> The US is probably being the 'most honest' by simply saying we won't implement them. In China and India they would simply misreport their emissions and not pay the tax.
Uhm, is there some data backing up your claim that we are honest and that China and India are dishonest. I mean, we really should think twice about accusing other countries of dishonesty after our whole weapons of mass destruction invasion debacle, various wars, regime changes, our "intelligence" services, rendition, Vietnam...
No, that's a common misconception. The majority of people with Dravidian heritage now live in Southern India but there's no "literal" meaning where Dravidian means Southern India. There's ample archaeological and linguistic evidence that Dravidian populations and languages were endemic as far north as what is now geographically Iran.
No. Just people who were willing to tolerate things being done to other people that they didn't care about. Sometimes even people they did care about. People forget that the 45 year old Tom Jefferson took a 14 year old child, Sally Hemmings to France as his sex slave. He fathered 6 children with her and did not free them. That's right. He kept those 6 children as slaves. Was he sociopath? Or just a product of a toxic culture that enabled him to commit such actions and still sleep well?
> Your example, while certainly a good one, is from 1943, rather late considering the empire would start shrinking and decolonizing in 45.
Again, as mentioned, I gave the 1943 example to point out how recent such colonial actions and attempts at ethnic cleansing were. There are people alive today who suffered through that.
There's ample examples of other genocides via famine performed by the English against ethnic groups they were subjugating at the time. For one closer to home, lets look at the English activity behind the Irish famine.
"The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people"
"Famine is an effective mechanism for reducing surplus population"
As usual, such individuals used all manner of tools to justify the genocide of any ethnic group they deemed "inferior". In this case, the Irish. It is telling that one of the major tools was that precise instrument of religion with Trevelyan even describing the famine and subsequent mass death as an instrument of God.
Churchill: Personally, I am not greatly concerned about Russian development in China. I would rather have them develop in that way down south into India. I believe in the ultimate partition of China—I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.
Churchill: I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.
> I don't see details to indicate famine was engineered for ethnic cleansing
We have to be careful to view this from the broad system level perspective. We have individuals like Churchill who expressed a clear racial belief system. A belief system where they believed, and even directly stated it was their manifest destiny to extinguish inferior races. In their positions of power, through intentional actions (and alleged inactions), they caused large numbers of their prey/victims to die. Should we attribute that to "capitalism was working as intended" or should we actually call a spade a spade and recognize that these men had agency and did these things consciously or at best sub-consciously to achieve lebensraum for their preferred race.
> were the Nazis and the Soviets to unite they would have canned the Americans a few times over
Something about that analogy is off. In case we forgot, in the 1800s, the British were the guys advocating and initiating ethnic cleansing of "inferior races" via engineered famines. Various parts of British occupied East India lost a third or more of their population. It was only that regions good fortune of having virulent tropical diseases that kept the British out. The indigenous people in Australia, New Zealand, and other places were not so lucky. The world might have been a better place if the Marathas and the Tipus of the world had united to prevent the subsequent genocides and massive loss and waste of human potential in South Asia.
> Didn't the British empire ban slaves and slavery on English soil at the start of the 19th century?
Depends on your meaning and what dates. The British did NOT ban slavery "at the start of the 19th century" (meaning 1800s). They banned only the buying of slaves using English vessels and even then it was nominally enforced. In 1833, the English compensated approximately 3000 slavers for "loss of business assets" (yes, that's right, they compensated the slavers, not the slaves) including the ancestors of David Cameron, the Bazalgettes and other wealthy families.
Almost instantly after the passing of the 1833 act, the British used indentured labour to replace slavery. Indentured labour was found to be equivalently cruel. The historical record shows death rates as high or higher than the slavery period for indentured labourers brought from South Asia to the West Indies and South East Asia. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/12/thefor...
> I'm pretty sure it's always been very normal in Thai society.
It is unclear which "it's" you are referring to. Group sex dealmaking or using group sex for bonding business partners as per the original article? I don't think that is normal in Thailand or any Asian society for that matter.
As for the history of prostitution in Thailand. That's a well covered subject. You're points are somewhat accurate but OP's point appears to be different than what you are addressing. I thought he/she was implying that the Vietnam war had overarching societal and economic consequences, one of which was the availability of vulnerable exploitable migrant and rural women in Thai cities.
The location of Thailand plays a key role in the success of the sex trafficking industry. It is close to war-torn Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. China and Vietnam are also nearby. Various waterways along with porous borders also facilitate trafficking.
If the point that was being made was that the Vietnam war had huge side effects, including enabling horrific sex trafficking and exploitation, then yes, I would agree.
> OLPC did, and that had a lot of credible backing and resources
OLPC had massive resources but it had such an arrogant "leader/founder", Nick Negroponte that it was doomed to failure. I can't believe this guy still suggests that journalists should describe him as the father of the netbook and tablet computing now.
Do you have any evidence that this is true? As far as I can tell, China invested in infrastructure in China. "West" just buys products. Your statement is equivalent to claiming that Apple invested in infrastructure in China when the reality is that Foxconn invested in infrastructure in China and Apple just buys the output.
A good way to check logic is to test the statements against other scenarios.
> The guy lied with the intent to get heavily armed people to point guns at someone.
What if we apply your reasoning to politicians that lied in order to enable invasions of other countries? Does that mean they also committed mass murder and war crimes? If no, then please explain what is the difference? If yes, then why are the politicians not charged?
What if we apply your reasoning to the same exact scenario but instead of it having been false, this was where there was an actual armed attack and a victim had been made to open the door and then been shot within seconds by the policeman? In that scenario, would you not say that the policeman had committed an act of murder or at least gross negligence leading to murder?
> I feel most of these 'cultural prognosis' are generally just old racial prejudices being justified to fit whatever one sees.
I think there's an element of truth to your statement. One key sentence in the essay that lends itself to your conclusion is this one:
"
A thar-dominated society will never achieve equality, regardless how prosperous it becomes, because prosperity for the masses is a direct affront to the status of the elite.
"
But we know that our very own Anglo-Saxon society was very much a "thar-dominated" one until quite recently and although we've not reached ideal levels of equality, we have significantly cut inequality.
> When you're poor these honor systems may be all you have
I think you're on to something there. I recall something from Steven Pinker's book on violence.
"
if I do something stupid when I'm driving, and someone gives me the finger and calls me an asshole, it's not the end of the world: I think to myself, I’m a tenured professor at Harvard. On the other hand, if status among men in the street was my only source of worth in life, I might have road rage and pull out a gun.
"
Why do you say xxx countries? It is not as if we don't have this type of thing happening in our own country.