Just wanted to tag on to the other comments confirming that yes, it was quite easy to access a VPN in China when I was there in September. I already set one up before I arrived for Hexbear, but wanted to stream some stuff that was still blocked so I bought a Surfshark subscription without any problems.
I know a lot of people are (rightfully) shitting PPB on Dick Cheney finally kicking the bucket, but his death has unfortunately completely overshadowed another prominent politician who coincidentally died on the same day: Kim Yong-nam.
I have yet to see anyone on Hexbear mention this, so I thought I'd bring it up here.
Who was Kim Yong-nam? He was a senior-level DPRK politician who served many positions in the WPK, but most notably was the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, which is basically the DPRK equivalent of their head of state. The latter title in particular, Kim held for two decades until his retirement in 2019. He was considered one of the last OG revolutionary statesmen who served the newly created DPRK in Kim Il-sung's time, and was old enough to have witnessed the horrors of Japanese colonization, WWII and the Korean War. There are conflicting accounts on his childhood history, but according to his official state biography he was born in Pyongyang back when Korea was still occupied by the Empire of Japan. He often acted as a senior diplomat on behalf of Kim Jong-un and his father Kim Jong-il for various cross-cultural exchanges and multilateral negotiations, most notably he went to the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Games in Occupied Korea, and has met three former ROK Presidents.
Kim Yong-nam passed away at the ripe old age of 97. May he rest in power.
Guys guys it's just a harmless SS symbol that young soldiers get tattooed on their bodies create massive banners and put in their meeting rooms, they're too naive and impressionable to really know what these things mean, stop with the purity testing and vote for a politician that will pay these brave American Ukrainian heroes more!
I find it hilarious that the article interviews a former military advisor to the US Secretary of State who tells us that Australia should start thinking about where our critical minerals are going and put controls on them to stop evil China from using it for missiles and nuclear energy, while just a paragraph before that notes that Australia signed a $13B rare earths deal with America last week like it’s completely fine.
Further down the article it even notes that America bombed an Iranian zirconium production plant back in June without any criticism from the authors, as if such an action was justified because we can’t let the ‘bad’ countries have their own zirconium supply. It’s like reading a script for a comedy skit.
It’s infuriating that the ABC, a state-run Australian media outlet, likes to portray itself as an ‘independent, fair, and transparent media’ when it’s pro-US, pro-neoliberal imperialist biases (which are really just a reflection of what the Australian state itself believes) are so obvious to anyone who has a good grasp of economics and geopolitical history. This is a tangent rant to the topic, but I just absolutely cannot stand reading anything about politics from what is effectively an Australian propaganda outlet like the BBC is, and the mainstream corporate media in the country is even worse in their analysis, or lack of.
Ok and? People like Contrapoints turned me away from the reactionary culture war a decade ago too. Doesn't change the fact that she like Hasan is a liberal whose only contributions irl are getting people to vote for the democrats and other bourgeois parties.
Online leftists really have to stop thinking parasocial relationships with streamers is somehow praxis and go outside (and also read theory).
Yes for the reasons stated in OP, but also because the actual subscriber count for both is abysmally low and merging would give more exposure.
And if merger occurs, there should be a clear rule that public figures must have their name mentioned in the post title to distinguish from anon posts.
Also just realized if the users per month of both comms were combined it would be the most viewed comm on Hexbear lol.
It’s really just a consequence of the ‘do nothing’ mentality of Chinese foreign policy, but at the same time, the international left really shouldn’t look to some socialist great power to do all the work for them. Change never comes from the top, and the same applies for geopolitics too. The proletariat must work to change the conditions of their respective societies themselves.
Did the Soviet Union create the PRC? No. At most they gave the CPC some leftover weapons and vehicles taken from the Japanese during WW2, but beyond that largely left the Chinese communists to their own devices throughout the civil war. Even the Soviet Union, despite being more proactive in foreign policy, sometimes looked the other way too whenever the US intervened in other countries: the 1953 Iran coup, and the 1973 Chilean coup for example, did not provoke any response from the Soviets.
I feel like an unspoken part of the agreement was that America ignores Taiwan and China looks the other way with Venezuela and Ukraine. Taiwan wasn’t mentioned at all in the talks despite the whole semiconductor trade war going on and Taiwan’s President sucking up hard to Trump and previously Biden, going as far as to allow TSMC to shift some of its manufacturing to the US.
As another user in this thread pointed out, economic development and Taiwan are the primary concerns of China, and they got something for both out of this agreement.
Unfortunately this does mean China will continue to allow the Global South to be Imperialized and will continue to undermine their efforts to develop their economies by being the biggest exporter of goods to America (the ‘mercantilist war’ that Xiaohongshu has brought up many times here). So at least in the short term, we will still be just getting strongly worded letters from Beijing about US aggression around the world.
a college degree, a mild improvement in the boot's conditions, escape from an abusive family, etc. are worth any amount of foreign lives to these people
The funny thing is Graham Platner isn’t even from a poor or abusive background, he comes from a multi-millionaire petite bourgeois family and went to private schools.
