Becoming a lawyer is part of what radicalised me tbh. Being in the system lets you hate it with the contempt born of familiarity
When I lived in Paris my dad came to visit and made me take him to Père-Lachaise to see the site of the commune and teach me about it.
Wow my dad is kinda based now that I think about it
What an incredibly succinct illustration of imperialism.
Beijing didn’t limit its global influence efforts to propaganda. It announced an ambitious COVID assistance program, which included sending masks, ventilators and its own vaccines – still being tested at the time – to struggling countries. In May 2020, Xi announced that the vaccine China was developing would be made available as a “global public good,” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” Sinovac was the primary vaccine available in the Philippines for about a year until U.S.-made vaccines became more widely available there in early 2022.
Washington’s plan, called Operation Warp Speed, was different. It favored inoculating Americans first, and it placed no restrictions on what pharmaceutical companies could charge developing countries for the remaining vaccines not used by the United States. The deal allowed the companies to “play hardball” with developing countries, forcing them to accept high prices, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University who has worked with the World Health Organization.
The deal “sucked most of the supply out of the global market,” Gostin said. “The United States took a very determined America First approach.”
To Washington’s alarm, China’s offers of assistance were tilting the geopolitical playing field across the developing world, including in the Philippines, where the government faced upwards of 100,000 infections in the early months of the pandemic.
I actually watched Zelenskyy’s show “Servant of the People” and at the end of that he makes a reference to Ukraine “being always stuck between the orcs and the elves”. So I guess it was in common usage at least in Ukraine prior to the war
Did they?? I had stopped following. But iirc they basically defrauded the competitions out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of prizes
I don’t know but they had the most unhinged cheating scandal in competitive sports ever. The top fisher was found to be cheating by putting lead weights into his catches.
The video of when they were caught is extremely worth watching (CW: dead fish)
True! She’s such a ghoul though she unwittingly helped out by condescendingly backing his leadership bid “because he’ll never win” and they used to just let a leftie run for appearances’ sake
I went to a Labour event in North Islington once where Jeremy and Starmer both spoke (this was back in… 2015 or so, when Jeremy was first campaigning for leader I believe?). Starmer was extremely boring and entirely forgettable, though there was some polite applause. The crowd was hollering and chanting Corbyn’s name when he spoke. And in the years since seeing how he has treated our Jez I have always wondered whether it’s been motivated by the petty insecurity of knowing that he will never have true popular appeal
Incredible. Now do Shen Yun
“Republicans voted against this immoral and blatantly fascist act” isn’t the own they think it is
Nahhh the unspoken rule is if you can dish it out you have to be able to take it. If you can’t take it people will only keep needling at the thing that triggers you the most until you develop a facade of utterly impervious cynicism and apathy just in order to survive the most basic of social interactions
Oh god Paul Mason. What an absolute dweeb
I have only played MH Rising and don’t recognise any of these mfers 😭
I liked the dargon that blew tornadoes at you and the slinky water girl and the polar bear
Are taglines from off-instance allowed? Because that is a banger
They’re running a candidate in Islington North? Hahahahaha get fuuucked. (I used to live there and I cannot imagine the place voting for anyone but Jezza, he’s universally adored)
Shoulda let John McDonnell off the leash when he had the chance
White people will feed their kids this then turn their nose up at food with actual colour and/or flavour
What is even the point of this? Like from a Biden’s internal logic/US imperialist perspective, how does this further their interests in any way? Is it just a cynical calculation that if Russia hits back it’ll be Ukrainians bearing the brunt of it? But what’s the benefit for NATO if Ukraine is turned into a nuclear battlefield? Make it make sense
Genuinely curious. I keep thinking “it can’t get much worse without some kind of mass uprising” but the ability of the general population of Western states to just soak up suffering seems endless. Do you think we will actually see mass movements in the next decade or two? Or just slowly lurch into a void of ever-shittier liberalism?
By the West I mean like. Western Europe and the Anglosphere I guess.
