I’ve always found Taiwan to be China’s Cuba in that regard.

Of course, China’s policy towards Taiwan is nothing like America’s towards Cuba. But hey, maybe it should be?

I don’t think most Taiwanese want war with the CPC

I don’t think they do, either. The KMT, specifically, wants to preserve the China-Taiwan relationship. Most lay residents just want to get on with their lives.

But from the country’s hawks - particularly expats like Elaine Chao and Ted Lieu - there’s ongoing pressure to climb the escalation ladder and return Taiwan to it’s historical role as forward operating base of the Western powers.

Framing an independence movement this way

When you’re asking for long range missiles staged inside your borders and the capacity to close the Straight as a political lever, you’re beyond the point of an independence movement.

We’re in Cuban Missile Crisis territory.

“We must protect our democratic instutitions!”

The Democratic Institutions

It is very funny to see the three major factions of Taiwan shaping out as

• The party that wants a war with China

• The party that wants war in China and regime change in Beijing so they can take it back over from the outside

• The party that wants all the Han invaders from the 1940s to GTFO

And they all hate each other nearly as much as they hate the Chinese communists. But not so much that they are willing to stop doing north of $100B/year in trade with the mainland.

“Regardless of ethnic group, regardless of who came earlier or later, anyone who identifies with Taiwan is a master of the country. Taiwan’s future must be decided jointly ​by the 23 million people of Taiwan,” he said.

George Bush Jr energy, shortly before he sticks the knife in Ted Kennedy’s back.

I wonder how many special forces units are mysteriously disappearing while on vacation.

the US isn’t a one party system

Explain that to the donors

It’s a division of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Which makes this akin to the Facebook Page of one of the major US parties.

an animated video posted by the China Daily on its Facebook page

Wait, Facebook is owned by China now? I thought it was just TikTok.

That’s all true. But I’m still firmly of the belief that the correct form of Podcast is some combination of British trans woman, Brooklyn journalism washout, and Philadelphia engineer talking about classic movies, election news, and engineering disasters.

Podcasts are a blight on humanity

They’re just radio shows you don’t need a broadcast station to distribute.

Some are definitely better than others

I don’t relish listening to people talk ad nauseum about inane shit.

Shrug

Nobody is forcing you to

Because it’s a deeply bitter ethnic rivalry between British settlers and Spanish settlers that’s been going on for multiple centuries.

You’ll have to explain that to the NGOs and legislators who continue to segregate it from the mainland for reporting and trade policy purposes.

Tianpin Investment Management Ltd

The full name of the firm is actually Hongkong Tianpin Investment Group Co Limited. And its primary stakeholder is Keppel Ltd. a Singaporean company headquartered in Keppel Bay Tower founded and largely still owned by British commercial stakeholders.

Always curious to see how Hong Kong gets counted as an independent country when we talk about the Fraser Institute Freedom Index or discuss US foreign policy.

But then there’s an environmental disaster for which the holding company is held responsible, and suddenly all that talk about Hong Kong independence and the glory days of British colonial rule fall away. And it’s Beijing’s fault that a company with a Mandarin name is being run by Captain Planet villains.

We’re trying pretty hard to slow down EV and green energy adoption as much as possible in my country, that count?

Well, on the one hand, we’re trying some very heavy-handed bureaucratic strategies to prop up O&G and to undermine domestic green alternatives.

But, on the other hand, we’re fucking up all the major international suppliers of O&G while incentivizing the world’s manufacturing powerhouse to spam green energy grids across the underdeveloped world at below-cost in order to build out a 21st century trade network.

So it’s a double-edged sword, and we’re just pinwheeling around with that thing.

“it’ll cause a negative feedback loop” technically they’re referring to a positive feedback loop

I’ve heard the terms “vicious”/“virtuous” cycle kicked around.

We need that for wealth as well, ie, wealth caps.

The perpetual struggle of any human-administered system is in how you keep the agents of the system (those implementing the policy) aligned with the principles (those setting the policy). Because we did have high tax rates and nationalization plans and even outright communist manifestos floating around the country eighty years ago. And then they were systematically sabotaged and dismantled by bureaucrats more aligned with the monied interests than the voting public.

In the modern day, you can’t even get a ballot amendment passed on majority (even super-majority) vote without a court casually overturning it, a legislature refusing to implement it, or the executive to enforce it.

Even something overwhelmingly popular, like high-speed mass transit or national health care or the policing of pedophile super-predators, is neglected on a bipartisan basis time and time and time again.

Who Watches Taxes the Watchmen Taxmen, so to speak? What kind of social organizing principle gets a large bureaucracy of people committed to redistributing wealth suited up and on the ground to do what must be done?

there definitely should be US on the list.

Gotta read the actual article

Cyberspace as the main battlefield

The European Parliament also calls for improved intelligence sharing, a stronger response to disinformation and cyberattacks, and closer cooperation with partner countries.

The anonymous author is just a cutout for the Americanized Techbro military surveillance state.

It continues to floor me every time I see Europe locked in a miserable quagmire war with Russia, only for some padagonia vest dweeb to insist on picking a fight with China ASAP.

It really does feel like some Europeans want a third world war.

The joke of Reddit is that it’s been decimating its real human userbase while it gobbles up investor cash and sells out wholesale to AI data harvesters.

For whatever reason, the folks with all the money don’t seem to care that they’re throwing enormous sums into a labyrinth of bot-farms. Tens of billions of dollars being pissed away on the Ur-case for Empty Internet Theory.

Tale as old as time

Song as old as rhyme

Fuck /u/spez

🚀🌝