[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[Username17]

Having it switch from red to white and back in the middle of the US IMPERIALISM text would make it hard to read, so they made those stripes double width. Similarly with the skulls. If you dropped the skull font small enough that you could get fifty of them on the blue field, you'd have difficulty working out that they were skulls and not smudges.

Now, these same people would probably be pretty upset with what happens re: Chinese encroachment and Islamic separatists if the US actually pulled military support for the Philippines. But I respect their typographic and vexicological choices. This ain't no "Evil Bert" demonstration.



-Username17

[Prak]

Except they already have a stroke on the letters, so the contrast would have been fine. And if they'd used just skulls instead of skull-and-crossbones, they probably could have reduced the size by at least 30% and at least gotten closer to fifty.

On the other hand, those aren't Americans, so I'm certainly going to allow for them not knowing, and not carrying about, the symbolism in our flag. The recognizability is really the important thing.

[maglag]

Now, these same people would probably be pretty upset with what happens re: Chinese encroachment and Islamic separatists if the US actually pulled military support for the Philippines.

The last time another asian nation threatened the philipines, the USA troops there ran away as fast as they could.

Sure, they eventually returned. After 3 years. Also after the philipines were already running their own guerilla war and knew all of the (new) invader's weak points.

Then the USA reduced Manilla to rubble because, while Tokyo remained relatively unscratched.

[angelfromanotherpin]

There's a lot wrong with what maglag's said there. I mean, unless by 'ran away as fast as they could,' he actually means 'fought a losing battle for three fucking months.' And by 'remained relatively unscratched' he actually means 'was firebombed multiple times resulting in ~100,000 deaths.'

[Username17]

The "last time" another Asian nation threatened the Philippines was this fucking year, when China claimed right to annex the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal. They were faced down by American warships.



Since the Philippines has disputed territorial claims with China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and (insignificantly) Brunei, they get threatened by other Asian nations fairly regularly. Like, more than once a year.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Tests to determine if you are a USAsshole.

1) You believe China is a threat to anything other than US Hegemony.

2) You believe the US has an international history of being helpful and defending others.

3) You believe Obama's actually frankly offensive openly stated plan to "contain China" and maintain US world dominance is already anything other than an abject failure.

[Username17]

Tests to determine if you are a USAsshole.

1) You believe China is a threat to anything other than US Hegemony.

Stop Being Retarded.

China has made military threats on literally all of their neighbors. Including the ones that are separated from them by water. China is extremely aggressive and literally invades any and all territory it believes it can get away with.

China is pretty much no threat at all to US hegemony. They do not at this time have a blue water navy and cannot meaningfully project force to the Americas. They are however a giant military threat to every single country within their arm's reach. Even being a nominally communist country like Vietnam or a socialist country with explicit non-aggression pacts like India is no protection at all from the People's Liberation Army coming roaring over the border if the Chinese Communist Party thinks they can buy an inch of your soil for a pint of their blood.

PL is, as usual, completely full of shit and laughably parochial.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

What the fuck, PL?

China and the Philippines have active territorial disputes. Active in the sense that their navies routinely apprehend one another's civilian vessels when they enter those territories. There are major incidents regularly that you don't hear about because you're a poorly informed shithead, but this isn't some big secret. China really does make a lot of fairly aggressive territorial claims to the surrounding waters, and the countries involved in those claims really do flex their muscles by targeting one another's civilian vessels. We are seriously talking one of the regions which could plausibly start World War 3.

[PhoneLobster]

You don't get to blame the antagonism in those regions on anyone other than the USA and it's proxies, same as Eastern Europe, same as the Middle East.

The antagonistic nation in danger of starting world war 3 is the USA, it is now, it always has been, it always will be.

Even now as China exerting it's significant power predominantly through trade and diplomacy (and is very much succeeding) your fall back, both as an argument AND as a horrendous official strategy is "but we have a bigger fucking navy! so we rule the world" fuck you you militaristic imperial fuck shits.

