Biden team faced "tirade" at meeting with Chinese over America's poor human rights record in "Diplomatic humiliation"

[Hawki]

I see absolutely no reason why this would be true.

Why Is There A Limit To The Efficiency Of Solar Panels?

Solar panels are the future of energy. However the maximum recorded efficiency of a commercial solar cell is 33 percent due to certain energy barriers at the molecular level.

www.scienceabc.com

Betz limit - Energy Education

energyeducation.ca

It's a bit technical, but basically, there's a limit on the energy efficiency of solar and wind due to physics, even if it's iffy as to where that limit is.

Only if you exclude the establishment & dismantling cost of the plants & equipment. That's where the real cost lies; not in upkeep.

I said investment, not operating costs.

For instance:

Why Is Solar Energy Getting 250 Times More In Federal Tax Credits Than Nuclear?

In 2018, the American solar industry got roughly 250 times as much in federal tax incentives as the nuclear sector, when compared by the amount of energy produced. Coming in a close second is the wind sector, which got about 160 times as much as nuclear.

www.forbes.com

I know that's just the US, but globally, the answer remains the same (I can't find the source) - renewables get more investment than nuclear.

Whether that's bad or good is another matter. You're right in that solar and wind are cheaper to install than nuclear, and cheaper to decomission. However, nuclear has its own advantages, such as baseload power, and a higher energy density.

As I've said though, at this point, anything that displaces fossil fuels is something I'm happy with.

Of course, you don't really get news any more corporate that the Global Times, doing exactly the same thing for another corporate gov. Different corporatists; different financial interests, in different countries. Both have an interest in fig-leafing their grotesqueries for the domestic audiences.

Perhaps, but I'm not sure if "corporatist" is really the best word for China's media, or even the government.

Again, I think this is a false equivalence. By any measure, the US has a freer press than China.

I'm more interested in addressing the posts spent downplaying or dismissing the severity of what's happening, in order to make sure the US keeps that "coveted" top spot.

Just to clarify (yes, I know this wasn't directed at me), I don't think either the US or China have the "top spot," per se. But yes, I'd say China is "worse," right now.

 

[Seanchaidh]

That wasn't the comparison that was made, to which I was speaking-- The equivalence was specifically drawn with incarceration and treatment of protesters within the US.

Yes, and?

It's similar. And in similar numbers. Arbitrary detentions and impromptu executions of people who did nothing other than live somewhere, put something in their bodies, have a certain skin color, or so on. Note, "or", not "and".

 

[Revnak]

That wasn't the comparison that was made, to which I was speaking-- The equivalence was specifically drawn with incarceration and treatment of protesters within the US.

No, in terms of scale to this particular event I explicitly compared them to facilities outside of the US, such as those in Iraq, as well as the treatment of “problem Muslims” by US puppets (that’s more implicit in the post in question though). I said the Chinese prison system is comparable in horrors to that of the US prison system.

If the US had all of its “problem Muslims” here rather than in other countries we’d have setup the same kind of detention facilities and work camps as China, because we did setup the same thing, we just built them in Iraq and then the prisoners made ISIS.

 

[Hawki]

Yes, and?

It's similar.

Congratulations. You made exactly the same argument the USSR did during the Cold War, and the same arguments China is making right now.

If you seriously think that mass targeted, systemic incarceration of an entire group is the same thing as overly punative policing, then I'm fucking done.

And in similar numbers.

In what sense?

Yes, the US has a larger prisoner rate per capita. If this was solely a numbers game, then that might be the end of it. Except it isn't.

What is the US equivalent of the Xianjiang concentration camps?

What is the US equivalent of the Laogai system?

What is the US equivalent of the arrest of journalists and political prisoners?

I mean, serious question. Do you honestly see no distinctions here?

Arbitrary detentions and impromptu executions of people who did nothing other than live somewhere

First, China leads the way in arbitrary detentions. Second, I'm not aware of "impromptu executions" in either country (at least in the US, people remain on death row for years), but there's seriously no comparison here.

