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4·6 hours agoYes, in a recent study “Manufacturing Impunity: Russian Information Operations In Ukraine” - (opens pdf), the authors call that an “information alibi”:
Information alibis closely resemble “accusations in a mirror”. This is a rhetorical practice in which one falsely accuses one’s enemies of conducting, plotting, or desiring to commit precisely the same transgressions that one plans to commit against them. For example, if one plans to kill one’s adversaries by attacking a civilian object like a marketplace, they would accuse the adversaries of plotting precisely the same act.
[Edit typo.]
This ranks certainly among the most derailed, out-of-touch forms of whataboutism I’ve ever seen. It would be laughable if it were not so serious.
11·12 hours agohmm. and data transfer to america is fine?
Who says that?
Question is how much of it is genuine and how much of it is exacerbated
A few weeks ago, an audio gathered by civil guard investigators (which do now rely on Huawei?) was made public and appeared to show the PSOE secretary, Santos Cerdán - a a trusted confidant of prime minister Sanchez - , discussing commissions paid by companies in exchange for public contracts.
I don’t know, but I am not sure whether the number of users is too relevant for this kind of software. If you use it in a country with a low population, it does the same fine job. A big problem we are facing is that online spaces are engineered to capture attention - as the article suggests - rather than to encourage a productive civil discourse. In Taiwan, for example, they built a solution called vTaiwan, which is based on the Open Source tool Pol.is, specifically designed to address this problem.
Maybe some people would be willing to work 996 for a certain amount of time, if and when they get their equal share of the proceeds then …
1·5 days agoIn somehow related news:
Chinese Electric Cars in Israel Found to Be Transmitting Data to China
The Israeli Ministry of Defense has officially suspended the supply of Chinese electric vehicles from BYD to IDF officers due to concerns over data collection via embedded communication systems and sensors. […] To minimize the risk of information leakage, the e-Call system — the automatic emergency services communication feature — was forcibly disabled in the received vehicles.
However, experts believe that this is not enough. Dr. Harel Menashri, one of the founders of the cybersecurity department at the Israel Security Agency (Shabak), pointed out that Chinese cars should be considered mobile intelligence platforms capable of collecting audio, video, geolocation, and biometric data, and transmitting it to servers in China.
42·5 days agoLol and what about them other AIs
Whataboutism, the rhetorical practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation, by asking a different but related question, or by raising a different issue altogether. Whataboutism often serves to reduce the perceived plausibility or seriousness of the original accusation or question by suggesting that the person advancing it is hypocritical or that the responder’s misbehavior is not unique or unprecedented. Acts of whataboutism typically begin with rhetorical questions of the form “What about…?”
The “tankie.tube” is a channel for authoritarian propaganda.
4·8 days agoBrazil sues China carmaker BYD over ‘slave-like’ conditions
Brazilian prosecutors are suing Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD and two of its contractors, saying they were responsible for human trafficking and conditions “analogous to slavery” at a factory construction site in the country.
Did coerced labour build your car?
Thousands of cars ship out of factories every day. But at the other end of the production line, workers are shipped in – thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz every year – from Xinjiang, the western region at the centre of a long-running human rights crisis.
Moved as part of a labour transfer scheme that experts call forced labour, these ethnic minorities are coercively recruited by the Chinese state to travel thousands of miles and fill the manufacturing jobs that recent Chinese graduates have spurned. An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found more than 100 brands whose products have been made, in part or whole, by workers moved under this system.
Brazil sues China carmaker BYD over ‘slave-like’ conditions
Brazilian prosecutors are suing Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD and two of its contractors, saying they were responsible for human trafficking and conditions “analogous to slavery” at a factory construction site in the country.
Did coerced labour build your car?
Thousands of cars ship out of factories every day. But at the other end of the production line, workers are shipped in – thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz every year – from Xinjiang, the western region at the centre of a long-running human rights crisis.
Moved as part of a labour transfer scheme that experts call forced labour, these ethnic minorities are coercively recruited by the Chinese state to travel thousands of miles and fill the manufacturing jobs that recent Chinese graduates have spurned. An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found more than 100 brands whose products have been made, in part or whole, by workers moved under this system.
Brazil sues China carmaker BYD over ‘slave-like’ conditions
Brazilian prosecutors are suing Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD and two of its contractors, saying they were responsible for human trafficking and conditions “analogous to slavery” at a factory construction site in the country.
Did coerced labour build your car?
Thousands of cars ship out of factories every day. But at the other end of the production line, workers are shipped in – thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz every year – from Xinjiang, the western region at the centre of a long-running human rights crisis.
Moved as part of a labour transfer scheme that experts call forced labour, these ethnic minorities are coercively recruited by the Chinese state to travel thousands of miles and fill the manufacturing jobs that recent Chinese graduates have spurned. An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found more than 100 brands whose products have been made, in part or whole, by workers moved under this system.
Defence or Welfare? Europe Can Afford Both, and Must
This is a highly biased article with little content. The article links to a couple of other media reports, but the author admits that increased military spending will “likely” result in a further erosion of the decades-old European social compact. I very much doubt that the author has had a look into the budget plan of a single EU member. They mention not a single number in the whole article, no research, it’s just a rant with a bold headline that serves a particular narrative.
What makes the whole thing worse is the sentence:
Europe’s leaders have decided to embrace the sort of massive ramp-up in military spending that so often serves as the prelude to war.
No, the current ‘ramp-up’ of military spending is certainly not ‘the prelude of war’ - simply because the war is already here. It has been happening for more than three years with military attacks on Ukraine and what is sometimes called a ‘hybrid war’ against European countries such as a recent arson attack on a restaurant in Estonia ordered by Russian intelligence .
I don’t see what’s wrong if the European countries spend “3.5 percent of their respective GDPs on core military spending, and another 1.5 percent on security and miscellaneous other expenditures designed to harden economies and infrastructure against cyberattacks, people trafficking, and additional risks and perceived risks to NATO economies.”
Estonia, for example, has been spending more than 5% of its GDP for defense already before the Nato summit, and I argue that this has not so much to do with ‘appeasing’ Trump than with its common border with Russia.
2·11 days agoUnfortunately there is only a German version of the study, I don’t know whether you speak German or you may manage to get a automated translation.
Study: Junges Europe 2025 / Young Europe 2025 - (PDF)
In the study (85 pages) you see each question and the response.
Last year the study was also available in English (Young Europe 2024 - pdf)
I hope this helps somehow.
Done :-)
This is an overly simplified narrative, and it is not ‘normal capitalism’.
Chinese carmakers benefit from unfair state subsidies to say the least, and there has been strong evidence for forced labour conditions in Chinese companies. Brazil sued China carmaker BYD over ‘slave-like’ conditions just to name a more recent example. The Brazilian prosecutors say two of BYD contractors in Brazil (where BYD opened a factory) were responsible for human trafficking and conditions “analogous to slavery” at a factory construction site in the country.
China is also heavily opposing any transparency, including the supply chain law introduced (and watered down in the meantime) by the EU. The conclusion here is that China is not a trusted partner, at least not under the current government.
Did coerced labour build your car?