China is stumbling towards an invasion the same way they stumbled their way into and through COVID. The consequences of this dangerous ineptness will be similar for the world.
This is at a scale unheard of in any other modern conflict.
Here are some ongoing wars that are more destructive:
Ethiopian Civil War: Up to 600,000 dead, up to 100,000 last year alone.
Russo-Ukrainian war: Around 200,000 dead, up to 95,000 this year.
Insurgency in the Maghreb: Up to 400,000 dead, around 14,000 this year.
Myanmar civil war: Up to 210,000 dead, at least 15,000 this year.
Yemeni civil war: More than 380,000 dead and 85,000 of those were just kids starving to death from 2015 to 2018.
Your submission is a prime example of confusing the attention a conflict is getting in the media with its actual scale. Yes, it’s a horrific war, but nobody is getting helped by hysterical hyperbole and shockingly few people care about wars when they are not in the evening news or on their favorite social media service 24/7.
It doesn’t help that your sources are just as hysterical:
In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II
The Ukrainian governments estimates 25,000 dead in that city alone. Over 31,000 people died in Aleppo and up to 500,000 or 0.6% of Germans died due to Allied bombings (which is more than the 1/200 in Gaza for those following along). Is nobody fact checking anything anymore?
Not to be the opposite of a Debbie Downer here (Debbie Upper?), but the fact that 75% of civilians in a high-intensity conflict like this one are not starving is extremely unusual and shows that aid is reaching them. You also turned 25% starving into 25% starving to death, knowingly or unknowingly, and there is actually a difference. Doesn’t bring any food to their nonexistent table, but again, hyperbole. Right now, 50% of people are starving in Syria, despite the conflict there having died down significantly, but nobody gives a damn and not even that UN buffoon seems to know, even though it’s literally his job to know that. Hell, 16.6% of Indians are starving and there’s peace in most of the country. 13% of Americans are food insecure and the only war that’s currently going on there is the “War on Christmas”, at least according to Fox News.
Netanyahu can get bent, but for all the terrible things he’s responsible for or permitting, braindead settlers included, this war is not one that his government started. They’ll end it, then they’ll get kicked out of office by a furious electorate as soon as it’s done and then Palestinians can piece their lives together and maybe tell the next people like Hamas to get just as bent as Netanyahu instead of starting yet another pointless war with the strongest nation in the Middle East in the next five to fifteen years. What did these Hamas idiots think would happen after staging the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust? Everyone else in the Middle East joining in on the murdering of Israelis with no staging time and against a nation armed with nuclear ICBMs? Ridiculous - and ordinary Palestinians and Israelis got to bear the brunt of this absurdity while uninformed people on the Internet get all high and mighty thinking they’ve got the morality of this irrational conflict figured out.
I wouldn’t call it freedom. If she’s treated like other “security threats” within China, then she does not have freedom to travel. She’s likely limited to her city at most, perhaps even just a small area within and has to regularly report to local police. Think of it like probation for people convicted of actual crimes in the West, except without court order, for an unlimited amount of time and with the constant threat of being tortured/disappeared looming over her head. If Xi ever feels like tightening the thumb screws on the Chinese people even further, she’d probably feel the effects before many others. All of this comes with social consequences, as many friends and business partners will be scared away.
To touch on one point mentioned in the article, I think the release of the tax revenue should come with clear conditions. The PA has a massive martyr’s fund that they are using to pay out the relatives of those killed, injured or imprisoned in the conflict, primarily terrorists. They are paying out hundreds of millions each year:
The withheld amount is much smaller than this fund. It would make no sense to allow this to continue, since the very same PA that wants to administer Gaza after this war is over is also heavily financially supporting and incentivizing continued violence.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this nonsense from the Namibian government will achieve absolutely nothing, except for driving the two countries apart again and setting back reconciliation by a considerable amount. Namibia doesn’t have anything to bargain with, which means they need the goodwill of Germany if they want more money - which they won’t get by being mock outraged over core German foreign policy principles.
The only thing that’s threatened by US military bases are their imperial ambitions in the region. There’s a reason why even Vietnam is seeking US protection. You know that the US isn’t going to attack China first.
The arrangement with Taiwan is different though. A war between the two Chinas would see direct US involvement, not just the sending over of old weapons that are well past their expiration date.
Especially in China. That’s a place where it’s not uncommon for very high ranking members of the government/party/major companies and public figures disappearing for months on time if not indefinitely. If it can happen to those people, it can happen to bearers of bad news much further down the line. Not to mention, Xi has been busy purging anyone who even looks remotely competent/threatening (same thing, really) for a while now in the very old-fashioned sense of the word, which isn’t exactly conductive to a smooth running state either.
People were saying the same about Russia before he invaded Ukraine. The moment we see a buildup of troops at the coast near Taiwan, the countdown to the invasion is ticking down. I do not think it’s a matter of if, but when. Could be this year already. I do not believe that the so-called PLA is even remotely capable of successfully conquering Taiwan, since they have zero experience with any kind of complex military operation (least of which any combined arms and naval landings, let alone the most challenging one in military history), but I think the end result will still be an enormous amount of destruction and suffering, as well as a major and long-lasting economic crisis.
This is a direct consequence of two things: Hamas not wearing uniforms in combat and their tendency to use suicide bombers. They are told to undress themselves before processing - they don’t stay that way.
How would any of the people criticizing this deal with a large group of fighting age men in a war zone?