Botond173
21d ago
Ostensibly, the parade was a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II. But Xi’s decision to invite the leaders of Russia, North Korea, and Iran, while snubbing the United States, Britain, and France, made clear that he is thinking more about future alliances than historic ones.
I think it's worth pointing out that the tradition of the Chinese communists officially celebrating the WW2 victory over Japan goes back to the long bygone days of...well, 2014 actually, if Wikipedia is to be believed. And the world leaders mentioned were only "snubbed" in the sense that apparently they've never attended any of these celebrations before anyway.
I know it’s controversial even here to refer to the homeless urban underclass as vermin or wild animals, but I can’t think of a better metaphor. Everyone who grew up in a major American metropolitan area knows that certain environments around the city are the natural habitat for a certain kind of predator.
It's not like Ukraine or Eastern Europe in general is radically different from North Carolina in that regard though.
Botond173
21d ago
The NYT capitalizes “Black” but leaves “white” lowercase. Elon Musk pointed this out and it’s getting traction. This is a policy shift the NYT, AP, and others made in 2020 after George Floyd’s killing, with the reasoning that “Black” marks shared cultural identity, while capitalizing “White” risks feeding white-identity politics.
The enormous levels of bias, lying, context denial and manipulation on the part of the US mainstream media with regards to race relations was already clear as day back during the Trayvon Martin scandal 13 years ago.
Botond173
21d ago
I dispute Mike Davis's 'Late Victorian Holocausts' thesis. Firstly, it's inappropriate to compare to a Holocaust since a famine isn't an organized mass killing so much as a mildly disorganized mass not-saving.
It's normally the publishers who decide on book titles and subtitles, not the authors, and it's their evident interest to grab the readers' attention. I imagine the author is probably not a Holocaust 'relativist' himself.
Secondly, much more severe famines were occurring right next door in China in this period.
From the same Wikipedia article:
This book explores the impact of colonialism and the introduction of capitalism during the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) related famines of 1876–1878, 1896–1897, and 1899–1902, in India, China, Brazil, Ethiopia, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and New Caledonia.
Likewise, it's hard to see how a few thousand British administrators running the whole country could cause famine actively, though they were not great at stopping famine.
From the same page:
Davis argues that "Millions died, not outside the 'modern world system', but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures. They died in the golden age of Liberal Capitalism; indeed, many were murdered ... by the theological application of the sacred principles of Smith, Bentham and Mill."
The book's main conclusion is that the deaths of 30–60 million people killed in famines all over the world during the later part of the 19th century were caused by laissez-faire and Malthusian economic ideology of the colonial governments.
From a different article:
The regular export of grain by the colonial government continued; during the famine, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 tons) of wheat, which made the region more vulnerable. The cultivation of alternate cash crops, in addition to the commodification of grain, played a significant role in the events.[6][7]
The Mughals who previously ruled India fielded a huge army, it's hard to see how the relatively small British/Indian forces based in India, around 300,000, were unduly taxing the Indian economy. The Qing fielded a million men and embarked on their own expensive indigenous naval programs. If India weren't colonized by Britain, it would likely have undertaken similar expenditure and/or get invaded by someone, resulting in an increased fiscal burden. Russia for instance spent about 30% of its budget on the military around 1900.
Fair points. However, is the main standard argument for colonial rule not the idea that it results in a higher level of flourishing and prosperity for its subjects compared to the dictatorship of their native brutish elites?
Botond173
22d ago
They actually paid money to the Raj government when deploying Indian troops for imperial operations that didn't have to do with the defence of India. The cost of war would be borne by the British treasury, not the Indian treasury.
I feel compelled to quote US historian Mike Davis, via Wikipedia:
"Between 1875–1900—a period that included the worst famines in Indian history—annual grain exports increased from 3 to 10 million tons", equivalent to the annual nutrition of 25m people. "Indeed, by the turn of the century, India was supplying nearly a fifth of Britain's wheat consumption at the cost of its own food security."[6] In addition,
Already saddled with a huge public debt that included reimbursing the stockholders of the East India Company and paying the costs of the 1857 revolt, India also had to finance British military supremacy in Asia. In addition to incessant proxy warfare with Russia on the Afghan frontier, the subcontinent's masses also subsidized such far-flung adventures of the Indian Army as the occupation of Egypt, the invasion of Ethiopia, and the conquest of the Sudan. As a result, military expenditures never comprised less than 25 percent (34 percent including police) of India's annual budget ...[7]
As an example of the effects of both this and of the restructuring of the local economy to suit imperial needs (in Victorian Berar, the acreage of cotton doubled 1875–1900),[8] Davis notes that "During the famine of 1899–1900, when 143,000 Beraris died directly from starvation, the province exported not only thousands of bales of cotton but an incredible 747,000 bushels of grain."
Botond173
28d ago
Recently there was Sydney Sweeney, who somehow became a darling of the online right while being famous for getting naked and simulating sex on screen.
What I find most ironic about the whole "good jeans" controversy is that there's a strong possibility that she'll actually end up not passing on her genes i.e. she'll either remain childless or end up adopting.
Botond173
29d ago
For instance, it would be appropriate for men to cheer, cry with joy, or hug each other if their sports team won the grand final, whereas stereotypically women might not react to that.
They might not do so, but is there really any social convention dictating that it's somehow unbecoming of them as women to do so?
That's what happened with the abortion debate in your view?
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