Perhaps you haven’t heard of the war and only noticed a lot of mentions of Ukraine recently. Actually, that’s because there’s a war there, that’s why people keep bringing up Ukraine or showing their support for Ukraine, alternatively for Russia. The war is about USA imperialism, where the USA wants to do imperialism towards Russia and Russia is stopping them. So that’s how those things are related. Ukraine is the battleground, and the USA is using Ukrainian humans as weapons. It’s a very horrible situation.

Extreme violence is still violence. Industrial violence on a massive scale is still violence. You are advocating for violence, terrible violence, and then getting upset someone else advocated for comparatively mild violence.

Maybe they just want to get rid of them. The west seems to mind Nazis a lot less than losers.

The problem with the RFA source is the CIA funding, not that it’s in English. It’s pretty disingenuous to try to imply Newizu is pro-Putin or anti-imperialist, or anti-west or anything else that would qualify as a separate bias or agenda.

state capitalism with red paint (CCP)

You know so much about them you haven’t even seen their name written out in English once.

The vast majority of (Let’s use Vietnam as an example) is proletariat. So the vast majority of people are dictating terms to a small subset with different class interests. It’s nothing like the dictatorship in, let’s say the Netherlands, where a small group of capitalists dictate terms to the large body of proletariat, and the bourgeois political apparatus mediates in favour of bourgeoisie class interests. There’s no corruption taking place, just the necessities of market economics.

This dictatorship will naturally “dissolve” when there are no more other classes (bourgeoisie et all) to oppress, since it will no longer serve the proletariat’s interests.

No but you don’t understand. They’re all actors. They torn down all the houses and built giant facades to fool tourists.

Holy shit my opinion is literally earth shattering??

Bruv we had rubbish bins in Europe before the year 2000. In France, they were mandatory in cities since 1883.

30K cheap houses entering the market is a meaningful improvement to people’s access to housing. To put it into perspective, according to the first DDG result the total number of houses they will be short in 2030 is 5-ish million houses. So 30K is more than half a percent of the total for the whole country. If they just guillotined this one dude/confiscated these houses the government could coast on good will until the next election.

That’s a cute Grievous

Maybe OPs friends will switch over when that happens.

Signal does suck though. What kind of privacy focused decision is mandatory SIM association?

So exactly the same then. Sep 11 conspiracy theorists also believe the attack happened. They just don’t attribute it to terrorists but the local government. Which is exactly what June 4th conspiracy theorists believe. And from experience, obnoxious foreigners are usually June 4th conspiracy theorists, because those conspiracy theories are pushed by western propaganda outlets like Radio Free Asia and BBC. They sometimes also believe they drove over people with tanks and shot people in the square. Same with Uighurs. Maybe you just wanted to talk about Uighurs or Xinjiang, but the conspiracy theorists believe Uighurs are being oppressed, and obnoxious foreigners are more likely to be conspiracy theorists. Even if you aren’t a conspiracy theorists, obnoxious foreigners usually are so at a certain point people just stop engaging.

If you’re an obnoxious foreigner who only wants to talk about Hitler in Germany, you’ll get similar responses. Or I know you said stop using USA a comparison, but in this case it’s a very easy and apt one. If you only want to talk about how the WTC attack was an inside job in the USA as a foreigner, you’ll get similar responses. It doesn’t mean they accept your version of events, just that it’s awkward to talk to you about it. Or I guess a similar one but back to Germany. If you’re a yank who wants to commiserate about how fucked the GDR was with someone who lived in the GDR, they’ll give you one half-arsed rebuttal then ask to change topic.

Is the government as accountable as in democracies like the Nordic states or Switzerland?

Bruv everyone in Norway wanted 10 politicians jailed last year. All that came from it was memes about how “I’m sorry I didn’t know corruption was illegal” is a laughable excuse and then it was memory-holed. The only person punished was one of the journalists and they shuffled some things around to reduce transparency. One criminal resigned but she got an emotional distress payout and is still at AP.

You should use your insights to conduct your more scientifically based study. I’m sure the CIA will be happy to fund you if you explain it’ll refute Harvard’s 95% claim.

Are you stuck with fax v34 speeds because your telecom hasn’t upgraded your landline to support the more modern v300 or are you fully covered by your internet equipment instead?

I don’t really see the point? Like who’s going to be excited about faster USB transfer rates in 2026?

You wrote “Chinese Taipei is not a place name.” and I hadn’t noticed your name appear multiple times in the comments so I figured someone just genuinely didn’t know Taipei is referring to the city rather than being some random Olympics-only moniker. And then with that second comment I just enjoyed being a pedant. Then when I did notice you had multiple comments I decided I should stop being rude because you weren’t being rude.

There isn’t really anything to disagree on. We (leftists) aren’t oblivious to the fact Taiwan has (not full but significant) practical independence from China, and many of us are not even against them receiving de jure independence as long as they aren’t allowed to host USA-controlled weapons. What I was trying to stress is that Chinese Taipei is a fine descriptor whether you support the PRC or ROC, since it’s the Chinese city of Taipei, or even if you want Taiwan independence, it can still currently represent a team of Chinese people living in Taipei.

The hostility you see in the comments isn’t because people want to deny Taiwanese their agency. Independence is stupid, and reunification under the PRC is absolutely what’s best for the proletariat on Taiwan, and the rest of China, but it shouldn’t happen without their popular support. What we’re against is rocking the boat or god forbid, a war starting. The situation is currently workable for everyone. China gets their forced security guarantee because they legally own the land and the government on Taiwan is mostly left alone. The PRC doesn’t blockade or sanction Taiwan over trade or financial issues. Every time they sanction them it’s because of a direct military transgression and they’ve all been temporary. The PRCs whole strategy for reunification is just outpacing them in quality of life. Despite what western media claims, China is not being provocative. So stories creating the conditions for military conflict scare and anger us.

On the capitals. They’re not equivalent to US-state capitals. They’re supposed to be the centres of political power for the people who live in each autonomous region. While undoubtedly Beijing is the capital, or centre of political power for the whole country, that doesn’t negate the regional governments’ power. You said the biggest city is the capital, right? But the biggest city financially in the USA is New York, and culturally it’s Los Angeles. And in terms of population they’re #1 and #2 too. But the capital of the USA is the centre of political power. China aims for a higher level of autonomy than the USA does, partially because they’re more committed to democracy, but also because the material conditions necessitate it. Beijing just isn’t as good at administrating autonomous regions as they are themselves.