I don’t think untrained violent people will respond less violently when the likelihood of violence against them increases. I would say y’all need to build barricades to safeguard neighborhoods, you need masses that can only be mowed down, and need to avoid being easily singled out. Using the car you are sitting in as a barricade is incredibly dangerous because there is a track record of using vehicles as weapons.

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 they really felt desperate, wouldn’t they show just a bit more flexibility in their demands?

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

That’s a five year old video.

How anyone that lives in a country that has HOAs can unironically call it “land of the free” is beyond me

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.

Whether or not violence is morally acceptable isn’t the most interesting thing in my opinion, but rather “what strategy is most likely to win”. It’s not a subject I’m well versed in, but the first analysis I found showed that non violent protest movements tend to win, see https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/are-peaceful-protests-more-successful-than-violent-ones (I know I know, correlation is not causation, so digging in deeper is needed). If you read this article, you can already see that a little bit of violence is enough to help turn people against you. The more restraint, the easier it appears to be to let people join your cause (or at least not turn against you). That doesn’t mean being meek, you can still be incredibly obstructionist while being non violent. In Europe, a huge amount of rhe progress we made was because elites feared the masses. Because of the potential of violence, maybe, but not because of actual violence. Most of all because of huge union movements who could grind whole industries or even the country to a halt. What works in one place doesn’t necessarily work on another one, of course.

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

With ICE already acting like nazis as it is, that sounds very scary. Something I heard is that people may already be self-censoring themselves for fear pf the consequences - not just at the high levels but also normal citizens

Is it worse then Lemmy filtered news lets on? (Edit: just an honest question. News here is pretty negative, I just wonder if the lived experience is even worse)

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.

I think this is exactly where the deepest crises of capitalism come from. What you describe is a natural consequence of unregulated capitalism. Either you start regulating (breaking up monopolies or nationalising them, high tax brackets on the very rich, etc.) before you hit a depression, or you risk a revolution by only enacting them after the shit has hit the fan. Then you can have a generation, maybe two, who reap the benefits of enforced redistribution. And then folks get complacent and start deregulation again.

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.