F you John Cena

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

4 minutes ago, Kguillemette said:

A popular Hollywood actor and personality is sucking ass to China? I'm speechless...

While one probably shouldn't be surprised, it doesn't invalidate OptOut being able to voice his concerns or otherwise being upset about it.

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

So shitty that Cena had to do this. He's usually an honestly good dude. I wonder what his true feelings really are, I'm sure he was forced to do it by his studio/by contract or whatever. Not excusing it, it just seems out of character for the guy who's literally done more Make A Wish visits than any other human, etc.

[Kguillemette | 1,547]

20 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

While one probably shouldn't be surprised, it doesn't invalidate OptOut being able to voice his concerns or otherwise being upset about it.

Agreed.

[Code Monkey | 2,014]

Are you seriously admitting you would take geographical advice from an actor? Maybe my assumptions coming into this were incorrect, I gave people the benefit of the doubt they are smarter than that.

[OptOut | 8,892]

17 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Are you seriously admitting you would take geographical advice from an actor? Maybe my assumptions coming into this were incorrect, I gave people the benefit of the doubt they are smarter than that.

Far be it from ME to feed a troll... I mean, come on.

But, based on your previous responses a sad, pitiful part of me actually believes that somehow, deep down, you genuinely do not understand the context and the meaning of the things John Cena said...

I am not going to demean myself to the point of arguing with you, and I'm certainly not going to waste my own precious free time going to great lengths to try and enlighten you. I think I've already said and offered enough to make my own points on the matter clear.

I can, however, offer you the tiniest morsel, a CLUE, if you will, that might help you unravel the mystery before you:

What John Cena commented on was NOT a point of FUCKING GEOGRAPHY. It was a political statement. Coerced, maybe. But a statement nonetheless.

However, you needn't concern yourself! I wouldn't expect someone of your mental faculty to understand that, I mean what is a POLITICS anyway? Just a bunch of humans with needs, desires and emotions, talking and fighting with each other about things that don't fit neatly into objective, categorical definitions.

Not something I believe you are capable of comprehending. More is the pity... 

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

1 hour ago, Code Monkey said:

Are you seriously admitting you would take geographical advice from an actor?

Who are you to claim that actors are uneducated? 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

[fcgamer | 4,754]

Oh makes me sick, listening to his apology was painful.

[Hammerfestus | 3,891]

[fcgamer | 4,754]

What @AdamW said is fairly correct, though some of the thoughts are a bit outdated by now.

@OptOut and I, well the island on which we reside, a large portion of people now consider themselves as Taiwanense rather than Chinese. 

some things to think about:

1. At no point in time has the CCP controlled Taiwan. 

2. For most of history, the previous Chinese governments viewed Taiwan as a haven for pirates and even forbid people from going there.

3. Taiwan has a mixed bag of people, ethnicity and culture wise. The Portuguese sailed by the island and named it Formosa; later the Dutch would colonise bits of it. Similarly, some Chinese from the coast would come over. At this time, and even earlier though, the island has been settled by the Aboriginal people here.

Later, the Dutch would get kicked out, and the Japanese would colonise for about 100 years, just until after WWII. So many older Taiwanense speak Japanese, and a large portion were essentially sent to battle lines to be used as human shields.

When the Chinese Civil war broke out, Chang Kai Shek and his troops (the previous government of mainland China) fled to Taiwan, even brought with a great deal of China's national treasures, hoping to one day reclaim the mainland. This never happened, and Chang's son led the groundwork for Taiwan to become the democracy it is today.

Iirc, Taiwan has more of less given up their claim on the mainland. And having such a different background, although they do share a lot culturally with the mainland, similarly there's a lot that isn't the same at all. So by now most of the younger people don't feel any ties to China.

similarly, there were multiple waves of Chinese moving to the island, under different circumstances and at different times. The land / business owners are from one wave, the politicians from another, the triads are mostly from Chang's group, the last wave, to set up protection from the locals, etc.

 

[Tanooki | 4,953]

12 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Trust me, nobody cares about anything any actor says. Professional wrestlers aren't exactly geography experts.

It seems like it would be pretty impossible to block an entire country from purchasing billions of dollars worth of life saving medicine. There would be United Nations investigations up the ass.