In 2019, the US executed 22 prisoners. But China? Well, China refuses to divulge the figures, but current estimates put it in the thousands - likely between 1200 and 2400 deaths per year, which, believe it or not, is actually an improvement when it was around 12,000 per year at the start of the 21st century. But even now, carries out mass executions, up to at least 55 at a time.

So, according to you, this is equal. One country executes 22 people in a year, another executes more people than the rest of the world combined, and you see moral equivalance.

Jesus Christ...

put something in their bodies, have a certain skin color, or so on.

[/QUOTE]

First, China is one of the most draconian countries in the world when it comes to drug use. Remember those figures I gave you? The majority of them are FOR drug use, alongside murder. This is despite the fact that the US actually has a higher drug-use rate than China (5.47% of the US population has a drug use issue, compared to 1.96% of the Chinese population. So yes, China's doing a better job of dealing with drug addiction than the US, but that wasn't your point. Your point, as far as I can tell, was based on punitive action on drug use, and in this, China is easily more draconian.

As for skin colour (a.k.a. racism), I seriously can't answer this, because measuring which country is more racist than another is practically impossible, and so many people have tried, and failed, because the criteria varies wildly. But frankly, I'm tired, so let's call that one a draw.

Even then, one is clearly worse. I actually checked up the Human Rights Index of OWID, China falls behind the US in every category with the sole exception of the Paris Principles, where they're both deemed as failures. That's not to say the US is a stellar example either, but by any measurement, China is worse.

So either come back to me with actual data and statistics, or don't come back at all, because I'm frankly tired of wasting my time having to look up these facts and figures, only to be met by sweeping generalisations in response or "the billionaires are funding it!"

No, in terms of scale to this particular event I explicitly compared them to facilities outside of the US, such as those in Iraq, as well as the treatment of “problem Muslims” by US puppets (that’s more implicit in the post in question though). I said the Chinese prison system is comparable in horrors to that of the US prison system.

Well, first, I disagree that the 'horrors' are the same. You can check above for evidence.

Second, even in terms of scale, this would pale to Xianjiang. I'm not talking about POW camps in Iraq, I'm talking about imprisoning entire swathes of a population. If China focused on enemy combatants in Xianjiang, that would be another story (let's give China this, Ughyr terrorists killed hundreds of Han Chinese before the crackdown).

If the US had all of its “problem Muslims” here rather than in other countries we’d have setup the same kind of detention facilities and work camps as China, because we did setup the same thing, we just built them in Iraq and then the prisoners made ISIS.

Two things.

First, the US did have "problem Muslims" inside the country. There was never a moment when Muslims inside the US were rounded up and forced into labour/re-education camps however.

Second, as I've already stated, ISIS existed before the invasion of Iraq. The invasion and withdrawal from Iraq allowed Isis to gain the power it did, absolutely, but "creating" it? No. Not unless you have a time machine (ISIS was formed in 1999, Iraq was invaded in 2003).

 

[Seanchaidh]

Congratulations. You made exactly the same argument the USSR did during the Cold War, and the same arguments China is making right now.

Were/are they not correct? Or does that make your head explode?

Yes, the US has a larger prisoner rate per capita. If this was solely a numbers game, then that might be the end of it. Except it isn't.

What is the US equivalent of the Xianjiang concentration camps?

Its own concentration camps.

What is the US equivalent of the Laogai system?

Forcing prisoners to fight fires or do other labor for pennies per hour, as well as extorting them and their families for money with absurd fees for the use of telephones and other things.

What is the US equivalent of the arrest of journalists and political prisoners?

The United States arresting journalists and whistleblowers and keeping political prisoners would be equivalent, yes.

I mean, serious question. Do you honestly see no distinctions here?

Of course I see distinctions. The United States also has been terrifying populations with drone bombing, economically ruining places with sanctions, attempting and sometimes succeeding at fomenting coups against governments that are at least as democratic as it is, is still occupying Afghanistan and Iraq against the wishes of their populations, invaded those countries in the first place, and still enforces the interests of its corporate ruling class above those of the populations of its own states and possessions and all foreign states.

 

[Revnak]

Well, first, I disagree that the 'horrors' are the same. You can check above for evidence.

