Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]

Fascinating. So if one state doesn’t recognize another, that means that it “clearly states its aim is to fully annex it.” So for example, the US doesn’t recognize the government of Afghanistan, so that means the US “clearly states” it aims to reinvade and fully annex Afghanistan, do I have that right?

Or maybe you meant to say that Russia implicitly suggested that it intended to fully annex Ukraine, according to your speculation?

they have clearly stated was fully conquering Ukraine?

Source?

The first thing to note is that Buddhism is a broad term that contains a lot of different belief systems. It is also plagued by poor translations of terms that don’t translate well into English, especially without looking meanings of the original terms.

Imo, your friend has distorted and misrepresented Buddhist teachings in order to justify not changing their behavior regarding meat-eating.

I’d challenge the use of the term “deserved” altogether, and I’d say “caused” might be a more accurate interpretation. Karma is not about an intelligent, all-powerful being passing judgement and smacking you down. It’s sometimes referred to as “the law of cause and effect.” It’s described as a function of the universe, the same way that physical laws makes objects fall to the ground when dropped. The exact way in which this works is up to interpretation. More secular-minded Buddhists might point to logical and observable consequences to explain it, while more spiritually-minded ones might argue that it’s more of an invisible, unexplainable force that carries over between lifetimes.

To use an example: a child that is fed a hamburger by their parents does not have knowledge of the animal’s suffering that was required to make it, nor do they have agency to control their diet or to prevent the animal from being harmed. But, an animal is still harmed through the process. The intent and agency of the actor are not important in the same way that it doesn’t matter if a ball on top of a slope is pushed or knocked over. It would only really matter if you’re dealing in terms of judgement.

It is not your responsibility to enforce karma on others. Karma isn’t a positive or negative force, and just because something happens that doesn’t make it good or fair or deserved. Rather, the idea is to navigate the world in such a way that you minimize undesirable consequences. Buddhist precepts are a list of guidelines that are intend to do just that, the precept about nonviolence being the first. The idea is: “Bad things seem to happen a lot when people go around killing living beings so it’s probably better to not do that, generally speaking.”

You are correct that your friend’s interpretation and worldview is a mess of contradictions that could just as easily be used to justify harm to humans, and that they’re blatantly violating the first precept. But I would argue that they’re not accurately representing Buddhist teachings, and their views shouldn’t be held as representative of the belief system, though admittedly, like I said there are a lot of different traditions and beliefs.

pennies on the dollar

Psychopathic framing. “Look how efficiently we’re killing people!”

Also great example of conflating states with people. Maybe Ukraine still wants to fight, but Ukrainians are being conscripted against their will. In the same way, wearing Russia down may serve the interests of the US government, but it certainly doesn’t benefit the American people in any way. The best thing for the Ukrainian people would be to stop the killing at any cost, even if it meant territorial concessions. They could’ve saved countless lives if they’d done this from the start, and eventually that’s what’s going to happen anyway, but unfortunately countless people have died and countless more will before the ruling class decides to stop forcing the poor into the meat grinder.

How the fuck is my life supposed to be better because of dead Russian soldiers?

NATO is seeking to take control of decision-making powers on future aid packages — normally led by the US — in an effort to limit the impact of a potential second Donald Trump presidency on the ongoing conflict.

This is wild. It’s bad enough that the US president has the power to start wars wherever he wants with no congressional approval. But now they’re trying to make it so that the only people with the authority to withdraw from a conflict are unelected NATO officials accountable to no one.

Dronies will support this, because they love endless war across the globe and want to remove any potential for popular support to achieve peace.

girls dressing like men

As a transfem in a situation where I frequently have to present as a guy: thanks?

Wow this thing’s going crazy over here

Israel doesn’t want to give Palestinians full and equal rights as Israeli citizens. Ukraine likewise doesn’t want to give the people of Donbass full and equal rights as Ukrainian citizens, as evidenced by them banning political parties that were popular there and shelling their cities well before Russia was involved.

What has the Ukrainian government ever done to show that they’re interested in governing the Donbass in the interests of the people living there? What has Israel ever done to show that they’re interested in governing the West Bank in the interests of the people living there? There is no hypocrisy, you’re just not examining the issues beyond a surface level knee jerk reaction.