Your nation has been the worlds bully for too long for the rest of the planet to give you any credit for your stupid protection racket.

[hyzmarca]

Tests to determine if you are a USAsshole.

1) You believe China is a threat to anything other than US Hegemony.

Stop Being Retarded.

China has made military threats on literally all of their neighbors. Including the ones that are separated from them by water. China is extremely aggressive and literally invades any and all territory it believes it can get away with.

China is pretty much no threat at all to US hegemony. They do not at this time have a blue water navy and cannot meaningfully project force to the Americas. They are however a giant military threat to every single country within their arm's reach. Even being a nominally communist country like Vietnam or a socialist country with explicit non-aggression pacts like India is no protection at all from the People's Liberation Army coming roaring over the border if the Chinese Communist Party thinks they can buy an inch of your soil for a pint of their blood.

PL is, as usual, completely full of shit and laughably parochial.

-Username17

China really only makes claim to territory that has previously been controlled by China at some point within the last 3600 years. And thus you could claim that that territory is still part of China and its possession by other countries, or its attempt to establish its own sovereignty, is illegitimate.

Of course, many people would dispute that stance. But China's position is that once a territory is part of China, it can't stop being a part of China. And that includes tiny islands that China hasn't actually had control over since before Christ.

But I wouldn't call them expansionist. They're more focused on reclamation than expansion.

You don't get to blame the antagonism in those regions on anyone other than the USA and it's proxies, same as Eastern Europe, same as the Middle East.

The antagonistic nation in danger of starting world war 3 is the USA, it is now, it always has been, it always will be.

Even now as China exerting it's significant power predominantly through trade and diplomacy (and is very much succeeding) your fall back, both as an argument AND as a horrendous official strategy is "but we have a bigger fucking navy! so we rule the world" fuck you you militaristic imperial fuck shits.

Your nation has been the worlds bully for too long for the rest of the planet to give you any credit for your stupid protection racket.

We don't just have a bigger Navy. We also have enough nukes to kill literally everyone. Now wouldn't that be fun? We could depopulate China tomorrow. A billion people dead in less than 10 minutes. Now that's power. But we don't, because we're the good guys. If we were the bad guys, we would have done it years ago, before China got the Bomb.

[Mechalich]

China really only makes claim to territory that has previously been controlled by China at some point within the last 3600 years. And thus you could claim that that territory is still part of China and its possession by other countries, or its attempt to establish its own sovereignty, is illegitimate.

Of course, many people would dispute that stance. But China's position is that once a territory is part of China, it can't stop being a part of China. And that includes tiny islands that China hasn't actually had control over since before Christ.

But I wouldn't call them expansionist. They're more focused on reclamation than expansion.

Okay, but that stance is so obviously bullshit by pretty much any standard acceptable to any set of international norms you could contemplate that it's very existence constitutes an expansionist stance by China.

The People's Republic of China doesn't have a 3600 year history. It has, being rather generous, about a 100 year history. It has passably legitimate claims to territories lost or disputed while it was actually functioning, which includes some disputed territories along some Himalayan borders and the Kashmir region and maybe, maybe, Taiwan.

The PRC claiming that is has a right to territory that was controlled by the Han Dynasty or the Tang Dynasty (claims that are generally based on suspect Imperial Chinese records as the only source in any case) is nothing but a bunch of imperialistic fig leaves. Imagine if the UK made the same claims: they would have the rights to half the world by the same calculus.

China is pressing claims in the South China Sea in particular right now, because of the fish that live in that ocean and because of the oil and natural gas that are quite probably under it. It's a fairly pure case of resource-based aggression.

[PhoneLobster]

because we're the good guys

No, the USA are not "the good guys" they are the nation who's international relations consist of in excess of 50 years RUNNING of state sponsored terrorism, illegal wars of aggression, undemocratic coupes and general fucking war crimes.

The USA isn't always the ONLY bad guy in any given international incident, but it hasn't been on the good guys side internationally since world war fucking 2. And even then only reluctantly. And even then ending with the needless atrocity of NUKING civilian cities exclusively so as to posture against "the commies".

