Objection

Objection , vor 7 Stunden

Turns out people really don't like being ruled over by nakedly colonialist regimes, and when people really don't like things they tend to blow stuff up, and when people blow stuff up, it hurts the bottom line of oil companies, i.e. the only thing you care about for some reason.

Do you want to create a second Iran? Because that's what happened there.

Objection , vor 3 Tagen

Name one time when that's happened.

Objection , vor 3 Tagen

Neither of those countries returned to a feudal system. Where are the nobles, with entrenched legal privileges, with titles passed down on a hereditary basis, commanding their own armies? What a ridiculous claim.

Objection , vor 3 Tagen

Does North Korea have the noble class I described? Do you have any evidence that such a class exists?

Objection , vor 3 Tagen

That's both not true and also not what I asked. The UK has a king and noble family, does that make it a feudal system?

Objection , vor 3 Tagen

There are other monarchies in the world today that do hold political power. That doesn't mean that they're governing over a feudal system. The noble system I described is one of the defining characteristics of feudalism.

Objection , vor 3 Tagen

Right, because you're doing zero analysis of the economic or political structures involved and playing fast and loose with terminology.

Objection , vor 4 Tagen

The Chinese embassy issued a response here

I don't read French, but from Google translate, the Chinese narrative is roughly as follows: Ling Huazhan approached the embassy claiming that he had been taken in by Falun Gong and burned his passport as a protest, but had changed his mind, and was now out of money and in need of help. The embassy put him in contact with a charity that provided him with room and board, while contacting his family in China, who purchased a plane ticket for his return. Due to the delicacy of the situation and his history of mental health issues, he was accompanied to the airport, at which point he abruptly changed attitude and claimed to be being abducted, in order to create a diplomatic incident.

I'm not claiming that that narrative is true, but just describing their response.

Objection , vor 10 Tagen

MY rotting corpse just has some stiff joints, that's all.

Objection , vor 11 Tagen

"Stuttered"

Objection , vor 11 Tagen

That doesn't give people license to lie about him.

Objection , vor einem Monat

What's the historical significance of Tiananmen Square? People sure seem to like talking about it, but personally I don't really see why it warrants so much attention, in the grand scheme of things.

Objection , vor einem Monat

Comparing an incident where 11 million people were killed to one where hundreds of people were killed is a form of Holocaust denialism.

Objection , vor einem Monat

China has official death estimates so I don't believe that they deny that anything at all happened.

Now, it’s considered patriotic to protest poor government decisions.

Is it now? Would you say the student protests over Gaza are considered "patriotic" in mainstream American culture?

Objection , vor einem Monat

Remember that time managers at a Tyson meat processing plant ran a betting pool on how many of their workers would get covid?

Objection , vor einem Monat

Are you a Maoist?

Objection , vor einem Monat

Even if that's true, isn't it better for countries in the global South to have multiple options instead of being forced to accept whatever conditions are imposed on them by the IMF?

Objection , vor 2 Monaten (Bearbeitet vor 2 Monaten)

So you're a Maoist?

Objection , vor 2 Monaten

Oh great the NSA bots have showed up

How's the weather in Langley?

Objection , vor 2 Monaten

There's no country where every single person lives in freedom and happiness. But there are numerous countries that have significantly improved the quality of life for the vast majority of people compared to what they had before, including Cuba, Vietnam, and China.

It may be true that in some cases the quality of life is higher in capitalist countries. But there's a good reason for that! Historically, the countries most prone to socialist revolutions... were countries with some of the lowest standards of living in the world!

Despite this, China has recently eclipsed the United States in life expectancy. If you compare the two countries' life expectancies before the Communists came to power, no one would expect that to happen! Why? Because for the average rural Chinese person, their way of life was virtually unchanged since ancient times with a life expectancy of 35, comparable to that of the Roman Empire.

Anti-communists would have us compare communist countries against either an imagined utopia, or against countries starting from a significantly higher level of industrial development. But those comparisons are not relevant to the question at hand! In order to evaluate the efficacy of socialism, the relevant comparison is the system that actually existed before, and what it was on track to do! And in cases like China, we can clearly see that the quality of life was miserable and stagnant for the vast majority of people, until the communists came to power!

Why do Westerners fail to account for this vital evidence? Because people used to a higher standard of living would take these improvements for granted! For a village tailor, being able to afford a sewing machine could be life-changing - but someone living in the imperial core would have no relevant experience to relate to that! The only thing they would notice is how poor the person still is, regardless of how much or how quickly their life is improving!