In the past, that kind of activity by U.S. agents has been a normal part of major international events like the Olympics.
Has it? NPR should expand on that because it seems like Trump is using ICE as a sort of pretorian guard (not actually trusting them with his life but using them as goons to look tough while the SecretSeevice do the real work)
over concerns that they could be remotely accessed by China and used to spy on sensitive sites.
Sufficiently advanced paranoia is indiciferable from magic.
Is it using a subspace transmitter? because anything else is going to be easy to detect with a firewall.
Like I think the UK should use British made cameras to spy on its people, but the paranoia around China being pumped out is ridiculous.
Better than ongoing death, but does anyone trust a state to keep their word, espexially one heades by a former Al-Qaeda
USSR should have left Cuba with a Nuke, and I’m generally anti-Nuke
As if China isn’t one of Israel’s biggest trading partners.
You litterally can’t form an independent workers union in China, it’s Bad.
You can’t move to the city you work in, both to keep house prices artificially low and to prevent organizing.
You can criticize the government online but the moment you try and organize a protest you get a knock on the door.
The state aren’t openly shooting protestors in the street these days but it doesn’t make it a good place for regular citizens.
Lol, at least Palantir are named after openly evil shit, this should be called the Goliath.
It’s a pretty big assumption that any regime change in Iran would be orchestrated by the US/Israel, what if I told you Iranians are actually individuals not controlled by their regime or the one in Washington, and can make their own decisions?
Iran’s nuclear development ambitions are about as real as Iraq’s WMDs it’s a nice myth that benefits both Israel and Iran’s regime, but that’s about it.
Hamas gets more money from Qatar than Iran, and a Democratic Iranian regime would be likely to keep that funding going, funding Hamas is a popular in the Middle East for a variety of reasons.
since US/Israel would be the ones picking who ran the new regime
So not a democracy then? Sure Israel would benefit from a puppet state, but how did that work out last time?
I’m not sure Israel benefits from regime change, Iran does a lot of sabre rattling but if the regime was replaced by a democracy, Iran would likely be more aggressive to Israel not less.
Not really, travel the global South and you’ll find most people like the West and dislike Russia, China & Trump.
Morocco was colonized by Spain, as were several other places in Africa, hell the Conquest of the Canary Islands was the first instance of European genocidal settler colonialism in Africa.
People have always migrated, but modern mass migration is a result of the economic extraction & resulting instability being so extreme that someone with minimal opportunities in Spain can make more money than your average person in a colonized country.
It’s not uncommon for migrants going from having middle class jobs (teachers, small business owners, etc) to cleaners and still having money to send home to support their family.
Additionally many people will migrate to Spain, England & France because their language is widely used in colonized nations.
I’m sure some rightoids will be mad, but if you don’t want people to migrate, you shouldn’t have colonized their homelands.
Sure but China are about a 1, Rupert Murdoch (who owns the Times) is probably about a 7, and the current UK government are a 9, so it’s wild seeing people hyperventilating over an embassy, while ignoring that the Times is a bigger threat to British democracy than China ever will be.
If the US wants to invade Europe it can, there is no point in trying to outspend them.
However they struggled to occupy Afghanistan that spends a fraction of the money the US does, I think they’d have trouble holding Europe.
Even with those numbers, Europe can match Russia (400 < 183 UKR, 97 DE, 91 FR, 85 UK) or even China (570 < UKR,DE,FR,UK,PO 62, IT 61) without factoring in other European countries that spend at least 200B more in that list alone.
So even by those numbers in the only scenario In which Europe is outspent is if China & Russia attack at the same time, and it seems China has little interest in invading anywhere but Taiwan.
I also don’t really buy those numbers given Russian performance in Ukraine and the fact that China uses their military to provide employment I think they overestimated the military strength of both countries.
Additionally I don’t think anywhere else has the extent of pork barrel spending on the military the US does, so I don’t really believe those in numbers are accurate for PPP for European countries.
Defend from who?
Russia (military budget of 145.9B) can barely invade Ukraine (miltary budget of 28.4B), meanwhile any 2 out of Germany (86B), UK (81B) & France (64B) can match Russia without even counting the rest of Europe.
The combined spend of just DE, UK & FR (231B) is inline with China’s (235B), again without the rest of Europe that has Italy (35B), Poland (28.4B), Netherlands (23.4B), Spain (19.4B), Sweeden (12B) & Norway (10B) which can more or less match Russian spending (128B) especially if you include Ukraine.
Europe alone basically spends the same amount as Russia & China combined, so unless the proposed attacker is the United States, the idea that European military budgets need to increase is ridiculous!
There is also a lot to be said for smaller better trained forces vs large meat grinders, especially in modern warfare, the scale of grift and job creation in US, Russian & Chinese armies is significantly larger than the equivalent in European armies.
And that’s all ignoring the nukes.
Interference by China a serious issue, and one is increasingly threatening democratic values in the West.
We are arming a genocide, our former PM is joining a “peace” board that’s committed to ethnic cleansing, there are 100s if not thousands of influence groups operating across the UK in favor of said genocide, and you want me to be scared of China?
It’s illegal to say you support Palestine Action! and you’re worried about threatening democratic values?
Not that I know of even one.
We spend £4-5B on MI6 and you don’t think we have any influence operations in China? What are we spending the money on?
Tens of thousands of Chinese students studying overseas are required to sign a document pledging loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party
Oh boy do I have news for you about Americans.
There are tons of reports of Chinese students and scholars stealing high-tech military technologies
I don’t know of similar influence operations from any Western country in China.
That’s because you’re very incurious about what the UK, US & Israel do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_for_International_Development
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_States
I’m no fan of the CCP but these hysterical times articles about China doing the same shit every nation state does are ridiculous. Sure all nation states should be abolished but fixating on China is ridiculous.
The problem with the myth of the fascist making the trains run on time, is Musolini reaped the benefits of the Social Democrats work.
So now Italy has facists who can’t even run the cable cars on time.