Team America: Feck Yeah!

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Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Michael on Tue May 09, 2017 12:38 am

Coming to save the mother-feckin' day, yeah!

China lawyer’s family says US helped them flee

https://ktar.com/story/1564381/ap-exclusive-china-lawyers-family-says-us-helped-them-flee/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1mlCPMYtPk
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Peacedog on Wed May 10, 2017 12:54 am

A good article on a serious problem. You know how bad it is when even the Chinese in my TCM program in NY are loath to say anything about the government in mainland China.
Last edited by Peacedog on Wed May 10, 2017 12:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Michael on Wed May 10, 2017 6:43 am

It amazes me that Westerners living here have no idea about the fairly recent history of this government, or those nearby, like Cambodia, Vietnam or Russia. Some of them think the Chinese govt is great because they "can get things done quickly."

Mind blowing.
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Peacedog on Wed May 10, 2017 9:26 am

The same bunch of morons refuse to discuss why Venezuela is falling apart: socialism.

Same goons different continents.
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Ian C. Kuzushi on Wed May 10, 2017 11:43 am

Peacedog wrote:The same bunch of morons refuse to discuss why Venezuela is falling apart: socialism.

Same goons different continents.


No, that's not right.
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Michael on Wed May 10, 2017 7:59 pm

Ian C. Kuzushi wrote:
Peacedog wrote:The same bunch of morons refuse to discuss why Venezuela is falling apart: socialism.

Same goons different continents.


No, that's not right.

So what's going on in Venezuela?
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Michael on Thu May 11, 2017 9:53 am

In the past two years, there were 3 cases I know of where the Chinese govt arrested Swedish citizens, two of them high profile and one of them kind of common, but in all cases the Swedish govt seemed to be totally unable to do anything to help, and seemed to me not to even be trying much, at least made no public protest.

One was a naturalized Swedish citizen, born in China. He was one of the owners of book store in Hong Kong that was publishing gossip rags about Chinese political leaders and one of five who worked there, who were secretly arrested / renditioned / disappeared. This guy was in his house in Thailand when the Chinese cops grabbed him, whisked him back to China without any word to the Swedes, kept him hidden away for a few weeks, if I remember correctly, and then announced that he had voluntarily agreed to solve a crime....that he had committed 11 years prior, a hit and run with a fatality. How fortuitous! He remains in jail in China today.

Case two was a Swedish citizen working for a small NGO in China that was training human rights lawyers. They nabbed him, locked him away with some sleep deprivation and a room adjoining to where he could hear his Chinese GF moaning and crying at all hours, then forced him to do a high-production-value video confession, where he had to apologize for many things, especially "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people." He did of course confess to being an unwitting agent of Goldstein and consorting with counter-revolutionaries, but it got edited out of the final cut that was aired nation wide. The Swedes did nothing publicly about any of this, but were I'm sure working for his release, which happened after 20-30 days of bright lights.

Third case is just a kid finishing his last year of high school in Beijing and some nothing argument his local and foreign friends had with a coat check girl outside a night club resulted in a passer-by claiming he was shoved. The Swedish kid and a South Korean were taken to jail for 30 days without any court appearance, which is normal in China, you can go away 2-3 years just on the police say so, and after his release, the boy's passport was kept for 11 additional months, keeping him in China while his college scholarship went unclaimed in Sweden. While he was in jail, his parents paid an unknown sum to the bloody nose claimant in an effort to get their son out of jail, but to no avail. After he was out, sans passport, he was encouraged by the police to make a few written confessions and self-criticisms, but luckily there was no struggle session. It was all for naught, didn't help him get his passport, which was finally returned after a total of 12 months when the "investigation" was completed, so he left.

That's the difference between being a citizen of Sweden or the USA, feck yeah.
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Steve James on Thu May 11, 2017 1:50 pm

So what's going on in Venezuela?


Best to ask a Venezuelan. The people are in the streets because of anti-government sentiment. Here's the CNN view.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/americas/ ... explainer/
Here's the BBC account.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39871694
If you read Spanish
http://elpais.com/tag/c/b7d3392e143d8c3 ... 191e372233

Decide for yourself what it's about. However, if you think there's turmoil in Venezuela, you should check out Brazil. There was a general national strike. Civil workers in Rio and other cities haven't been paid.
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/20 ... asil.shtml

Neither of these have much to do with the specific political system, though.
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Michael on Thu May 11, 2017 7:50 pm

A year ago, I watched some vids of an American who went there to do some reporting.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkF-VwtHgf0



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOQb7Y5QVO8&t=274s
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Steve James on Thu May 11, 2017 8:28 pm

As I said, it's better to ask a Venezuelan who is protesting. In general, they say they're fighting political corruption. Now, would you say that they're fighting for or against socialism? I dunno, but it's simpler to say they're protesting perceived injustice. The empty shelves are not typical of Venezuela, a country that gave free oil to poor Americans in the past.

But, did you know that Venezuela is still one of the top places where US expats retire? http://www.expatexchange.com/venezuela/ ... zuela.html
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Trick on Fri May 12, 2017 2:09 am

Michael wrote:In the past two years, there were 3 cases I know of where the Chinese govt arrested Swedish citizens, two of them high profile and one of them kind of common, but in all cases the Swedish govt seemed to be totally unable to do anything to help, and seemed to me not to even be trying much, at least made no public protest.

