Labor Conditions in China and the Civil War

The reason that so much manufacturing has been sent to China is because the Chinese government is willing to put their people to work in slave and near-slave conditions. Some of the very wealthy really like that. Not only do the get cheap labor; they get to crack the whip, or at least hire people who will.

Are we going to refight the Civil War on a global scale?

“I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” – Lincoln

Twee-ee-eet!

[This is about a week’s Tweets, some edited a bit. It’s an unusually discouraging list, partly because of a great deal of discouraging news and partly because of the continuing deterioration of Twitter under the management of Elon Musk.]

• White collar criminals are treated with kid gloves, all the way through the legal process.
• [In response to “US must cooperate with China to fight climate crisis” from someone who really ought to know better]: because making trade deals with the world’s biggest human rights violator has worked out so well in the past four decades.
• [On the new “protect the children” internet bill, co-sponsored by Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)]
  Connecticut – where even the men are Karens. This digital comstockery will be the death of us yet, or at least the inauguration of a new age of prudery and hypocrisy. Teenagers have to have access to adult social life, or they never become adults. What the fascists want to do here is forbid the blocking of fascist propaganda, something right out of 1984.
  Freedom of speech has to also include the freedom of silence, or it is no freedom.
• The ammosexuals are bringing back dueling.
• There’s probably questions Chief Justice John Roberts doesn’t want to answer under oath. Three of the six conservative justices are compromised; I wonder what a sharp interrogator would winkle out about the others.
• The Michigan legislature is Democratic for the first time in decades. Give them some time.
• [In response to claims that covid causes immunodeficiency like AIDS] There is no reason to believe such claims. It may sometimes cause immune problems, but if those were as severe as AIDS, it would be obvious and widely known.
• [On the debt ceiling negotiations] Over the cliff we go.
• Hume acidly observed that, in the 1745 Jacobite Rising, Edinburgh had been better-defended by its chamber pots than its available forces, the Scots still being forbidden a militia.
• The Supreme Court has lost its credibility. One Justice is a bought man, another accepted a bribe, a third is an alleged rapist, and the Chief Justice himself is covering for them. Our last mechanism of conflict resolution has failed. The Senate bloody well ought to do something. The Democratic leadership ought to do something.
• One wonders just what Chief Justice Roger Taney, er, John Roberts does not want to be asked under oath. Perhaps he, too, in involved in corrupt dealings.
• Don’t elect bad cops mayor.
• With Disney a contract is a contract until it’s not. https://www.writersmustbepaid.org/
• Ron DeSantis is probably on the autistic spectrum. Which shouldn’t disqualify him as a candidate. But he’s also a religious fanatic with a fondness for torture, which should.
• We need regime change in Mississippi and Tennessee.
• Compulsive rapists never have just one victim.
• When people as rich and powerful as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel support terrorism, it isn’t terrorism anymore – it’s revolution.
• [The Republican leadership is] trying to get people to participate in pogroms, starting with sexual minorities, just like the Nazis did. Once they’ve got people willing to do that, they’ll move on to other groups.
• I hate the way Twitter buries tweets containing links.
• [On the mifeprestone decision] I think even the Supreme Court’s “conservatives” are having second thoughts. My guess is they break out the bucket of gray paint, and come up with some vague but nasty 7-2 decision, with the conservatives going narrow on standing and the liberals making a broader argument.
• These “justices” identify with the stalker. They are probably harassers themselves.
• This place is turning into the Sunnydale of the Internet. “Bored now.”