Discussion and Debate Community Thread

[Cope]

It's Versailles all over again.

[AqD]

What does the ancient world have to do with anything.

To show you that the whole movement of religious freedom is utter nonsense because religion the zeal on religion itself which triggered the need of religious freedom is nonsense. Before monotheism was introduce, nobody cared about what others worship.

It's like fighting for the freedom of choosing a color of clothes, after some idiots decided everyone should wear black or die. If there is no god in it, you'd no doubt consider it a mental illness. The freedom as you might consider it is not a cure to this madness, but a measure to ensure the madness doesn't go too far, so that people of different faiths can be happily mad together.

[Lord Thesaurian]

To show you that the whole movement of religious freedom is utter nonsense because religion the zeal on religion itself which triggered the need of religious freedom is nonsense. Before monotheism was introduce, nobody cared about what others worship.

It's like fighting for the freedom of choosing a color of clothes, after some idiots decided everyone should wear black or die. If there is no god in it, you'd no doubt consider it a mental illness. The freedom as you might consider it is not a cure to this madness, but a measure to ensure the madness doesn't go too far, so that people of different faiths can be happily mad together.

Imagining alternate histories stemming from trends spanning thousands of years isn’t relevant to the question of religious freedom. Plus, as you well know, the pluralistic democratic norms under discussion are quite a new phenomenon in the world and arose from the philosophical and societal upheaval of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Age of Exploration that spread and developed these ideas around the globe. Clearly the absence of a god or religion does not negate the need for institutional guarantees of individual freedoms, among those, religious, as anyone living under authoritarian governments can attest to.

[Vanoi]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-a...102729902.html

The corruption in Mexico truly knows no bounds.

[swabian]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-a...102729902.html

The corruption in Mexico truly knows no bounds.

Yes, quite true. There are estimations, that about 30% to 40% of the country are in the hands of drug barons; who often employ individuals even Jesus himself would condemn to a slow, painful death. It really is a freaking problem, isn't it? I mean it is after all supposed to be a country and not some sinister corner district, or did i get that wrong?

[Lord Thesaurian]

New round of POTF is up:

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/foru...ht-Competition

[Lord Thesaurian]

A rising threat to a free and open internet?

The most concerning vector for companies operating in China appears to be a series of new Chinese laws that began taking effect in 2015 covering national security, national intelligence, and cybersecurity. Collectively, they have set the legal groundwork for the Chinese Communist Party to access all network activity that occurs in China or in communications that cross its borders. The culmination of this legal maneuvering appears to be the updated Multi-Level Protection System (MLPS 2.0), which came into effect in December 2019 and is gradually being rolled out.

Consisting of over one thousand pages and published only in Chinese, MLPS 2.0 sets out the technical and organizational requirements to which every company and individual in China must adhere. MLPS 2.0 gives “the legal authority to go in and ensure that a foreign company’s system is completely open to inspection and retrieval of information by the Communist Party,” says Steve Dickinson, an attorney with Harris Bricken, a Seattle-based international law firm with offices in Beijing. In other words, China has stripped away the legal grounds for an American company operating in China to protect its network from inspection by the Ministry of Public Security—the country’s feared law enforcement agency.

While no Chinese law grants the authority to install malware or backdoors in corporate networks, under MLPS 2.0, “anything the company would install on its Chinese system to prevent that will be neutralized,” Dickinson said. As a result, the global systems of any foreign company in China could now be within reach of Chinese authorities. Dickinson, who speaks and reads Mandarin, spent fifteen years advising companies in China.

Also of concern is that this legal framework enables China to require foreign companies to use specific software, encryption keys, and cloud computing providers that are under the Communist Party’s control. As a result, Chinese intelligence and security services can obtain direct access to corporate data through Chinese cloud providers, install Remote Access Trojans (RAT) or backdoors, and decrypt corporate data—all without the company’s knowledge. One clear example of interference is the case of Golden Tax software, a program required by the Chinese government for use in filing tax statements to it. Security firm TrustWave has reported that the software contains malware, which gives the government access to the user’s network.

A final element of the Chinese strategy appears to be achieving the ability to surveil American decision-making systems. “China wants to have somebody sitting in a big control room in Beijing with a set of screens in front of them looking at every computer system in the United States on a real-time basis,” Dickinson said. “Not just computer systems, but also every Internet of Things system, every cell phone system. They’ll use Artificial Intelligence to filter the information so that it’s not just a random blob on the screen. That’s their goal. There’s no question about it.”

https://nationalinterest.org/feature...mputers-173292

[Abdülmecid I]

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

The negative consequences of private TV.^^

[Vanoi]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/w...ug-policy.html

The UN has reclassified marijuana as a less dangerous drug. Good progress though this will have no effect on individual countries and their drug policies.

Biggest opposition to this reclassification was Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Russia, and China.

[Prodromos]

As much as economics or geopolitics may motivate the dispute, beneath the waves of conflict resides the clash of two diametrically opposed worldviews. ... With China emerging as a political and economic force, until China or the US experiences a change in ideology, a resolution to the South China Sea conflict is unlikely. Yet often forgotten is that much of China may convert to Christianity by 2050. What are the implications of such a projection, and how might it affect US and Western foreign policies toward China?

