Yeah, sure clean all yards but start with your own.

Do you say that to Europe, to China, or both?

It’s obvious you’re addressing only Europe. Why?

This is what I meant with ‘The West bad, China bad okay’. It’s hypocritical. It’s double-standards. It’s ignorant and disgusting.

What about cleaning all yards? This ‘the West bad, China bad okay’ stance is dehumanising and ignorant. [Edit typo.]

I posted this elsewhere already, but it also fits here goven many of the posts in this thread: It is not just about data/privacy concerns (which are underestimated imo, as China pursues an own agenda with collecting your data through Chinese tech) and ‘unfair’ subsidies, but about gross human rights violations.

In short, some parts of the cheap Chinese cars are made in concentration camps where people are forced to work under catastrophic conditions.

I posted this elsewhere already, but it also fits here goven many of the posts in this thread: It is not just about data/privacy concerns (which are underestimated imo, as China pursues an own agenda with collecting your data through Chinese tech) and ‘unfair’ subsidies, but about gross human rights violations.

In short, some parts of the cheap Chinese cars are made in concentration camps where people are forced to work under catastrophic conditions.

It is not just about data/privacy concerns (which are underestimated imo, as China pursues an own agenda with collecting your data through Chinese tech) and ‘unfair’ subsidies, but about gross human rights violations. In short, the cheap Chinese cars are made in concentration camps where people are forced to work under catastrophic conditions.

Chinese orgs love signing MOUs

The CCP - or, better, the China Scholarship Council (CSC) under the rule of the CCP - forces Chinese students and researchers to sign ‘loyalty pleadges’ before giong abroad saying they “shall consciously safeguard the honor of the motherland, (and) obey the guidance and management of embassies (consulates) abroad.” The restrictive scholarship contract requires them to report back to the Chinese embassy on a regular basis, and anyone who violates these conditions is subject to disciplinary action.

In one investigation,

Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow working on China at the German Marshall Fund, sees the CSC contract as a demonstration of the Chinese Communist Party’s “mania for control.”

“People are actively encouraged to intervene if anything happens that might not be in the country’s interest,” Ohlberg said.

Harming China’s interests is in fact considered the worst possible breach of the contract.

“It’s even listed ahead of possible involvement in crimes, so effectively even ahead of murder,” she noted. “China is making its priorities very clear here.”

[…] Kai Gehring, the chair of German parliament’s Committee for Education and Research, says the CSC contracts are “not compatible” with Germany’s Basic Law, which guarantees academic freedom.

In Sweden, for example, universities have already cancelled the collaboration with the CSC over this practice.

There is ample evidence that China uses scientific collaboration with private companies as well as universities and research organizations for spying. You’ll find many independent reports on that as well as of the CCP’s intimidation practices of Chinese students who don’t comply with the party line, e.g., in Australia and elsewhere. It’s easy to find reliable sources on the (Western) web.

Yes. We need human responsibility for everything what AI does. It’s not the technology that harms but human beings and those who profit from it.

You wouldn’t trust the Chinese supplier (or any supplier). You’d go to the bauxite shipment company and let them register with the network, you’d send independent auditors to their premises, very much as we do it with ibdependent audits nowadays.

We do need to physically access the premises across the supply chain to verify that ‘on-chain personas’ reflect their ‘real’ identities. But no single authority can control the data, we can be quite sure that all transfers of ownership across the supply chain have been authorized by their controllers. Compared to centralized systems, the blockchain provides us a much higher level of transparency and certainty over the fidelity of the information.

there’s no way tovtrack where resources, material, items come from, who made them

Independent audits are done -they are very common in many industry for a variety of reasons- and they work if done properly.

We could even track the provenance of each material through a trustless system like a blockchain to guarantuee a high level of credibility and transparency, just to name a relatively new technology. This is done already.

They have been already managing that for a long time. Independent audits are common - except in a few countries.

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Forced labour in Chinese prisons isn’t limited to Xinjiang, nor to the car industry. A lot products we use in Europe and North America and elsewhere around the globe are made by Chinese prisoners forced to work under catastrophic conditions.

There is strong evidence for this provided by many independent sources, among them a documentary by Arte (a French-German media outlet). If interested:

Forced Labour - SOS from a Chinese Prisoner – (documentary, 95 min.)

A desperate cry for help written in Chinese was discovered in a pregnancy test sold in France and made in a Chinese factory. It revealed a hidden world of Chinese prison-companies where prisoners are forced to work for 15 hour days manufacturing products for export. This documentary tries to find out who wrote the letter.

(And, yes, prison labour exists also in the U.S., and it is as evil, but this doesn’t make the autocratic Chinese government any better.)

A few statements are very illuminating. UniCredit ‘set aside EUR 800m in provisions’, which means they didn’t pay taxes for this sum (assuming the Russian accounting law has the same principles as everywhere else which seems reasonable here), so they might have predicted the Russian move anyway.

Another point is that they report a profit for Q1-2024 that is more than double than that in Q1-2023. I would be curious to see more numbers to learn how they ‘significantly reduced’ their bussines.

This is why Russia has to leave Ukraine.

They may come from one of the sources you list in your comment above :-)

In Germany -as anywhere else- there is much more. You may be interested in this, for example:

Which German websites help disseminate pro-Russian narratives (here is the alternative archived link)

After our research on which websites are spreading pro-Russian narratives and talking points that benefit Moscow, we decided to take a closer look at websites in German. During the analysis, we found publications that quote Russian state media, that receive back quotes from them, and that spread claims that could play into the hands of the Kremlin.

[…]

It is clear that Russia is waging a war of propaganda and disinformation against Europe, whereas it is waging a real war against Ukraine, seizing its territories. An analysis of key Kremlin media narratives in different languages reveals that their campaign’s main goal is to force the West to stop supporting Ukraine and make concessions to Putin, probably by giving him the occupied territories and thus recognizing the redrawing of borders in Europe by military means.

News websites that tend to support pro-Russian, Euroskeptic, and anti-American views, as well as those close to the positions of right-wing radical parties, often pick up such narratives. Consciously or unconsciously, such web resources play into the hands of the Kremlin’s agenda. Such news reports are becoming a tool for spreading Russian and pro-Russian influence in Europe.

This is maybe a good idea. What would an emoji analysis tell us about a network? 😃

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Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” to NATO, support will continue, Secretary General says in Kyiv

On membership, [NATO Secretary General] Stoltenberg said: “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO. Ukraine will become a member of NATO. The work we are undertaking now puts you on an irreversible path towards NATO membership, so that when the time is right, Ukraine can become a NATO member straightaway.”