flabberjabber

Therefore the ozone hole caused by CFCs that peaked in the 90's really did a number on this mans visage.

I have no horse in the colonial race.

But you do, your post history is entirely pro China. Each article you've chosen is limited in scope, looks at only small details; whereas I'm coming at this from a contextual point of view. Why are you trying to pretend you haven't cherry picked your references to suit your political leanings? It's baffling.

Also, Marxist-Leninist fits, thanks for your honesty. I'm with Lenin, up until he calls for a continuous revolution against all political opponents: that's the point at which a righteous revolution turns into tyranny.

From my point of view, colonialism regardless of the flavour of it, serves only to impoverish and destroy the lives of a large number of working people. Its the opposite of what true communism should look like.

Despite this, I actually gave China a tiny bit more credit because at least they're building infrastructure, the USA wouldn't have done that historically. Even if that infrastructure is a debt slavery trap.

You're welcome to think of me as loving the USA though. From where I'm sitting tonight that's given me such a chuckle.

All your links are media arms of the Chinese government.

All of your points are quite literally Chinese governmental talking points with no nuance and no analysis from any point of view that isn't pro-China.

And you call my post projection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative

Much like America's more usual approach, it's softer colonialism than what the Brits did.

The difference this time around though is the building of infrastructure. America didn't do as much of that during its rise or prime. That said, its often just another way to get the nation indebted to China, its not like they're building the projects for free and often enough the debt is more than the country in question's economy can handle.

Colonialism is colonialism afterall.

This method is built on political manoeuvring behind the scenes through intelligence assets and corruption with infrastructural incentives masking debt slavery out in the open.

Here's the list you asked for:

Angola, DRC, Zambia, Sudan, Mozambique, Gabon, Ethiopia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Pakistan Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Iraq and Iran.

"In other news, womans lips now visitor in own face."

The only downside is living in a universe that has the Borg. They are existential terror incarnate.

That said, they seem to always get defeated one way or another. Just make sure you live in a major federation star system and you're golden.

You dont understand how the American two party system works. Let me explain it in simple terms.

You have one party that is corporate light; that's the democrats. And you have another party that's corporate get fucked in the arse; that's the Republicans.

Both parties serve their corporate masters first and foremost before any consideration of the common man. Neither party will challenge this status quo in any meaningful way. The difference is that one is willing to be a little more giving than the other fiscally.

But the reality is that the entire political process is captured by vested financial interests that own politicians and work together so that over the long term it all gets shitter and shitter for the common people and they get richer and richer.

The only way out of this is to primary every politician in the democratic party that have any financial ties to the elites. To money.

That's most of them.

So many generalisations and a complete lack of understanding of there being other valid ways of conducting a relationship beyond what you've experienced yourself or seen with your own eyes.

True love is like any other feature of a relationship, only as enduring as the health of that relationship. That takes work, communication, and many other aspects too numerous to list here. It is complex and not easy to define. But it can endure just fine.

If it makes you feel better to think that relationships based on true love don't last, by all means continue in that fantasy. But it is a fantasy and I think it says more about your fear of what you're missing as someone who's likely stuck in an arranged relationship, or stuck in a culture where that is expected of you, than it does about how enduring true love can be.

Agreed. Although with the caveat that, had there been more stringent regulations surrounding misinformation and manipulation in political and media discourse for the UK, Brexit would never have been able to occur. Leave got there (and only just) through a multitude of lies and emotional manipulation.

Direct democracy is the ideal end goal of any democratic system. But for it to work, people need to be educated, healthy, stable, and both interested and invested in the political process.

We've a lot of ground to cover between then and now.

Yeah my bad, my math was off and wasn't looking at it across the multiple years. Makes sense. Cheers mate.

Never encountered fake pot until Covid.

For some reason the increase in demand meant that the streets became filled with synthetic cannabinoid sprayed weed, pesticide sprayed weed and other adulterated products.

It definitely happened before, but it happens much more frequently now than it ever had in the past.

It happens for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. Whether thats to increase the grow weigh, the intensity of the high, the ability to spray it with synthetics after washing it for the real THC or the cheapness of spraying the plants with pesticides for bugs: all of it is to make more money without caring about the consumer.

Legalise it, regulate it, health and safety it.

That slight raise is arguably relatively normal-ish variation. It probably represents the problems with capitalist lack of social care and resources to some degree. But 99.99% of people are still eating.

It's still bad, it's still unacceptable, it's still ridiculous for a wealthy nation and shouldn't happen, but it's also not huge, it's a tiny fraction.

To parse the math, if it keeps rising that would be concerning. But look at the scale... that "3" That the USA reaches isn't percent. It represents circa 1 in 33,000 people which equates to about 10,000 people in the entire USA.

Whereas according to the same source, North Korea's famine produced at least 450 sufferers every 100,000. That, represented 1 in 222 people.

Weirdly this actually doesn't tally with a lot of other sources. So I'm left scratching my head about it somewhat. The above reference suggests only 100,000 people suffered from the famine in North Korea yet, the minimum other sources put as having died in said famine is 360,000 and the maximum of 2,000,000.

Am I missing something? This does not compute.

Edit: Ah the context I was missing was the famine occurred over multiple years. Each year was 420 per 100,000 or below out of 20 million.