regularization

> Taiwan is not simply an island claimed by Beijing

Yes, China claims Taiwan and China are the same country. Not mentioned is that US policy also says that Taiwan and China are the same country. In fact Taiwan policy is that China and Taiwan are the same country. You would think reading this that Taiwan had declared independence from China as a separate country.

Also on the topic of "simply an island" - Taiwan is not just the island of Taiwan, they are on Kinmen island in the harbor of Xiamen on the mainland PRC. This would be like Manhattan receiving imperial proclamations about its "sovereignty" from China.

The fact is Taiwan was Chinese long before the United States even existed, just like the Russian Navy has been in Crimea since before the US existed. The US funded and armed separatist forces - but in 1900 the US was raising its flag in Beijing's imperial city. The historical development is these imperial intrusions have been pushed back by China. Taiwan is important to China and the US is too occupied blockading Cuba, slaughtering Venezuelan and Iranian leadership, aiding the genocide of Gaza and the invasions of Syria and Lebanon etc., while its health secretary fights against vaccines.

Interesting how politicians, preachers and consumers are the powers in the world but rich people are missing from the equation.

Here is cabinet minister and minister of National Security publishing a video of him smacking around the people on the flotilla who were trying to bring food to Gaza. They were seized in international waters incidentally. He also has them tied up and in other ways humiliated.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/q5nZRNjgGv8

If this is what they are boasting about doing to Europeans in countries who have been aiding his government, imagine what they are doing in private - and to Palestinians.

> never once actually did any work

I work at a company creating wealth, and heirs who own stock collect dividends from the company. What work did they do? You're talking about the guy sitting near you who you don't feel is working hard enough, and nothing of the parasitic heirs expropriating the product of unpaid surplus time of those working and creating wealth. Which unions are formed to rest control back from.

If we roll back 10,000 years, people often worked less hours per week. No class society where we have to serve the rich. Drinking alcohol, painting caves. Sounds pretty good.

> The stock market keeps going up in the face of the indefinite closure of Hormuz. We're investing in datacenters at a scale that only makes sense

If there is a psychosis, what is it? It is not an AI psychosis - modern AI started in the 1940s, or by some definitions before, and made progress up until 15 years ago to where deep neural networks became viable. And it has been progress on every front since then. No psychosis, it is doing well.

You mention the stock market, and that is another story. Cryptocurrencies, sub-prime loans, dot-com crash, Asian financial crisis. The economy has veered from crisis to crisis, overproduction and overproduction to crashes and bailouts.

AI is doing just fine - the past 15 years are a success for it we did not see in the decades before. If the economy as constituted is dealing with this in a "psychotic" fashion, it would not be the first time.

> To me it seems obvious that this is exactly what happened. Democracy is by far the most common style of governance, extreme poverty is falling even as the population rises. A substantial majority of all human beings have a magic screen in their pocket that lets them look up any information they're interested in or contact anyone on the planet who they'd like to talk to. How can you possibly look at the world as it exists today and not conclude that technology has radically changed our lives for the better?

For who? The people who have been living in Gaza for the past millennia (or who were driven there by arms during the Nakba) who the western establishment decided could be deprived of food in 2024? Meaning a genocide. How is all this benefiting them? This is harming them. And many others. Even, to a much lesser degree, the 20% of Cloudflare workers cut this week.

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones

They removed changes and added their own stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/214.13.2...

ARIN shows that 214.0.0.0/8 CIDR is still US Department of Defense (or Department of War as Trump and Hegseth aptly call it) but reverse DNS over 20 years later does not still point to the same CENTCOM IP.

Also to a point - US military propaganda arm was doing this over 20 years ago. After getting the gift of country articles to mostly come verbatim from CIA and US State department sheets.

Because the IP is in the edit, and the reverse DNS went back there (and ARIN did not disagree)

More info on this in my other reply.

Look back to the earliest version of the history and information of various countries on Wikipedia. They say themselves they were from US State department or CIA histories of those countries.

I was editing a page on the US massacre of civilians in No Gun Ri, Korea with some IP at CENTCOM removing my edits. I spend my off tine trying to send in facts of what happened, my taxes from my on time pay for some propaganda arm of the US armed forces to remove it.

As the US kidnaps the president of Venezuela and his wife, blockades Cuba, bombs Iran and on and on, great to know someone else is smearing Russia to further my tax dollars funding the endless war on their borders too.

Corruption means something legitimate is happening that can be corrupted.

Maduro was president of a sovereign country. A bunch of kidnappers and murderers invaded the building he was in in Caracas, murdered everyone in the room, then kidnapped him and his wife.

What's the "mission"? To pop up in some room and slaughter everyone in it, then kidnap his wife and him? In order to help steal the resources, billions of dollars in oil, for already wealthy people?

Same thing happening in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria. Israel with US help slaughtering people to steal their land and resources.

There's no mission except theft and murder. There's no corruption because the entire enterprise is rotten to begin with.

What I said is correct. Inflation-adjusted hourly wages are down.

