Hegar

Obviously there’s a proxy war between russia and the west in ukraine, but I don’t think the US wants a long attritional war.

They could have done more to not end up in one, but I think escalation management really is driving a lot of decisions in washington.

I generally recoil from comparing biden to putin but this really requires russian levels of post-truth politics.

Israel is committing war crimes like trump commits all his crimes - openly, in public and shielded by US elites.

That code is to computer porn as the Hunt the Wumpus is to computer games.

Boeing is an important part of our military industrial base and thus an important part of the broader structure of US power.

That’s why they’re allowed to kill whistleblowers without repercussion.

Oh, this looks interesting! Written by… malcom turnball? No thank you.

Yep, Israel is too dependent an ally in a region vital to our interests. The Senate is loyal to the Empire, if not the Emperor.

peasants not liking

I’m slightly less skeptical - I think the castle is slightly concerned and we may see some tangential policy concessions, like that delay on Palestinian deportations. Mostly we’ll get a lot more public pretending I expect.

Lol that’s like asking for evidence that the daily mail is a tabloid.

NYT is just a mouthpiece of the US empire, but SCMP is the official forum for china to troll english language speakers.

a collection of wet floppy noodles instead of arms and legs.

That basically describes me now. But my mother was a delicious bowl of liang fen so I feel like it’s pretty understandable.

Why shoot up a public concert hall if your enemy is Putin and not the general public.

Why do any extremists - or russia, the US or israel for that matter - target violence towards civilians?

Maybe they believe the cause is worth it, the tactical calculus still comes out in their favour, or they just hate all russians? General destabilization? Forcing the state to devote more resources to protecting soft civilian infrastructure. Making people feel unsafe. Inspiring similar atrocities. The logic of tactically deploying murder isn’t always clear to an outsider, especially before we have a firm idea who did this.

I strongly doubt this is an “honest-to-goodness sign of revolution”. Shooting concert-goers is obviously not that. But I don’t think it’s logically sound to rule out an anti-putin motivation just because civilians were killed.

Of course, putin is not above killing russians if it benefits him. But russia has plenty of natural sources of potential extremist violence. As climate change and resource scarcity pile increasing pressure on individual humans and whole societies, events like this become more common.

Sometimes, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might just be a duck.

Let’s at least wait to see what putin does in response before we jump up and down shouting about putin’s 1999 apartment bombings.

He was 100% killed by boeing.

Either they had him professionally killed or their treatment of him was a major contributing factor to his suicide.

When the powerful decide to target, marginalize and gaslight individuals, they are fully aware that piling on stressors can break a person and solve the problem via suicide.

No we don’t. If you already oppose the horror there’s no need to see it for yourself. If you support it then yes, you should have the courage to face what you support.

I always presumed that Montana was telling Idaho, “It’s okay, I believe you’re in the PNW.”

Because russia is also a brutal imperialist horror show?

I lived in Taiwan 5 years ago, so I’m less comfortable talking about specific recent events.

That said, I think it would be fair to say that relations with the mainland are still the overriding question in Taiwanese politics. There’s just nothing else as pressing or relevant, it colors most other issues.

The thing is that neither formal declared independence nor becoming a province of China are electorally viable platforms. Voters and opinion polls consistently show that they want the status quo: defacto independence, access to Chinese economic opportunities, and no invasions please.

Declared independence and reunification are both less popular than staying in the increasingly narrow space of having your cake and eating it too that is available without provoking an armed response.

DPP wants to continue the defacto situation as is while pursuing greater cultural distinction from the mainland. They also have some openly pro independence types, and the much more numerous ‘independence when it won’t obviously get us invaded’ types. They tend to be more progressive in general - gay marriage, marijuana legislation style.

KMT is contains most of the ‘status quo with less cultural distinction from the mainland’ voices. Pro-unification folks too, but that’s a minority. Historically they were far right anti communists who ran the military dictatorship, so squaring that circle with pro-unification sentiment has lead to some weird positions. They’re also more conservative, often crazily so. I had KMT supporters earnestly explain that Tsai Ingwen was actually a man in disguise.

Largely, both parties want some but differing degrees of economic ties with China. Any other position is impractical.

Indigenous voters are far more likely to be rural, which tends to coincide with culturally conservative.

There’s also a very complicated history of ethnic politics in Taiwan. Multiple historic waves of migration from different areas of the mainland, along with the Japanese imperial period. The DPP have focused on Minnan speaking Taiwanese as a locus of independent Taiwanese identity, sometimes to the detriment of Hokkien speaking or other group.

Indigenous Taiwanese had been attacked, marginalized and treated harshly by these successive waves and during the Japanese period, so when the nationalists lost the civil war in China and fled to Taiwan to set up the military dictatorship, they were viewed as something like liberators by many indigenous people.

It’s complicated.

It is quite funny that we call our empire rules based order. Athens was also known for using a lot of euphemisms.

Something about pretending that an imperial democracy is a legit thing that can exist seems to make you want to lie to yourself.