To maintain economic ties with China you have to not acknowledge Taiwanese sovereignty officially. On the other hand, Taiwan is the most important chip producer in the world so the US does not want China as it's gate keeper. Should the US be able to catch up to Taiwan with domestic chip production I assume they will abandon Taiwan.

The US Congress passed the TAIPEI Act with bilateral support (unanimity in the House of Representatives) in 2020, which you might not have expected for a Trump Administration measure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan...Initiative_Act

President Biden says that the US would defend Taiwan, in the event of a PRC invasion, with the commitment of US personnel rather than just military aid, going further than the US commitment to Ukraine. This hardening of the US stance is presumably a result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the obvious need to show Western resolve against the dictators at this time.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/...inese-invasion

All this is true without doubt. I do wonder how the US would react if the Warsaw pact had endured and in a strictly defensive manner had expanded up to the US border. We saw what happened when the Soviets tried to get a foothold in Cuba it was the closest we ever came to WW3.

Well, they already had a foothold in Cuba, this was more a case of putting nuclear missiles in that foothold. Beyond a border in Alaska partially protected by climate and distance, The US is not particularly used to aggressive geographical neighbors with capacity for inflicting serious harm. Comparatively, in Europe this has historically been hard to avoid (and now history is repeating itself).

Anyway, the response is not that hard to speculate on. It might not have been the US, but we something similar happen post-WW2 to the western allied nations. An aggressive CCCP under Stalin did not demobilize its standing armies and started invading neighboring countries. Western allied nations joined force under the NATO umbrella. However, at that time the combined military might of NATO was (on paper at least) pitiful compared to the Soviet Union and her allies. Thus the NATO doctrine rested on nuclear deterrence. If Russian aggression did not stop at NATO borders, they would launch a first strike.

Victor thinks the American prison system is worse than gulags.
Guy is a nutcase.

You guys are presumably talking about different things, conditions vs population size. Conditions are pretty terrible in the US in terms of developed countries but no where near gulag levels. The population size is of course unquestionably a national disgrace. That image is also outdated. It's grown to about 25%.

I am talking about overall suffering caused.

Well, that post is only comparing share of prison population.

I guess you don't care about the suffering caused by the imprisoned?

no not really. most people in jail have caused no suffering or very little. in fact, I would even say the people in the soviet gulags caused far more suffering than the people in American jails of the last couple decades.

Which people in jail do you think caused very little or no suffering?

I agree that the people who are there for drug possession alone should have never been there, but that isn't happening much anymore.
I don't think there are many others in US prisons who haven't caused much suffering.

I'd be interested in hearing you back this up. I'm particularly curious how much evidence you can provide on the true guilt of inhabitants of the gulags.

its not happening much? a quick google search shows how wrong you are.

anyway, I do applaud your honesty. you say the things that libs think and that is very valuable.

it was just a guess.

but just as everyone in USA jails are truly guilty, everyone in Soviet jails were truly guilty. hell, everyone in Nazi concentration camps were guilty. the Law is kinda funny that way.

Well I'm sure it is much less than a few decades ago, but maybe it still happening in some states. Not in mine though.

https://oregonlive.com/politics/2020...ation-law.html

Those dirty kulaks had it coming to them!

So, you don't stand by your original statement then.

Read better

Victor, I'm curious if you've ever considered that your message might be better received if you didn't so often resort to oversimplification, hyperbole, and gross generalizations, or if this is just performance art or something?

I was asking you to qualify your statement that people in gulags had caused more actual suffering than inmates in US prisons. Clearly you were making a distinction between actual guilt from suffering caused or justness of imprisonment and legal guilt in that post, where you believe gulag inmates had more actual guilt while many US prisoners are guilty only or mostly in a legal sense.

This:

implies that you are abandoning the distinction that you made in the first post or at least not willing to attempt to support it.

his gotcha was bullshit.

I responded in kind. he knows what I meant.

the English language construct in my post

"I would even say"

implies that I am not sure nor have any way of really knowing. it also implies that it is a provocative statement and that the writer knows this and is being, as the English say "cheeky."

I followed it up by saying "it was just a guess" to make it even clearer.

and a further idea is that there is no reason the burden of proof should be on my side. why dont you proof that American inmates are worse than Soviet Gulagmates? is there something with the Russians where they are less criminal than Americans? well, maybe they were until recently if you read this board, which I do. but its not a statement that needs defending.

if you want to actually discuss this and not throw out gotchas and twist words then I may engage. but I kinda doubt you are interested in that.

It don't think it necessarily implies either of those things. It can, but it relies on context to be read that way. "I would even say" is basically just another way to say "in my opinion" where you want to indicate that your opinion is going further than just contradicting the claim you're responding to.

Person A: "This pizza is just okay."
Person B: "I think it tastes good. I would even say, it tastes delicious."

"I would even say" implies neither cheekiness nor hesitance in this case.

Person A: "This pizza is awful"
Person B: "I think it tastes good. I would even say, it tastes delicious."

Provocative but not hesitant.

Person A: "This pizza is awful"
Person B: "I think it tastes good. I might even say, it tastes delicious."

Provocative and hesitant.


When you say something like, " in fact, I would even say the people in the soviet gulags caused far more suffering than the people in American jails of the last couple decades."

Using phrases like "in fact" and "far more" in that statement provide a context of certainty of your opinion that renders the claim that you're indicating hesitance with the phrase "I would even say" as pretty absurd. Saying, "I might even say" would be clearer but it would still be fair to ask you for evidence of "far more suffering". It wouldn't need to be conclusive, just an indication of what lead you to that feeling. You are of course being provocative as always, but that's not the part that matters.



The burden of proof is on you because you're the one who made the positive claim. I never made the claim that American inmates are more deserving of jail time that those in gulags, I only asked you to back up your claim. I'm not making gotchas, just observations. I was actually interested, even if doubtful, in hearing about what made gulag inmates likely to have caused far more suffering because I was under the assumption that many were merely victims of Soviet repression.

the reason is that I dont think USA inmates have caused much suffering. and there are a lot more of them than gulagites.

What matters and what I doubted was your ability to compare the rates of those unfairly imprisoned in gulags and US prisons. My guess with absolutely no evidence is that it's possibly a wash depending on your view of which laws are unjust in the US. I agree that there is a huge chunk of the population in the US prison system that shouldn't be there. I also suspect that a huge chunk of the population in gulags did not belong there due to repression and corruption. I assumed you were talking about rates because I don't see the sense in comparing raw numbers. The US also has nearly double the population the USSR had at its peak of the gulag era.