International events

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

51 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Scot, my original point was essentially based around my frustration over the fact that the same people who are shouting oh so loudly from the rooftops about Israel and Palestinian, about the suffering of Jewish and Arab families, have said absolutely nothing over the past ten years to advocate for the rights of ordinary Yemeni families to live in peace.

They probably have. This is basically the logic Chapelle uses when attacking the trans community. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I don’t disagree, but I do believe that in some instances the label does apply. 

Not really in almost most. Better phrasing would be to discuss how fucked up it is people get paid so little, have close to no rights and no real benefits. But that's not slavery.

ETA: Or to put it another way, slavery is when you read a story from China about how the factory has to put nets up to stop people from committing suicide cause they make less than they owe for food and lodging to said factory.

Edited January 14 by Mr. Chatywin et al.

[Rippounet]

38 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Not really in almost most. Better phrasing would be to discuss how fucked up it is people get paid so little, have close to no rights and no real benefits. But that's not slavery.

ETA: Or to put it another way, slavery is when you read a story from China about how the factory has to put nets up to stop people from committing suicide cause they make less than they owe for food and lodging to said factory.

If you're "free" to sell your labor, but in actuality you don't have a choice, because you need money to pay for rent and food, and the society you live in does not even allow you to attempt being self-reliant, if you're "free" to choose the job you want, but in actuality the only jobs you will have access to are determined by the socio-economic status of your parents, then you really have a lot of illusions but no real freedom.
Or, to put it differently: if the society you live in has no upward social mobility, then it does not provide you any meaningful freedom. Freedom to choose what you eat or watch tonight is not "freedom."
And it's easy to see that, because owing more than you earn is not limited to China. It's rather common throughout the world, including in some of the wealthiest countries. But even that doesn't matter as much as the simple fact of having to work without having ever had the possibility of negotiating your working conditions. If somebody else has always decided the when, where, and how of your work, then you were never free. And sure, being a slave in 2024 is generally much better than in the 1850s, but that doesn't change the fact that various forms of slavery are still common today.
The reason we don't think this way is because anyone having access to this forum is almost guaranteed to be in the top 10% earners of the world and thus not a slave. We here have constraints, but we can't call that slavery.
The people who built the laptop I'm typing this on? The people who mined the raw materials necessary to make this laptop?
I wouldn't be so sure. I would ask them, but that's not possible because... well, they can't really come here, can they?

Edited January 14 by Rippounet

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

If you're "free" to sell your labor, but in actuality you don't have a choice, because you need money to pay for rent and food, and the society you live in does not even allow you to attempt being self-reliant, if you're "free" to choose the job you want, but in actuality the only jobs you will have access to are determined by the socio-economic status of your parents, then you really have a lot of illusions but no real freedom.
Or, to put it differently: if the society you live in has no upward social mobility, then it does not provide you any meaningful freedom. Freedom to choose what you eat or watch tonight is not "freedom."
And it's easy to see that, because owing more than you earn is not limited to China. It's rather common throughout the world, including in some of the wealthiest countries. But even that doesn't matter as much as the simple fact of having to work without having ever had the possibility of negotiating your working conditions. If somebody else has always decided the when, where, and how of your work, then you were never free. And sure, being a slave in 2024 is generally much better than in the 1850s, but that doesn't change the fact that various forms of slavery are still common today.
The reason we don't think this way is because anyone having access to this forum is almost guaranteed to be in the top 10% earners of the world and thus not a slave. We here have constraints, but we can't call that slavery.
The people who built the laptop I'm typing this on? The people who mined the raw materials necessary to make this laptop?
I wouldn't be so sure. I would ask them, but that's not possible because... well, they can't really come here, can they?

This is all the feeling of being a slave to a system. That's not the same as being an actual slave. 

[Rippounet]

2 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

This is all the feeling of being a slave to a system. That's not the same as being an actual slave. 

I see. You say one needs to know who owns them to be a slave.
That's fair, but the difference may not be that relevant ; in fact, a system may arguably end up being more brutal.

[Conflicting Thought]

Isnt the 13th amendment a thing? 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Isnt the 13th amendment a thing? 

Yes

[mormont]

You know, the slavery issue might be one that can be debated, though certainly there's no evidence the Houthis are taking any action against the practice.

What's not debatable is that the Houthis are Islamists, are dedicated to the destruction of Israel, are undeniably anti-Semitic, and while better than some other Islamists are also definitely not promoters of the rights of women, LGBT+ folks and democratic rights. They are allies of Hamas and share quite a lot in their world view. They are, in short, not good people. They support a Palestinian state, certainly, but not in a form I'd like to see. And they are currently engaged in a campaign of piracy and terrorism. They are not the good guys.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

I see. You say one needs to know who owns them to be a slave.
That's fair, but the difference may not be that relevant ; in fact, a system may arguably end up being more brutal.

Except I find this argument to usually be made by those in good positions which insults people facing actual slavery.

[Conflicting Thought]

53 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Yes

so slavery is semi legal if you are in prison?