The USA in any given conflict with China DEFINITELY doesn't get to claim it's the good guy considering it's record compared against China's, a nation that HASN'T got fifty years of war crimes and wars of aggression under it's fucking belt with just it's latest hits just for the last two US presidents including but not being limited to Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, and the Ukraine.

Because guess which nation WASN'T the bad guys in all those or any fucking comparable incident in that period? Fucking China.

China is a big scary nation with lots of power and certainly it's own agenda. But the world is embracing it with open fucking arms because the USA is just THAT transparently evil as an international force in comparison.

Delude yourself if you like but the USA are the fucking bad guys and have been for your entire fucking lifetime.

And since there is a presidential election going on that US residents think matters, let's remember, while it's likely to have significant domestic impacts, from the perspective of the international community it doesn't actually make all that much difference to the rest of the world if you DO elect an actual lunatic because you are already are that bad and have been since forever and Hillary is just as likely to fucking bomb Iran for no fucking good reason.

[Kaelik]

considering it's record compared against China's, a nation that HASN'T got fifty years of war crimes and wars of aggression under it's fucking belt

I'm sure that all of China's neighbors agree with that assessment, especially the ones China has conquered.

[hyzmarca]

because we're the good guys

No, the USA are not "the good guys" they are the nation who's international relations consist of in excess of 50 years RUNNING of state sponsored terrorism, illegal wars of aggression, undemocratic coupes and general fucking war crimes.

The USA isn't always the ONLY bad guy in any given international incident, but it hasn't been on the good guys side internationally since world war fucking 2. And even then only reluctantly. And even then ending with the needless atrocity of NUKING civilian cities exclusively so as to posture against "the commies".

The USA in any given conflict with China DEFINITELY doesn't get to claim it's the good guy considering it's record compared against China's, a nation that HASN'T got fifty years of war crimes and wars of aggression under it's fucking belt with just it's latest hits just for the last two US presidents including but not being limited to Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, and the Ukraine.

Because guess which nation WASN'T the bad guys in all those or any fucking comparable incident in that period? Fucking China.

China is a big scary nation with lots of power and certainly it's own agenda. But the world is embracing it with open fucking arms because the USA is just THAT transparently evil as an international force in comparison.

Delude yourself if you like but the USA are the fucking bad guys and have been for your entire fucking lifetime.

And since there is a presidential election going on that US residents think matters, let's remember, while it's likely to have significant domestic impacts, from the perspective of the international community it doesn't actually make all that much difference to the rest of the world if you DO elect an actual lunatic because you are already are that bad and have been since forever and Hillary is just as likely to fucking bomb Iran for no fucking good reason.

Listen. The reason that the Fae are refereed to as the Fair Folk, and the Furies as the Kindly Ones, is that if you call them that loudly and often enough, maybe they'll believe it and act accordingly.

With the USA, you already have an advantage. We believe that we're the good guys, and try to act accordingly. You just have to reinforce it. But this isn't helping. Because if we start believing that we're evil then international relations becomes a horror movie with the USA as Jason Voorhees and the rest of the world as horny teenagers having sex on the shores of Crystal Lake.


If we really wanted to go Imperialist asshole, we could make 1984 look like a goddamn motherfucking Utopia.


Imagine a world devoid of hope, where there are two classes of people, Americans and slaves. Slaves die by the millions in slaughter-factories where they labor ceaselessly without respite or recompense to feed the unending vacuous hunger of American Consumerism.

Imagine a world were any slave-nation that refuses to prostrate itself is reduced to radioactive ash without the slightest bit of remorse.

That is the world your ramblings will bring on yourself.

[tussock]

The international rules are if your country claims an island then the stuff in the sea within 200 n.miles of that island, and not closer to anyone else's, is yours for exclusive economic purposes, give or take for continental shelves and how those rules interact, which no one really agrees on. You get to control and sell the mining and fishing rights, basically. You may not stop ships travelling over it, that's only 12 n.miles, but you can arrest folk for fishing, and board their ships to check if they are or not.

