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OT: World Politics

Good. Hopefully he succumbs to his wounds. Fico is a fascist. He halted aid to Ukraine and tried to shut down Slovakia's public broadcaster. He's the Pierre Poilievre of Slovakian politics (speaking of fascists who could use a bullet to the head)
No fan of Pierre and I am worried about him as a PM, but he is a 'facist who deserves a bullet' to me sounds harsh aside from the fact that he is a Canadian with a family. Is he really that far right? we railed against Romney and MaCain's of the world similarly whose policies we disagreed with , but then realize a Trump could exist.
 
No fan of Pierre and I am worried about him as a PM, but he is a 'facist who deserves a bullet' to me sounds harsh aside from the fact that he is a Canadian with a family. Is he really that far right? we railed against Romney and MaCain's of the world similarly whose policies we disagreed with , but then realize a Trump could exist.
yeah, was going to make this point earlier, it's ridiculous. I don't like PP but pretending he's the second coming of Hitler and that all conservatives are evil fascist monsters is not a valid argument.
 
WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled steep tariff increases on an array of Chinese imports including electric vehicle (EV) batteries, computer chips and medical products, risking an election-year standoff with Beijing as he woos American voters who give his economic policies low marks.
"American workers can out-work and out-compete anyone as long as the competition is fair, but for too long it hasn't been fair," Biden said during a speech in the White House Rose Garden before unions and companies. "We're not going to let China flood our market."

China immediately vowed retaliation. Its commerce ministry said Beijing was opposed to the U.S. tariff hikes and would take measures to defend its interests.
Biden will keep tariffs put in place by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump while ratcheting up others, including a quadrupling of EV duties to over 100% and doubling the duties on semiconductor tariffs to 50%.


Biden is smart smart and most people aren't going to get this

- Chinese domestic consumption is flat. Export growth is a necessity for the CCP to be what it wants to be as a regional and international power. This is going to force the CCP into significantly increasing it's already massive subsidies to the affected companies to keep them competitive in the American market. Obviously, this can only exist to a point before these products aren't economically viable. Chinese subsidies being used as a way to try to force out nacent American producers in these spaces will force higher tariffs, etc, etc until Chinest products on those spaces just don't exist.
- This is targeting a bunch of industries that Biden has already done big work in bringing back to the US
- There's going to be a knock on effect with the Europeans here as well, as it's the only other real import market that can pick up a significant amount of the slack for the Chinese. But the Europeans have domestic production of their own to protect as well, and the US has already been protectionist against those.

Idiots are going to screech about how important China is but the fact of the matter is there isn't much China can do for the US that the US can't build up and do for itself (the spread in labour cost isn't remotely what it was 20-30 yrs ago...America has economically depressed regions where the median individual income is isn't that far off the median income in the chinese industrial centres. Set up in Mississipi and pay ~37K a year USD or Shenzen and pay ~22K USD and then deal with all the shit inherent to having a supply chain that stretches across the pacific.

Or even better, pay about the same as you'd pay in Shenzen per worker, put your plant in Monterry Mexico and cut your logistics cost and complexity down massively by switching to rail instead of container ship.
 
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yeah, was going to make this point earlier, it's ridiculous. I don't like PP but pretending he's the second coming of Hitler and that all conservatives are evil fascist monsters is not a valid argument.
Further to CTheBigPic's point, neither Romney nor McCain ever had me worried about losing democracy. Bush and Cheney were worse threats. And just because Bush and Cheney weren't as openly malevolent as Trump make no mistake about it; they are both reprehensible and objectively undemocratic, especially Cheney. All of these shitgibbons, going all the way back to Joe McCarthy to Barry Goldwater to Nixon to Reagan, to Bush 1 & 2 and even to a certain extent Clinton, have helped move the needle just a little bit closer to authoritarianism.

As for Canada, Pee-Pee isn't the second coming of Hitler....until he becomes the second coming of Hitler. The only thing stopping him is an opportunity. He has shown already that he will do whatever it takes to secure power and that he has no firm beliefs other than to believe whatever he needs to appear to believe in order to win support. His political career is not vocational in nature, it's purely aspirational. He wants power for its own sake, because he is a small and petty man just like Trump. Small, petty men are always trying to get even with the world. Poilievre looks to me like he was the nerdy kid who got his head pushed down a toilet by the cool kids back in high school. He's been plotting his revenge ever since.
 

View: https://twitter.com/havivrettiggur/status/1791309935910756629

This is not true, but it does hint at a deep truth.

Yes, the American Jewish lesson from the Holocaust is to double down on tolerance and liberalism for all, because American Jews believe they were saved from the 20th century by these features of America.

But Israeli Jews didn’t have that privilege. They couldn’t avoid the cataclysm by relying on the great kindnesses and strengths of America. No one saved the Jews who would become Israel. No one would even take them in after the genocide. So their lesson was the opposite of the American Jewish one. They became obsessed with self-reliance.In the Israeli Jewish experience, the world is uncaring and hypocritical at best, viciously evil at worst, and it can move from one to the other at the drop of a hat. The only real safety available to a small people is whatever power it can wield in its own defense by its own exertions. Any western elite that claims otherwise knows it will never itself face the consequences of being wrong.

Before you moralize your way out of grappling with this point, dear westerners, here’s one way to show Israelis they’re wrong: Stop the Assads of the world, in realtime, when it matters; meaningfully protect the Uyghurs, even when it means bucking a superpower. Until you can actually do what it takes to bring safety to small and vulnerable peoples, the Israelis will be right and your great moral vocabularies will be no more than undeserved self-adulation.

The Israeli message to Palestinians, then, isn’t that “only Jews get to be safe” - it’s that Palestinians need their own Zionism because only self-reliance brings safety.The world’s love and concern for them is a mirage, a western elite’s self-validating moral cartoon about itself, not a willingness to actually protect and sacrifice for Palestinians. The very fact that the world is invested in Palestinians more than in any other conflict or suffering population combined is a sign that its concern isn’t the actual suffering but rather western elite narrative-making. True morality and real law would swing into action for others too_Or put another way, the whirlwind of moralism that is so often described as “anti-Israel” is actually, in the Israeli understanding of history, anti-Palestinian, a vast and cruel political trap Palestinians have not yet seen for what it is.

Palestinians cannot claw back some imagined idyllic Palestine of yesteryear anymore than Jews can reverse the erasure of the ancient communities of Poland or Iraq. The only path available to any of us is to build a new future on the solid foundation of endogenous strength.

The only salvation available to Palestinians will come by Palestinian hands, Palestinian strategy and wisdom, and internal Palestinian solidarity.

That’s the Israeli “claim,” such as it is, and not just for Palestinians. For all small peoples.
 
I'm not sure that (North) American Jews feel that differently from Israeli Jews. And many of the ones that did probably feel differently after the last few months.
 

If Israel is so hell-bent on being self-reliant why is the US sending them artillery shells to kill Palestinians with? Why does Israel need foreign military aid in the first place? They have the 17th most powerful armed forces on the planet. They have the best of everything too, not the shit that the Red Army has which breaks down constantly. And they have nukes. Why the fuck are we sending them aid? They should be sending it to us!
 
If Israel is so hell-bent on being self-reliant why is the US sending them artillery shells to kill Palestinians with? Why does Israel need foreign military aid in the first place? They have the 17th most powerful armed forces on the planet. They have the best of everything too, not the shit that the Red Army has which breaks down constantly. And they have nukes. Why the fuck are we sending them aid? They should be sending it to us!
whooooosh
 
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