Because no fighting was happening in Ukraine before the Russians entered the country, right? The war just fell out of a coconut tree?

I don’t immediately remember any particurarily good (liberal, free, non-oppressive, democratic) nations that NATO poses a risk to, however. Perhaps you can refresh my memory.

Liberal, free, non-oppreasive, democratic nations that oppose Western neocolonial interests tend to get coup’ed by the CIA and replaced with pro-Western fascists. Countries that do survive, like for instance Cuba, have their name dragged through the mud by an enormous propaganda machine - which also whitewashes or conveniently forgets the crushing of the leftist projects that don’t survive.

There are countless examples throughout history, but my go-to is Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran, in the 50’s. No doubt the line will be that “that was a long time ago so it doesn’t count,” but the CIA covered up their involvement for decades, and if I picked a more modern example you’d likely either deny involvement or say that the government deserved it.

Iran suffered under British colonialism for decades. In the 1800’s, the shahs signed all sorts of deals selling out the country at absurdly bad rates and no expiration, to fund their exorbitant lifestyles. A large scale popular movement ousted them, but the agreements remained, and a new dynasty took power with British support, and the exploitation continued. Britain secured enormous profit and wealth through Iranian oil while falsifying records to pay virtually nothing for it while the Iranians lived in abject poverty. For decades the Iranians sought a diplomatic resolution and we’re completely stonewalled.

Finally, another popular movement caused the shah to appoint Mossadegh as PM (a position that had previously been hand-picked by the British). Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry to enormous popular support, but the British responded with a blockade, and offered Eisenhower support in Korea and in forming NATO in exchange for having the CIA oust Mossadegh (an offer Truman had dismissed in disgust, as this was the first case of CIA involvement of regime change).

Mossadegh, like many Iranians at the time, saw their struggle as being only against the British and trusted the US to uphold the values it preached and saw it as a potential friend. The CIA took over every newspaper in the country and started publishing anti-government propaganda nonstop. They hired false flag protesters, who claimed to support the government and then wrecked shit (as well as hiring protesters to march against the government). Politicians, vote counters, religious leaders, journalists, anyone with an ounce of power was getting bribed by the CIA. Mossadegh believed that these were genuine and legitimate expressions of dissent and did nothing to crack down. Finally, a US diplomat told him a made-up sob story about people at the embassy getting death threats from his supporters and threatened to close it, and Mossadegh got on the radio and told his supporters to stand down and stay home - the next day, the CIA launched a coup that ousted him from power.

What followed was the restoration of the shah’s power, which included hunting down leftists with secret police, banning traditional religious garb to make the country appear more Western, and of course the continued exploitation of Iranian oil, the proceeds of which went straight to the king’s bank account. When the Iranian Revolution of 1973 happened, decade of political repression of the left allowed the Islamic fundamentalists to be the ones that took power, and the US allowed the shah to flee there which outraged the Iranians, considering that he had previously been installed by them.

I could tell you the same story over and over again about countries all around the globe. Many nations had resources stolen from them via violence and colonialism and these resources remain in the hands of the people who took them, and anyone who attempts to reassert control over their own resources is putting themselves in the crosshairs of the the US and NATO, whether through sanctions, seizing assets, CIA backed coups, or overt military aggression. But all they have to do is cover up the truth or present a bullshit justification, and by the time it falls apart it’ll be too late to do anything about it, it’ll have faded from the public consciousness, and people will assert, without reason or evidence, that “they don’t do that anymore” dispite having clear means and motive to and never having faced any sort of punishment for it. Meanwhile the historical examples can continue to be used to intimidate countries outside of the imperial core who don’t have goldfish memories, and understand that they could be next. So they either comply with neocolonial exploitation, or they take measures to prevent CIA infiltration, which then gets them derided as “authoritarian” by people like you - and if they do neither of these things, then they get coup’ed and replaced by a fascist.

That said, if people who haven’t harmed anyone are being imprisoned solely because of their beliefs, regardless of how poorly informed those beliefs are - which this New York Times article discusses - then it’s fair to criticize the state for those actions.

