Sheer incompetence? Gives them the chance to propaganda away all the separate instances one at a time, rather than having a single huge pile of evidence once?

I was indeed not talking about the history of quality of life of the people, but about the way hard politics are organised. As far as I can tell, this has become even more centralised under Xi. When it comes to freedom of thought and expression of the people, I see as much reason for pessimism about recent evolution in the West (especially in the Anglo-Saxon world), but I don’t see much reason for optimism when it comes to China. E.g. look how they are not even allowed to know their own history, or how independent thought in Hong Kong is being stuffed out. Lifting, what, 800 million people out of poverty is an impressive feat, and certainly holds a few lessons for laissez faire capitalists. Then again, large part of that poverty were self inflicted wounds. And that growth shouldn’t blind one for the immense cost at which it came, and the large challenges ahead to keep things afloat.

Still the same party in control, still the same way folks get selected for power. Not exactly comparable to a country losing a war, getting split in two, one adopting liberal democracy, the other a Soviet style communist system. And then later rejoining into a single country again.

Well it’s been that long that they went full circle again. I guess my age is showing (I’m a geriatric millennial). Until a decade ago, or maybe two, a successful AfD would have been unthinkable. Just goes to show how far off OPs comparison with Germany is.

Interesting comparison to Germany. As you may be aware, there was quite a significant change in government structure right around 1945. While yes - if new evidence from that period were to be released, it would indeed reflect poorly on Germany. But everyone would know it’s news from basically another country. Whereas in China nothing has changed when it comes to the structure of the nation. And they sure as hell did not go through a period of national mourning or apology to reflect on past mistakes.

I’m not behind our prime minister at all, but the core of what he’s saying is “we’ll only do this if we share the risks involved among the whole EU”. Given that no-one seems to be willing to do that, it would appear that he has a point that the risks are significant. I also heard him call the idea “theft”, which sounds crazy in the context we’re in. But then he’s talking about the practice of taking money from countries we’re not at war with, setting a bad precedent if you want to be a financial center for the world. That one’s a little far fetched, even without a formal declaration of war, Russia isn’t just a random country at this point we have a few issues with.

If only someone could invent a system where huge amounts of freight could be moved on something more durable than pavement. We can only dream of such technology of course.

I would assume they were happy to close the door behind them, when it comes to immigration. I think they did not expect their friends and family would be deported.

We’re talking about an Israeli, not a Jew. One who has a prominent role in the cultural life of that country. As a “liberal”, I would not have had an issue with questions being asked if some high profile Saudis were invited to a festival in October 2001.

It’s pretty immoral in the current day and age, but it is something that should be made (near) impossible with better regulation until it can be done with a reasonable carbon cost

General strikes worked in 19th century Europe. I think y’all might have it a little better then they did. More to the point: union memberships are used at the time of strikes exactly to break the cycle of not being able to protest for being too poor.

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If Epstein got murdered, wouldn’t they kill his wife too?

79 in fact. Pretty low for a country that rich, but to find 69 you have to go to Africa or the poorest Latin or Asian countries.

Security services use things like airgapping, but our politicians talk to each other using WhatsApp…

Great documentary!

Hey that’s insulting to the super popular chairman of our social democratic party!

I haven’t read recent research on this, but at least until a decade or so ago, consciously not having children is a very small part of this. It’s more about economic outlooks and the immense pressure of expecting both parents of working full time and raising kids at the same time. Or wanting to have two kids, but putting off the decision so long that the chance of not having successful pregnancies rises a lot.

Apparently, they have been able to not be blatantly racist enough in their new incarnation. Perhaps they should have gone more after the core leadership instead of only the party.

Yeah, it was a little shocking to see this happen now. Though to be fair, it only happened with local parties that did not belong to a national umbrella party. All the parties that matter at the provincial level and above still maintain the principle of not working with them.