• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • I wouldn’t call it freedom. If she’s treated like other “security threats” within China, then she does not have freedom to travel. She’s likely limited to her city at most, perhaps even just a small area within and has to regularly report to local police. Think of it like probation for people convicted of actual crimes in the West, except without court order, for an unlimited amount of time and with the constant threat of being tortured/disappeared looming over her head. If Xi ever feels like tightening the thumb screws on the Chinese people even further, she’d probably feel the effects before many others. All of this comes with social consequences, as many friends and business partners will be scared away.





  • DW (Deutsche Welle) is pretty good. It’s funded by the German government, but I haven’t found any faults with the reporting yet. Unlike with Qatar’s state media, there is a law preventing the German government from directly influencing the reporting. At worst, their English voice overs can be a bit clumsy at times and some of their English language stories are of relatively little relevance to an international audience.

    https://www.dw.com

    It is worth noting that their Arabic-language team has come under fire for antisemitism in the past (similar to a recent scandal at the BBC), so even they are unfortunately not perfect.

    As for Al-Jazeera (edit: and sorry for writing such a long comment, this wasn’t originally planned), there have been a number of occasions of their journalists cutting off citizens in Gaza the moment they started to criticize Hamas and/or Qatar. Two examples:

    https://twitter.com/MEMRIReports/status/1724696674763719162

    https://www.memri.org/tv/jazeera-reporter-gaza-prevents-criticism-of-qatar-turkey

    Earlier in this war, when a rocket from a Hamas-aligned group struck the parking lot of a hospital, Al-Jazeera spread the lie that it was an Israeli air strike, even though the breakup of the rocket launched from Gaza could be seen on their live stream. They later switched to a questionable analysis that claimed the Iron Dome had intercepted the rocket over Gaza, even though that’s impossible, since the Iron Dome neither extends over the strip nor intercepts rockets during their boost phase.

    Analysis:

    https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/21/gaza-hospital-explosion-00122889

    This kind of reporting has consequences. Al-Jazeera’s Arabic language content in particular - which is far different in tone compared to the more moderate English-language edition - has an enormous reach in the Middle East. In this case, the misleading at best reporting resulted in riots and antisemitic pogroms in several Middle Eastern and North African countries, including the torching of a synagogue.

    Israel has also accused several of their journalists of working directly for Hamas. While they have presented evidence, these accusations have been met with heavy criticism, although notably primarily by people and organizations already critical of the Israeli government.

    IDF claim:

    https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-781666

    Counter reaction:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/journalism-groups-family-reject-israeli-accusation-gazan-reporters-kil-rcna133666

    The fact that at the funeral of this journalist, Saleh Aljafarawi, a man known for his many roles and clear connection with Hamas was front and center does support the IDF claim though (first from the left kneeling down):

    https://abcnews.go.com/International/al-jazeera-journalist-laments-son-killed-israeli-strike/story?id=106223633

    In case you are not familiar with him, here he is singing a Hamas propaganda song in uniform:

    https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1723492449157288062

    I’m not saying that every journalist killed by the IDF is automatically a terrorist or that the company any of them keep, in life and death, is evidence of wrongdoing, but the whole thing is definitely odd.

    Al Jazeera though has been dubious at best for decades already. I recall that even all the way back in the early 2000s, they were being regularly criticized for uncritically broadcasting terrorist propaganda.





  • No. I’m honestly trying to educate, even though I’m absolutely disgusted by your comments. None of what I wrote is inaccurate and by my own standards, this is not a very long comment either. If that’s too much reading for you to the point that you feel overwhelmed, then that’s your problem and I hope that at least someone else can get some use out of it.

    Do you have any actual arguments or are you just going to hide behind this platitude? Imagine having the audacity to tell Jews that the hatred, discrimination and violence they are experience isn’t real. Would you do the same with POC or LGBTQ+ people? Deny their suffering outright, because it doesn’t fit into your narrative?



  • They have over 3500 aircraft, although a large percentage of them are outdated and almost all of the types used, except for a relatively small number of Russian imports, are untested in combat. Their operational history is universally one of accidents and/or dangerous provocations. Expect even the latest types, which appear modern on paper, to lag at least a generation or more behind any current Western designs in actual capabilities.

    It also doesn’t help that there is no institutional knowledge due to a complete lack of combat experience anywhere in the PLAAF, that Chinese military pilots are poorly trained and that China appears to have no ability to deal with American countermeasures and tactics, as evidenced for example by their chaotic and unsuccessful attempt at intercepting Nancy Pelosi’s flight to Taiwan.