Tag Archives: Uighur

What If China Was Stronger Than The US?

This one was a lot of fun to make. Early on in this channel’s history I played around with scripted skits a bit more, and it was fun to get back into it. I’ve long been incredulous about the way that China-US relations are covered. US media seems utterly incapable of looking at things in their proper context. It seems obvious to me that China is heading in the wrong direction, and US media loves to document that. Where most US news sources fall short, however, is in explaining why China has turned a bit nuts. There’s a very involved history of US antagonism that led us to where we are, and China’s actions, while horrific, aren’t really an effective counter to anything we have been doing. I don’t want to excuse China’s behavior, but I don’t think we should obscure the US’s part in it.

I’ve made videos covering this material before, but I thought it might be fun to do it what I hope is a more breezy and amusing scripted format. What if we re-ran the past ten years of US China relations, but with China as the more powerful party rather than the United States? Today’s video is a thought experiment, and an experimental video as well. Let me know what you think!

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Is China’s Xinjiang Genocide?

Trying out a new format today! Folks may have noticed that traffic has been declining a bit on the channel. I’d been wondering about this for a while, but over the holiday season I did a deeper dive, and decided to figure out why. The simple fact seem to be that YouTube’s requirements have changed. It’s true that they are less likely to point to controversial topics from small channels, but my videos are no longer algorithm friendly in a more important way as well: They’re just too short.

People may prefer short videos, I certainly do. But YouTube wants people to watch for longer. Long established YouTuber Veritasium maintains that you need to have an average watchtime of around 8 minutes for YouTube to get excited about putting your video in front of more people. Can’t get to an 8 minute watch time if most of your videos are under 8 minutes long, as mine are. So, with today’s video, I’m switching things up a bit. I’m trying to mix the produced videos with more improv-ed riffs. Let me know how you think it’s going!

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Kashmir, Xinjiang, El Paso | Our Concentration Camp Era | Globalism 3

One of my favorite things about my YouTube Channel is the comments section. The MFF comments defy the stereotypes. It’s a really pleasant environment, where people actually deal with issues, and often add to my base of knowledge. We’ve got our share of racist trolls of course, it’s Youtube after all, but even they engage positively now and again, and nobody pays them much mind when they are trolling. I spend a lot of time in the comments, and I consider the experience very rewarding. The same, alas cannot be said, for the comments section to this video on our concentration camp era.

There were plenty of stand outs, but it was really sad to see a lot of people retreat to their foxholes. I think this video is pretty important, and I think the parallel it draws between the world’s three most important countries is worth thinking about. Unfortunately the comments are full of Americans, Chinese, and Indians bitterly denouncing the idea that their country could ever do wrong. It was especially sad to see folks who are delighted to engage with my critiques of the US shrink away from criticism of their own countries. Most of my regular commenters didn’t fall into this, but a few of them did. Makes me sad. Though actually I suppose it’s an indication of our common humanity too.

I put this video into my “We need a globalist party” playlist. The playlist is an old idea I need to revive. The fact is that our three 20th century titans will need some restraining, and as my comment section indicates, they are unlikely to do it to themselves. In the mid 20th century institutions like the United Nations had a real moral authority that they could use to motivate grass roots shaming of great power crimes. That ability to hold the great powers to account has faded away. We probably need it back.

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The New Cold War Could Be Fun! | China, The US and Everyone Else | MIC 19

Multi-polarity doesn’t have to be a disaster. It certainly could be. As competition between the US and China has ramped up over the past year or so, the focus has been on violent possibilities, and the US defense department has led the charge. That’s certainly the point of the exercise. China is being turned into an enemy so we can sell weapons. The competition now looks to me to be inevitable. But, as this video entreats, we can change the tone of that competition.

We can change the frame from war to friendly competition. The last cold war had horrific consequences, but it had positive ramifications as well. If we act proactively we can optimize the mix of the next competition for positivity rather than horror. This may sound ridiculous, but it’s not. The tone of the New Cold War will determine whether or not it kills us.