I know that even if he was poor, doing what he did in the US military is still wrong, but it’s just funny seeing American “leftists” trying to use this argument of “if you’re poor, being a jackboot soldier of the American Reich is fine!” for someone as privileged as Platner.
This whole Graham Platner saga has been such a good litmus test for the western left. The Russia/ Ukraine war was already a good one for 3 years, but that one was harder to use for westerners. This one though? Clear cut war criminal with blatant Nazi symbolism tattooed on his chest running on a social fascist platform, and the best defence these radlibs have is “but he said he was a communist on Le Wholesome Reddit!!!”.
Graham Platner is a lying, (likely) corrupt, overtly racist and greedy person who ALSO has a Nazi tattoo. The only reason this liberal is using a double standard is because he's running under the Blue MAGA label.
Also, at age 23 I was still a liberal starting to learn and embrace socialist ideas more, but back then I at least knew having a Nazi tattoo on my body was bad idea. At 23, you are not a fucking child anymore and you have to accept consequences for your actions. Stop infantilizing a fucking 4-time Iraq war criminal you POS.
It's because most people here I suspect are White Americans who are desperate for a popular public figure to attach themselves to. They want their own Xi Jinping to look up to. Problem is, no one on the American 'left' is willing to get up off their asses and actually put in the work to create a vanguard party because they are too privileged and comfortable in their current material conditions, so they instead rally behind and
for what already exists; a two-party bougeois duopoly where the furthest left the system will allow is racist, genocidal imperialists who will allow the American working class some treats from the super profit gained from the spoils of war and exploitation of the rest of the world. And even then, the American state tries its hardest to not even allow those kinds of politicians to take power.
Edit: It has also become apparent to me over the last few months, likely because Trump 2.0 broke a lot of Americans here, that any non-American that tries pointing this fact out gets met with a lot of pushback from these folks. A common argument I've seen (not just here but literally everywhere) is that because Americans have it "worse" that the rest of the Global North, it's fine to vote for socdems/ social fascists because they deserve a bit of reprieve.
I frankly have never agreed with this line of thinking because 1. It completely disregards how America treats the Global South, which is far, far worse than how any American is treated and is against the spirit of internationalism which all socialists should strive for, and 2. Because I live in a Social Democracy and I can clearly observe how my country is still imperialist, still engages in the pillaging of the Global South and supports the Palestinian genocide, and still exploits and divides our working class through xenophobic, racist, sexist, and transphobic bigotry (just done more subtly than it is in MAGA land) which is intentionally designed to prevent any socialist movements from ever getting popular.
If anything, having socdem reforms makes it easier for the capitalists to keep us docile and compliant while our wages are stagnant, we are more overworked than ever, and inequality and household debt has never been higher in the last 50 years. Nothing has changed, except our workers get some more treats to shut up while Billionaires still dine on our misery. The socdems in my country also let Nazis march in the streets and let cops have Nazi tattoos without repercussions too! This is not the future you want to fight for, Americans. It's not the future any socialist/ communist should be fighting for.
Yeah, he's just a weird inconsistent guy who went on four tours, the last time as a PMC as late as 2018, to the Middle East to be an Imperialist war criminal and makes no apologies for it.
He's also a weird inconsistent guy who got a SS Totenkopf tattoo on his chest, kept it on him for decades right up until he got caught with it during his campaign to join a bourgeois party, and defended other soldiers getting SS tattoos because of "PTSD" from being Imperialist war criminals.
Oh, and let's also not forget he's a weird inconsistent guy for openly gloating about mass murdering brown people in the millions during the war against ISIS back in 2014 on his now deleted Reddit account.
Wait, that doesn't sound inconsistent at all.
Well, I guess he did LARP as a "Communist" one time on Reddit back in 2018 (while he was working for Blackwater) but went confronted about it recently he completely backtracked and said he doesn't stand by those posts anymore.
So nah, I think he's pretty consistent with his social Fascism.
On a more meta note: I think we owe the now banned user Wheezing an apology for accusing him of being unhinged over thinking this forum was full of imperialist boot lickers. We've had like 5 struggle sessions in the last few days over this topic and we're still seeing people defend a fucking sucdem with a Nazi tattoo.
If Chinese animators were brave enough to write more stories set in the modern era (which is partially because they are afraid of triggering Chinese censors) it would not only be likely more popular with the rest of the world but can also be used to promote socialist ideas abroad.
Just wanted to tag on to the other comments confirming that yes, it was quite easy to access a VPN in China when I was there in September. I already set one up before I arrived for Hexbear, but wanted to stream some stuff that was still blocked so I bought a Surfshark subscription without any problems.