So them arresting each other's fishing vessels is what you would expect in a dispute over an Exclusive Economic Zone border.

One should note that Exclusive Economic Zone disputes are common. A lot of countries have them, particularly where governance of some isolated shit pile changed hands in the last couple centuries. Fishing rights in the disputed zones totally get people arrested, and/or shot at.

In the current disputes in the South China Sea, the "problem" is mostly the Spratly Islands, which are a series of uninhabited navigation hazards that have never been documented in a way that allows the normal international maritime rules to be applied. The only international ruling was that they are not proper islands, merely projecting rocks and reefs at best, should not be documented as islands, and no one can claim them. Both the Philippines and China rejected the ruling and continue to claim extensive sea that the international community says is not theirs to claim.

So the lack of inhabitants or contiguous governance or natural liveable space or history of sea-bird-egg collection or anything in the area means everyone's claims are equally bullshit, but the US militarily backs the claims of the Philippines because it's a proxy state for a US naval base, duh.

The imperialistic power acting outside the normal rules at the greatest distance from its own borders in this case is the United States of America, but everyone is equally wrong, the South China Sea should be almost entirely international waters.

[Mechalich]

China is a big scary nation with lots of power and certainly it's own agenda. But the world is embracing it with open fucking arms because the USA is just THAT transparently evil as an international force in comparison.

No, that is not what is happening. Currently, the largest political issue in the Pacific region is the Trans-Pacific Partnership which is a major trade deal wherein Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Mexico, Canada, Peru, Chile, and New Zealand get together to bind there economies in such a way as to implicitly undercut Chinese influence over them all by tying them closer to the United States. So pretty much the exact opposite of what you suggest is what's actually happening.

[Dr_Noface]

Any sources for that analysis, Mechalich? I've also been told that the TPP is a blatant powergrab by certain moneyed interests. What kind of the tradeoff does signing onto the TPP have?

[Mechalich]

This explainer seems to cover the basic points, and this article discusses the China impacts specifically, but TPP is admittedly insanely complex and I'm not an expert, but the general idea is that it will bind several important East Asian nations: specifically the growing economies of Malaysia and Vietnam (and less critically Singapore and Brunei) into a trade pact where the standards are set by the US and other advanced economies who have similar, or quite possibly better, standards. There are certain areas where China is specifically excluded and the idea is that doing so will put pressure on China to meet the new standards for any future trade pacts between it and any of the involved nations.

It is absolutely possible, and in fact, quite likely, that certain moneyed interests will make out like bandits due to certain specific provisions of TPP - intellectual property is the one I've heard mentioned most often, and any increase in IP projection tends to inherently benefit big corporations at the expense of the little guy.

The thing is, TPP can both vastly benefit certain moneyed interests and have an important positive geopolitical effect at the same time. Whether having slightly reduced growth for US (and Japanese, Australian, and Canadian) workers is worth it to limit the specter of Chinese aggression over Vietnam and Malaysia is certainly open to debate.

Personally I think TPP is deeply flawed and something else is a better plan, but that's not really material to the point regarding how other nations view China compared to the US. If the US was truly hated and feared and China welcomed with open arms as PhoneLobster had claimed, TPP would not be happening at all.

[PhoneLobster]

Any sources for that analysis, Mechalich? I've also been told that the TPP is a blatant powergrab by certain moneyed interests. What kind of the tradeoff does signing onto the TPP have?

The TPP is sort of, at least now, somehow meant to be the thing Mechalich thinks it is. There has been a lot of language along those lines from the Obama administration even though technically the deal is "open" to China and stuff.

But generally more than an actual free trade deal it IS currently more the thing you think it is, and in practice has yet to actually succeed in being a thing at all since the agreement proposed by the USA has been stymied by it's greatest and most effective opponent so far, the USA.

Regardless of that what is China doing in the mean time? Trading with everyone. What would happen if you did genuinely successfully limit China's trade with everyone? Pretty much global economic collapse.