Second, even in terms of scale, this would pale to Xianjiang. I'm not talking about POW camps in Iraq, I'm talking about imprisoning entire swathes of a population. If China focused on enemy combatants in Xianjiang, that would be another story (let's give China this, Ughyr terrorists killed hundreds of Han Chinese before the crackdown).

I AM NOT COMPARING XIANJIANG TO PRISONS. I AM COMPARING CHINESE PRISONS TO US PRISONS, US CONCENTRATION CAMPS AT HOME AND ABROAD TO CHINESE CONCENTRATION CAMPS, US NATIVE RE-EDUCATION SCHOOLS TO CHINESE, ETC. GIVEN THAT CLARIFYING THIS IS THE ONLY REASON I DECIDED TO RETURN TO THIS ARGUMENT I WOULD APPRECIATE THE CLARIFICATION BEING NOTICED.

These facilities are not prisons, they’re concentration camps, which were invented as a method of imperialist war and have been used by the US in conflicts repeatedly and by US puppet states routinely. The distinction is an important one, as prisons are a kind of individualized punishment while concentration camps are exclusively a kind of collective punishment or method of control. In terms of scale, the concentration camps employed by the US at home and abroad (remember, a concentration camp imposed on a foreign people isn’t not only still in the category of concentration camp, that was literally their original implementation) are comparable to Chinese concentration camps that, as far as I know, are only presently being implemented in Xianjiang.

Two things.

First, the US did have "problem Muslims" inside the country. There was never a moment when Muslims inside the US were rounded up and forced into labour/re-education camps however.

Second, as I've already stated, ISIS existed before the invasion of Iraq. The invasion and withdrawal from Iraq allowed Isis to gain the power it did, absolutely, but "creating" it? No. Not unless you have a time machine (ISIS was formed in 1999, Iraq was invaded in 2003).

For the first, no, we just put them all on lists to extra-legally monitor them and occasionally took them to black sites where we would torture them without a trial if they raised any concern. At least, that’s all we did if they were domestic problem Muslims, which were hardly ever an even vaguely comparable concern or significant demographic, as most of our problem Muslims were abroad.

For the second, I’m tired of debating on technicalities like this. If ISIS wouldn’t have had a similar prominence, form, or leadership without US prison camps then it wouldn’t be fucking ISIS now would it?

 

[Satinavian]

Overall I do think that China is doing more shitty things than the US. Slightly, debatable and obviously depending on which human right you value more. But China is not a democracy styling itself as champion of human rights. For some undemocratic one party system busy centralizing power in the hand of one leader, it is comparably tame and there are dozens of worse systems around the world though not that powerful. That the behavior of the US seems to be not that much better reflects thus quite badly on the US.

But the important thing is that there are two shitty superpowers quarrelling over dominance in the western pacific and i really really don't have any interest in being dragged into it. Even if the US is better, it is not that much better that i want to take its side. Staying out of this as much as possible and hoping no one is stupid enough to start a hot war seems like the most prudent action. We have nothing to win, much to loose and the morality argument is not convincing enough when it is the choice between pest and cholera.

 

[Thaluikhain]

As i said, nuclear power does not have a future even if one disregards the waste aspect. It just is not that cheap in comparison anymore and we really don't have enough nuclear fuel for widespread adoption..

Disagree there, domestic nuclear power is closely tied to military use. Nations are going to want to have nuclear powered surface ships or submarines, and nuclear things to put on them. I'd be surprised to see a nation embrace nuclear weapons and nuclear ships but reject nuclear power plants.

Second, I'm not aware of "impromptu executions" in either country (at least in the US, people remain on death row for years), but there's seriously no comparison here.

In 2019, the US executed 22 prisoners.

Well...if you use the term loosely, the US has had a lot of impromptu executions.

Now, that is not to say that the US is exactly as bad as China, and there's not even a single murder between them or anything.

 

[Silvanus]

It's similar. And in similar numbers. Arbitrary detentions and impromptu executions of people who did nothing other than live somewhere, put something in their bodies, have a certain skin color, or so on. Note, "or", not "and".

