• quiet [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This was the case with that Sri Lankan port everyone talks about. Sri Lanka's external commercial and bilateral debts to the West, especially Europe, dwarfed its debts to China, and they were on much less generous terms. Yet when China steps in to buy the port to help them navigate their way out of their distressed debt to the West, suddenly it's a Chinese debt trap.

    Listening to Blowback lately, I'm starting to think that the more utterly straightforward it appears in the media that the US's enemies are doing bad things, the more likely it is that they're just unable to include any nuance because it would make the US look bad.

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Yet when China steps in to buy the port to help them navigate their way out of their distressed debt to the West, suddenly it’s a Chinese debt trap.

      Yes. In the same way that Wildlife Rangers sedating a bear and moving it out of a rural downtown full of angry armed ultra-nationalists are using a bear trap.

      Listening to Blowback lately, I’m starting to think that the more utterly straightforward it appears in the media that the US’s enemies are doing bad things, the more likely it is that they’re just unable to include any nuance because it would make the US look bad.

      It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
      
      Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
      

      :stalin-pipe: