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Comment by surfanddurf | Hacker News Reader

I think we, as the world, need to counter this by

1.) Start moving factories out China, back into your local country. It could be an upgrade for companies to upgrade to more automated factories. Furthermore, it fights against China's agenda of 'Made in China in 2025', which they expect to make....everything in China.

2.) Shame companies that are investing further in China, destroying jobs in your local country.

3.) Stop buying things that are made in China. China doesn't have a big enough consumer base; it requires developed countries to purchase their good.

4.) Let everyone know about China's concentration camps that affect 1M+ muslims.

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> the world

FWIW, 20% of the world is China. They also manufacture a lot of things. Also it'a a huge country with a huge tapestry of interwoven peoples and problems.

"The world" isn't just going to turn the other cheek and oust what will probably be the next global superpower.

In other news, the US, NATO and friends in this century alone destroyed Iraq, Libya, almost destroyed Syria and Yemen and did a few other nasty things that resulted in at least a million dead. Do you have a big enough item 5 for that?

> In other news, the US, NATO and friends in this century alone destroyed Iraq, Libya, almost destroyed Syria and Yemen and did a few other nasty things that resulted in at least a million dead. Do you have a big enough item 5 for that?

Destroyed? You'll need to provide some pretty strong proof to convince me those countries aren't there anymore.

Also the Syria and Yemen are civil wars. Don't know how you think it's reasonable to pin that on the "US, NATO and friends" (that is, unless you want to do something silly like trace things too far back to look for butterflies, ignore a lot of recent history, and remove all agency from the locals).

Proof? Libya has currently been broken into four or more warring states, each controlling some part of Libya.

>Also the Syria and Yemen are civil wars. Don't know how you think it's reasonable to pin that on the "US, NATO and friends".

By providing the various sides with arms and support. Though I think you can put much of the blame of the civil wars staring on the US, even if you disagree the wars are still dramatically different than it would be without US support.

>> Also the Syria and Yemen are civil wars. Don't know how you think it's reasonable to pin that on the "US, NATO and friends".

> Though I think you can put much of the blame of the civil wars staring on the US, even if you disagree the wars are still dramatically different than it would be without US support.

I think that's profoundly ignorant and belies lazy thinking, especially in relation to Syria.

The precise cause of the civil war was the domestic policies of the Assad regime [1] [2] [3] [4].

As for "providing the various sides with arms and support," I would be gobsmacked if you could show the US provided arms to Assad, especially in significant numbers. I recall significant dithering by the Obama administration over the level of support to give the rebels, and the fact that the US withheld arms to the rebels (over fears of inadvertently supporting Islamic extremists) is what allowed ISIS to grow so strong and eclipse the more liberal rebel groups.

> the wars are still dramatically different than it would be without US support.

If only because the support of other nations would have had a relatively greater effect [5].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_of_events_of_the_Syrian...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/world/middleeast/26syria....

[4] https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/11/22/syria-s-path-from-c...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syr...

>I think that's profoundly ignorant and belies lazy thinking, especially in relation to Syria.

Why is it ignorant and lazy? The US has been backing the Syrian opposition since 2006, and arming them since 2011. Additionally, it was the US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent mismanagement that allowed ISIL to gain power in the region.

Mostly beside the point though. The US has been an active participant in the war for a while now, and other outside support doesn't change that.

>The precise cause of the civil war was the domestic policies of the Assad regime

https://www.sott.net/article/377588-Syrian-War-for-Dummies-T...

I think your version is ~ between Disney and high school.

read your [5] carefully again (I am sure you haven't), and note the nice sidebar on the right "Covert United States involvement in regime change", it's not there by accident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore

>> The precise cause of the civil war was the domestic policies of the Assad regime

> https://www.sott.net/article/377588-Syrian-War-for-Dummies-T....

Sott.net doesn't seem like a very reliable source. This appears to be a friendly description of it in a related wiki (https://thecasswiki.net/index.php?title=Signs_of_the_Times):

> SOTT is a research project of the non-profit Quantum Future Group (QFG) and is run by volunteers. The project includes collecting, arranging, and analyzing news items that seem to best reflect the movement of macrocosmic quantum energies on the planet. This research further includes noting whether or not human beings, individually and/or collectively, can actually remember from one day to the next the state of the planet, and whether they are able to accurately read that information and make intelligent decisions about their future based on that knowledge. In short, SOTT is an experiment.

> While the site began as a one-woman operation, this work quickly attracted some truly fine, open minds – people interested in truth, many of whom are scientific professionals and whose work on SOTT is anonymous for their own protection. SOTT and QFG has been attacked, suppressed, and marginalized by the Powers That Be in ways that no other work has been, leaving editors and researchers with the distinct impression that they must be on the right track.

"the Powers That Be" links a page about the "Matrix Control System."

This is a much less friendly description of the person who founded sott.net: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Laura_Knight_Jadczyk.

> and note the nice sidebar on the right "Covert United States involvement in regime change", it's not there by accident.

1) That lists the Syrian civil war. 2) It doesn't contradict anything that I said.

The precise cause of the present Syrian civil war was the domestic policies of the Assad regime. No one pretends that the US was friendly or neutral towards that regime prior to the war. I would not surprise me if the US took some action against it prior to that, but those actions were unsuccessful and not causally linked to the civil war (beyond butterfly-effect level stuff).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore:

> "Launched in 2012 or 2013"

That post-dates the beginning of the Syrian civil war.

>Sott.net doesn't seem like a very reliable source

irrelevant, it's not a source but a compilation with links to various sources.

>The precise cause of the present Syrian civil war was the domestic policies of the Assad regime

no it wasn't. it was a pretext, an opportunity the the US and UK seized upon to concoct a crisis - precisely like they did in various other cases.

Civil war implies it was a local phenomenon -- it was not. Foreign invaders occupied territory which has thankfully been restored to the democratically elected government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Doesn't make his point any less valid in this PARTICULAR context.

I mean, where are we going to move the factories if the prerequisite is "No brutal use of deadly force against Muslims" ?

Was he making a relevant point besides that the West/US has done bad things too?

I guess I inferred that he was pointing out the futility of looking for a place to move factories that is untarnished in this regard. If that was his point, he's right. I can't really think of any place to move the factories to that wouldn't just be kind of pointless. I mean, pretty much everyone uses deadly force against muslims. (Maybe someplace where they don't have muslims? We might be able to move there?)

In any case, I should probably just let him, (or her), outline what their own point was.

If you want to dispense justice, then I should remind you that Lady Justice is blindfolded for a reason. If you want to selectively punish China but not others then it's not justice, those who are punished immediately see that it has nothing to do with their bad behaviour.

So then we might as well just leave the factories in China then?

> I think we, as the world, need to

There's no "we, as the world". There are individual actors driven by their own motives. There will always be desire to make extra money by some of them by dealing with the shady governments.

I agree but how should this actually work? I feel like we have no options here. Everything comes from China, beginning with my mobile devices.

> I agree but how should this actually work? I feel like we have no options here. Everything comes from China, beginning with my mobile devices.

One option is to more or less emulate China. It's factories were built over the last 30 or so years. There's no reason that other countries couldn't start to replicate those capabilities and supply chains over a similar time period. It would probably require more automation to be economical in the West, however.

The hard part with that will be to force Western profit-uber-alles corporations to comply.

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