The Man that Must Change China (recent Economist essay)

[Almalexia]

While I agree about the whole value of democracy thing, the Homeland Security Act is not exactly unprecedented, nor is it the most radical "Acts" that suspended or impeded rights. This is a country that passed the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act for christ's sake, not to mention the internment of Japanese Americans into concentration camps, suspensions of Habeus Corpus, McCarthy, and institutionalized racism, which in the case of the Japanese was a cause for open war.

On the Sedition Act:

It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for 5 to 20 years. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion. It applied only to times "when the United States is in war."

 

[Anthropoid]

So some of you guys are working on your Mandarin? 

 

[Schemer]

It's not like the Chinese aren't brainwashed (and they aren't free, for that matter) but at least most of them have accepted that if the nation is to develop, everyone has to work towards that. And that there's a social contract for that purpose. The issues in China being that said social contract, for which many people have given their lives, is being abused by people who've discovered the attraction of quick money.

The west is equally brainwashed, if not more so, but we do not acknowledge our brainwashing. Our media is full of propaganda. Even look at political campaigns, which are built upon propaganda, and we can see how they have affected us. Because with propaganda, the most effective way of spreading it is through simple, subtle ways that say a lot without really saying anything at all. Slogans like "Change you can believe in."

Businesses are also increasingly spreading internationally, with more and more businesses reaching to spread in foreign countries and start business there, whether for production or sales. The propaganda term for this put forth by the west is "globalisation." The actual term for it is "empire building." The term "international diplomacy" is similarly a propaganda term, used for when powers wish to give away something that they do not actually have control of.

In a lot of ways, our propaganda is actually worse than China's. Between 2001 and 2009, the number of deaths from terrorism stood at 3,000. In the same period, there were 192,000 from homicide, 204,000 from drunk driving, 360,000 suicide, 456,000 second hand smoke, 873,780 diabetes, 4,622,268 from cancer, 5,304,000 smoking related, 6,238,284 heart disease. There are more people being killed by poisons sold in stores labelled as "food" than there are people dying from terrorism. This did not stop the imperialists from invading the middle east for resources and control because of one terrorist attack, that was played repeatedly by the media until it was engraved into our minds.  But the propaganda campaign continues, and propaganda campaigns are being started against other places too. Such as Libya, where mass rape and air strikes were simply propaganda used to get another faux-communist leader out of place.

I would say that the Chinese are at least as free as we are, but they're more obvious and less subtle. The strongest superpower is always the best at hiding its crimes.

 

[Almalexia]

So some of you guys are working on your Mandarin? 

Well actually, yes. I'm taking a class on it next semester.

 

[Ludial]

So some of you guys are working on your Mandarin? 

yep, I got me a self-learning book that I'm starting work on soon. there's also this saying - 'optimist buys dollars, pessimist buys euros, realist buyes Chinese yuans'. Or at least it was valid before the EU started shaking worse than the US.

 

[Anthropoid]

So some of you guys are working on your Mandarin? 

yep, I got me a self-learning book that I'm starting work on soon. there's also this saying - 'optimist buys dollars, pessimist buys euros, realist buyes Chinese yuans'. Or at least it was valid before the EU started shaking worse than the US.

And what about when the predictions in the Economist essay come true, hmmm?

 

[Beny]

So some of you guys are working on your Mandarin? 

why bother, there's more English speakers in China than there are in England 

 

[AWdeV]

And what about when the predictions in the Economist essay come true, hmmm?

Even then it's a good language to learn because roughly one tenth of the total population of the world speaks it, assjack.

I'll still need to read the economists blather but that doesn't mean there's no value in knowing the language.

 

[Schemer]

Why are you learning something useful? You should learn completely useless languages that only 2,000 people fluently speak like I do.

 

[Ludial]

So some of you guys are working on your Mandarin? 

yep, I got me a self-learning book that I'm starting work on soon. there's also this saying - 'optimist buys dollars, pessimist buys euros, realist buyes Chinese yuans'. Or at least it was valid before the EU started shaking worse than the US.

And what about when the predictions in the Economist essay come true, hmmm?

Predictions about what? Or rather the wishful thinking of the governments that after the end of the cold war have been actively fighting a bunch of wars with the express purpose of not letting another enemy like the soviet union to invite itself to the game. Just because they want everything for themselves.

I'm pretty sure there are Chinese newspapers writing identical articles for the US  I mean, China is being accused of covert aggression and human rights violations by the very country that invaded the Middle East, built and maintains Guantanamo Bay, funds repressive regimes in Africa and where the DoD essentially dictates how America interacts with the world. Just think about that last point - the state invests soldiers (as in general staff field commanders) with vast political and financial power that they are to use often at their own discretion. How close is that to legal warlordism? And mister Xi Jinping is simply buddies with the Chinese military. And he's also expected to be their watchdog and minder.

let's face it - one empire with lots of dirty laundry is accusing another empire with lots of dirty laundry of playing dirty. That's probably the oldest of dirty tricks in the book of dirty tricks.

 

[FrisianDude]

Why are you learning something useful? You should learn completely useless languages that only 2,000 people fluently speak like I do.

Maybe you should. Not necessarily to actually converse (I mean, yuck), but to learn more about the language family it pertains to.

 

[Schemer]

Why are you learning something useful? You should learn completely useless languages that only 2,000 people fluently speak like I do.

Maybe you should. Not necessarily to actually converse (I mean, yuck), but to learn more about the language family it pertains to.

I was going to, but the languages that I most like the sound of are too hard. I know English, Swedish, and Latin. Latin was for Roman history, Swedish because I like the sound of it and a bunch of people I know on the Internet are native speakers of it. Right now I'm trying to teach myself simple Gaelic and Cornish just because they're pretty.

I was interested in Russian, Chinese, Icelandic, and Finnish, but although they sound pretty, they're so hard that I didn't even bother trying. How do people memorise >200 ways to say "walk"?

I'm not really sure what language families would be useful to branch into. Are there any other languages where people who know one can understand others? Like Russian and Ukrainian, and Swedish/Norwegian/Danish.

 

[Almalexia]

Well keep in mind that no native speaker would be likely to ever vary far from the most common form of "walk". When stuff like that makes you balk at a language, it helps to take a trip to the thesaurus and gain some perspective from your own language. 

 

[Austupaio]

Saunter, stroll, stride, strut and so on.

 

[Mad Vader]

Patrol, plod, prance, promenade and so on.

If you are looking for a beautiful and practical language with a large body of fine literature, there's Spanish.

 

[Austupaio]

I can't say I've heard many Spainards speaking but the Mexican dialect is certainly not beautiful.

 

[Lord Burgess1]

Mince.

 

[Mad Vader]

Americans may have problems as they associate the Spanish language with immigrants, lawlessness, corruption etc.
If you live in Europe, you tend to think about sunny beaches, ancient cathedrals, friendly people and great food.

 

[AWdeV]

And youth unemployment.

 

[Austupaio]

Americans may have problems as they associate the Spanish language with immigrants, lawlessness, corruption etc.
If you live in Europe, you tend to think about sunny beaches, ancient cathedrals, friendly people and great food.

I was just referring to the lingual differences, man.