@EugeneMcParland A #MUSTREAD; unless you insist on pressing snooze again so you could later claim "how could this happen. I had no idea..."
The lede: "Confronting the new Axis now might save a lot of lives later."
I've been arguing against empowering hostile dictatorships while ignoring developing democracies since the 1990s... ๐คทโโ๏ธ
Democracies: "Let's send all the money, technology and manufacturing to the 'People's Republic' of China to help its regime to survive and foster a global alliance of despots...!" ๐ฅณ
And guess what, our democracies *are still doing it* !! ๐คฏ
"Today, a new Axis is coming together in plain sight."
I tried using the hashtag #AxisOfDespots here among few others... That collaborative axis came together years ago, with emperor-for-life jinping as its central sugardaddy.
Kasparov states long list of blindingly obvious historical facts which the vast majority of people seem completely oblivious to these days, but please read, learn and weep.
ใItโs 1939 and we have Charles Lindbergh (note: a firebrand nazi sympathizer) in the White House.
Leaders in other free countries canโt force the current occupant of the Oval Office to change who he is. For now, they will have to defend their eloquently-espoused belief in liberty on their own. Individually, none of the modern democracies in Europe or Asia can face down China, but collectively, they would stand a chance. If they stop Putin in Ukraine, they might even convince Xi to back down from some of his more ambitious plans. A little leadership now might save a lot of people later by nipping the global conflict in the bud before China and Russia grow too strong.ใ
@noelreports Modi's Hindustan is also siding with the top despot behind the curtain i.e. CCP china. (despite their medieval style attacks in the Tibetan Himalayas, not to mention their past land grabs).
Modi's hinduist regime fears democracy, tolerance and progress more than those that militarily attack them. ๐คฏ
India will be ashamed of this period, but hopefully sooner rather than too late.
The better-informed people laugh, not irrationally, at the magas who "just wanted cheap eggs!".
Meanwhile 99% of these smart people couldn't spend more to fund the Chinese dictatorship's global rise even if they tried...
ยฏ\_(ใ)_/ยฏ
It's basically the same thing. Refusing to see evil because "cheap and convenient", for the time being.
Meanwhile others are already paying the price.
@rbreich The greatest geopolitical catastrophe since WWII was democracies' 'coupling' (i.e. financing and empowering) with the military-expansionist CCP dictatorship of China in the first place.
USA handing that dictatorship its "Most Favoured Nation" trade status in 1994 and greenlighting its accession to the WTO in 2000.
They were epoch-making *bi-partisan* mistakes, sponsored by your business/donor interests' greed.
Now both sides of your two-party system have to some extent realized what globally powerful monster you created over the last 30+ years.
Trump is a narcissist-fascist moron and his motley crew of sycophant morons are naturally doing it idiotically, but moaning about the fact that the USA is now engaging "trade war" (instead of rightfully moaning about the disastrous tactics!) feels a little rich.
(The CCP was *always* manipulating trade and tech transfers to its sole benefit)
Democrat administrations since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 at the latest should all have tried building a *global coalition of democracies* that rewarded democracy and shunned all despots.
Instead putin was emboldened watching how the CCP regime got away with literally everything, just like all other dictators. ๐คทโโ๏ธ
This rant wasn't your finest hour.
World's democracies condemned the crackdown in Hong Kong, but did nothing to impose costs on the CCP dictatorship. Instead business (read: Chinese exports) only grew and grew. Gotta empower them despots! ยฏ\_(ใ)_/ยฏ
Hong Kong's pro-democracy struggle presented an opportunity for democracies to stand up against dictatorship, but we failed miserably.
Giving the #CCP yet another free pass (after its repressive occupation of Tibet in 1950-1951 and the 1989 Tiananmen massacre) surely emboldened #putin to invade #Ukraine in 2022.
Repression of Tibetans, Uighurs, South-Mongolians, Hongkongers... or a billion+ voiceless Chinese brought no consequences, but at least the invasion of *European* Ukraine gave us Europeans a limited wakeup.
It's not enough. We could have aided developing democracies when the Soviet empire fell in 1989-1991 and *not aided* repressive regimes. Instead we doubled down on doing business without limits and empowered the likes of Chinese dictatorship.
There are things I love about Europe, and things I am deeply ashamed of. Talking about human rights while empowering despots belongs in the latter category.
Some foreign individuals did "Stand with Hong Kong" though. At least one here in Mastodon is, as always, still busy fighting authoritarian takeover. Now in her homeland of the USA.
โYour freedom and mine cannot be separated.โ
โ Nelson Mandela
#Hongkong #Tibet #Uighurs #ccp #china #EuropeanDefence #AxisOfDespots
Joe Biden has been the most decent human being โ alongside the recently deceased Jimmy Carter โ to have occupied the White House at least since WWII, if not well earlier.
Both were Democrats opposed and kneecapped by an increasingly corrupt and unprincipled 'GOP', now merely known as maga, a mindless organism controlled by a self-serving parasite, similar to how the CCP controls the population of China for its autocratic objectives or how russia has always operated.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/18/world/zombie-ant-fungus-parasite-mystery-scn/index.html
While we should and ultimately will respect both Carter and Biden for their moral objectives and achievements, we need to realize that the present anti-democratic forces, both domestic and global, will not "play fair".
Think Stalin, Hitler and Mao not as the most despicable and murderous despots in history, but as role models.
