Modern Chinese architecture; built to last a thousand minutes

It is a legitimate thing to ask of white people, to be less "white" and more "people". We tend to not acknowledge that we do have an advantage in our part of the world.

Why this is only asked of white people is what beats me. No one is asking the Japanese in Japan or the Chinese in China or the Koreans in South Korea or the Saudis in Saudialand to be more inclusive or care at all about the sad fate of non-locally sourced humans. Granted the Japanese get a bye because they are quietly polite about the whole "no foreigners welcome" thing.

Could it be that white people are not more or less racist than other local majorities, it just so happens that (admittedly some) white people are willing to acknowledge our own racism might be a problem?

Actually what really gets me is how North Koreans manage to be racial supremacists in the face of their everyday reality.

Says who though? That's a narrative, fed from the media, tightly controlled by the CCP. Yes, people's lives are in general getting better materially. But people knows they have little freedom to criticize the government in public, but that doesn't mean it's "part of the bargain." There's just no means to disagree with the CCP without risking life & limbs. But those that got treated so badly that they felt there's nothing left to lose? Oh they do "rise up", whether you can hear about it, that's another matter entirely.

Chinese (as a whole people) don't "rise up (at least enough)" beause they see the financial benefit of China's explosive growth, and in general, you won't get into the CCP radar/ire if you're a regular citizen just going on your day. But the vast majority of Chinese knows they're far from catching up to anywhere near the G7/10 standard. So their focus is on that (the financial end), not toppling the CCP. They're more pragmatists than idealists.

Make no mistake, the G7 is ALSO part of the problem by enabling the CCP due of the immense financial gains and just pay lip service to "human right abuses" in China to score domestic points.

The Chinese (and the CCP) saw what happened to the U.S.S.R. and they don't want the "Western world" to "rescue" them. As they know the one thing the Western World does best is Abandonment.

I think the quote by a high ranking US Naval officer was: it took us 50 years to learn how to operate carriers without killing ourselves. I wish the Russians and the Chinese good luck.

Wouldnt that be the Chinese communist party?

Such nonsense.
Biden did not approve, nor is he helping build this pipeline. He chose to not sanction one Swiss company helping build the last 90 miles, but is still sanctioning Russian companies involved, and is likely to block it's certification and insurance (by banning any insurer from using international or US banking) without guarantees the Ukrainian pipeline won't be abandoned.
He decided not making Germany go dark was a better plan, not alienating a long term ally and strategic partner that we are trying to repair our severely damaged relationship with.
He also decided putting Russia in bed with the Chinese, their other option for selling their gas, was not a smart move.
He is clear, he is against this pipeline and is still sanctioning many Russian companies involved in it's construction.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/18/politics/us-nord-stream-decision/index.html

Those grapes must be really sour today @bobknight33, they've got your yummy tears flowing like a firehose....keep em coming. So yummy, you guys.

Edit: I'm curious why America SHOULD hold veto power over international projects approved by all involved countries on other continents. Should we stop pipelines because Putin says so? He could stop hacking them and just tell us to quit. It seems ridiculous that we are telling Germany they can't have more natural gas, and telling Russia they can't sell it.
For clarification, I'm against it for ecological reasons, yes gas produces less CO2 than coal and oil, but produces way more methane which is >25 times more destructive per molecule in the short term. 11 billion could have built any number of wave/tidal generation facilities that run 24/7 without a new source of greenhouse gases.

I 100% agree with you! Further, I hope those 100 GOP leaders choose to split and form their own party and take 10% of the Republicans with them. Hell, I hope all the red states bail from the US and form their more perfect union where they can all get together and enjoy the 26% of GDP fruit of their labors -- hell, they can even keep it!

Y'all just stay over there and we'll put up some nice fences on Highways 2, 90, 80 and 50 to keep you from straying into our horrible socialist paradise. Then, after pellagra sets in, we'll even provide you with a nice new life as organ donors to rich Chinese, but we will want to keep the $.50 a head we get for your worthless bodies.

Fair deal?

60% of Americans can't find the US on a map, and 100% of my statistics come directly from my ass, but when I see another American in Europe, my first thought is "are you lost?" and my second thought is "oh Christ, please don't open your mouth."

