HK65

As if the NSA was not suveilling the whole internet through a dragnet.

Look, I'm not saying China is perfect or even good. I'm saying that it's starting to look like there is no moral or values based argument to buy Apple instead of Huawei or Tesla instead of BYD.

There was a second attempt since

SWIFT is actually European - Belgian in fact, it's just that the US has an outsized influence through the dollar. Visa and Mastercard has several EU alternatives, the only caveat with them is that each of them only works in their respective countries.

The fact of the matter is that Trump has spent his whole lie dodging responsibility by just throwing enough bullshit at the system that it ground to a halt. It was unable to get through prosecuting Trump for four years until he got into power again, and then all cases got dismissed.

What is it that you expect to happen? Or what is it that you think that there is a chance that it will happen to stop this or even reverse this?

So far

IDK, I imagine the US is lagging behind China in that, especially now, if we're looking at foreign imports.

But their pasta sold in the EU seems to be made in Parma, Italy.

They do keep "pausing" consequences every time it matters for 47 though.

Justice delayed is justice denied. It also must be super reassuring to all those people in ~~the concentration camps~~ CECOT.

Or at least get to a point where even he will get to know the feeling of getting your card declined at a fast food place.

You're right, a better comparison might be Hungary.

• Orbán achieved near-unlimited power solely because of the ineptitude of the corporate-beholden "left"
• Protest movements started immediately with no clear, realistic and actionable goals and are still going strong 15 years later, yet nobody in power cares
• Orbán started by attacking and dismantling key government institutions like the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labour, replacing them (and a few others) with a joint Ministry of Human Resources
• The "left" parties and their leaders were mostly squabbling between themselves, either never giving up the "mantle of the leadership of the left" or trying to protect their own small grifts that were going
• In the meantime, voting districts were redrawn and the voting system was changed to benefit the ruling party
• Disenfranchised citizens effectively became a pool of voter/workers beholden to the local party-aligned municipalities, who can be threatened with taking away their sub-minimum wage
• The country was shifted into a manufacturing-focused economy which again produced a large pool of people who can be threatened with their jobs into voting the right way
• Constant threats of war and migration are exploited to call for wartime emergency powers for the government to sidestep the checks and balances that haven't been dismantled yet

Strap in, for us it took 16 years to get out of it, if we get out of it next year. The way out seems to be a combination of:

• a major economic crisis
• the emergence of a new, "non-partisan, no left no right" political party, grounded solely on anti-corruption
• the fact that finally, after a quarter century, the fake "leftist" parties are polling below 5% collectively and thus will get ousted from Parliament

What I mean is that this could totally end with China going "fuck this, we subsidize food for our citizens" and Africa starving yet again.

Or, hopefully, food prices rising in the developed world while the only place the US would be able to sell being Africa, below normal prices, like it happened with Russia and India and oil. But then I'm expecting too much from the world.

Yeah, but the US is actially starting to be worse in this regard than China