Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

Make them choose between the two markets.

I'm tired of the idea that the Western and Chinese markets can both be appeased the middle of the road morality.

What is happening in HK right now is wrong, and the west has fought wars over this very issue.

> and the west has fought wars over this very issue

Which ones?

Also, China has nukes, we probably don't want to see that war starting. I don't think there's a good military option available.

It's the authoritarian Chinese government insisting on censorship. Not so much the Chinese market.

Cultural movement would require people who are not themselves in the middle ground in the road to morality.

It's hard to imagine people stopping using Uber, Lyft, Twitter, Snapchat, Fox News just because Saudis are heavily invested.

Do they have the capacity to hit targets in the continental US without winning naval supremacy?

Yes.

I don't think the navy can do anything about ICBMs, but even if, they can start by nuking the US navy.

Furthermore, the western market is more than happy to comply with the censorship.

Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-41

Saudis barely have any influence, if anything - the opposite is true, any hint of editorial intervention by any middle eastern/african nation and the west is up in arms about journalistic integrity but chinese have been exerting their power for quite sometime.

It's interesting to watch this unfold for someone who isn't entrenched in any of these spheres.

I probably should’ve done a quick search instead of asking:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-para...

Chinese propaganda is well-spread. I had a Chinese roommate, well educated to boot - PhD in Econ from Columbia, and I could feel the reverence he had for Mao even though his ancestors were landlords.

They can launch people into orbit and safely bring them back. Hitting a ground target with an ICBM is about the same difficulty.

They aren’t saying we should start a war. They are saying we’ve gone to war to defend those principles but now we put up much less resistance, such as denouncements, sanctions, etc., lots of things short of war that we’ve done with the USSR and Russia.

authoritarian government is a tautology

I've traveled throughout eastern China and I've encountered this indoctrination many times when talking to otherwise reasonable people.

But despite the widespread nationalist zealotry, most ordinary folk still seem to enjoy bootlegging Western media choc full of Western morality. They're not trying to ban it.

Though of course China does have its very own PC police that are encouraged by the government.

The US Navy does appear to have an ABM capability on some of its ships:

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

Different forms and examples of government exhibit relatively different levels of authoritarianism. Communist governments are invariably more authoritarian than liberal democracies.

He realises that being a landlord is immoral. Nothing wrong with that.

Read Mao's "On Contradiction".

They can't nuke the subs, who's primary purpose is to ensure retaliation, which hopefully the fear of keeps countries from launching nukes.

Good to know. Now the question is, can the newest AEGIS deal with China's newest hypersonic ICBMs. It's a question I very much don't want to see answered through actual test.

I read them as implying it, though even if they aren't, in previous HK threads I've seen comments that were, as if open war between two ICBM-equipped nations was something that wouldn't have disastrous consequences for every single one of us.

I also would love to know which wars we (the US, or the Western world) have gone to over those principles (versus e.g. "over oil"), because I can't think of any.

If that's true then your comment still doesn't make sense. As there cannot be non-authoritarian government, calling a government authoritarian makes objectively no sense and is just meant to provoke emotions obviously.

We’re not (at least I’m not) saying go to war. I’m saying take the same actions we do against Russia and Venezuela for example.

Similar experience. He said Mao had to make hard choices as a leader to propel his country forward. I asked him why India didn't have to starve millions to do the same thing.

Mao’s picture has been greatly undermined after 2000s as even the CCP history book said he made terrible mistakes and there were several wide spread videos criticizing Mao. His time has been long gone and only a little respect passed to the next gen mainly from grandparents.

It’ll be interesting if you could talk with him regarding his position for the government, recent issues and long term policy. My bet is he’ll be super supportive and you might be surprised that “greater good” trade off is well accepted

After 1949, Mao barely did anything right and I’m surprised if any Chinese born after 90s would still defend him. But I doubt India is such a great example, we probably all have seen photos of the Gange

Lots of Americans express admiration for our founders and institutions too, though. Flags and conspicuous patriotism are everywhere in our country.

It's possible that that's just normalized for you but it seems jarring when you see someone revering a 'commie'. The programming runs deep on all sides.

As noted in that article, the system is ineffective (officially, at least) against ICBMs. It only works against ballistic missiles that don't leave the atmosphere.

Are you comparing a polluted river to the deaths of millions?

Polluted by dead bodies...

For very different reasons. Venezuela is "communists in our backyard" and Russia isn't about human rights, but about global hegemony, human rights is just the big argument.

If there was an actual point in "it's about human rights", the US would come down on Turkey like an anvil on a cartoon character in old animated movies. Instead, the US appears to support Turkey's new expansive invasion of Syria that goes hand in hand with their genocidal desires to annihilate the Kurds. It's never about human rights on the international stage, it's about power.

From flooding or what? Seems like there is a difference...

Its true human rights is rarely the true or stated reason, and it needn’t be here either.

It could be about hegemony and influence. the NBA and Hollywood having to cater and cave in to official Chinese positions. I think it’d be different than say hoi polloi (public opinion) in China dictating what Hollywood does. One is freedom of speech and opinion the other is government coercion and control.

All government is authoritarian but not to an equivalent extent. From a liberal point of view the current Chinese government is relatively authoritarian, as evidenced by many things including recent examples of censorship.

There are a handful of wars in the 20th century that you can argue the US participated in because of principles (communism bad).

Venezuela is also in top 10 of net oil exporters, which I do believe is the reason other nations in general, and US in particular, care about it at all.

You do realize that floating a family member's body down the Ganges is considered a sacred ritual and that what you just said has nothing to do with mass deaths due to negligence right?

There are key founding principles for any liberal democracy.

China and what it stands for is the antithesis of those principles.

Our unwillingness to act on what our ancestors viewed as infringements on basic human rights will be the end of the free world.

I admit I didn’t know about the ritual part, but just a little google show me this:

-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnao_dead_bodies_row

And many sources mention they did this just because they can’t afford proper cremation.

Another funny picture is Train with many people attached outside, not sure if that’s another convention or custom :)