Merkel, as Varoufakis put it, sending your failed minister to Brussels is a good choice because “In Brussels, you can’t hear them scream”

Aren’t Doctors Without Borders active, and also losing doctors to IDF strikes in Gaza? What’s the complaint here?

bro is fellating autocrats left and right

If you asked me about that dudes username, I would’ve 100% said it’s an undercover government agent… lmao

In Taiwan, these people are called 民主二代 (second generation of democracy), oftentimes in a derogatory way, referring to a generation that came of age after Taiwan’s democratization, sometimes seen as taking democracy for granted.

I kinda half don’t blame them, they suffer from the same issues that most liberal democracies face now:

• horribly low pay and worker protections, in your first year working, expect to barely have 3 holiday days offered to you
• never being able to buy property in Taiwan (Taiwanese property market is insane and I could talk at lengths about it)

In this context, Taiwanese politics is a hugely partisan-tribal affair with a lot of drama. A lot of people become apathetic and just go “you can’t eat democracy” (a dig at parties that keep pushing this as their campaign slogan rather than talking about kitchen-table political issues (housing, affordability, high cost of raising kids).

Idk how to feel about this. If this news came from the UK, the replies would’ve been:

you got a loicense for that, mate?

But because it’s China, people will gladly glaze this move.

If there was a suitable banquet hall, why are state receptions held on the South Lawn by every admin?

Not passing judgement, making an observation

That’s a reasonable way to think about it, but what “should” happen and what “does” happen are different.

It seems like historically, state visits happen at the White House, which to me makes a lot of sense given the logistics of hosting foreign entourage.

The US is a world power, part of being a world power is being able to project that power, including through aesthetics, compare the aesthetics of a state visit in the Kremlin and Great Hall of the People vs. hosting in a temporary tent on a lawn.

Why is defence of it insane? The article makes a good point re: state guests and needing to erect tents to accommodate them.

Genuinely curious

Yes, but the EU is currently a US vassal and surprisingly weak as a driver of any geopolitical decision.

I wish the EU would have closer relations with the PRC as a balance to being screwed over by the US

Unfortunately such a system doesn’t exist. Britain used to be hegemon before world war 2, then the US, and soon the PRC.

I’m not part of the imperial core (US), so I’d rather deal with Beijing than Washington in foreign affairs.

Unfortunately, my country already has all those discriminations, so the only thing that would change for me is dealing with a more cooperative rather than extractive “pole”

It’s more likely that AI will become a middle, or upper manager than a floor worker.

Humans are still very cheap to work with, especially if you gut worker protections

China is orders of magnitude more of a force for good than the US is.

China becoming hegemon would unironically be amazing for humanity

That’s basically every westerner passing judgement about China, so I’ll take it that his artistic message punched through

Depends on the country, of course there were politicians that disagreed on principle, but the voting on the issue wasn’t done by MEPs , if it’s MEPs you messaged

Broke nation sells out national security… more at 11

The rejection of the bill wasn’t on principle, but technicalities, if you look at most countries that opposed, the bill will be back with edits, Denmark is already aiming for December

The rejection of the bill wasn’t on principle, but technicalities, the bill will be back with edits, Denmark is already aiming for December

Germany used to send their car manufacturers to China to do knowledge transfer, they’d surely benefit from some reverse knowledge transfer from the Chinese these days.

What’s the point of being able to criticise someone publicly, if nothing’s going to change to your material conditions? Sounds like yelling at clouds: feels good, but doesn’t achieve much