zephyreks @ zephyreks @lemmy.ca

Posts

8

Comments

635

Joined

2 yr. ago

Zelle and Venmo dominate and the US government is rather incompetent at government services given all the small government folks there.

Doesn't this solve our immigration problem? We can begin to import (presumably) highly educated people into the country who may be more comfortable living in somewhere that's not Vancouver/Toronto (given that they're coming from the US).

That's being eroded, but in essence this is correct.

If you're not covered by provincial insurance, you pay out of pocket.

Agreed. That's the kind of immigration I can get behind.

Huawei was already sanctioned to shit, though... And a lot of the other big consumer tech companies are technically headquartered in Taiwan.

Taiwan claims those waters as well...

By the same definition, crossing the median in a plane shouldn't be worthy of mention.

How's that been working for Russia? Hasn't their manufacturing PMI been shooting up? Isn't inflation actually higher than desired because their economy is red hot?

Turns out, keeping 5G chips out of China's hands didn't work out too well. Do people just happen to forget that Huawei isn't exactly some young naive kid in the telecommunications space?

This international sponsors of war thing really should only apply to companies based in countries that have sanctioned Russia - if you're not operating against sanctions, the onus isn't with the company (which could be sued for contract violations) but with the government for not placing sanctions.

Have you seen Taiwan? It's the world's largest floating ship. Nevermind that Taiwan also claims and is enforcing their claims on islands in Southeast Asian waters... oh look, Taiwan and Mainland China claim the exact same islands! Odd.

A large-scale naval landing is an immensely complicated logistical exercise even on relatively flat land like in Normandy. Imagine what it would be like on Taiwan?

Plus, China has simply projected no hard power away from its immediate vicinity. How exactly do you propose China would become the center of the universe without an aircraft carrier that can actually operate outside of Chinese waters?

Landlords aren't developers lol

The NDP has about as good policy as you're going to get in Canada if you care at all about the working class.

Why are we even provoking China on Taiwan? Which idiot in Canadian leadership actually thinks China has the capability or desire to capture Taiwan? The best China could do is blockade and starve Taiwan out, but it's pretty much fucking impossible to invade.

Fuck, Taiwan and China were on positively friendly diplomatic terms up until 2016.

Isn't M/M inflation down for everything except mortgage payments?

There's this obsession in Washington that has propagated throughout the West that somehow, magically, China will decide to invade Taiwan and that the West ought to build up military support to defend against such an attack.

Nevermind that Taiwan is literally one of the most unassailable places in the world: a mountainous jungle island that would require a naval assault larger than D-Day. Nevermind that Taiwan has had almost a century to build up core defenses. Nevermind that Taiwan has mandatory military service and thus has a massive swath of citizens trained in combat. Nevermind that Taiwan is basically unassailable in a direct conflict because of the aforementioned...

Taiwanese culture is strong in China. Taiwan-China trade is massive. Tourism between the two countries is very sizable. Bloodshed would be incredibly unpopular politically because Taiwan is simply not seen as an enemy. A blockade is possible, but impractical given that the goal is still the de facto unification of Taiwan and Mainland China in economy and culture if not in government. Prior to the rise of the DPP and the close alignment of Taiwan (and thus TSMC) to the US, Taiwan and China had maintained a rather amicable relationship and it seemed that a diplomatic solution was on the horizon: with neither side acknowledging the independence of the other, independence was implicitly allowed so long as the economies and cultures remained coupled.

Today? The economic coupling of China and Taiwan is still rather strong. The cultural coupling is even stronger... But diplomatic relations have completely broken down and economic relations have deteriorated. Sanctions on imports of semiconductors have been met by bans of imports of Taiwanese products. Imports of Western weapons have been met by provocative tests of Taiwan's response times.

Relations between the US (and thus the West) and China have deteriorated precipitously. This context provides the backdrop for the fall of globalization and the rise of multipolarity. As a result, Canada can no longer sit on the sidelines and offer humanitarian aid. Canada cannot afford to focus on a military that orients itself towards peacekeeping and humanitarian aid and engineering because the countries that Canada could help the most are increasingly becoming aligned against the West.

By our own political posturing, we are being tied into a conflict that frankly is silly to even contemplate. We are losing our core and unique military capabilities to become a simple complement to the US while bleeding our top engineers (e.g. those that designed the Bombardier C-Series) to foreign firms. If war does erupt, we have little domestic R&D capacity to exploit, but if war does not happen we lack the resources to project soft power because of how tightly coupled we are with NATO.

NATO posturing means we can't do that now

Poorer people will find ways to use transit. Richer people will use transit if it's convenient.

I'm perfectly fine with this.

Why are we taking asylum seekers who entered the US and didn't like it when there are legitimate reasons to seek asylum from the US (i.e. for LGBTQ Americans) and the needs of those people aren't being met?