One was a naturalized Swedish citizen, born in China. He was one of the owners of book store in Hong Kong that was publishing gossip rags about Chinese political leaders and one of five who worked there, who were secretly arrested / renditioned / disappeared. This guy was in his house in Thailand when the Chinese cops grabbed him, whisked him back to China without any word to the Swedes, kept him hidden away for a few weeks, if I remember correctly, and then announced that he had voluntarily agreed to solve a crime....that he had committed 11 years prior, a hit and run with a fatality. How fortuitous! He remains in jail in China today.

Case two was a Swedish citizen working for a small NGO in China that was training human rights lawyers. They nabbed him, locked him away with some sleep deprivation and a room adjoining to where he could hear his Chinese GF moaning and crying at all hours, then forced him to do a high-production-value video confession, where he had to apologize for many things, especially "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people." He did of course confess to being an unwitting agent of Goldstein and consorting with counter-revolutionaries, but it got edited out of the final cut that was aired nation wide. The Swedes did nothing publicly about any of this, but were I'm sure working for his release, which happened after 20-30 days of bright lights.

Third case is just a kid finishing his last year of high school in Beijing and some nothing argument his local and foreign friends had with a coat check girl outside a night club resulted in a passer-by claiming he was shoved. The Swedish kid and a South Korean were taken to jail for 30 days without any court appearance, which is normal in China, you can go away 2-3 years just on the police say so, and after his release, the boy's passport was kept for 11 additional months, keeping him in China while his college scholarship went unclaimed in Sweden. While he was in jail, his parents paid an unknown sum to the bloody nose claimant in an effort to get their son out of jail, but to no avail. After he was out, sans passport, he was encouraged by the police to make a few written confessions and self-criticisms, but luckily there was no struggle session. It was all for naught, didn't help him get his passport, which was finally returned after a total of 12 months when the "investigation" was completed, so he left.

That's the difference between being a citizen of Sweden or the USA, feck yeah.

Usually Swedish government in cases like mentioned seem to display extrem meekness, but the current government seem to be especially useless. And more than often Swedes(authorities, and as above people working for 'human right issues' display a very 'blue eyed' view of the world, they know exactly what is best for everyone on this planet and that of course everyone understand and will almost immediatley agree with the stubbornly soft hand bureaucratic Swedish way. I have not been back to Sweden for about 10 years, but in a few days will go and stay for about a month ( have to take care of some official errands) i already miss China.
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby yeniseri on Sat May 13, 2017 2:31 pm

Whether socialism or capitalistic orientation, the facts are that the 5-10% (private enterprise) of all kinds) in Venezuela refuse to participate in the present debate and when that happens, chaos will be answer. Add the US embargo (it follows the Cuban model) and we will see who blinks first ;D
According to my Venezuelan cousins, Maduro is the face of leadership so he has the power to do what he is doing. The government has no power to force private enterprise to fill the empty shelves and the rich has plenty to eat so it is no skin of thier back to ignore the 90%.
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Ian C. Kuzushi on Sat May 13, 2017 3:26 pm

The main problem was putting all of their eggs in one basket. That was the cause of the economic collapse. This was, of course, exacerbated by corruption: not something inherent to or limited to socialism.

Venezuela is kind of like Chicago. Ill-informed conservatives like to oversimplify the two cases to make erroneous points. The biggest difference is, one is based on absolute bullshit Cold War ideology, while the other is based on bald-faced. racism.
Last edited by Ian C. Kuzushi on Sat May 13, 2017 3:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Peacedog on Sat May 27, 2017 7:23 pm

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Re: Team America: Feck Yeah!

Postby Ian C. Kuzushi on Tue May 30, 2017 3:42 pm

Capitalism winning!

*Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay: Strongly free market, 90,000 people "disappeared" in a country that had only 2.3 million at the time, mass graves were found near the Chaco River

*Antonio Salazar of Portugal: Totalitarian, people who criticized him simply "dissappeared", highly xenophobic, strongly pro-colonialism

*Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire: Totalitarian, robbed the entire country of Zaire's wealth, directly responsible for the 2nd Congo War by proxy of the USA

*Rafael Trujillo of Dominican Republic: capitalist; tens of thousands of people dissappeared during his regime)

*François "Papa Doc" Duvalier of Haiti: killed tens of thousands of people in his small island country, cult of personality, preferred to be worshipped as a god,
strongly anti-communist, strongly pro-market

*Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam: Catholic dictator, harassed/tortured/executed Buddhists and Buddhist clergy, Buddhists were arrested for practicing their religion in public, suspected communists were tortured and executed, hundreds of thousands were tortured and executed in capitalist purges.

*Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines: thousands murdered, thousands more "dissappeared", close to 120,000 tortured and imprisoned, billions of dollars stolen from the Filipino economy

*Anastazio Somoza Debayle of Nicaragua: autocratic ruler, he introduced the term "death squads" into the common vernacular; in 1975, tens of thousands were executed, tens of thousands more "disappeared", hundreds of thousands were tortured and jailed in capitalist purges, elections suspended, mass malnutrition and disease, corruption, etc. etc.


Denmark, Iceland, and Norway seem to be doing pretty well with Socialism. Maybe you guys are confused with your definitions? It seems like you are equating formerly Stalinist dictatorships with Socialist states. As I mentioned, Venezuela's failures can be chalked up to poor planning (all eggs [oil] in one basket) and corruption, which Steve very correctly pointed out. Of course, as shown above, these problems are not exclusive to Socialism (or whatever you think you are talking about).

Of course, Socialism in the post depression era did a lot of good for the US and it was only the erosion of these social safety nets by free-market cowboys that led directly to each crash since then. Read some peer reviewed economic histories (not economic theory) and figure a few things out.
Last edited by Ian C. Kuzushi on Tue May 30, 2017 3:45 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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