my T60 for many many years. Carbon X1 seems nice.
Now I ended up buying a cheap ASUS Chromebook for traveling, replaced drive with a large one and installed Ubuntu. But still haven't decided if I want to replace my main machine.
Was eyeing Carbon X1 models for a while, but now will have to rethink.
Besides, like some people here, I always wipe everyone out and reinstall my own distro on it (Ubuntu usually).
The T60 was one of the very first laptops Lenovo released after it purchased the IBM PC division. I wonder if it had already been in development under IBM before the purchase.
I am pretty sure it was. Mine still has the old style IBM Thinkpad logo on the case. Documentation and driver downloads pointed to ibm.com site for a long while even after the acquisition.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/11/c...