You posted a link that people are working more hours per year, so their yearly inflation-adjusted income is up.

So you're really posting the second negative here, thanks. As I said, tge average hourly median wage is below what it was 50 years ago. From the same federal reports you linked. Plus, we can see from here, that not only are people paid less per hour, they have to work more.

I don't know why you think these two negative things post a rosy picture.

> But if you're single, isolated, on dating apps -- or maybe caught in an unfulfilling marriage commuting from the suburbs to a job you resent -- there often doesn't seem much point to your own existence. Everything has been stripped of its meaning.

The scenario you paint is one where everything has been stripped of meaning. One option is to seek more meaningful work and social relationships, on an individual level, and/or on a societal movement level. Or one can seek some supernatural mental delusions, an opiate for the people, to anethisize oneself to being a miserable wage slave with a miserable life.

> When I came to the US in mid-90s (as an atheist) over half the population attended religious services regularly.

No. When polled, half the population said they attended religious services regularly.

Researchers going to churches and estimating attendance found actual attendance was always less than what polls said. If people actually attended services like they said they did in polls, pews would be much more full (now and before).

Also, you know two people, but I could give examples as well - a normal secular family doing well compared to some evangelical family which is not doing well at all.

Also - there are suburbs which have, say, a sizeable Norwegian population. People go to some ELCA church. You talk to them, and a lot of them don't believe in the tenets of Lutheranism - miracles, the resurrection of Jesus etc. But they go to weddings, funerals, services, coffee after services. Dinners, clothing drives. Events around Easter. For many of them there is no belief at all, they just have coffee with their neighbors every week. Technically they are considered Christians, without believing in Christianity per se.

The average inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US has fallen over the past 50 years. With productivity and wealth gains, the median worker working for an hour is making less. Meanwhile, the heirs and rentiers and "rich kids of Instagram" are doing better than ever. Trump just sued the SPLC for investigating neo-nazis and the Ku Klux Klan while Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Lebanon, Gaza etc. are bombed, blockade and whatnot. We"re not living under the Bew Deal or Great Society any more. Things are not going back, this is the new future. Meanwhile, Democratic Socialists of America just cracked 100,000 members, and people might be surprised how active they are in many smaller (and bigger) cities around the US.

Average median hourly wage is not everything, but it is a sign of where the priorities of the US is, and it's not fir those who work and create wealth. As property prices soar and young couples can't afford to buy, the heirs and rentiers are doing better than ever.

Being as the bedrock of MAGA'S base is white evangelical Protestants, as Michael Harrington pointed out long ago it leads to a continuing cycle of Christianity becoming more reactionary and politically reactionary, as the rest of society secularizes. Whether or not that is a good thing, it is what is happening.

Also, with regards to phones, social media etc. and circling back to young couples, studies show married couples met 30 years ago via friends, family, church, school, bars etc. Nowadays the majority, with the number only growing, are meeting via corporations - swipe left and swipe right apps. People stay honest and play video games and watch Netflix instead of going out

The three things said not to be it are part of a shift to increasing alienation, as working people are immiserated. There was an economist 150 years ago who predicted this happening.

> Siding with a dictatorial regime

Right, Iran used to have a parliament with Mossadegh as prime minister, what happened there? Oh yaa, Mossadegh wanted Iranian oil for Iranians, so the US and UK overthrew Mossadegh, with the help of conservative mullahs, and installed a dictatorship. Then SAVAK with CIA help spent decades slaughtering the secular opposition.

> that’s murdered 100s of their own people

There are armed Balochi and Kurdish separatists shooting at the Iranian army right now, no doubt with clandestine Israeli and US support. Incidentally the Kurds had their own state at the end of WWII, until the US and UK made them dissolve into Iran.

Also aside from the bombings, the Basij have been fired on from the ground and have fired back. Who is arming the people shooting at the Basij is unknown, but some signs point to Israel.

I write this less than three months after armed federal personnel decided to march into Minneapolis and among other things kill a nurse and also a woman.

> and aided terrorist organizations

The Arabs in southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip have lived there a long time. Over the past century Zionist Jews from around the world have been invading their land, shooting, bombing, starving them. If they fight back the epithet terrorist is applied to them, and if these brave men fighting for their people are assigned the word, it gives it a great esteem.

> Russia invading Ukraine and failing, has been the greatest strategic gift Russia could give to the US against China in setting the stage for shaping a defence of, and deterring an offensive on, Taiwan.

Amidst the US bombing Iran, blockading Cuba, slaughtering the president of Venezuela's guards and kidnapping him and his wife, and so on and so forth - US government talk on China can be removed from reality. So this point -

Mainland China says it is the same country as Taiwan.

The US acknowledges mainland China and Taiwan are the same country.

Taiwan acknowledges mainland China and Taiwan are the same country.

So this discussion of "invasion of Taiwan" means PLA troops in mainland China moving to Taiwan. Which could mean the Chinese navy moving into Xiamen harbor (a Mainland city!) and putting its troops onto Kinmen island which is claimed by Taiwan.