And you believe those are equivalent to a concerted effort on the part of a government to wipe an ethnic group in its entirety from the face of the planet?

Second, I'm not aware of "impromptu executions" in either country

What? We've been shown, time and again, that members of the US Police forces feel very comfortable using lethal force in scenarios that don't call for it (such as... possibly using a counterfeit bill, for instance).

That's functionally an "impromptu execution". A representative of the state feels empowered to use lethal force, without trial or process, without even establishing guilt or threat. And it happens time after time.

 

[Hawki]

Well...if you use the term loosely, the US has had a lot of impromptu executions.

Now, that is not to say that the US is exactly as bad as China, and there's not even a single murder between them or anything.

Wait, are you talking about murders, or executions?

If you're talking about the murder rate, then the US murder rate is 10x the homicide rate of China. If we're talking about executions, then see above (China absolutely dwarfs the US). If you're talking about police shootings, that's hard to say, but yes, China's police almost certainly kill less than US police, in part because they didn't start carrying firearms until recently.

That said, I draw a distinction here, and this goes for pretty much any country - stuff like police shootings and murder rates aren't inherently the result of animus from the country's government. Dysfunction on some level, yes, but not necessarily animus. If you think this is special pleading for the US (it isn't - anyone can see that its prison system is broken), I'll point out that if we're using China as an example, there's a reason why most people hold Hitler as the greater evil than Mao (including myself), even if more people died under Mao's regime. Because as disastarous as the Great Leap Forward was, with a higher death toll than the Holocaust (and by some estimates, all of WWII), Mao never sought to exterminate an entire group of people. It's why I don't hold dysfunction as being equivalent to systemic suppression (political prisoners, arbitrary detention of entire groups), or state-sanctioned execution.

 

[tstorm823]

It also is highly reliant on mineral extraction from Africa, which historically is not a good foundation for an industry unless you’re a fan of mercenaries massacring slave laborers.

Source? Pretty sure you got this one backwards, some of the renewable technologies depend on rare mineral extraction, nuclear cares about uranium, which there's enough in Canada and Australia to fuel the whole planet, and a really big pile of steel and concrete.

 

[Hawki]

What? We've been shown, time and again, that members of the US Police forces feel very comfortable using lethal force in scenarios that don't call for it (such as... possibly using a counterfeit bill, for instance).

That's functionally an "impromptu execution". A representative of the state feels empowered to use lethal force, without trial or process, without even establishing guilt or threat. And it happens time after time.

Look, I get the argument you're making, but you yourself have, in that very post, made distinction between the level of incarceration in the US and concentration camps.

I'd argue that the same applies here. When we compare levels of police brutality in both cases (the US police are more dysfunctional), when I think of "impromtu executions," I'm thinking of state-sanctioned executions, directed by the state, without trial. And in this, China's execution rate is astronomical.

Don't think I'm defending Derek Chauvin, but the state didn't direct his actions, and he's on trial right now. He himself is responsible for his actions. In contrast, execution sanctioned by the state is sanctioned by, well, the state.

 

[Silvanus]

Look, I get the argument you're making, but you yourself have, in that very post, made distinction between the level of incarceration in the US and concentration camps.

I'd argue that the same applies here. When we compare levels of police brutality in both cases (the US police are more dysfunctional), when I think of "impromtu executions," I'm thinking of state-sanctioned executions, directed by the state, without trial. And in this, China's execution rate is astronomical.

Don't think I'm directing Derek Chauvin, but the state didn't direct his actions, and he's on trial right now. He himself is responsible for his actions. In contrast, execution sanctioned by the state is sanctioned by, well, the state.

State-sanctioned executions aren't "impromptu".

Derek Chauvin is responsible for his actions. But he's one among dozens (or hundreds, even); it's a very noticeable trend. And when so many officers are allowed to kill without legal repercussion, then the state can certainly be said to be tolerating their behaviour, or looking the other way.

That's why it's fair to say these actions reflect on the establishment. And if the establishment is happy for it to keep on keeping on, then I don't think it's a stretch to use the term "execution". It apportions well-deserved blame for their willingness to oversee and allow violence in their name.