Seriously, if the Americans, Brits and Chinese had a cunt-off to see who were the most insufferable tourists, the Germans would come busting in, grab the gold, silver and bronze, fart loudly on a child then fall drunkenly into the nearest canal.

Wait, that was my last trip to Ghent.

You really believe this crazy bullshit then, eh? I thought some of it was an act.

Yo;

Yes of course. Of course they did. Because it's a

REAL DISEASE THAT PEOPLE GET IN REALITY

So when he encourages behavior that promotes spreading disease, says it'll 'magically go away', and closes the boarder with China BUT puts enough exceptions in the China travel ban that 40,000 Americans/Chinese diplomats come back to three usa


Yes. When he's saying people are immune when THAT'S JUST NOT TRUE yeah, i expect that they should complain about it.

Rightly so. He's responsible.

He eradicated the agency that was protecting us from exactly this kind of disease. He let it in the country by only stopping Chinese people from entering, he let it spread by refusing to quarantine, he made it exponentially worse by telling you idiots it was just the flu, go about business as usual. He did nothing right and failed miserably to lead.

This is the Trump pandemic, I blame all American deaths on his actions directly. We had every opportunity to avoid any outbreak at all, and he squandered every single one.

I thought I addressed that. Travel was also open between states, and many countries with "free travel amongst nations" had no-travel/stay at home orders in place, unlike the U.S., and afaik, mandatory quarantine for all international travelers.

Again, because he eradicated the international Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, I can legitimately ascribe every single non Chinese death and most Chinese deaths to his actions directly. A pandemic on this level WAS foreseen after SARS, Ebola, and Swine Flu, it's why we created the GHSB. It's why we had a pandemic response plan that Trump completely ignored and actually denied it existed for months and months.

I also am going by facts. My facts say that at least four things Trump did against professional advice took us from prepared to minimise any pandemic to at worst a foreign epidemic to a place where months after pandemics start our leader denied any danger and made no moves to stop it.
1) Eradication of the GHSB, missed opportunity one to have zero US cases and avoid a pandemic completely.
2) Repeated early public denial of the danger while encouraging others to do the same and go about business as usual, missed opportunity two to have zero US cases, and a missed opportunity to minimize any spread if quarantining travelers (something else he failed miserably to even consider early on) failed.
3) Encouragement of those who trust him to ignore all mitigation efforts, don't mask, don't social distance, don't shut down non essential businesses, don't close schools, don't listen to medical professionals....missed opportunity number three to minimize US infections to thousands instead of hundreds of thousands. Remember the many months he said grandma would gladly die to get people back to work, pretending many months in that only feeble octogenarians get sick?
4) Denial of a prepared response plan, never following it and claiming total ignorance, missed opportunity number four to follow prepared plans based on science from day one, missing the opportunity to keep our infection rate at S Korean levels.

That's four well researched and vetted moronic, irrational, and irresponsible mistakes he personally made that multiplied our infection rate by 100- infinity times (if we could have had zero without his multiple massive and stupid mistakes, which is not just possible but likely, he can be said to have CAUSED every single US case, multiplying our infections by infinity.). There were more, but I'm beating a dead horse.
Remember, his real plan was natural herd immunity, with an expected 3-60 million deaths depending on who you asked.

I say if intelligent decisions could have avoided all US infections, and that's undeniable IMO, you can lay the blame for as high a percentage as you like on the leader who made bad dangerous decisions out of pure narcissistic ignorance and hatred of his predecessor...up to 100%. 80-90% still seems like I'm coddling him, at least two failures could have made cases zero, and others minimized it to under 10% of what we have. All four I listed almost certainly allowed >90% giving every doubt and giving him all possible credit....so yes, I'm satisfied I'm not exaggerating.

Obama's responsible and responsive planning and execution stopped Ebola from ever spreading here despite it making it to our shores, and it was FAR more contagious and deadly. Had we had Trump then doing the same things, there would be tens of millions dead and likely still spreading disease, imo.


Edit: let me try analogy...If a mayor removes the stop signs from 4 way highway intersections, they are responsible for every wreck that happens, even though other towns with stop signs still have wrecks at intersections. Trump pulled the signs, removed the flashing red light, and cut first responder funding, and claimed there never was a highway code to follow and he takes no responsibility for the jump in highway deaths.