What else has China been up to, why only negotiating it's own bigger international trade treaty (you know just covering more GDP than the TPP since... well the year BEFORE the TPP actually started most of it's negotiations). Of course the fact that the Chinese alternative has the entirety of ASEAN is on board kinda makes the "use TPP to exclude China from Pacific trade" kinda a farce since 7 out of 12 of the nations signed up to the TPP are ALSO involved in the Chinese agreement, resulting pretty much in China being excluded not so much from "the Pacific" as from "North America and a couple of countries in South America". Which. Lets face it, aren't actually going to reduce trade with China whatsoever anyway.

Their agreement even includes it's own bullshit fuck yous on copyright and stuff. Only slightly less bad in some ways because of course the USA isn't involved so lesser evil.

And as an extra fuck you to "The USA is the good guys" India (oh yeah AND the Philippines, oh yeah AND basically all of Chinas cowering neighbours in need of rescue), a country China is so evil for being "antagonistic" towards is PART OF THE DEAL. So while the USA runs around trying to "exclude" its "enemies" from trade deals because China is so "antagonistic" the evil evil China is attempting to negotiate mutually beneficial if somewhat bullshit trade deals with the supposed victims of their antagonism unlike the fucking USA that tries to use them as a blunt club to smash their rivals with along with their totally not bully boy tactics of endless boasting about nukes and aircraft carriers. But then the USA just sort of gets distracted trying to sell out to corporate interests instead of having an actual trade deal and then block it in their own government for political point scoring.

[Chamomile]

Any sources for that analysis, Mechalich? I've also been told that the TPP is a blatant powergrab by certain moneyed interests. What kind of the tradeoff does signing onto the TPP have?

To say that the TPP represents the US and other signatory nations selling their souls to corporations in exchange for limiting China's influence on the Pacific is probably the least inaccurate way of summarizing the deal's effects in a single sentence. I consider corporations to be at least as imminent a threat to freedom and opportunity as China so I don't really approve of this tradeoff, but it's still true that it is (among other things) a sort of economic defense pact against China.

[Username17]

You don't get to blame the antagonism in those regions on anyone other than the USA and it's proxies, same as Eastern Europe, same as the Middle East.

Well, that's certainly a viewpoint. But it's also an incredibly stupid viewpoint, and people who have it are idiots. You PL, are an idiot. That is an incredibly stupid thing to say.

Yes, the United States is the most powerful country in the world. It also has a history of aggression, as well as of using covert agents to shit stir around the globe. To say that any particular brushfire war or coup was probably the fault of the United States before you learned anything about the situation is a good bet. There may be a lot of marbles in the bag, but more of them say "United States" than anything else.

But that's just the problem with your incredibly stupid fucking analysis. Just because more marbles in the bag are United States marbles than any other doesn't mean that they all are. The fact and reality is that shit happens without the US' say-so every fucking day. The US has the biggest military and the biggest economy, but it' still only 5% of the population, and not actually in Eurasia or Africa save for some military bases that have to abide by various deals and treaties (only some of which were obtained through conquest or even arm twisting).

Let's take Prague. I lived in that city for like seven years, and it has a very colorful history in the 20th century. It changed hands six times in the 20th century and the United States was the precipitator of that only once. In 1918, when Czechoslovakia was carved out of Austro-Hungary at the behest of Woodrow fucking Wilson. In 1938, France and England sold the Czechoslovaks out to Hitler and the Nazis conquered them as an entirely internal Western European matter. All four other times were the Russians. The Soviet Union liberated Czechoslovakia from Nazi occupation in 1945, the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 for their Communist government disagreeing with the Soviet Central Committee on too many things, the Soviet Union liberated them again in 1989 as a cost cutting measure, and Czechia and Slovakia were divided in 1993 in an unconstitutional move by some parliamentarians who were KGB agents. It has been almost a century since "America did it" was the right answer to the government in Prague being overthrown.