The whole class was super suspect anyway because the discussion topic was “how would you debate morality with a religious fundamentalist terrorist” or something I don’t fully remember. And this guy is just like “yeah I’d say look, we have all these modern comforts like toasters and smartphones and stuff, we must be doing something right”. (This was in like 2009)
Anyway the ending of the story is that the dude became known in our class for being rejected by a girl and wanking into her dustbin like some kind of even more pathetic Louis CK. And later on for becoming a blood diamonds trader (serious). I don’t know if there was a moral to this tale but uh. Don’t be a chud I guess
I do a bunch of tournament coverage for a card game and I’ve been working years on these online events. I’m pretty good I think, and the goal has always been to get on the broadcast for the biggest pro tournament. The company that makes the game knows me because the online events are also part of the official tournament circuit so they’re happy to have me represent them… just not on the biggest stage I guess. And today I found out that some white guy streamer who has never done a real coverage show was given a role on the latest pro broadcast and I cannot handle it. I’ve worked SO hard.
The background to this was that a couple of years ago I publicly criticised the show (without even naming the casters) for misgendering my friend while she was playing the biggest tournament of her life. She was basically the only person in the event who wasn’t a cis man. It was so shitty for her and she desperately needed support. Anyway one of the casters yelled at me months later in a giant twitter DM saying how I shouldn’t have made him look bad if I wanted to work with him etc etc and now they are hiring more white guys with no experience over me and it suuucks
Happy New Year everyone!!!! I hope you all get to honour the true meaning of the Spring Festival by eating as much as you can and not doing any work. Also don’t let the capitalists short change you with their puny watered-down holidays, the celebrations should last 15 whole days. Thank you for making this the best place on the Anglo internet to be for Chinese diaspora socialists. !red-sun !heart-sickle
Was this deliberate??
Background: I’m Chinese by origin but grew up in the west. He’s English. He’s kind of a !LIB but in a lefty way and has been with me to China multiple times, we’ve been together for years. He has had misconceptions before but is always learning. He does go on Reddit still, mostly to talk about land value tax which is his big political obsession right now.
Anyway last night we were at dinner and talking about an idea for a project that’s like quora but with only expert/academic researchers as responders. Part of it would need a reputation rating for the researchers. We were then talking about the use cases/audience for the project and I said “this might be better suited to Asia” (because of how highly education is valued and the pressure on kids to study/achieve grades). And he immediately responded “because they’re used to social credit scores?” Like. Without missing a beat. Maybe I’m overthinking it but it really pissed me off that his first association when I mentioned Asia was… this.
We talked about it and he explained that the concept was already in his mind when he was thinking about the reputation system so it wasn’t just a reaction to Asia specifically. But he insisted that he knew social credit scores were a real thing. I think he did listen when I said these types of jokes were what made Reddit such a hostile environment to be in, though.
I’m not sure what I’m asking but I just wanted to get it off my chest. Does anyone maybe have resources on internet Sinophobia / explanation of where the social credit stuff came from I can share with him?
Thanks crew. Sorry that was so long x
I recently read this book researching a writing project and I think it should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in imperial or modern China.
It’s the autobiography of Puyi Aisin-Gioro, the last emperor of China. His life was insane. He was put on the throne aged 2 and abdicated 3 years later, but kept his title and was raised in the Forbidden City as essentially a prisoner - all so the corrupt palace officials could keep getting money from the government. He betrays the country and becomes a puppet emperor of “Manchukuo” under Japan’s colonial rule. After the war he is captured by the Soviets and then transferred to China when the Communist party won the civil war. Throughout his imprisonment, and to his great surprise, he is treated humanely and over a period of 10 years in prison manages to reform his entire outlook and become an upstanding citizen.
We talk a lot about deprogramming the cultists but I think there’s not been much discussion about how it can be done. The last few chapters of this book give a great illustration of reeducation that is compassionate and effective.
The book has received some criticism for being propaganda, and certainly the CCP took the view that his reformation would be an excellent demonstration of their progress and undoubtedly treated him well - but he wasn’t exempt from any of he duties and obligations in prison or anything like that. Anyway I haven’t seen any allegations of falsehood regarding his account.
I feel like I’m doing it wrong or something but I can’t make the emote menu go away and it fills up the whole screen when I’m trying to make comments. Please help
I was a long time lurker of r/cth and it was the only sane place I could go on Reddit to read shit that wasn’t saturated with racist memes about where I was born (China). Like I don’t even live there and haven’t for decades but fuck me is it wearying to see sOCiAl CrEDIt SCorE jokes on every fucking thread. Anyway I’m done with Reddit and was hanging around general lemmy instances and found y’all through the federation noise. I guess this post was kind of pointless but I’m just happy this community is still around.
Love & peace x