Yes, they had isolation we don't, but also had fewer resources to work with by far, and are much closer to the outbreak in China with tons of travel between countries. I would say having a reasonable, thoughtful population that wanted to avoid being someone who spread the virus and killed people, so followed instructions nearly without exception, compared to the U.S. who had a leader denouncing closings, masks, and social distancing and a population that was happy to spread the disease for political reasons. I think that has WAY more to do with our horrific , worst on the planet per capita despite the most resources by far outcome.

We only have two borders to close. Canada is easy, just ask nicely and they'll stay home. The border with Mexico is a problem, granted, I found it odd Trump didn't use emergency powers to finish his fence when he had a legitimate reason, but that would mean admitting Covid is dangerous, but if we cooperated with Mexico to secure the border we could have minimized all international travel early.

Back to Canada, with two open borders. They have 23000 and a population of 37.59 million, so they also have a per capita death rate well under 1/2 ours, close to 1/3, and they also could have done better if we had done better. It's impossible to figure out what percentage of their infections came from the U.S., but it's definitely a significant number.

Other nations have divisions, if not states, provinces, prefecture, or some other separation of areas. I don't agree that because we have states in our country we are like the EU, because a federal law or executive order covers all states and territories, the EU has no such mechanism as far as I know.

We were the only nation with an international Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, with teams in China and elsewhere, designed to identify new diseases early to avoid pandemics. Trump is totally responsible for dismantling that office, meaning there's a likelihood every non Chinese death and most Chinese deaths would have been avoided had Trump not been butt hurt over a good system set up by Obama. His racist and political hatred put the planet at risk. That alone puts most deaths, U.S. and global, directly on his hands.

Also, the EU population is double ours, meaning with all the multiple open borders and haphazard mix of regulations from different countries, and the enormous immigrant populations, and some actual temporary lockdowns in some of their countries (but not all by far) their infection/death rates are barely over 1/2 what ours are per capita. That's not on par, sorry.

Some of their leaders have some blood on their hands because of poor or slow decisions, but few actually fought against all science and public health measures, denying the mortality rates and doctor's recommendations to convince their populations to do nothing at all to mitigate the pandemic...Brazil did....look at them now. Yes, the president of Brazil absolutely has blood on his hands, and his response mirrored Trump's.

I'm regurgitating the numbers Dr Birx used, and comparing our outbreak to other nations that took it seriously like S Korea and New Zealand. If we had used the same serious action S Korea had, our death rate per 100000 would be an astonishing 1/60th of what our death rates were in the first 6 months or so. Just universal mask wearing would have cut our deaths by an estimated >1/4, 130000 fewer deaths, and slowed the rate of new cases significantly, but Trump fought against them.

Here's the link on that data...., granted slightly dated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/23/how-many-coronavirus-deaths-are-truly-attributable-trump/

Remember, the Whitehouse said 100000-240000 possible deaths, around the same time Trump said deaths would never rise over 20000, using the lower of those numbers and blaming Trump's policies for the excess we are >80% his fault now, using Trump's promised numbers over 96% are blood on his hands.

There's also the fact that after knowing about the uncontrolled epidemic in WuHan Trump let over 40000 people (just not Chinese nationals) back in the country from that region with no tests available and no quarantine except for those obviously extremely sick. An immediate and actual travel lockdown could have made our deaths zero, and definitely would have made them exponentially lower.

Then there's the dismantling of the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit he closed that likely could have identified the outbreak in China much earlier and again, made our numbers zero. It's exactly what they were created to avoid.

I honestly feel 80- 90% was being generous, in fact there's a real possibility that a thoughtful adult president would have made any number of intelligent decisions, any one of which could have avoided the pandemic altogether or minimized infections enormously, even minimizing the Chinese epidemic.

I do agree, Biden is doing much better at taking it seriously and acting like rapid vaccination is important, but still isn't doing enough. I would prefer an enforced national mask mandate, mandatory social distancing, school closings until vaccination saturation, etc until we have herd immunity....not half assed measures like 50% capacity at bars and restaurants, with few business shutdowns and zero enforcement, pretending it's over every time infection rates dip.