Naivety stopped being a quality we can afford already years ago. And it started with the 'rehabilitation' and normalization of first the PRC China, then autocratic putin and finally maga that gutted the USA from within, as designed.
With the next four years signalling "whatever the hell they want" (trump, 2024) to the enemies of world's remaining democracies I can only hope that we'll still have enough wagons to circle and the American Democrats are more focused and united in helping restore sanity in the world they already once helped recreate.
#Biden #JoeBiden #democracy #AxisOfDespots #CCP #china #russia #putin #trump #maga
@GossiTheDog โ๏ธ [alt take]
"... but for a brief moment we really 0wned the libs..."
๐ก๏ธ๐คฏ Here's a wild and totally unreasonable idea: The 'Free World' industrialists and financiers that *empowered* and *emboldened* military-expansionist dictatorships that attack other countries should 'contribute' much higher proportion (from their loot) for the defence against those aggressors than the regular people.
Of course it is in everyone's interest that democracies don't simply fold and surrender, but those aiding and abetting the authoritarians shouldn't be simply allowed to stash away their profits and wash their hands and image from what they've done.
Case in point: Basically all nazi-collaborator corporations got off with zero consequences after #WWII, and practically all of them (and countless more) were again involved in building up the regimes in #russia and #china... ๐คท๐ปโโ๏ธ
What have we learnt?
#Germany #UnitedStates #EuropeanUnion #humanrights #dictatorship #imperialism #AxisOfDespots #ccp #putin #Ukraine #UkraineWar
โ ๐ Some history-changing events or trends were easy to see as they started unfolding. Just consider the various actors and their real motives and objectives. ๐คฏ
Democracies, imperfect as they are, had opportunities to react and either prevent or mitigate nefarious developments, or they could just choose to not care.
I saw through #putin when the assassinations of critics first started. (NB. he already had neoimperialist track record!)
I've watched #CCP's *actions* through the eyes of its victims while listening its manipulative win-win BS. (never in doubt)
I knew America's 'Iraq adventure' would, besides a few other things, destroy #USA's standing in *most* of the world... (the wild exhilaration of Chinese nationalists was the icing on that cake)
#trump? One of the easiest characters ever to see through... (which makes all that followed all the more shocking...!)
As a natural 'liberal democratic' friend of tolerant and secular Indian republic โ always an ideal โ I've watched the rise and rise of the intolerant hindu nationalist populism with concern and sadness.
๐ฅ I didn't foresee the Gov't of #India assassinating a political (religious) opponent โ a citizen of #Canada โon Canadian soil and then revelling in its ability to execute the deed and to taunt the elected leader of the 'target country'. With apparently most of India 80% Hindu population โ including the opposition โ celebrating this new-found audaciously extraterritorial muscularity. ๐๏ธ (me=fail)
June 18, 2023 โ the day Hardeep Singh Nijjar was gunned down outside a Sikh gurdwara in Canada โ may well mark brave new #Hindustan's coming-out party.
Now, I get the "why" without accepting the act's necessity. It's the "how", "where" and what followed that mark a new era. A hindu-nationalist India is *not* even interested in being full buddies with liberal democracies on a 'fundamental' level.
This actually exhaustively explains #Modi's solid attachment to the #CRIBS#BRICS alternative formula and Modi taking India into the "Shanghai Cooperation Organisation" (SCO) in 2015.
But just how far down the rabbit hole is the dominant Hindu electorate willing to follow, with "the greatest democracy's" closest allies consisting of a motley crew #AxisOfDespots whose sole unifying drive is "liberal democracy delenda est"?
Ulrich Speck (๐ฉ๐ช) on democracies vs ๐จ๐ณ & ๐ท๐บ :
ใThe battle clearly is about principles: how to organise power inside states and between states. What rulers in Russia and China want is clear: the right to run states without democracy and rights of the people, and the right to dominate weaker countries by using every instrument.
Liberal-minded countries around the world, led by the US, are pushing back against this vision that Putin and Xi try to jointly advance ("changes that the world has not seen in a century").
That struggle is not just about borders and the independence of countries (Ukraine, Taiwan), it is a struggle about far broader principles: the future of the liberal order -- the package consisting of human rights, rule of law, democracy, market economy and collective security.
Ukraine and Taiwan are on the frontline of this struggle for broader principles and ideas of order. Important for the liberal-minded coalition to win: to make sure that Russia won't control Ukraine and China won't subjugate Taiwan by force.ใ
https://nitter.net/ulrichspeck/status/1703328806411370949
As recently as in 2021 it would've been seen as scandalous to state the reality of rising threat of authoritarianism as clearly. The peoples on the front lines of that struggle were routinely shrugged off as "alarmists" or worse.
On a personal note I recall hanging out with a number of German China-business types and discreetly gauging their interest in the ethical considerations of their 'engagement', not least due to certain historical considerations supposedly learned from Germany's own past. Depending how one counts, they collectively hit either 0% or 100% batting average. Zero concerns about anything. Schroeder and Merkel weren't complete anomalies, but normalizers of that indifferent appeasement and collaboration (for profit).
Thankfully I already knew that this lot wasn't representative of entire Germany and the reaction to russian invasion of #Ukraine shows that most Germans still see value in doing the right thing.
#china #russia #authoritarianism #AxisOfDespots #Germany #UlrichSpeck #Zeitenwende #HandelOhneWandel #democracy #Taiwan #humanrights
demi7en ๐๐ช๐บ