“Haven’t harmed anyone” - antivax conspiracy theories have led to the reemergence of all sorts of diseases, so that’s already one reason already. But moreover, allowing CIA-backed organizations to operate in a socialist country is a recipe for disaster, and there have been countless cases of leftist projects that were defeated after failing to take the necessary steps to stop the CIA from operating with impunity and installing a fascist. Look at Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran and the CIA coup in the 50’s if you want an example of what happens when you go against Western interests and refuse to crack down on foreign subversion because of your principles. Rule number 1 of good policy - you can’t do good policy if you’re not in power. If a policy results in fascists coming to power, then it’s not good policy.

I’m not fully convinced one way or the other, but the arguments were compelling enough for several major governments to speak out against it and pass laws in response.

“Several major governments” will speak out about any random bullshit that makes China look bad. They’re the ones who come up with it in the first place!

I’ve also been unable to find rebuttals to the specific evidence. As a contrast, the World Trade Center “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams so it must have been an inside job” conspiracy theories prompted government investigations and a ton of debunking articles that I can easily find via a web search.

Not exactly shocking that there’s more articles debunking a claim that makes the US government look bad than there are debunking a claim that makes the Chinese government look bad.

Inference involves making a conclusion by taking evidence and applying logic and reasoning. Not sure why you think that’s “made up.”

Now you’re just being a debatebro. Inference is a lower standard of evidence than hard proof. You obviously know this. Given the clear incentives people have to cast China in a bad light and to always assume the worst, and given a track record of made up bullshit in that regard, “inference” from these people is worth less than dogshit.

Let’s say I’m at work and my lunch goes missing. If I think that one of my coworkers is the type of person who might steal my lunch, then I might infer that they probably did that. But let’s say that any time anything goes wrong, or even when nothing goes wrong, I accuse that coworker of random bullshit that never turns out to be true. At what point do you start saying my so-called “inferences” about this person are just “made up?”

Tribunal:

What Tribunal? What organization was involved, why are they an authority on the topic? Let’s see, the full name of that Tribunal was:

“The Independent Tribunal Into Forced Organ Harvesting of Prisoners of Conscience in China,” known as the China Tribunal,[66] was initiated in 2018[67] by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China."

I wonder what the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China is going to determine about whether transplant abuse is happening in China? Say, who’s on this, anyway?

The China Tribunal was initiated by the charity ETAC, of which “a minority of its committee members are Falun Gong practitioners”.[3]

Who would’ve guessed?

One man, Wang Xiaohua, was imprisoned in a labor camp in Yunnan in 2001 when he and twenty other Falun Gong detainees

Another source that’s just “Falun Gong says this.”

Israeli authorities arrested several men involved in mediating transplants of Chinese prisoners’ organs for Israelis. One of the men had stated in an undercover interview that the organs came from “people who oppose the regime, those sentenced to death and from prisoners of the Falun Gong.”

Source is a book I don’t have access to.

Tibet

Tibet has historically been a part of China and is claimed by the ROC. It emerged briefly as an independent entity in the political instability in the early 20th century, along with countless little warlord states, and it never received international recognition. During the time when it was a de facto state, it was a backwards authoritarian theocracy with a caste system, serfdom, and a life expectancy of about 30. China ended these things and vastly improved the quality of life for the vast majority of Tibetans.

There are plenty of people in the US who would say that the changes in the South following the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery constituted a destruction of the Antebellum culture. “A civilization, Gone with the Wind,” to quote the movie. The South did undergo many changes including culturally, as much of its culture was tied to the institution of slavery. If it’s true that Southern culture was so tied to slavery that freeing the slaves destroyed that culture, then I say good riddance - and if freeing the serfs destroyed Tibetan culture then I’d say the same.

Organ harvesting

If you actually read that article, the evidence presented is laughable.

The authors qualified their report by noting the inherent difficulties in verifying the alleged crimes: no independent organizations are allowed to investigate conditions in China, eyewitness evidence is difficult to obtain, and official information about both organ transplantation and executions is often withheld or is contradictory. The initial report however received a mixed reception. In the US, a Congressional Research Service report by Thomas Lum stated that the Kilgour–Matas report relied largely on logical inference, without bringing forth new or independently obtained testimony; the credibility of much of the key evidence was said to be questionable.

In other words, nobody’s actually collected any real evidence and it’s all just speculation and inference. It’s made up. Many of the people pushing the narrative have incentive to lie about China.

