somelamer567

The fish rots from the head.

The rich have greedily and selfishly opted out, and left a massive moral vacuum.

They must be held accountable. And the only way to hold the rich and powerful accountable is to stop them from corrupting the political process. Ban lobbying, undisclosed political donations and concentrations of private media ownership, and society will recover.

This would make ideal cover for a Russian hybrid sucker-punch.

I've spotted Russian trolls in the comments on YouTube blaming Israel for their hybrid attacks in Germany these past few days. They have form, and they have been preparing the information environment for ongoing hybrid aggression against Europe. The key "tell" it's Putin's thugs is because if ANY act is petty, thuggish, dishonourable and implausibly deniable, Russian intelligence are involved.

In any case, the perpetrators will be found and dealt with. The aggressors are dumb (otherwise they wouldn't be aggressors)... and slow learners. Ukraine can look forward to some additional aid in the coming weeks.

Meta have long profited from knowingly aiding and abetting the enemies of the West by undermining our societies from within.

Meta are the greatest force against freedom in the world today, apart from Putin's post-fascist power vertical and the Chinese Communist Party.

What I think of Mark Zuckerberg unfortunately cannot be printed, because unlike Meta platforms, HN has standards.

We need to get over the idea that criminals and geopolitical aggressors have human rights. Human rights should only be afforded to the law-abiding.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Even if a certain large Asian country has carefully constructed a pretext to do do out of confected historical grievance, and entitlement to 'rise' at the expense of others?

I'm wondering what the grift here is.

Usually, the pattern is that we see a tsunami of planted "China number one" stories boosted by hordes of Chinese "internet commentators", and then the world trembles for a few days until the scam mechanics are revealed.

My would be either: crippling limitations on the model, vast, unfair, and/or illegal subsidies by the CCP regime as a mercantilist attack on Western capabilities (as we've already seen in iron smelting and clean energy), sanctions-busting, gamed benchmarks, outright theft -- or a combination of the above.

These days, Amazon do a lot of print-on-demand which gives bootleg quality, and there's no way to tell if you're going to get it, and there seems to be no way to avoid it.

Not correct. Sodium-ion batteries were invented in the United States in the 1970s.

Wars and self-destruction, if they happen, will be purely the responsibility of the Chinese side, who have been caught numerous times hacking, spying, copying and stealing the hard work of Western countries. China's conduct of the last 40 years has been the greatest illicit transfer of wealth in the history of the world.

NONE of this Chinese malfeasance has been 'consensual' or about 'free trade'

Please enlighten me -- if a robber pulls a gun on me in the street and demands my wallet, or if a burglar robs my house, then in what way must I blame myself? Normal human beings with common decency and honour would blame the criminal, not the victim.

China's predatory and anti-competitive trade practices, undervalued yuan, hacking, espionage, IP theft, etc., need to be formally recognised and penalised. They have lied, cheated and robbed their way to the top, and the West is in serious danger of being subdued by thugs who have seized control of the world by acting like criminals.

Back in the days of their entry into the WTO, we _knew_ the Chinese Communist Party were literally thuggish peasant bandits in suits. Wiser heads knew they absolutely could not be trusted. Yet weak minds, including the Harvard MBA class got greedy little dollar signs in their eyes and thought they could make money. They were led like pigs to the slaughter by people who have never been anything but our adversaries.