I have no idea, but I think most of it is produced in China and our resident PRC nerds might be able to find out. I don't think there's much inherently exploitative in most forms of agriculture (except manually cutting sugar cane), just that it depends on the scale and rights of the workers. My issue with coffee is that it went from a small focus boost to being held hostage by the inconvenience of abstinence, and I thought "why not?". The coffee craze did begin with slave labour but at least the plant is not some addictive grassblade bamboo from hell that cuts you and gives you tetanus.
Good point. Maybe the original report should've been linked there rather than the CIA mouthpiece reporting of it. I've never seen this laboratory and they should not automatically be trustworthy just because they are from an university, since it is not peer-reviewed, but let's analyse their claims.
Summary from their report:
H3. INORGANIC, CHINA STATE-SPONSORED
Most Likely Scenario
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The majority of the evidence that we have identified is consistent with the hypothesis of a state-backed influence operation.
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The timing coincidence between the removal of a Chinese state-sponsored IO by Twitter in July/August 2019, and the start of the HKLEAKS campaign, is an indicator tilting the analysis towards HKLEAKS being backed by the Chinese government.
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Javascript code used by HKLEAKS contained Mandarin words and acronyms in Hanyu Pinyin spelling, typical of mainland China.
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Some doxxing used privileged information, only available to the Hong Kong and/or Chinese authorities.
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It is possible that the campaign also benefited from some degree of organic engagement by sympathetic online communities.
First and last one are just opinion based on the three in the middle. First actual one is just about another "operation" of spammers on twitter that "originated in the PRC". Although they claim in the summary that they were "state-sponsored" both they and their source on that (which is the Australian govt btw) provide only as evidence that they have spammed against people who are generally hated by patriotic Chinese people like Guo Wengui. In all honesty, to me it just seems like they assume it is state sponsored because the tweets are in Chinese and coming from China, and even the "timeline" is not that much of a certainty with a 3 week gap between both events for a riot timeline of around 3 months. China has a lot of people with very high approval for their own government, and there is no listed evidence there besides the "coincidence" for both of them being the same group, let alone being handled by the same shadow branch of the government.
Second one is just bizarre, obviously if the campaign is coming from mainlanders it is going to use mainlander lingo. Again, that only narrows it down to being made by mainlanders (possibly even mainlanders that participate in Hong Kong), and does not implicate the government.
The last one is the best smoking gun they have, but that could also be a leak and there's no evidence presented to determine any intentional participation from the actual government. Their main source on this. They also link to this facebook post as a "other reports", not sure what is up with that. I'll admit that the reported response by the agency doesn't help their case, but I haven't dug into that and it is not an admission of guilt either.
So in conclusion, I see very little evidence in the report itself that it was state-sponsored other than trusting blindly the Aussie govt or assuming that because something is from the mainland it is made by the government. They don't even include their shy "Most likely scenario" assessment in their conclusion, and it is only in a random box in the middle of the report.
I still stand by my words that this is basically "something that happened in China happened in China, therefore is the fault of the government" kind of nonsense. Feel free to correct me though.
I'll leave you with a Weibo post from one of the alleged spam accounts which I found really recognisable for Westerners. I wonder what that'll mean for northwestern countries. Is the USA sponsoring disinformation campaigns on twitter during protests and riots?
In the past four months, rioters in Hong Kong have blocked the subway, the airport, the roads, surrounded the government headquarters, stormed the police station, destroyed public and private property, insulted the national flag and national emblem, attacked journalists and tourists, exposed the identity of police officers and their family members recklessly, incited sexual harassment of the wives of the police, and bullied the police’s children who were still in kindergarten. These illegal acts are shocking and outrageous! Today’s Hong Kong is devastated, and Chinese people all over the world are heartbroken and find this unacceptable!
There was no offence taken, I just stated why you are wrong. The correct "next step of capitalism" is it being relegated to history books and horror movies.
We have no "Sunday hot take" tradition here, so you'll have to excuse us for engaging with your joke as if a serious statement. With regards to "developing capitalism further", I see no other way to interpret "taking capitalism to the next step". Your original suggestion of "Capitalism 2.0" is already bad as others have explained better than I could, but by analogy your "next step" approach could also be applied to calling capitalism "Feudalism 2.0". If you don't like capitalism and want to abolish it, much like the bourgeoisie historically tried to do to European feudalism and all other social organisations that do not benefit them as a class, then taking your enemy's name for yourself is just counterproductive. Only liberals who want to decry imperialist capitalism as "not true capitalism", likely due to not knowing much about imperialism, call capitalism "Feudalism 2.0".
If the USA implements central planning it should not be called "Amazon 2.0". We are communists, some milder ones may prefer the euphemism of "socialist", but we shouldn't pretend we are different than what we are because our enemy has slandered us.
I think one thing that often gets passed is that Trump was the brokest of clocks and would sometimes pay lip service that things that the citizens actually want, like avoiding participating directly in new wars. Not that it was ever applied consistently, but it was a legitimate campaign thing both in 2016 and 2020 where civilian republicans claimed that Clinton and Biden wanted WW3 and since Trump's campaign was also extremely contradictory he got to play both warmonger and pacifist to his followers.
You can even see how some traditionally anti-war "centrists" like Tulsi Gabbard have gone full Republican after the Ukraine war and how older Republicans have changed from Bush era "we need to bring freedom to their souls from their bodies" to "genocide in america first". The other explanations are valid too, but it is also a genuine concern of a portion of Republican voters and since the Democrats can't keep their cluster munitions in their pants it's a free win for Republicans.
Bread stopped in 2020. They better revive those Gracchi brothers already.
responsibly manage your currency
I mean...
I'm not sure if that's the best course of action. I didn't want to do leftist infighting over on the lib instance, but some of your comments over there make it seem like we are the ones lusting for more war and death. I think there's a clear difference between arguing (even angrily) with libs and trolling with "hope your country gets nuked". It makes those of us actually engaging with them on good faith and trying to educate look bad by association.
Yeah, I didn't want to bloat the post, but I didn't quit right away. I didn't do it very methodically but I stopped brewing it everyday and instead spent 2 weeks brewing a single full jar and leaving it on the fridge, then drinking every day some 10% less than the day before until there was none left. I also always waited until every daily dose was room temperature and without sugar to make the drinking experience less pleasant. I only really felt the abstinence when I was finally out of coffee around a month ago, but I was too invested to prolong it any further.
If anybody does this while under significant external obligations, I'd recommend being more careful than me spending at least a full month on the reduction.
On invidious you can double the speed of shorts, so it at least sounds like parody.
I can’t help but think of the climate activists who defaced the Van Gogh painting. Except they didn’t – because the painting is actually behind protective glass. I sincerely doubt most people got that fact from the outrage news cycle that followed that incident.
If it makes it ~~better~~ worse, Britain then promptly passed a bill that makes "disruptive" protests like that illegal. The government policy towards the climate crisis there is still the same ol' "Keep Calm and Carry On".
Malcolm X has an old speech which applies very well to this issue as well. Too bad you can't vote for him anymore.
Huh, interesting. They can get tried when the USA gets annexed by Ukraine then.