FLG

Falun Gong is a far-right political group funded by the CIA with made-up religious trappings so they can cry oppression when they aren’t allowed to spread lies and bigotry with impunity. Just from the Wikipedia page on them, they oppose gay rights, feminism, and modern medicine and science and espouse QAnon and antivax conspiracy theories - this is the main source of “organ harvesting” claims btw. China Uncensored is directly affiliated with Falun Gong.

I wouldn’t necessarily describe the TV Tropes page as white supremacist but that’s the context for that stuff, and the page is definitely missing some disclaimers and context.

My brother is a veteran, and when he came back he started “self-medicating” with meth to treat his PTSD. He was constantly on the verge of crisis and making violent threats (carefully phrased to not be actionable). At the time, I was working at an Amazon warehouse, at times doing 60 hours weeks, and at the time I was on Facebook and if I got off work and wanted to check it, he’d see I was online and if I left him on read it would be a whole thing. I described it as being a 911 operator on call 24/7. I basically wrote him off as dead to me, but my parents wouldn’t and that was the worst part. I remember visiting and we tried to go out for dinner but then he texted my mom with another crisis and now she’s in tears again, like always. It was constant. And he’d accuse them of all sorts of stuff, my mom still had one of those phones you had to press the button multiple times to get a letter and if she had a typo he’d accuse her of doing it on purpose. All he did all day was be alone with his thoughts, going through the same cycles, shooting up meth and absorbing whatever crazy right-wing bullshit he was listening to.

My parents are pretty well off and they were there for him. They tried to check him into all sorts of mental hospitals and rehab, but he’d check himself out early. There was an incident early on where he checked himself into the VA and they tried to cut him off Xanax cold turkey, which is potentially life-threatening, and he responded violently. This put a flag on his record which made it difficult to get him treatment later, and he was also careful to phrase his threats ambiguously enough to not be institutionalized.

It was pretty clear to me that this was only going to end one way, and at one point I thought about going up there and killing him myself, before he could hurt an innocent person. But the cops kept a watch on his house until it happened and he took a gun and led them on a car chase to somebody’s house, pulled a gun on them, and got shot in the arm. When I heard it happened, I didn’t know if he’d live or die and didn’t care, I was just relieved that it had finally happened and that nobody else got hurt. He went to jail for a bit and that got him off the meth so he’s doing better now.

What really gets me about it though is how easy we got off, though. Compared to the people on the other side of the war, the people actually living in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered, countless civilians. The children terrified of sunny days because that’s when the drones fly. How many times over do you have to multiply the pain and suffering I felt when I saw my mother’s face in tears to get even an inkling of the suffering inflicted on those people?

And it’s all just out of sight, out of mind. We went to war and people hardly even noticed, everybody just went about their lives as normal like it wasn’t even happening. People don’t even give a shit about veterans killing themselves on the daily in VA parking lots and waiting rooms because they can’t get care, they sure as shit don’t care about brown people on the other side of the world that the news treats as subhuman. And now, Bush gets rehabilitated on Ellen and the libs expect me to vote for Biden. It’s absurd how little people care about all the people they murdered.

I suppose time will tell whether that trend will grow to the point of being really significant. I don’t really trust the state as it stands to regulate speech in my interests. I do still believe in deplatforming hate speech when possible, and I don’t really see the marketplace of ideas as being reliable due to certain ideas having stronger signals, either from monetary backing or grabbing attention. As things stand though, I don’t really have a better answer than just personally using the fediverse over big social media sites.

Is the tendency for devisive content to be promoted a quirk of certain social media platforms, or is something more inherent? I’d argue that people are more likely to click on something if it presents a message of, “You are under attack!!” as opposed to say, “Firefighter rescues kitten from tree!” because the former invokes more and more powerful emotions. Brains are designed to seek out and pay attention to threats, and I think even something like a print newspaper is going to be subject to that incentive, at least to a degree.

The other question I have is:

What we need to do is take away the power social media companies have to influence the types and quantity of information we receive.

Do you mean through state regulation, or just consumer choice?