The reality is that while the United States is truly a global superpower and can and does cause havoc all over the world, there are still other countries that still throw their weight around in whatever sand box they play in. Russia and China are very powerful and push their neibors around constantly. And the fact that you refuse to accept this reality makes you the same kind of useful idiot as Julian Asange.

The United States invaded Vietnam. That was a shitty thing to do and we shouldn't have done it. But China also invaded Vietnam. In 1979. That was also a shitty thing to do and not something that the United States caused in any direct way. Apparently the Chinese thought the Vietnamese would be weakened by decades of war with the French, Japanese, French again, and Americans and they could swoop in and take all the land. Which means to me that the Chinese weren't actually paying much attention to the Vietnam War.

Guessing "It's America's fault" is a pretty good guess. But it's a guess that is often wrong. Often it's the fault of some regional player instead. If you're talking about things that are in arm's reach of China, China is also a pretty good guess. If you're talking about things in arm's reach of Russia, then Russia is a good guess. If you're talking about htings in arm's reach of Germany, then Germany is a good guess. Because those countries are also quite powerful in their respective regions and also quite imperialistic and dickish. You're only really safe guessing "America did it" when shit goes down in the Americas. But even then you aren't 100%, because you got shit like Argentina touching dicks with the United Kingdom over the Falklands and the rising power of Brasil.

China really only makes claim to territory that has previously been controlled by China at some point within the last 3600 years. And thus you could claim that that territory is still part of China and its possession by other countries, or its attempt to establish its own sovereignty, is illegitimate.

But they lay claim to the Mongol Empire through the Ming dynasty.



That basically is a flimsy excuse for never ending expansionist aggression on all fronts. There's no particular reason to believe that if they did conquer half of Turkey that they wouldn't come up with a new excuse for why they needed to have Istanbul as well.

-Username17

[Username17]

Any sources for that analysis, Mechalich? I've also been told that the TPP is a blatant powergrab by certain moneyed interests. What kind of the tradeoff does signing onto the TPP have?

To say that the TPP represents the US and other signatory nations selling their souls to corporations in exchange for limiting China's influence on the Pacific is probably the least inaccurate way of summarizing the deal's effects in a single sentence. I consider corporations to be at least as imminent a threat to freedom and opportunity as China so I don't really approve of this tradeoff, but it's still true that it is (among other things) a sort of economic defense pact against China.

The TPP deal is super complicated and all the details aren't out even now. There are good things in it (as I understand it, it improves labor conditions and environmental protections in Malaysia and Vietnam, not that this is hard). There are bad things in it (the intellectual property rules are particularly odious). And there are simple Realpolitik things in it (attunement of standards between countries that aren't China can only enrich not-China countries at the expense of China). Whether this is all "worth it" or not is actually a fairly narrow thing.

While the economies involved in the TPP are huge and represent a big chunk of the world's people, there isn't actually going to be much difference on the group one way or the other. Trade barriers between these countries are already quite low and the simple size of the Pacific puts a limit on how much trade is ever going to happen. The TPP is likely to increase trade slightly, but the economic effects of that will be minimal. What we have instead is basically a package of legislation on labor and industrial and environmental regulations with chunks written by special interest groups, labor unions, and corporations in twelve different countries. Many of the provisions have effects that probably wouldn't make sense to you unless you carefully studied Chilean mining regulations or some fucking thing.

Right now, both Hillary and Donald are saying that the deal is overall not a good one and that they want to make it better. In short, both people on becoming President would go back to the table and get some language changes put in as a face saving measure and then pass the newly reconstituted package. Hillary would go to bat for some sort of labor and/or environmental demands, I have no fucking idea what Cheetoh Jesus would demand and I suspect he doesn't either.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

You are pulling an excuse most three year olds don't get away with "other kids did something similar but lesser and ages ago!" or worse "other kids WOULD do it if they could!" with no fucking evidence.