 

[Silvanus]

No, in terms of scale to this particular event I explicitly compared them to facilities outside of the US, such as those in Iraq, as well as the treatment of “problem Muslims” by US puppets (that’s more implicit in the post in question though). I said the Chinese prison system is comparable in horrors to that of the US prison system.

Hmm, okay, then I might have misunderstood, or conflated different peoples' positions with one another. Apologies for that. This was the origin of the equivalence drawn between Xinjiang and domestic US prisons with which I took such an issue.

 

[Seanchaidh]

And you believe those are equivalent to a concerted effort on the part of a government to wipe an ethnic group in its entirety from the face of the planet?

First, I don't believe the febrile imaginings of Adrian Zenz. Second and more importantly, I don't think the people killed by one or the other much care which is which.

 

[Hawki]

State-sanctioned executions aren't "impromptu".

I should have elaborated, as I was thinking of my earlier posts.

Neither the US or China execute prisoners impromptu. Least in the US, prisoners have to go through a trial, then an appeal (I assume), and can spend years on death row. China, even if its execution rate is much higher, still allows trials. But I'd maintain that there's a difference between a cop breaching his training and killing someone, versus the state ordering the cop to kill someone arbitrarily.

Derek Chauvin is responsible for his actions. But he's one among dozens (or hundreds, even); it's a very noticeable trend. And when so many officers are allowed to kill without legal repercussion, then the state can certainly be said to be tolerating their behaviour, or looking the other way.

That's why it's fair to say these actions reflect on the establishment. And if the establishment is happy for it to keep on keeping on, then I don't think it's a stretch to use the term "execution". It apportions well-deserved blame for their willingness to oversee and allow violence in their name.

I actually agree with most of this. If this was solely a question of which country had the more functional police force, then I'd be rooting for China.

On the other hand, I can't call deaths at the hands of police officers "executions." Not unless I disregard intent. And mostly, we agree that intent does matter, both in the moral and legal sense (e.g. we distinguish between murder and manslaughter).

 

[Silvanus]

First, I don't believe the febrile imaginings of Adrian Zenz.

An irrelevance and a deflection. You may as well be dismissing evidence of the UK warmongering because you don't believe the febrile imaginings of George Galloway.

Second and more importantly, I don't think the people killed by one or the other much care which is which.

Indeed they don't, hence my disdain for the effort to dismiss and downplay one to make sure the other comes out on top in the league tables.

I imagine they do care, though, to know that what's happening to them isn't being swept under the rug.

 

[Thaluikhain]

But I'd maintain that there's a difference between a cop breaching his training and killing someone, versus the state ordering the cop to kill someone arbitrarily.

Ah, but is it a breach of training, though? I would argue that it is not. The state hasn't told police to kill a specific person, but has told them that it is perfectly fine if they kill certain kinds of people.

To be clear, not saying that this makes China better than the US, or anything, I see no reason why we can't be concerned with both.

 

[Revnak]

Hmm, okay, then I might have misunderstood, or conflated different peoples' positions with one another. Apologies for that. This was the origin of the equivalence drawn between Xinjiang and domestic US prisons with which I took such an issue.

Fair. I’m not entirely opposed to conflating prisons and camps anyway (primary difference is whether the punishment is individualized or collective, and while the latter is universally unjust, the former doesn’t have a great track record either), just prefer to avoid it if it’s entirely unnecessary.

 

[Seanchaidh]

An irrelevance and a deflection. You may as well be dismissing evidence of the UK warmongering because you don't believe the febrile imaginings of George Galloway.

Except that the evidence falls well short of "trying to eliminate an entire ethnic group from the face of the earth" unless, like Zenz, you interpret the extension of China's two/one child policy to the Uyghurs as an attempt to prevent all births whatsoever.

Indeed they don't, hence my disdain for the effort to dismiss and downplay one to make sure the other comes out on top in the league tables.

I imagine they do care, though, to know that what's happening to them isn't being swept under the rug.

Or hysterically promoted as mandate for regime change by the ruling class of the global superpower.