Comment on China says US broke international law by seizing oil tankers off Venezuela
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 17 hours agoLol! Ummm, yeah. You get that those examples are not the same thing, though…right? The US isn’t actually “blockading” Cuba with military vessels in order to prevent traffic to and from the country. Don’t get me wrong…what they’re doing to Cuba is wrong. But it has nothing to do with illegally policing international waters.
And bringing up Israel, when talking about China / US similarities, is also not applicable. They have nothing to do with either situation. They’re committing their own crimes, completely independent of those being committed by China and the US.
This is what makes it “whataboutism”.
mrdown@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Why does it matter for you if the blockade involve the military or not? At the end of the day the effects on Cubans are real and goes against international laws.
The usa is envolved in the blockade of gaza it is not whataboutism, you are being ridiculous. With your rhetoric all your comments are whataboutism since the article is about china position on the attack on Venezuela
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 16 hours ago
Sanctions don’t necessarily violate international laws. And particularly in Cuba’s case, they don’t actually prevent anyone other than the United States from trading with Cuba. As far as I recall, the only other country that is actively participating in the “Cuban blockade”, is Israel. The point being…the “blockade” is almost entirely symbolic, unless you believe that trade with the US is somehow the only way Cuba can sustain itself.
But, again…none of this has anything to do with China’s recent criticism of US actions in the Caribbean…which is what I was responding to with my comment. The reason I keep calling your arguments “whataboutism”, is because none of them have anything to do with the context of either my statements, or the statements that China made, that I was responding to. If China was talking about Cuba…sure…then Cuba is part of that conversation. If China was bringing up Israel…sure…lets talk about Israel. But they weren’t talking ab out any of those things. The only reason we’re talking about them at all, is because you keep swinging back to them, despite them having nothing to do with what I was responding to.
You just bringing them up to say, “but, whatabout this thing that the US did that was really bad?”, and “whatabout that other thing the US did that was also bad?” Why not bring up WW2 while you’re at it? Or Vietnam? How about Nixon? Or Ronald Reagan? Those guys were terrible too. Whatabout we talk about the entire history of the US, and see if that distracts from the specific context that this entire conversation was actually about?
mrdown@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
The majority of the international community consider the sanctions on cuba to be illegal.
You seem to be really invested in discussing what you consider to be whataboutism as if you don’t have any issue with it.
You decided to mentionning the theme of hypocrisy and china being the last country to talk about international laws so it is fair for me to want to extend on on that theme. It is not whataboutism. Whataboutism goal is to deflect from the valid critisism but i always try in my comments to keep the idea that China of not respecting international laws and being hypocritical about it either
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
You know there’s “context” here though, right? I was responding directly to the article this post is about.
Wanting to talk about everything else, is what makes it “whataboutism”. Whataboutism’s goal is to change the subject. It’s a form of deflection. It’s the introduction of a wide range of unrelated details, that have nothing to do with the original point being made.