they’re talking out their ass.

Yes, which is par for the course.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart

What is behind the inconsistencies?

Cash payments in return for interviews with North Korean refugees have been standard practice in the field for years.

Initially, the payment was to cover the cost of meals and local transport, which was approximately $30 in the late 1990s when I first began interviewing in China and South Korea. However, the fees had risen to $200 per hour by the time I attempted to interview people from North Korea in May 2014.

A government official from the South Korean ministry of unification told me the range of fees could vary wildly, from $50-500 per hour, depending on the quality of information.

But this practice raises a difficulty: how does the payment change the relation between a researcher and an interviewee, and what effect will it have on the story itself?

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Dog…

My original claim was that in none of these articles is there any evidence of Putin or Xi expressing interesting in extending their lifespan.

It’s a claim you still have yet to disprove, btw.

Claiming that Russia is not technologically advanced is a nonsequiter. Refusing to engage with a nonsequiter is not underhanded. And you’re not humouring anyone by backing down from your attempt to turn this conversation into one about Russia’s technological capabilities. You’re just backpedaling.

Again, please show me where Putin or Xi expressed interest in extending their lives.

Not even remotely related to the part I quoted and laughed at, but I’ll humour you

So how does a claim regarding Russia’s technological capabilities relate to my original comment? The only person being humoured here is you.

The way the healthy skepticism just leaves the liberal mind once a state department hit pieces comes out is laughable. You have been effortlessly oriented. Yall just eat this shit up. “Deduction”… lmao.

Again, maybe one day show me where Putin or Xi expressed interest in extending their lifespan. You won’t.

Just read your article. Nowhere in it did Xi or Putin express fear of mortality or an interest in extending their personal lifespans.

All this is is musings on transhumanism.

[mortality] haunt[s] people—especially aging tyrants who fear that the icy hand of death is upon their shoulder and want far more time to ensure both national and personal glory.

Show me where Xi or Putin expressed fear of mortality. Better yet, show me where Xi or Putin expressed interest in extending their lifespan.

Show me where Putin or Xi expressed interest in living to 150.

leaders of two of the world’s most technologically prominent countries muse on the prospects of transhumanism in front of a crowd of dozens

rabid disapproval from liberals who claim that Putin and Xi got caught on a hot mic wanting to live forever so they can rule eternally or something, idk

Seriously, the reading comprehension is abysmal in this thread. Can someone show me where Putin or Xi said they personally wished to live to 150?

They’re in the phase where people are too scared to resist

Source?

Enjoy the freedom of having the likes of Meta and Google pull another Cambridge analytica. Or the freedom of having multi-billion dollar companies like YouTube aggressively push algorithms that steer people down the alt right pipeline. Or the freedom of instagram mechanically and ruthlessly instilling in children as much body dysphoria and low self esteem as possible in the name of profit.

It was literally only two years ago that Meta was got caught promoting racial violence in Myanmar. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

Any reasonable person can look at the heinous acts carried out by western tech companies in recent years and realize that the great firewall has been vindicated.

Edit: “CCP shill”, “whataboutism”, “two things can be bad”… come on folks, its time to start thinking of some new thought-terminating cliches. These are so 2023.

There’s no AI databases in tibet, Yemen, Sudan etc.

Yes… I know… the point was not that AI is stealing water from the Middle East. The point is that, whether its datacenters in the west, or climate change in the Middle East, profit motive, corporate greed, and theft are the main causes of water scarcity and lack of water collaboration. As is stated more elegantly in the numerous sources I’ve linked - which quantify water scarcity at the hands of corporations.

these places were going to run out of water eventually anyways

Source? This is a massive statement. You think that since humans first settled the Middle East, they were doomed to run out of water? How do even prove or disprove this? Any analysis here is predicated upon a history of capitalism and imperialism.

Climate change is listed as one of the main contributors to water scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa. And as we know, capitalism is one of the main drivers of climate change. Water scarcity is a result of capitalism and corporate greed. Until AI companies are no longer able to move into towns and suck up their entire aquifer just to make AI slop, there is not as much of a water scarcity as there is a water hoarding and theft.

https://r3sustainability.com/corporate-water-usage-the-surprising-impact-of-40-of-all-water-consumption/

https://unu.edu/article/how-bottled-water-industry-masking-global-water-crisis

https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/water-scarcity

Which is still a result of capitalism and corporate greed.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/corporations-water-crisis

It’s no longer interesting because it’s probably bullshit - which is par for the course for these CIA cutouts. These are the same groups that push absurd ideas about state-mandated haircuts, Kim Jong Un dying, that Kim Jong Un executed his ex, that North Korea banned sarcasm, that Kim Jong Il claims he once shot 11 straight holes in one, etc… these pieces get absolutely eaten up by western liberals who, in the next breath, will call citizens of the DPRK the most propagandized on earth.

So are the Russians weak or strong?

Am I understanding this right? You believe that, amid a new strategy of gunning down starving Palestinians arriving to aid sites, Taiwan was obligated to start giving free vacations to genocidal IDF soldiers to bolster its defensive capacity? Dafuq?

Yall’s “liberal pragmatism” is laughably evil.

So then why is Taiwan bending over backwards to cater to Zionists from a lunatic blood-thirsty genocidal child-killer state-terrorism country? Going so far as offer free vacations to zionists and expanding ties in the wake of Oct 7?

https://www.ynetnews.com/travel/article/bj611yqjqxe

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-taiwan-forging-closer-relationship

“It was Mao Zedong who said, ‘Israel and Taiwan are bases of operation for imperialism in Asia. They created Israel for the Arabs and Taiwan for us. They both have the same objective’. So almost automatically, if China supports a side, then Taiwan will support the other,” Arnaud Bertrand, an expert on China, told Middle East Eye.