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Is the United States Islam’s Best Friend?

The question asked by this video may seem ridiculous, or even horrifying. The United States has waged a relentless war on Muslim countries for two, based on the terrorist activities of a few individuals and ideologies that were just as much inspired by the US intelligence community as they were by any religion. From Iraq, to Yemen to Somalia and Libya it’s a pretty horrifying legacy.

But it could be so much worse. In this video I argue that the Devil world-wide Islam knows is vastly preferable to the devil it does not know. Both China and India have demonstrated in recent years that their approach to their own Muslim minorities is awful. As their power grows this treatment will extend to Muslims worldwide. In the months since I made this video, this has only gotten more apparent, with India’s new repression of the Muslims of Kashmir, to Modi’s (very related to Kashmir) growing closeness with the most repressive elements of the Israeli government.

China’s Brutal Empire | Xinjiang And The Uyghurs

At the end of today’s video I allude to a very basic principle that shouldn’t need explanation, but kind of does. Put simply: Conflict is bad. It’s not always bad, of course. Competition can be tremendously helpful. It can inspire us, and help us achieve new and better things as a species. My hope is that China and the US will be goading each other on for centuries, out to Mars and beyond. But this healthy competitive process can be corrupted.

There are a number of relationships, that the US government carefully maintains, that have fallen into permanent disrepair. Healthy competition has devolved into useless dick waving contests, and pointless geopolitical chess games that kill people. The US-Iran relationship is the classic example, North Korea is another. The greatest tragedy of this decade is the fact that another relationship, between the US and Russia, has fallen into this pattern as well. Relationships can have virtuous or vicious cycles going on, and relations with all these countries are quite vicious.

I tend to blame the US for this, but it does take two to tango, and there are hardline elements in all our manufactured enemies that help to keep the vicious cycles going. And it really is a collaborative effort. Iran’s theocratic regime can’t exist without the US defense industry funded war-mongering think tanks and politicians, and vice versa. We have gotten to a deeply sad point where the only people who have trusted expertise on these issues are perpetuators of the vicious cycle with Iran. Figuring out how to unscrew those relationships is one of the missions of this channel. But it’s far better to avoid starting the disaster in the first place. It’d be really good if we could avoid getting into an Iran style vicious cycle with China. Today’s video on the Uyghurs ends with that plea.

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Is Iran The Biggest State Sponsor of Terror?

I’m excited to announce that with today’s video and last week’s video, I now have enough vids put together a full Iran playlist! It’s weird how this stuff develops. I never set out to make almost 30 videos that deal with Iran in some capacity, but I suppose it’s kind of inevitable when covering the delusions of US foreign policy.

It’s all in here, the foolishness of Trump’s abandonment of the Iran deal, the US press’s inability to cover Iran anywhere near fairly, and so much more. With today’s video, and last week’s vid, I think I’ve got a good core of five vids that cover the most important bases of US policy towards the country. I’d like to really dive in on Iran at some point, the country’s history is absolutely fascinating, but I’m pleased to add another “series” on this channel, even if it was somewhat more haphazardly constructed than the other ones…

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Literacy Beats Empire | Literacy II

This video explains one of literacy’s most important effects. I’ve long been puzzled by the “Long Peace” we’ve been experiencing since the end of the second World War. Despite what our media tells us, the world is much more peaceful than it has ever been. There has been very little war between great powers since WWII, and the pace of civil wars has slackened greatly since the end of the Cold War as well. Even more importantly, the great powers have not been able to exploit this period of peace to beat up on everybody else they way they have in the past.

Europe experienced a great period of peace from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 until the Crimean War in the 1850’s. Even that war was a relatively quick, if costly, break in a period of peace stretching up until World War I (1914). During that period of time however, Europe extended over the whole world, crushing indigenous peoples and empires all around the globe. It was peace for Europe, and suffering for everybody else. This time it has been different. This video lays out why Literacy has a lot more to do with this than is currently recognized.

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Video Transcript after the jump…

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