Strippers and puppies.
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Point very much taken.
Wasn’t sure where to put this. (fyi, Obama’s memoir is apparently 768 pages long, and that’s just part one…oh, goody, there’s more!):
Seem to be taking advantage of the perceived confusion stateside to try to flex. Just what we need lol
Ah good, we are at the meaningless first round polling portion of the French presidential election.
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Taiwan/China sword rattling getting a bit louder.
Speaking of China - they don’t seem to mind picking at virtually every other country in Asia / Oceania.
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I took an East Asian history class in high school (going back 20+ years here) and the one take away I got was China has ALWAYS done this to other EA nations going back, like, forever.
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This seems like a pretty good brief summary on the China - Taiwan issue as it stands right now:
Looking for @dt79 for insights on the ground over there in East Asia… Thoughts?
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If China really wanted to invade Taiwan, they would crush them easily and from what we’ve seen recently in HK when they passed the new national security law, which was an obvious and egregious infringement of the terms of the handover treaty, no Western country is going to do anything substantial to prevent it.
What China seems to want is to negotiate a HK-like relationship with Taiwan, i.e, Taiwan being recognized as an autonomously governed part of China, but they won’t do this by force in this day and age. They can pull off something like getting them into a debt trap like they did with Africa. There’re lots of different things they can do and they’re willing to take their time.
Their show of force was most likely for the US and some other nations, NOT for Taiwan. So, yes, one reason could be it was a “test” for Biden. But they’ve been doing military drills and war simulations all the time throughout the years like they did when they had that territorial thing with the Philippines, which also have US backing, but people other than the governments didn’t really notice since they weren’t widely reported.
Most of us here watching the protests turn into riots in HK were surprised they didn’t even send in their military so the possibility of using military force is pretty slim. But they did deploy troops to Shenzhen, which is on the border with HK. Since the leaders of HK are already cronies of Beijing, the show of force was obviously for the US to warn them to back off supporting them.
Taiwan’s mandatory military training for all males is next to useless anyway since their quality and duration of training is so low from what I’ve heard. They’re nothing like the IDF.
Regarding sentiments in China for both government and citizens alike, Taiwan is like a “limb on your body”. Recognizing them as an independent nation is like “cutting off your arm”. It’s never changed from the start. 15 years ago we were having intense debates online about Taiwan using QQ when the government wasn’t that strict on controlling the internet lol.
But the sending the military planes into Taiwan’s airspace thing was pretty damn funny. It was like some elaborately coordinated trolling. I was laughing about it for days. I’m sure the pilots had lots of fun.
And I think Biden has continue to be tough on China while restoring relationships with other countries that Trump fucked up. There’s a possibility they will overtake the US in terms of political and economic power in the next decade.
You gotta understand the sentiments of China people. When the US and google barred Huawei from using the android system in their phones, people didn’t whine about it although they did curse Trump for fucking with them.
Their main reaction was this was a good thing as it will encourage more local innovation in the face of adversity. This kind of thinking even from the everyday individual is why China will gain massive amounts of power at a substantial rate.
Like what they did in the 90’s and 2000’s, they’re now actively calling back successful citizens from overseas and offering them better incentives than what they are receiving from abroad from what I’ve been hearing from dependable sources. They’re prepared to go to war on the economic front.
Shit, they’re even trying to enforce this again to get talent back from what I’ve been hearing but their plans keep changing every other week so I don’t know if they’re serious this time:
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Really awesome breakdown dt79. Lots to consider
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A deeply courageous man. His contributions to the world will dwarf the butchers who murdered him.
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I was recently told by a fairly dependable source that Xi Jinping may be “dumber than Trump”. “Dumber” as in literally “stupid” and/or displays Biden kind of “senility” behind the scenes, and all his educational credentials after his basic degree(and maybe even this) were obtained through good ole Chinese nepotism. Trump isn’t stupid. He’s just a self-serving asshole who says and does dumb things for short term gains.
So now I’m not sure about how the top brass is currently organized and who’s really running the show since equally and more dependable sources have raved about the intellect about the 2 previous Presidents, which is part of the reason why I invested so heavily in China in the 2000s and early 2010s.
But now they(the leaders) have become extremely discrete about their meetings and stuff so it’s hard to get information or verification of my current source’s claims from previous sources.
Wow, very interesting tidbit of info there. I don’t know how to weight that information, but I suppose it could be one reason that Xi’s administration has seemed to roll back many of the previous reforms or what passes for “transparency”… It’s easier to hide stupidity when nobody can see behind the curtains.
Then again, how did Xi rise to the top in such a system if he isn’t at least cunning? You can buy a degree if your parents are connected, but it’s got to be astronomically harder to rise to the Presidency in a cutthroat Party.
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Perhaps cunning is its own type of intelligence, that is disconnected from other indications.
Like how a comedian might be sharp enough to make a physicist look buffonish in a social setting, yet barely passed through algebra.
Example Pelosi. She sounds less intelligent to me than most politicians, yet is at pinnacle of power for years.
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Sounds like the definition of stupid.
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I can’t say that I know anything about the byzantine system used to choose the leader of the CCP, but I have to say that this is not that unusual for systems where a successor is being chosen through palace intrigues ostensibly turned into a formalized selection process through the Party.
Usually the smartest and most capable are eliminated fairly quickly by other candidates, which leaves a cadre of mediocre bureaucrats vying for the top job.
Take the USSR for example. Khruschev flew under the radar because everyone fell for his “dumb Ukrainian peasant” act. After pulling of his coup de main (see Ianucci’s Death of Stalin) he surrounded himself with dour, incompetent apparatchiks with a history of failing upwards. He believed that if his entourage consisted solely of unremarkable idiots, then no one would have the brains or the guts to attempt to depose him.
One of these idiots was Leonid Brezhev who was allegedly too stupid (and senile) to hatch such a scheme himself, and was allegedly only a figurehead of the internal revolt to depose Khrushchev, only to double cross his backers at the last minute.
This pattern of “stupidity comes out on top” in palace intrigues occurred in Soviet satellites as well, where the Soviets were exasperated in turn that the majority of candidates seeking their approval/backing were stupid - the East German Communist Party Secretary Walter Ulbricht was spectacularly dumb (he never finished elementary school) and was regularly berated by Khruschev for being unable to understand basic instructions (that’s how the Berlin Wall came to be)
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You’ve read the Discourses on Livy.
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I’d say that’s probably pretty accurate.