Beneath the Waves of the South China Sea Dispute - Providence

Pretty interesting.

[Vanoi]

Beneath the Waves of the South China Sea Dispute - Providence

Pretty interesting.

I think China will crackdown in any religious group that gets too big, especially Christianity as it is a Western-based religion.

[Abdülmecid I]

To be honest, I found Providence's article rather absurd. The basic premise is that China maintains an expansive policy, because she disregards maritime law, due to Marxist moral relativism, as opposed to Christian filial piety. Pretty sure the opposite is true, China is violating international agreements, because they conflict with her interests. Even if China magically became Christian or democratic, there is no reason to assume that its foreign policy would change drastically.

I think China will crackdown in any religious group that gets too big, especially Christianity as it is a Western-based religion.

It's not going to happen anyway. The estimation is relying on Fenggang Yang, who is affiliated with the Templeton Foundation and who is promoting a certain narrative. He's basing his estimations on a comparison between Pew research and a 1979 statement made by the Chinese government, on the successful conversion of tens of gangsters in a Chinese prison by a Protestant preacher and on his visits of Chinese Christian communities in Dubai and France. Even if we accept that such a trend actually exists, we cannot assume that it will continue without interruption and delays for the next decades. By that logic, some researchers had extrapolated that female athletes would eventually surpass their male counterparts, since their records improved much quicker. Surprisingly enough, their predictions failed.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Beijing’s militarism and expansionism are integral to the CCP’s obsession with maintaining absolute political control. As China becomes a global power, that obsession extends to its foreign policy and activities abroad.

The CCP’s approach to influence in the developing world is driven by deep-seated and intensifying concern about regime survival. From the outset of Xi’s tenure, he declared an intent to forcefully restore Party control, prevent a Soviet-style collapse, and prepare for the next phase of “reform and opening up” and China’s rise to great power status. These enduring imperatives will ensure an aggressive Chinese approach to securing leverage over developing countries even after Xi has stepped down. To prevent the resulting spread of authoritarianism and defend its interests, the United States will need to recommit to the hard work of defending democracy around the world.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/p...eloping-world/

The CCP is determined to control the PLA, and this nexus controls China’s economy through state run enterprises and links binding the country’s major commercial enterprises and economic sectors to the military. This phenomenon of regime survival through institutional control is nothing new; the same was observed in the former USSR:

First, historical Soviet expansionism and zero-sum thinking about international politics have largely been caused by th e nature of Soviet Stalinist domestic institutions, especially th e militant Communist Party and the centralized command economy geared toward autarkic military production . These institutions , their authoritarian methods, and their militant ideology wer e necessary for the tasks of "extensive economic development."-- namely, mobilizing underutilized labor and material resources and overcoming bottlenecks--in conditions of imminent foreign threat4.

Today, however, in an effort to create a more modern econom y through "intensive development," Gorbachev is waging a campaig n against entrenched interest groups, such as the military-in- dustrial complex, which are now in eclipse as a result of th e strengthening of reformist constituencies . Civilian defens e intellectuals, reformist ideologues, and supporters of liberalize d
trade policies among the intelligentsia are gaining influence an d calling for changes that would institutionalize new policies . Thus, recent changes in Soviet foreign policy are being caused both by the need to reform the economy and by the interests of Gorbachev's main political constituency--the intelligentsia . Elements of the "new thinking" in Soviet foreign policy includ e calls for more involvement in the world economy and an emphasis on "mutual security" as regards the East-West conventional an d nuclear military balances .

https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/pre...3-3-Snyder.pdf

As China becomes more powerful within the global economy, we see the same push-pull between the communists’ need for absolute control versus the commercial incentives to open up and decentralize. To avoid this conflict, the result appears to be a sort of consensus around combining aspects of militaristic, centralized control with aggressive external power projection and expansion complimentary to economic interests, and vice versa.

The Deutsch Commission also concluded that there was a need for enhanced transparency: ‘‘Because there is currently no national security-based review of entities seeking to gain access to our cap* ital markets, investors are unlikely to know that they may be as* sisting in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by pro* viding funds to known proliferators.’’

The Cox Commission addressed the issue of China’s investment in U.S. capital markets. It concluded, unanimously, that ‘‘Increas* ingly, the PRC is using the U.S. capital market as a source of cen* tral government funding for military and commercial development and as a means of cloaking technology acquisition by its front com* panies.’’

.........

It is extremely disturbing to think that we are financing China’s military develop* ment and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations. But plenty of evidence exists that we are directly investing in companies and programs that may one day be the agents of our own destruction.

https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/f...2.6.01HT_0.pdf

[Prodromos]

To be honest, I found Providence's article rather absurd. The basic premise is that China maintains an expansive policy, because she disregards maritime law, due to Marxist moral relativism, as opposed to Christian filial piety. Pretty sure the opposite is true, China is violating international agreements, because they conflict with her interests. Even if China magically became Christian or democratic, there is no reason to assume that its foreign policy would change drastically.