I agree with you in part, but:

Societies which stifle dissent, especially using the power of the state, grow weaker because they aren’t able to effectively adapt to change. Remember it is not too long ago that advocating for gay marriage would have been seen as morally deviant and repugnant. But strong speech protections allow us as a society to have that discussion and come to the correct conclusion which is that it’s fine to be gay, that love is love, and that gay people deserve equal protection under the law.

Free speech is also allowing a massive, astroturfed campaign to spread transphobia. The people with the most money have the loudest voices, and printing sensationalist bigotry to provoke fear, anger, and hate gets the clicks which makes more money.

What makes it especially terrifying, and I’m speaking from personal experience, is that you don’t know who’s on the other side of the screen. Most people in the target audience will just get a little pissy and keep clicking headlines (and voting to take away rights), but there’s also people who are unstable, whether due to drugs or psychological issues or simply being too deep into the narrative. When you have for example far-right media outlets saying trans people are pedophiles, and more mainstream sources validating that perspective in not so many words, and that’s being broadcast to some meth head watching hours on end every day, then I’m not really a fan of that speech being free.

Just last weekend, for instance, some queer friends and I were threatened by an unstable person with a metal pipe just walking down the street, idk how much the media plays into that but I also had a family member who did what I described above, shooting up meth and watching shit like OAN all day every day. And even regular people who watch too much cable news, and it doesn’t even matter that much what they watch, if you try to reason with them, no matter how much sense you make or what facts you have on your side, it’s one conversation vs all the time they’ve spent watching the news - I like to compare it to trying to win an argument when the other side gets to say 100 words (or more) every time you say 1. In this way, good ideas don’t always win in the marketplace of ideas.

But yeah I agree with your overall point, sanctioning someone for interviewing a world leader is some bullshit, fuck Tucker Carlson but it’s always important to understand rival geopolitical powers.

I was raised Catholic and left it at a young age and spent a lot of time uprooting the brainworms so I don’t think there’s much left. However, whenever I can’t find something I really need and start getting stressed, I’ll still recite, “Dear St. Anthony, please come around, my X has been lost and cannot be found.” It’s a useful way to calm down and focus instead of freaking out and panicking.

Other than that, I still retain a lot of the theology I learned in high school, and I can still sometimes get a little opinionated about various things even though I have no dog in the fight.

Years ago I tried my hand gambling on politics on PredictIt, and I didn’t lose all that much, but there were a couple bets I lost that seemed like sure things. Mostly the lesson I learned is that talk is cheap and there’s no real consequences for people saying one thing and doing the other.

For example, in the 2016 election, there was a market on whether no-name Carly Fiona would qualify for the CNN debate, and by the rules they set she didn’t qualify, but there hadn’t been as many polls in the right timeframe as had been expected. Still, they released a statement days before the debate, saying “rules are rules,” so I took a bet at like 90% odds thinking it was completely safe - then they let her in at the last minute and I lost big. I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but I think I lost a fair bit on a market about Trump meeting with Kim Jong Un, which was a pretty chaotic market. The most chaotic market I ever saw, which I avoided and wanted no part of, was whether Bernie would win Iowa in 2020, and watching it closely in real time made it very obvious that some really shady stuff was going on. Probably the most I ever lost was Biden winning the 2020 primary, which is about when I got out of it.

I would not recommend gambling like that because if you have money on the line there’s an incentive to be glued to the news in a way that can be really unhealthy. Honestly the stress was worse than the money I lost. It’s more trouble than it’s worth, the fees will get you, also it’s generally more about predicting what the market will think so you can profit off the swings, and personally I think it’s kind of a distasteful way to engage in politics. At the same time, it can be a learning experience - it definitely got me in the habit of asking “And what consequences will this person face if they’re lying off their ass?” every time I see a headline about someone saying something, and of not paying as much attention to statements in general.

Tfw your subscription-based private court rules that weapon emplacements pointed directly at your neighbor’s house are not a NAP violation

Tfw you’re hanging out in a cell getting ready to testify against a bunch of super-powerful people, in a prison that’s prevented every attempted suicide in decades, after having made repeated statements that you have absolutely no intention of killing yourself, and then suddenly both the guards leave to go take a nap, and at that exact time, you notice that the multiple cameras watching your cell all randomly glitch off at the same time, so at that moment you decide to kill yourself using a method that’s indistinguishable from being murdered