Posts by Keith Ng
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Re: Decreased public spending, once again, what'd you expect:
This is going to be the norm for the foreseeable future.
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Despite her breeding, I think some legitimate concerns are being raised here. but...
When looking at Chinese militarism, half the question is why they're doing it and what their objectives are (the "what" half is a matter of empirical fact). And as I said, I think that China's recent history drives pretty much everything that it does. Therefore, when you get someone who willfully ignores that history asking the question, you're bound to get a pretty wacky answer.
I think there are very legitimate questions about what will happen as China's military influence grows, but they need to be answered with an understanding of the historical context, and not "World War II? What World War II?".
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Lest we forget, the Jews weren't engaged in a 10 year old civil war amongst themselves, refusing to allign with one another when the holocaust took place. It's easy to play the victim on that one.
No, it's not about China being a blameless victim, it's about China being a *helpless* victim. The very core of Chinese nationalism and Chinese militarism is that it was such a prolonged period of humiliation and suffering, and that Chinese leaders at the time were full of asshole warlord who were so ineffectual in defending China. Whether you blame that on Western efforts to undermine and corrupt the imperial system or not, the point is that China was weak and was kicked around by the West and by Japan.
This humilation drives Chinese nationalism, statism and militarism. It doesn't excuse all the shitty things that they do. It's simply a statement that these values can be traced directly back to this experience of humiliation.
And this is precisely why Koike's piece was so offensive - that she is criticising Chinese militarism while willfully ignoring its history with Japan.
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On the point of revisionism- The day both these countries can make a concerted effort to remove revisionism of their own dark pasts from their history textbooks will be a win for knowledge.
Fair enough. The CCP narrative of its own role during the period is equally fucked. If the DomPost ran an op-ed from a senior CCP official explaining that, for example, Thailand should conduct its politics in peaceful and rational manner just like China, I'd be just as pissed.
The main point isn't that Koike is a revisionist, or that revisionism itself is offensive. I'm simply angry that the DomPost didn't understand any of the issues surrounding a piece that it gave half a page to, and was just some random piece they pulled off the wires. It's both negligent and ignorant.
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I found this somewhat ironic, given that public health advocates for many years had difficulty getting the anti-smoking message across in Germany because the Nazis had been seriously anti-smoking, so being anti-smoking carried the taint of Nazism. (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_Germany)
'Course, you can bet once the war was over, big tobacco milked that for all it was worth...
Ha! That's fascinating!
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Quite a slick website, ACR. Any estimate on what it might have cost?
Hur? I assumed that the website was deliberately designed to look like it came out of the 80s, you know, as part of the astroturfing.
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The current journalistic fad for friending people to investigate them is far too creepy for me
"Carrick Graham is now following you on Twitter!"
lol.
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Judging by the website, SpinItWide is basically an automated mass-email service to allow clients to spam media contacts and maintain their own contacts database. So although the Inwood connection is very interesting I wouldn't leap to the conclusion that all its clients are equally skeezy.
Yeah. But it's a fairly... selective group that uses it. We just saw how Lombard was connected to everything, so I'm quite interested to see whether the other organisations connect too.
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Carrick Graham is Doug Graham's son.
The Hollow Men had him sponsoring tables at a National fundraiser and hosting Brash and John Carter at British American Tobacco's offices.
This is like Friends. Cast of half-dozen, and everyone's in bed with everyone.
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We looked at the evidence with an open mind. We interpreted the nuances. Shit, the Web has done little else for the last week. To still think after reviewing all the evidence that it could have been a honest mistake is not being "open minded". It's being obtuse.
I was aiming that one squarely at Tom. Hell, my conclusions about the video are probably fairly close to yours. Just trying to make my point to Tom that such conclusions are worthless if they're based on ideologies and not facts.