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

@Zorral

I dropped out of Twitter about two months ago.  It was eating my life in a bad way

OK . . . .  Ya.  Good. But ?

I've been a twit refusnik from the gitgo, just as I was FB, Insta, Tickty -- any of them.  These are not my news sources.  I don't trust them and I entirely object to being their product sold to advertisers.

 

 

[Rippounet]

51 minutes ago, mormont said:

They are not the good guys.

No, but that's not the point. The point is that killing "bad guys" isn't necessarily a good in itself: one should look at the consequences of the killing being done. And as soon as you start broadening the context beyond how bad the people being killed are, you start seeing that the moral justifications are rather weak, among many other things because bombing people is rarely a way to improve the living conditions of populations. If bombing the Houthis doesn't do anything for the Yemenis, there's little reason to bring up how bad they are, except to feel a bit better about international events.
It's not about defending the Houthis, it's about understanding why Western militaries are now bombing them. And it doesn't take long to see that "our" governments haven't decided to bomb them because they are "bad," but because they have become a nuisance to us. The fact that they're slavers is just a justification used after the fact.

[mormont]

Is bombing the Houthis doing anything for the Yemenis? No.

Is Houthi piracy of Red Sea traffic doing anything for the Palestinians? Also no.

The Houthis are kidnapping and attempting to kill innocent sailors who have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That's what this is about, for me. As a moral justification, I don't find it to be weak.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

being a slave in 2024 is generally much better than in the 1850s

Tell that to the sex slaves.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

56 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

so slavery is semi legal if you are in prison?

That is the only qualifier in the 13th Amendment and it’s absolutely wrong and unjust.  That said I’ve never hear of prison inmates being sold as slaves since the passage of the 13th Amendment.

[Conflicting Thought]

24 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That is the only qualifier in the 13th Amendment and it’s absolutely wrong and unjust.  That said I’ve never hear of prison inmates being sold as slaves since the passage of the 13th Amendment.

its wrong and unjust and its there and it is used.

maybe they are not sold but they are transfered to other prisons.

[Wilbur]

After last month's rumors of similar Chilean action by Sernapesca, it is good to see actual evidence that Argentina has also decided to take some (very small scale) action on Chinese resource theft in their waters.

If more South American nations would stand up to this sort of parasitic conversion of their national reserves, we might curb, at least a little bit, some of the habitat losses experienced in the southern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, as well as the economic losses for South American countries being overfished by illegal Chinese industrial fishing vessels.

Watch the video.

Friends of mine living in Argentina say that this is made possible by the change in administrations, but I have no expertise to suggest this is true or not.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That is the only qualifier in the 13th Amendment and it’s absolutely wrong and unjust.  That said I’ve never hear of prison inmates being sold as slaves since the passage of the 13th Amendment.

Not sold, but 'rented/contracted out' for which the middlemen made a nice profit, while the labor received no pay, lived in  indiscernible conditions and worked horrific jobs.

This was the way of things during Jim Crow, in which African Americans could be and were rounded up indiscriminately, sentenced to prison, and rented out, to rich white men with special labor projects and the town, the county and the state, or wherever unpaid, hard labor was wanted as in the mines and piney woods. which is why one of the most important works on the subject was titled Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas M. Blackmon -- also made into a PBS documentary --

https://www.pbs.org/show/slavery-another-name/#:~:text=SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME is,ended with the Emancipation Proclamation.

or wherever labor was needed, as in the mines and piney woods by white men.  It was horrendous.  We have really gone back to that again, in states like TX particularly.

[Werthead]

Iran has launched ballistic missile attacks on Iraq and Pakistan in recent days, which seems an interesting - and highly unwise - step. Iraq is going to take Iran to the UNSC and now Pakistan is expressing extreme anger. Iran's claims that it was targeting a Mossad base and a "terrorist centre" have not been taken very well.

Iran and Iraq have had mixed but improving (ish) relations and Iran and Pakistan really don't need to suddenly be at each other's throats. However, Iran may claim that that Pakistani target was related to the terrorist strike last week, which at least would make the need to retaliate make sense, even if it comes as the expense of pissing off Pakistan (and possibly making Pakistan's good friend China furrow its brow).

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Iran has launched ballistic missile attacks on Iraq and Pakistan in recent days, which seems an interesting - and highly unwise - step. Iraq is going to take Iran to the UNSC and now Pakistan is expressing extreme anger. Iran's claims that it was targeting a Mossad base and a "terrorist centre" have not been taken very well.

Iran and Iraq have had mixed but improving (ish) relations and Iran and Pakistan really don't need to suddenly be at each other's throats. However, Iran may claim that that Pakistani target was related to the terrorist strike last week, which at least would make the need to retaliate make sense, even if it comes as the expense of pissing off Pakistan (and possibly making Pakistan's good friend China furrow its brow).

They're also in a territorial dispute with Afghanistan, i.e. the Taliban, over a river basin which has been drying up. Weird to piss off so many neighbors.