Uhh no.  Not when one of the primary seats on the various UN councils IS China.  When you have the level of control they have (which if I recall is either 5 or 7 countries that alone can pull shit and get away with it creating an issue or shutting down an argument on their own) anything goes.  China has so much play on the UN level they can effectively outright, or at least to not really kick up anti-China hate, use back channels to basically threaten in a classic 'do this or else...' scenario and cause all sorts of hell for Taiwan.  It's documented, it's repeated, they pull all sorts of crap and twist the arms of other groups too.  Back before the pandemic hit for instance Taiwan saw it coming, charted, logged, wrote up the entire damn thing about what it was, where it came from, how to help mitigate and contain the problem.  Taiwan took it to the WHO, when China found out, they demanded Taiwan not be heard and their work be ignored...and here we are.

China due to its mass population, its designs around the world in controlling various mining, production, creation assets, stealing through hacking others IP and the rest, they have a lot of countries, leaders, and business types by the balls.  They're bullied and cowards and since no one wants to get into outright conflict with them, they get away with political murder (and real too, look at that lovely genocide they're committing for years now.)  The thing is one policy they do have, bleed the enemy.  They know damn well even the US which could school them, won't, because we don't have the population controls they have and once people started dying by the tens of thousands, hundreds...you get the idea, the winds of change would blow and they'd have us because they can send millions into the meat grinder and not give two flips.

 

And back on Cena, celebs in general... you have to be on crack to think what they say is meaningless.  Look at the level Cena is on, then look at some random youtube wankers who make 6-7 figure salaries doing what?  TALKING and taking video/images as INFLUENCERS.  Yeah that shit is a real job now and pays far more than quite a few real good noteworthy careers.  So given how much pull that guy has, you can bank on it that it could make things worse.  China can go, hey look, see even he apologized and recanted Taiwan is ours and not a legit country.  They've played that game for years with Tibet and won on that one, its disgustingly a done deal, and now they want Taiwan and/or the Spratleys next where they're making fake islands and installing military bases to basically encroach on the Philippines, Indonesia, and others trying to bully them all under China's control and sphere of influence.

[Tabonga | 2,345]

11 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Uhh no.  Not when one of the primary seats on the various UN councils IS China.  When you have the level of control they have (which if I recall is either 5 or 7 countries that alone can pull shit and get away with it creating an issue or shutting down an argument on their own) anything goes.  

 

There are 15 members of the UN security council - ten serve short terms (2 years IIRC  from my junior high civics days). 

The other five are permanent - the major Allies from WWII - China*, the US, the UK, France and Russia.  Any one of those can veto anything the UN votes to do (other than simple procedural things).

*Originally held by the Republic of China until the Communists pushed that government onto Taiwan.

[Tanooki | 4,953]

Just now, Tabonga said:

There are 15 members of the UN security council - ten serve short terms (2 years IIRC  from my junior high civics days). 

The other five are permanent - the major Allies from WWII - China*, the US, the UK, France and Russia.  Any one of those can veto anything the UN votes to do (other than simple procedural things).

*Originally held by the Republic of China until the Communists pushed that government onto Taiwan.

That's it, that's what I was referring to, just wasn't 100% on the explanation.  The permanent seat total, and the fact if you have one of them anything comes up you can just instantly shut it down with a veto.  Because the CCP inherited it when they ruined China, they technically on the UN level can be held accountable for NOTHING.  And because of that veto they can get away with whatever they like because of it.  Funny how it's the 'United' Nations, yet the entire UN could technically be united against China, and they can just wave the veto flag and snicker.

[Tabonga | 2,345]

3 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

That's it, that's what I was referring to, just wasn't 100% on the explanation.  The permanent seat total, and the fact if you have one of them anything comes up you can just instantly shut it down with a veto.  Because the CCP inherited it when they ruined China, they technically on the UN level can be held accountable for NOTHING.  And because of that veto they can get away with whatever they like because of it.  Funny how it's the 'United' Nations, yet the entire UN could technically be united against China, and they can just wave the veto flag and snicker.

The only reasons the UN intervened in Korea (even though the US was the main combatant it was a UN effort) was because Russia was boycotting the UN (I don't remember why) and the ROC kept the security council seat until 1971.  

The structure really limits the ability of the UN to do anything effective in most cases of military aggression.  (Which was also a major problem with the League of Nations.)

[The Count | 534]

In fairness to Cena, he does amazing work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and while it sucks, he's not any different than the NBA in terms of pro-China for $.

