A salient point here often forgotten in the remembrance. The United States only joined the Second World War due to the attack at Pearl Harbour becoming the industrial juggernaut we still think of it as today.
In the Bible, the Tower of Babel was an attempt to erase tribal identity and differences of language in a human attempt to create the tallest tower then known. God frustrated the attempt and created confusion which meant the tower was never built.
Today we see a similar “globalist” movement seeking to remove the differences of our nations and languages artificially and create global governance. It’s a mistaken endeavour which will meet the same end. Confusion and broken plans, the beginnings of which we can already see in our world.
The good news is that each of us can embrace both our national differences and trade with each other in peace again if we stop trying to become a monolithic ‘global’ tower. Unity in true biological diversity envisioned by a creator who made this paradise we live in. True trade begins with trust and extending a hand of friendship, having faith that our neighbour will enrich our life voluntarily, obeying the law of the heart, not the commandments written in stone.
When we accept the original divine vision, then paradise will return to the earth and the tree of life will flourish for all to care for. The onus is on all of us as divine sparks to embrace the call voluntarily. Spread the message and the future will be bright!
For 100 years, the US only intervened in Europe if a country (Germany or Russia) threatened to dominate the continent.
We didn't get involved in border wars. Not in Poland in 1939 nor in Hungary in 1956.
Not the Spanish Civil War nor the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
When Putin invaded Ukraine, President Obama did the normal American thing: ie nothing.
Getting involved in this European border war is new for the USA.
But recently, Democrats haven't seen a war where they don't want to send other people's kids into the meatgrinder. Sick fucks.
NZFirst heard the feedback from you about the proposed homeschooling amendment and we helped the minister make that change.
Due to the urgency of the matter, we met with the Minister for Education yesterday evening and this morning to work together to find a solution and a way forward on the matter. NZFirst worked well with Minister Stanford to get this done.
The result has been the removal of the homeschooling provision.
We are a party of practical action not pretentious mimicry - we don’t rely on soundbites and performative expressions of concern in posts and letters like other parties in parliament tend to do.
The UK govt’s comments about a huge peaceful demonstration in which their own flag is waved proudly is a stark example of an elite class that has reached peak disconnection with the population.
Compared to the regular violent marches they don’t comment on where arrests are numerous and damage significant, this demonstration has been positive, calm, and almost entirely peaceful.
That even Starmer’s potential usurpers repeat the derisive rhetoric about British people shows that a change in leader will change nothing.
@Strange_G Reputation is all she can attack as she doesn’t have anything else. Don’t worry about it Gilda. If they resort to this, you won already. 😆😆😆
Everyone who is up in arms about Trump "kissing Xi's ass" needs to understand that this is realpolitik and dealmaking.
Trump is, by a mile, the most aggressive president America has had against the CCP in modern history. No one else imposed sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, banned Huawei from domestic networks, put the entire CCP military-linked ecosystem on the entity list, restricted semiconductor exports, strengthened the Quad, and publicly called out China's currency manipulation, IP theft, forced tech transfers, and South China Sea aggression the way he did.
Pre-presidency Trump was blunt. If you recall, as a candidate, he often complained about how "China was screwing us over." Literally in 2016 on the campaign trail, he said that "China is raping us."
You need to understand that this posture completely shattered what was bipartisan elite consensus at the time - which was that more engagement with China on economic terms would liberalize and democratize China (ethnocentric projection once again), and that as China became more integrated into the global system, they would act more and more like responsible stakeholders. Every President since Nixon pushed closer economic integration while ignoring the OBVIOUS signs. This was especially supercharged under Bush, Clinton and Obama (but not Biden).
And yet at the time, the mainstream media painted him as a xenophobe for this kind of rhetoric. It wasn't even a subtext - they directly alluded to how Trump was being racist against the Chinese for calling out their unfair trade practices.
Once in office, Trump refined it into a strategy that actually moved the needle while dialing back his strong rhetoric.
The personal flattery - calling Xi a "great leader," talking up respect for China, saying they'll have a "fantastic future together," is all Machiavellian Art of the Deal stuff. Flattery costs nothing and makes the other guy more willing to give ground without looking like he's folding domestically.
The CCP's entire system is built on the leader's prestige. Publicly humiliating Xi or treating him like a subordinate would make him dig in, rally nationalists, and push him to retaliate harder just to save face.
I don't actually think Trump knows about Chinese "honor culture" and the obsession with mianzi (face), but for whatever reason, Trump instinctively understands authoritarian psychology and how to work with it.
The problem is that intellectual types, especially those steeped in liberal internationalist frameworks, tend to struggle with parsing the difference between rhetoric vs. revealed preferences. They're hard-wired to overweight the former.
They treat diplomatic language as a window into the soul, as if it maps directly onto intent rather than as front-facing tool of statecraft. China weaponizes this brilliantly.
It's a lesson everyone should've learned by now. With Trump, ignore the optics and ignore what he says. Just look at his actions, and look at his results.
@johnkonrad No ship is ever going to be perfect. As long as you get the basics right, you can streamline from there. Leave room for improvement over time.
Agreed. Easier to calculate. No loopholes apart from if you receive your income from the system. Beneficiaries shouldn’t be taxed. So somewhere around 17%. If you don’t want to contribute to the commons, the question should be why considering no one can honestly say they receive nothing from it.
Should be a verified status too. Shouldn’t be able to join certain matches if you’ve been banned with verified streamers. Kind of like how steam works. You have to make a store purchase and be an active player with no dodgy behaviour to gain a certain reputation. Should mitigate bot behaviour and have to have skin in the game.
Groups like the ADL (which tracks "hate" and pushes deplatforming while accused of overreach on critics), Media Matters (drives ad boycotts against conservative speech), and CCDH (reports targeting platforms for censorship) operate on similar models: identifying enemies to fuel donations and advocacy. No proven SPLC-style fraud yet, but their incentives mirror the risks exposed here—perpetual threats keep the funding flowing. Transparency audits would help everywhere.
@aimkeyx Is that wolfpacks? I noticed a lot of rats 🐀 were n close scrutiny modes on swamp. Farming people who came to do trials damage last week. It was quite dangerous to bring anything valuable. So many aren’t doing trials or expeditions and are bored