The fact is your fucking claim is China is the bad guy right the fuck now and that the USA is the good guy right the fuck now your lame excuses that it's OK for the USA the only nation to ever drop a nuke on civilian cities to be evil "because power" even though, wait a minute, other nations have nukes that it's OK for the USA to engage in very fucking recent wars of aggression because wait, other nations COULD be doing that, like you know, specifically "bad guy" China and they fucking are not that it's OK for the US to be an international criminal of incredible scale responsible for war, death, corruption and needless poverty on a scale unseen in human history because you would wishfully like to think other nations totally would do that?

Fuck you, we pretty much have to go to Nazis or Romans to get fuckers that, given the power, MIGHT be worse than the modern day right now USA.

Oh and a dig at Julian Assange, you deplorable fucking asshole.

But seriously, not just equivalence of evil, but SPECULATIVE equivalence of evil. Wow you actual fucking literal war crime apologist total piece of human shit.

[Username17]

You are pulling an excuse most three year olds don't get away with "other kids did something similar but lesser and ages ago!" or worse "other kids WOULD do it if they could!" with no fucking evidence.

Not "ages ago." Right now. China is funding Naxalite terrorists in India right now. China threatened to blow up a Filipino ship in Philippine waters last month.

The fact is your fucking claim is China is the bad guy right the fuck now and that the USA is the good guy right the fuck now

I'm gonna cut you off there. Yes, China is often the bad guy right now. Yes, the United States is often the good guy right now. Not always. But often. Things are actually quite complicated, and you're still an idiot.

When the United States blocks UN actions on stopping Israel from doing whatever latest anti-Arab atrocity they are doing today, the US is the bad guy. But get this: when Russia blocks UN action on stopping the Syrian civil war, they are the bad guy. And holy shit! When China blocks UN action on child soldier enslavement in Myanmar, they are the bad guy. It's almost like different countries can simultaneously be in the right and in the wrong on different important issues at the same time.

China is a belligerent power and behaves extremely dickishly on all of their borders. Being next to China is scary as fuck because they are militarily expansionist and quite capable of invading their neighbors with little or no pretext. If I was El Salvadoran, the US would obviously be my number one target of hate (what with equipping death squads in the country for years). But compare being Canada to being one of the countries that has to share a border with the PRC. There's just no fucking comparison.

Again and still, not all bad things are the fault of the same country. Different countries are in the wrong on different issues and at different times. China is not meaningfully evil in Brasil or Ukraine because they have no power there. China is meaningfully evil in their own backyard. Like, all the fucking time. 84% of Vietnamese people say they are worried about Chinese border aggression, which is entirely reasonable considering that the last time China attacked them on their border was 1990, not generations ago. Countries in that area are not wrong to be looking for protection from China, because they fucking obviously need it! And the fact that you don't have enough room for nuance in your one track mind to understand that means that you aren't worth listening to on this or any other subject.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

But they lay claim to the Mongol Empire through the Ming dynasty.



That basically is a flimsy excuse for never ending expansionist aggression on all fronts. There's no particular reason to believe that if they did conquer half of Turkey that they wouldn't come up with a new excuse for why they needed to have Istanbul as well.

-Username17

There is only One Turkey, and Istanbul is a part of it.

You are pulling an excuse most three year olds don't get away with "other kids did something similar but lesser and ages ago!" or worse "other kids WOULD do it if they could!" with no fucking evidence.

The fact is your fucking claim is China is the bad guy right the fuck now and that the USA is the good guy right the fuck now your lame excuses that it's OK for the USA the only nation to ever drop a nuke on civilian cities to be evil "because power"

So, would you have preferred that we kill 20 million Japanese civilians in a conventional invasion, or that we let Japan keep Manchukuo and Korea?

that it's OK for the USA to engage in very fucking recent wars of aggression

*Points to the New York Skyline. *

What fucking Wars of aggression?

Fuck you, we pretty much have to go to Nazis or Romans to get fuckers that, given the power, MIGHT be worse than the modern day right now USA.

I'd actually go with the British and the Spanish, personally.


And really, killing tens of thousands of Japanese civilians with nukes is bad, but killing tens of millions of Japanese civilians with a conventional invasion would b