I can't help wondering though if this may have unexpected benefits for e.g.: sleep quality, civility in online discussions, exercise. It's hardly intended that way, but could end up being a net benefit for the well-being of citizens, particularly if it were implemented in a highly-developed country like the US.
And no, having an Internet curfew for preventing bloody protests won't improve the well-being of citizens.
I, for one, don't care at all about the positive externalities of taking away people's rights, nor do I see the merit in discussing them. It normalizes the taking away of rights when we discuss how great it could be when you aren't allowed access to information and freedom of movement.
The streets are still full of kids because no one can afford to give every child the latest smart phones.
The martial law introduced in Poland from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983 resulted in an unmatched birth rate increase. The 82-84 generation was big, with all the future consequences even after the fall of communism in 1989: overpopulation in schools, difficult job market, but many friends on the playgrounds. The generation of 88 and later didn't have these issues. But had others ;)
Thanks to Poland's quick economic development and rise in life quality & capacity, the 82-84 generation didn't create another baby boom, as their births were spread out over a 10 year period. Some had children at 25, some at 35. This, coupled with the 90-94 generation not willing to have kids early, of course led to an overall drop in fertility, which the current government is trying to fix by throwing money at it. The situation didn't get worse, but fertility didn't get much better either. Most don't want to have 3 or more kids these days. And that's what we need if we want to make more kids than the economic immigrants and the third world countries, so we can keep our retirement and workforce afloat. Or we put it on the shoulders of these immigrants. But then in a few decades the current western culture will be replaced with a new one. I'm not saying it's good or bad. But it's healthy to understand the possible futures. I know which one I like more, and hopefully will work towards it.
Boy did I go off-topic...
This curfew is a scaling back of previous heavier restrictions.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/iraq-protests-latest-...
>At least 110 people have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded in Baghdad and in the south, since security forces started cracking down on demonstrators.
And the whole world is "outraged" about HK. Here on this thread the other posters are making jokes.
If they killed every single person in the country no one would give a shit. Same way no one gives a shit about Yemen.
While around that same time, the US accidentally droned 30+ Afghani farmers [0]. The international response to that? It doesn't exist to this day.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack-drones...
From Wikipedia:
> Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, admitted in an interview to Al Jazeera "when we talk about 'peaceful resistance', we are deceiving the public. This is a peaceful resistance bolstered by a military force and by security agencies, and enjoying tremendous popular support."
So you basically had a bunch of militants using civilians as cover. They were throwing Molotov cocktails and using kites with incindiary devices.
Otherwise intelligent people are incapable of understanding that their outrage is being directed to serve geo-political ends. Antagonising China is patriotic. Antagonising Israel serves no end, and is, also of course, anti-Semitic.
The truly ironic bit is when presented with the idea that many mainlanders may be more supportive of their government than of HK, they dismiss it as brainwashing, compelled speech, or just flat out propaganda. As if we arrive to the contradictory conclusions we hold independently, and from first principles, without any steering...
It's not that Al Jazeera isn't biased, or even that it's less biased, it's just that it provides a viewpoint which is so obviously missing from western news sources, and if you're not making an attempt to expose yourself to that viewpoint, you are only hearing one side of quite a wide variety of global political issues.
You should speak for yourself. There are people who care but that does not make a difference unfortunately (yet or maybe never).
As well you shouldn't speak in absolutes IMHO.
There is an undeniable discrepancy on how we receive and perceive information about individual subjects; Where our attention is directed, and from where it's deviated - what I'm surprised about is how this persists despite a medium like the Internet.
Oh, and the propaganda industry.
https://www.news18.com/news/world/pak-parliament-blocks-chri...
The world did not care.
Also not exactly Gaza-level lopsided...
I don't have a single product in my house that says "Made in Iraq".
It's not strange that North America doesn't care much about Iraqi plight, as we have next to no relationship with them or their people.
Same as we all cannot afford to cry over every single other person's mother and father passing away, but we cry over our own parents passing.
>Continue to keep soldiers there
>no relationship
flyGuyOnTheSly, I...
Also it’s amusing that you’ve managed to elide the not insubstantial relationship of having started a war that killed at least a hundred thousand Iraqis and in all probability many more.
Hong Kong is ideologically closer to American's values, and so having China take it over can be seen as a form of indirect threat. It also plays into the whole trade war going on at the moment. Financially, American companies have more ties with Hong Kong than Iraq. ...
People are also influenced by what the media gives them to think about this week.
What's your point exactly?
Is it that human nature is broken, and that we should try to compensate for it [by trying to force ourselves to care more] ?
(Because I wonder how many atrocities there are in the world, and how that scales if every internet stranger needs to be angry about every atrocity or else...)
No, that if we should be aware, we should be aware for all injustices, not just follow the ones we are force-fed by hypocritical self-serving interests (e.g. our country's diplomacy and subservient media preferring this victim over that, or getting outraged at this player over that - because it suits some diplomatic plans).
Especially when they atrocities they point people to look at are much more minor than others they purposefully ignore...
In general, getting one's own opinion, as opposed following the government/media agendas of enemies and victim's du jour, and knowing when they're manipulated, is a good thing...
should see through crocodile tears hypocritic concern, and that we should be aware of all injustices
People outside conflict areas only start to give a shit when it affects something they care about personally.
I don’t want people to be killed for protesting, but I don’t know if I care if that protest is successful or not. I’m open to ideas why I should.
It sounds like a bunch of people are protesting that their country and has few useful economic outputs, and that sucks, but I’m not sure what can be done about that.
I guess that enterprising freedom loving American ideology didn't take. Oh well what can you do /s
I mean Iran, Russia and Saudi are all over there. They don’t need another entity adding their two cents.
It’s like AOC, let’s get out of Syria. We leave Syria —how can you leave Syria they’ve been our allies, etc.
In that part, or any part of the world people only become you allies in war when there’s something in it for them. They’re not doing so as a favor. Just like us. When we went into WWII it wasn’t a favor. We knew that not going in would be worse for us.
This legitimizes the current puppet-government installed by foreigners.
I think a more appropriate term would be US-backed Junta forces.
Of course, some of us were saying this almost 20 years ago now: Don't invade Iraq, you'll destabilize the entire region.
I'm a one-issue voter: No foreign wars, period. Some of us do care about the well being of others, but it's impossible to have this kind of discussion because people are selfish. Everyone wants to talk about Climate Change, Socialized Health Care, etc, etc. Most people don't actually care about others, and it's why I want to slap anyone that discusses climate change. We have much bigger problems that we need to solve right now, or we're going to kill ourselves long before we fry the earth.
As a Chinese, I've personally been following Chinese forums and continue to see individuals that rationalize the behavior of the West and to try to put down flames that's only in the name of nationalistic pride, albeit few still. But it's an important theme, only if both side can put behind their bias can there be a better and more peaceful ending in the China-US conflict to bring benefit to us all. There are many intelligent and rational Americans, it's a sad story for Iraq and we wish them best, but at least the news is helpful in helping us collectively realize what the media has been doing to our brains.