It's not going to happen anyway. The estimation is relying on Fenggang Yang, who is affiliated with the Templeton Foundation and who is promoting a certain narrative. He's basing his estimations on a comparison between Pew research and a 1979 statement made by the Chinese government, on the successful conversion of tens of gangsters in a Chinese prison by a Protestant preacher and on his visits of Chinese Christian communities in Dubai and France. Even if we accept that such a trend actually exists, we cannot assume that it will continue without interruption and delays for the next decades. By that logic, some researchers had extrapolated that female athletes would eventually surpass their male counterparts, since their records improved much quicker. Surprisingly enough, their predictions failed.

It's true that Christianity's growth could decelerate in the future, but it could just as well accelerate, since the more Christians there are in China the more opportunities there will be for evangelism.

Moreover, as the sociology of religious conversion has established, religion usually spreads through personal ties among individual believers. As more and more Chinese people are exposed to Christianity through interpersonal interactions with Christians, Christianity's growth in China could continue to accelerate just as it has in the last three decades. Therefore, to project growth in Chinese Christianity in the next few decades, it is more appropriate to use a metric such as the compound annual growth rate, a method of modeling growth that dampens the effect of periodic spikes and dips and calculates an average rate of growth over a long time period. The compound annual growth rate of Protestants in China was about 7 percent from 1950 to 2010 and more than 10 percent from 1980 to 2010. To put this change in practical terms, in each year since 1980, every 100 Christians would bring in 10 new members after counting out those who died or switched out of Christianity. In the following year, those 110 Christians would be joined by 11 more new Christians. This rate of growth might seem to be too extraordinary to believe for Americans and Europeans who have grown accustomed to membership losses and lateral movement of members among churches; certainly not every religious tradition grows at such a rate. However, those who have direct interactions with Christian groups in China in recent years most likely have witnessed the same rapid expansion of churches and Bible study groups that I have seen in my fieldwork.

Christians* currently make up 5-10% of China's population. As much as I don't want to underestimate the effects of compound growth, I'm skeptical that 2/3 of China will be Christian within a few decades. However, even if Christians grow to a mere 20-40% of China's population, that could still have a big effect on China's culture and relations with the West.

* I'm using 'Christian' in the sociological sense. Who knows how many of these people are genuinely born of the Spirit

[Vanoi]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-p...154008831.html

So the Mexican president has submitted a proposal to eliminate diplomatic immunity for DEA agents in Mexico and would require any information that DEA agents require to be handed over to Mexican authorities.

Lopez Obrador was elected into over 2 years ago promising change for Mexico including on how they combat the cartels. Hugs, not bullets strategy. Yet under his current term cartel has risen exponentially to the worse its ever been.

Now you have Lopez actively undermining US-Mexican efforts in combating the cartels. Diplomatic immunity is something DEA agents do need, but the bigger issue is information sharing. Mexican authorities are notoriously corrupt and my article references this as well:

The history of leaks is well documented. In 2017, the commander of a Mexican police intelligence-sharing unit that received DEA information was charged with passing the DEA data to the Beltran Leyva drug cartel in exchange for millions of dollars.

Being forced to share information with these corrupt authorities will just strengthen the cartels and make most efforts to combat them useless.

How do you fight off the cartels when your own partner is actively undermining efforts to do so?

[Cope]

How do you fight off the cartels when your own partner is actively undermining efforts to do so?

Build a wall?

[Lord Thesaurian]

Don’t forget to vote/nominate for POTF

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/foru...ht-Competition

[Vanoi]

Build a wall?

I think a bigger and better trained border patrol along with high tech monitoring and recon/intelligence from drones and electronic equipment placed along the border is a better idea.

Besides, from what i understand a lot of the drugs that make it into the US simply go through the borders checkpoints. Border Patrol can't do thorough checks on every vehicle that passes through

[Love Mountain]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-p...154008831.html

So the Mexican president has submitted a proposal to eliminate diplomatic immunity for DEA agents in Mexico and would require any information that DEA agents require to be handed over to Mexican authorities.

Lopez Obrador was elected into over 2 years ago promising change for Mexico including on how they combat the cartels. Hugs, not bullets strategy. Yet under his current term cartel has risen exponentially to the worse its ever been.

Now you have Lopez actively undermining US-Mexican efforts in combating the cartels. Diplomatic immunity is something DEA agents do need, but the bigger issue is information sharing. Mexican authorities are notoriously corrupt and my article references this as well:



Being forced to share information with these corrupt authorities will just strengthen the cartels and make most efforts to combat them useless.

How do you fight off the cartels when your own partner is actively undermining efforts to do so?

Co-operation with United States hasn't eliminated the issue of cartels. If Mexico feels there is no real benefit in continuing to provide immunity to DEA agents, they are well within their rights to do so. It was clear that the strategy waged since Calderon's presidency, wasn't working. A switch to "hugs" makes sense in that regard.