[AdamW | 713]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

That's it, that's what I was referring to, just wasn't 100% on the explanation.  The permanent seat total, and the fact if you have one of them anything comes up you can just instantly shut it down with a veto.  Because the CCP inherited it when they ruined China, they technically on the UN level can be held accountable for NOTHING.  And because of that veto they can get away with whatever they like because of it.  Funny how it's the 'United' Nations, yet the entire UN could technically be united against China, and they can just wave the veto flag and snicker.

To be fair, this is the case for all the other permanent security council members too. For instance, the weight of international opinion - and non-binding court judgements and UN resolutions - is solidly against the UK in the matter of the Chagos Islands, but the UN won't do anything binding about it because that requires a security council consensus and the UK would just veto it.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,018]

8 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Are you seriously admitting you would take geographical advice from an actor? Maybe my assumptions coming into this were incorrect, I gave people the benefit of the doubt they are smarter than that.

It's PR man. It's a show a strength that a movie star who is helping bring in over $500M is bending the knee and saying something absolutely ridiculous. 

How detracted from current events are you? Bc it seems like you're at a 10 from your comments.

[Tanooki | 4,953]

I know the UN is marginally toothless depending on the situation.  With general aide, general condemnation, throwing some money around for some problem -- fine.  But when it comes to anything that needs a bit behind it, they really are as compared to, as worthless as the league of nations which is a shame.  It's kind of more like the United (When Convenient) Nations.

I know some here don't follow the shadiness of what China's CCP does other than those living there or who are invested in keeping up on stuff.  I'm not saying it's an entirely unbiased support structure of media release, but they are on point covering the stuff going on, even getting interviews from noteworthy parties, and that's China Uncensored on youtube.  The only reason it still even exists on there is due to consistent funding through patreon and other donations from viewers because Youtube for years has been harassing, erasing, demonitizing the account and they've had to go through courts to put them in their place due to google violating their own terms of service.   I guess they strike a nerve since they've been trying to make media/network inroads in the CCP space for years.

[phart010 | 1,708]

@OptOutYou guys still have power?

[fcgamer | 4,754]

16 minutes ago, phart010 said:

@OptOutYou guys still have power?

Power? Like political power, or electricity or?

The last week or so there has been droughts, water rationing and rolling power outages, just like a fine wine, complements covid 19 nicely.

[phart010 | 1,708]

26 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Power? Like political power, or electricity or?

The last week or so there has been droughts, water rationing and rolling power outages, just like a fine wine, complements covid 19 nicely.

Electricity. I was reading that Taiwan is having some power outages right now. 

[fcgamer | 4,754]

2 minutes ago, phart010 said:

Electricity. I was reading that Taiwan is having some power outages right now. 

Yeah, luckily my building has thus far been spared from the electrical outages, but there's been occassional outages the past week or two, for a few hours at a time.

[OptOut | 8,892]

Haven't had any outages here in Changhua, fortunately, although we have been warned it may be a possibility. The covid situation is sucking bad tho, but we just gotta keep going make the best of things you know.

We're doing some online teaching just to keep the school ticking over whilst we're closed, but honestly it's really a terrible way to teach, the kids don't learn nearly as well this way. It's really sad. 

[SpoonMan Abrams X | 697]

On 5/26/2021 at 2:05 PM, The Count said:

In fairness to Cena, he does amazing work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and while it sucks, he's not any different than the NBA in terms of pro-China for $.

To the point if I may play devil's advocate, Cena also does a considerable of other philanthropic work, and is said to actually be a pretty good guy backstage when he was actively performing in WWE.

As it were too, far as I can tell he danced around as much as possible from actually outright saying "Taiwan is not a country" as he could muster (unless I missed something) and has been dully called out for it by on the other side for it to via comments on the other social media (as per the article linked in the OP)

I would assume that the only reason he even did it is because of immense pressure from corporate overlords to backtrack it.

This of course does not at all excuse it for being exceptionally feckless of him, but I wouldn't personally completely demonize the guy over it. Just wish he had more backbone and stood behind his words previously. That would actually mean something.

On 5/26/2021 at 12:54 PM, Hammerfestus said:

... is that Conan O'Brien?

[Hammerfestus | 3,891]

9 hours ago, SpoonMan Abrams X said:

... is that Conan O'Brien?

When he was a student at Harvard.  

Just trying to illustrate what a dopey point code monkey was making.