freediver wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2021 at 1:00pm:

Well it was, at least...

The regime is not so much harvesting grain as billionaires and companies for their money.

freediver wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2021 at 2:40pm:

Just ask Jack Ma.

freediver wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2021 at 2:43pm:

I bet he is... Probably likes the idea of keeping his money and companies as well.

freediver wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2021 at 2:53pm:


Money... Its a gas. Share it fairly but keep your hands of my stash.

"a Chinese billionaire dies every 40 days...unnatural deaths have taken the lives of 72 mainland billionaires over the past 8 years...15 were murdered, 17 committed suicide, 7 died from accidents and 19 from illness. 14 were executed. (Welcome to China.)"
Rob Henderson
@robkhenderson

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Yes we are. Economic liberalisation is liberalisation. It won't be long before the little princes are demanding all sorts of other rights. You can't have one without the other.

Ask any poor person and the right to make and hold onto some money ranks above just about everything except the right to life, and is often the same thing. We like to talk about the right to sodomise each other and take a crap on the white house lawn, but that is only because we take these more fundamental rights for granted. This is why the CCP is doing so well in the propaganda department. They are making the important moves first.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2021 at 3:36pm:


Cement boots, behind bars, ankle bracelets in home detention or just stopped expressing themselves altogether. The CCP has gone backwards on liberalism.

As pay and conditions have gone up, human rights have gone down. If you put GDP per capita on a graph next to political detentions, you'd see a steady rise; perfect correlation.

If you cant have one without the other, FD, there go your "principles". The situation in China blows your case out of the water.

Russia - another example. While Putin shifts round the fossil fuel and mineral wealth, he's detaining his political opponents and building billion dollar palaces. For Putin, like the CCP, this is branded as an alternative political-economic model to liberal democracy. Unlike the CCP, Putin throws a healthy dose of religion in, but the rivals to the West are role models to the countries they influence.

Trump, of course, parotted Putin's model perfectly. That's what MAGA is - the protectionists and the Bible Belt in a handshake deal, united under an authoritarian cult of personality. The Republican party effectively has no liberal democrats left at the federal level.

You, of course, have kept devoutly mum on Trump for the past five years. Trump signals the dearth of liberal democracy on the formerly Reaganite US right. You've spent the last five years evading this shift.

Perhaps it's time you woke up.

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Do you have any evidence of this?

Between 1958 and 1961, between 15 and 55 million Chinese were denied the right to life. Not deliberately of course. Bureaucratic error. This is what Athos means by merit.

freediver wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2021 at 5:46pm:

'denied the right to life'?

It's worse than that he's been denied the right to life, Jim, denied the right to life, Jim, to Life Jim, to life Jim, to Life Jim... LIFE