quetzthecoatl

Two party system with entry barriers for new parties isn't a democracy. It's a system that's only slightly better than a single party system like what you have in PRC.

when I do it's moderation, when they do it's censorship.

Between this and the matt taibi twitter discussion, the conclusion is that Americans overwhelmingly are for censorship of " the otherside", but wants to do it in such a way that it can't be called censorship. It's not that they don't want censorship, but they don't want to do it in a transparent way in which a government entity/clerk hands in a takedown request to fb/twitter, instead they want embedded partisan operatives operating through backchannels to takedown content they don't like in absolutely opaque fashion. The point is to claim - "see it's not censorship" even though the end result is the same. All it matters is how it looks like, not what it is.

to sum up, political slant that aligns with your politics is good, the rest is bad/edgelord/nihilism.

Everything else aside, if you just compare Nytimes and wikileaks, it's easy to see who the good guys are - the one who stood up against the biggest power in the history of mankind at immense personal and organizational cost vs the ones who perpetuated lies to support Iraq Wars, US sponsored Coups, Genocides. One siding with nytimes on his/her politics ignoring everything is on him/her. Maybe from US internal politics perspective Nytimes is the good guy, but for everyone else, they are absolutely the bad guys.

not the parent, but the others who responded with "whataboutism". Holding one accountable to the same standards that he holds others accountable isn't wrong. I refuse to take anyone who raises the bogey of "whataboutism" seriously. It has the same validity as someone responding to an argument that it's wrong to make that argument at this time of the day.

he is right, but raising whataboutism isn't an argument. It's absolutely valid to point out immoral doings of the very people who are doing the accusations. Otherwise, it's a race to make the accusations and the first one wins - everyone else is whataboutism. You can easily see who came up with the inane whatboutism - the one who did a whole lot of crimes in the past, and wants to judge others now for similar crimes.

The same way US is a democratic society?

If two party system with hard barriers for a new party to enter needing additional approval from board consisting of the existing parties is a democracy, then so is Iran with all their limitations. Maybe a lesser one than US, but not that different.

because if you get your account compromised on one site/forum because of lax security on their end, you don't want all your accounts compromised.

>HN has been consistently contrarian. That’s about all that you can say without quickly becoming mistaken.

until recently. Just like reddit, it has become less niche and more mainstream. For eg: HN majority opinion on covid's origin. It matched the official US govt lines as it switched back and forth between market and lab.

In the same lines : "judicial activism" and "judicial coup".

and all of that combined is like a regular wedensday for US.

does these labels make any sense any more? Not that they made sense to begin with. Liberalism and conservatism aren't polar opposite. The opposite of conservatism (those who don't like change) is radicalism (significant changes). In general, anyone who favors the long standing status quo is a conservative. Conservative label itself doesn't convey anything about one's political believes without knowing the contemporary social and political history surrounding the person. Every longstanding blue-state democrat by definition is a conservative. On top of all that you have the uniquely american problem of having to pigeon hole everyone into just two labels, and labels gradually losing their values to identities.

I know it's a joke, but it's not a front-end/back-end thing, but a form/content thing.

>Is murder ethical then, if the murderer uses the victim's organs to save the lives of 10 other people?

Even better, just kill everyone for a greener earth.

that it has nothing to do with real achievements, but everything to do with politics and optics. I am not saying "west" wanted to award Navalny Nobel peace price, but if they did, it's understandable given the real politik.

Obama got the Nobel prize, and he proceeded to commit crimes against humanity - especially against some of the poorest and weakest people on the face of earth. It's a political award.

Come on. None other than Justin Trudeau vocally supported the middlemen blocking highways in India against the farming reforms that Indian government passed in parliament. Some self introspection please.

The same would be true for US as well - or any country based on how people feel about the party/person in power.

>>The biggest issue of all of the foreign aid is corruption.

It's worse than corruption. It buys entire ruling class of poorer nations paying peanuts in dollars/euros. It's subversion of poor countries by propping up oligarchies.

Sorry for your loss. Do whatever you need to make your days easier.

Open classes are against SOLID principles (O stands for - classes should be extendable, but not modifiable). So, a big no in some circuits. Aside from open classes, ruby also have instance_eval and class_eval taking to violating that principle to whole new level.

Politics too. People are far too eager to cede power to these big tech companies just because it will hurt those on the other side of the political spectrum now - without realizing that that power is gone forever. DMCA takedown, demonetization and ad revenue scene, privacy - it's all the same story.

No it was the US with the help of Pakistan. See - /dev/null.

touchy. i really touched a nerve huh? why the smiley at the end though.

>And yet you stand in a 1 KM queue to get a visa to the "west". :P

How else are we going to destroy you from within? :P

It would be absurd to suggest that America created the people who became taliban - obviously their parents did. I doubt any of them are americans. I guess that part of obvious, and i am sorry that i didn't make it clear. What I meant was that it was US with their attack dogs in the area, ie pakistan, who gave money, training and weapons to them.

