Countries anger and provoke each others’ populations by pointing out the bad stuff, and defend against that by censoring or otherwise cracking down on dissent. Articles like this are just attacks against us in this process, true, but I think specific ones like this are still useful, when critically understood, to help us realize that not only the countries we don’t like use those authoritarian tricks, but more or less every one (and those countries that don’t are couped by one or another who does).

Nah we are basically immersed in a housing crisis, so no right to that. And every time an actual leftist party succeeds, our media basically unite against it while pretending to accept them. You can call it a “lesser evil”, but I would even doubt that, since China is probably talking about us the same way we talk about them.

Depends a lot on where you live. In many countries, communism is simply considered “radical/violent” rather than “authoritarian”, and one is not considered a leftist of any sort unless they defend a leftist stance on the economy (progressive views on social issues may not be described as leftist everywhere).

I wouldn’t consider it an ideological thing, but more of a strategic decision by Xi et al.

I’d say it’s too soon to see if China will take an imperialist approach. The US and Europe seem to be decoupling from them, so they are in desperate need of well-developed markets that will buy their products. It’s in their own best interest that African nations develop quickly (which also hurts the US and Europe, making it harder to get cheap raw materials, thus doubly good for China).

It would be a win definitely, but unfortunately resolutions made by the General Assembly are not binding.

When returning from kernel code, one should issue Drop Execution Ring Privileges, of course.

Very interesting. I’d say China will only increase and cheapen its production even more, which will allow them to push their influence. They have been focusing on doing exactly that, by building efficient transportation networks, putting increasingly more companies’ equities in the hands of the state (and therefore sidestepping investors), and, recently, setting up abundant facilities for cheap, green energy production. All three of those policies rely for their swift and massive realization on what US policymakers nowadays seem to refer to as “non-market” dynamics, which are basically out of the question for them.

The benefits of a free market have been discussed by communists in the past, and newer experiments like the reforms implemented by China make it clear that socialism is compatible with a free market, to very good results.

Thanks for engaging with OP in a civil fashion, especially when you felt attacked… Anyway, hmu if you want to discuss this in more depth.

Rule 34/34

Reminds me of the time an investigation into a high-profile corruption scandal in Spain revealed the names of those involved, among them “M. Rajoy”. There’s a running joke that no one knows who might be behind that name, it’s a mystery that may never be solved.

Palestine has attacked territory that was assigned to Palestine by the UN in 1947. The UN also makes it very clear that a country may lawfully recover occupied territory “by any means, including armed force”. UN laws are thus very clear: Ukraine and Palestine can recover territories by force. Now, that doesn’t mean you should support them in their struggle to do so, but if you don’t, it must be for some other reason (e.g., Israel taking over would constitute a huge strategic gain for the US, while Russia taking over would destabilize the world and thus benefit small or weakly aligned players).