Western elites have antiquated ideas, like talking about the rights the Britsh colonialists have over Hong Kong and other imperial nonsense. They brandishing their liberal ideals in their imperial machinations. But those days are over.

> Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan.

It's amusing amidst the US bombing Iran, incarceration the president of Venezuela and his wife after slaughtering everyone who was in the room with him, seizing oil tankers off Cuba, continuing the siege of Gaza and on and on to start getting sanctimonious about China.

Taiwan is Kinmen island in Xiamen harbor, so a mainland invasion of Taiwan would be mainland China "invading" an island in its harbor.

Also mainland China does not recognize Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. The US does not recognize Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. Taiwan does not consider Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. I'm not sure what the invasion would be, a country invading itself? It would be like if the US president sent armed agents to Minnesota who started killing people willy nilly - oh yaa, that just happened.

The most satisfying thing is if mainland China did choose to reassert it's rightful authority in Taiwan against the colonial powers, there's absolutely nothing those western powers can do about it. Just like Russia's assertion over the West tring to nove it's NATO armies to its western borders in the Ukraine. It's amusing to see the US flailing about, hitting a Venezuelan here, a Cuban there to try to look tough. I guess Nicaragua is next on the list. The changes coming in the 21st century are welcome. A bozo like Trump as president is a sign of a fading West.

> a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors

The US sent Saddam the Bell helicopters to gas the Kurds. US military aid increased after that happened.

The war with a neighbor was with Iran - the country the US just attacked, and which the US encouraged Iraq to fight. That's why Rumsfwld was over there shaking Saddam's hand.

> Iran has been attacking the U.S. and its proxies for no reason for decades

Iran did not attack the US and Lebanese Shia did not attack the US. Israel invaded Lebanon and the US went in in August 1982. This allowed for the Istaeli allies to perform the Sabra and Shatila massacre. About six months later the US embassy was bombed. Then the barracks was bombed.

The US eas not attacked, the US sent troops into Lebanon, which helped allow for the massacres which took place, and Lebanese attacked the US barracks that came into their country a year earlier.

> separatist movements

The Kurds had their own state at the end of World War II - the US and UK forced them to dissolve and integrate with Iran.

Actually the US just abandoned the Kurds in Syria two weeks ago as it signed deals with Syria's former al Qaeda leader.

Kurds are people the West foments to armed rebellion, and then quashes, for decades, depending on western material needs at the minute.

The US just helped overthrow, with US troops on the ground, a secular government in Syria, to replace it with an al Qaeda leader who was on the US wanted terrorist list until two months ago. What are you talking about, the US has supported Islamic fundamentalists for decades.

> non-violence

Armed Baloch and Kurdish groups have been boasting of firing on Iranian police. The police are firing back. Hard to call them non-violent when they openly boast about armed attacks. Who knows where they are getting their weapons, with western countries also openly declaring their intent to destabilize Iran.

Iran had a parliament until they wanted Iran to control its own oil, whence the US and UK overthrew Mossadegh. They had ayatollah Borujerdi wreck the democracy. Also Kashani who helped oust Mossadegh, and then later supported Khomeini.

The US recently worked to oust the secular leader of Syria to replace him with an ISIS leader. Actually al-Sharaa was on the US wanted terrorist list, only removed three months ago. Many such stories.

Right, a clearer way of saying this, as you do, is the West imposed crippling sanctions just prior to all of this, as Trump sends aircraft carriers to the Gulf.

Navalny, wasn't that the heroic fighter for human rights who said people from the North Caucucus were cockroaches, then mimicked a gun with his fingers saying what he would like to do with them?

An obvious hero of western liberals fighting for human rights and democracy.

How is this cause of death verified? Someone claims they smuggled samples from his body and sent them to two labs in other countries? Sounds like quite a solid and anonymous chain of custody, rock solid proof.

His e-mails show him trying and failing to get a Russian visa. Not much of a Russian agent.

Actually the person who was trying to help him was until this week the UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson. He had to resign this week due to the emails. He previously spent decades attacking the UK Labour's left like Corbyn and trying to make the party more amenable to the type of people Epstein hung around with.

Odd that this very American American, with heavy Israeli contacts and some UK contacts is claimed to be associated with Russia with little evidence. He's American through and through (or failing that, Israeli aligned).

> forced to pay dues to unions

If I'm forced to pay dues to a union, I'm forced to pay expropriated profits to my company. And I don't get a vote on that (or a vote on the existence of the management, board and rentiers). The company political activity is almost always to find a way to screw me over more. I can just leave? So can the people at these jobs.

They have almost no credibility.

Gazan health authorities were releasing the names of their dead, and this was met with great skepticism and qualification in Israel and the West (until this week when Israel just accepted at least tens of thousands died).

Random, inflated numbers from anonymous sources pop up on Iran and they're instantly quoted as fact.

Also - some of the rebels have guns and have been using them, so some of these dead are from shootouts.