There are complexities to every situation anywhere.

PS: America created Taliban. ISIS too.

Yeah, USSR's help was sought out by Afghanistan. How does it concern US? As a sovereign republic, it's Afghanistan's right to self govern seeking help from whoever she pleases. It's none of US' business.

As for history and barbarians. In the last 300 years, US have eclipsed whatever injustices others have done in thousands of years. If we include the whole of western hemisphere, it's not even comparable. There is no other civilization that matches the horrific evils that the "enlightened western civilization" did even remotely. You lot wiped off entire natives from multiple continents. Did mass murder in other continents. Followed it up with slavery. I could go on, but even chengiz khan looks like an emo kid if you look at the evil and barbarity of western history.

>What exactly do you want to do with past events?

Reconciliation, reparations and justice.

>Lot of talk about China

Why is it US or China? It's just two countries. There are so many other way to do things. Why do you conclude that other than US' way, the only other way is China's way?

>Also, learn about what happened in Afghanistan from 1975 - You'll find that it has evolved into a proxy war between many parties, but was started by an Afghan president seeking help from Soviets.

Good one. How does Afghan president Soviet help justify America and Pakistan creating Taliban to destabilize Afghanistan? How is it America's business? Every sovereign nation has the right to seek help from whosoever they like. It's none of America's concern. But no, that won't be. Taliban has to be created to bring down a government that dared to seek Russia's help. I am not saying then afghanistan govt was all good. I am saying that doesn't justify US/UK destabilizing Afghanistan and creating Taliban with the help of Pakistan.

I have no idea what your identity has to do with your points. So, i am just gonna ignore all that except the "South Asian" bit. It's hard for me to take anyone seriously that uses that term. South America and North America actually mean something. They are real geographical entities in the south and north. It's just plain stupidity to call India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as "South Asia". All of Arab states, Iran, Pak, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar all the way to Vietnam is South Asia.

It's "people like us". Always been. What's changed is how the "people like us" is defined. It used to be race, then skin color, then religious belief, and now it's class. It's still us vs them, only "us" is not defined on racial or religious lines.

that and they really are unaware of the horrible things their government/country did and still does. In my view, every good thing/ideal has been corrupted and weaponized by the west. Be it women's rights, civil liberties, human rights in general - whatever. West uses this as a means to pressure other countries to achieve west's foreign policy goals. It's just a stick to beat others with - not an ideal to uphold. So, what you have is a few in the west setting the narrative, and the rest mindlessly dancing as per the narrative believing it. What you see in HN/Reddit etc are the people who believe the propaganda as they being the good guys despite the ones doing the horrible things all across the planet for the last few hundred years. It's hypocrisy when the ones setting the narrative peddle this nonsense. I don't think that crowd comes to HN/Reddit. They are more in nytimes/wapo/economist opeds and columns. The ones you find here are genuinely clueless and/or can't think for themselves. As punishing wrongthink becomes the norm, it's going to get worse.

>This is a twisted form of whatabboutism.

As if that's a valid criticism. What about your whataboutism? hehe.

You wrote about western countries and especially US having protections that make your democracy enlightened - especially citing bill of rights that protects the rights of everyone. To which I pointed out that you had genocide of natives, slavery of Africans, oppression of women, sexual minorities etc when bill of rights was in full force. Point being that not only are you wrong about west being equal, but also about having these protection would actually mean anything.

>The crusades a thousand years ago do not justify jihad today.

No where did i say it does. You are literally making stuff up. How does you lot doing genocide and slavery in US justify Taliban blowing up whatever they find unislamic in their narrow definition of pure islam? None of the examples I used went far back to 1000 years, why even bring it up?

As for ignoring this happened in the past - Axe doesn't remember, the tree does. You can conveniently forget horrific events in the past when you benefited from it or you did it (whatever that "you" identity is). You might say the genocide of natives was in the past, so shouldn't matter, but the native americans would definitely beg to differ.

btw where do you draw the line? 500 years? 100 years? 10 years? yesterday? Of the genocide, slavery, segregation, wars to spread christianity and/or stop communism - what according to you is beyond the statute of limitations on moral responsibility?

>"The West" has come a long way. It's not hypocritical to want the rest of the world to catch up.

It really hasn't. The latest nightmare that is unfolding in Afghanistan, is created by west. The rest of the world can't catch up when you keep destabilizing it.

are you even aware of your own history? Genocide, slavery, segregation, oppression of religious and sexual minorities etc ? You did wars to spread christianity. Even now gays don't have equal rights. Whatever little rights they earned was just recently. Bill of rights was in the 1700s. Genocide, slavery and all that rest happened while your bill of rights was in full force.

How do people write these shit with a straight face knowing western history? especially United State's history.

As for the topic in hand, the Bahraini govt is accused of doing to select people what US govt does to everyone, and you are getting self righteous? Lmao this is hilarious.