Bush didn’t care. Dude was an asshole. He tried to drum up support with our allies, and when most of them said no, he just did it anyway.

That said, it was a mistake to warmonger, don’t get me wrong.

I don’t think the invasion of Iraq can be blamed on the NYT. I think the Bush administration and Al Qaeda get the credit for that one.

However much is necessary to arrive at the truth.

Nobody and no system should be expected to be perfect all the time, I would anticipate some mistakes over a course of decades.

Have you checked for any times they were critical of US foreign policy within the same timeframe?

“Consistently” and “in-these-specific-cases” are different things.

Ah. That’s too bad, I think that’s a worthwhile topic. His hardware is in the Netherlands if I remember right though, so everything has to comply with EU and Dutch law. Or, gone it goes, by necessity. That would need to be hosted on a different server.

That’s kinda funny. It’s still a barrier to entry though, as a niche, technical hobby. It’s going to get less crap than, say, a news community, which does not require monetary investment and some genuine interest to engage in.

With all due respect, a 3d printing community is going to draw extremely low levels of bullshit.

Other communities are seeing quite a bit of tomfoolery already. Personally, I do not think attracting all internet denizens equally is a sound strategy for healthy long term growth.

Correct, I am not really approaching this in a dialectical way, I do not fervently ascribe to any specific ideology. I try to take all potential influences into account. Similarly, this does not mean human history is driven by “great men” or somesuch, only that individual decisions do have an influence on events, and should be taken into account.

I do wish things could exist in such a simple way, where states operated in such a clear-cut manner, but that’s just too oversimplified. The world is just messier than that, and individual egos cannot be completely separated from people’s choices.

Sure, states in the abstract do pursue their own interests, though there’s a great many very small states that see their interests differently from how larger bodies tend to. This is potentially distinct from the exercise of power though, and is not necessarily imperialism. To qualify as imperialism in a way that fits empires throughout history, I think you need two things: scope and expansion. An embassy, while a means of national power, is not really focused on expansion, but diplomacy. An embassy can be a simple defensive precaution. State media can be, depending on what message it is broadcasting. If it broadcasts a warmongering message, it could easily be imperial in nature. If it’s just reporting local news, not so imperial. Curbing other state media is just about stability.

Nations exist, borders exist. Whether they should or not is more up to those individual peoples that live there, and how they want to set up their societies.

No, which is why I have a default position of suspicion towards the words of my own officials. Because they’re people, just like me, no better, no worse. They can make mistakes, exercise poor judgement, change their minds, etc etc.

Not just national power, but expanding national power over people who were not part of your nation. The word is in its roots, people can redefine it into whatever they want, but it still has that historical root. I think this loyalty towards its historical meaning is more valuable than any redefining it for other purposes.

That would be the process by which you select your leaders. Not too different from a democratic republic. It does not mean every single one of them understands the inner thoughts of those leaders, though. It’s a selection process. Does a selection process give you the power to understand their secret minds, or do you simply think they have no secrets?

Yes, national power is exactly what we’re talking about. Exercising it over a broad area, of people who did not before fall under your control, is empire-building. Or, imperialism. Power + new lands/people = imperialism.

Hegemony simply refers to degree of competition. If an empire is contested by near-peers, it does not have hegemonic control. This is core to what the word means in the English language.

I appreciate the sources, but if you as a believer cannot adequately explain these things from them, I’m not sure the sources will be of much benefit.

Oh come now, the decisions of a country are made by its leaders, not every single member of its political party. Otherwise that would be true democracy, and unbelievably cumbersome and impractical. Also, I’ll remind you a fifth time, my default in the modern day is suspicion. I simply don’t believe people automatically. This is independent of the things they say and how good they sound. Like, when I’m buying a product, I do not simply believe the user reviews. Instead I try to look for someone providing a little bit of actual evidence of their objectivity. That would earn a higher degree of trust, though still not total faith.

I would describe it as an influence or informational or perhaps espionage empire. You can have a military empire, where people do as you say or you kill them, yes? You can have an economic empire, where you use economic coercion instead of military. Or, in the modern day, you can control through another form of power–control in the information space. While propaganda is certainly nothing new, it has reached a degree of power we’ve never seen before. Or so I’m arguing, anyway.

I disagree, I think that muddles what “a hegemon” is. An idea, not being a conscious thing, cannot be a hegemon. Only a human or group of humans can be. There’s nothing wrong with ideas competing because ideas alone cannot control. What one person realizes, another can too. While the idea can be influential, it cannot truly exert force. So, you could have an information empire, but having a hegemonic information empire is probably impossible without some kind of supernatural mind control. In this new way of looking at imperialism that I’m proposing, anyway. I acknowledge this is new, and traditionally empire was mainly economic and/or military.

Do Chinese citizens have any more insight on the inner workings of their leaders than outside observers? Or are they forced to simply trust them? And yes, I do not think 100% of everything that comes out of our State Dept is automatically a lie. Some things are true, some are false. The default of suspicion applies regardless.

Imperialism is empire-building. That’s the root word imperial, of-an-empire. It’s authority exerted over other people, foreign lands. Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great both worked on imperial projects, back when it was more commonplace. Hegemony is somewhat similar, though implies the empire is uncontested by other powers. The Mongols had a hegemonic empire. Napoleon, while being imperial, did not have a hegemonic empire, as the British and Russian empires contested and eventually defeated him.

So, I don’t understand this difference between steps/products of imperialism, and just imperialism. Either you’re empire-building, seeking authority over more and more peoples, or you’re not.

China’s system is opaque. Without allowing independent observation, aka transparency, there is just no point. I’m simply not willing to give them any extra faith. For the third time, suspicion is default. Suspicion exists until evidence to the contrary is provided. This is just a basic safety principle in the modern age and is healthier than faith-based alternatives. I know you didn’t say that, incidentally, I was getting out ahead of a potential criticism before it appeared, saving us the time of having to discuss it. I was not accusing you of saying it, was I?

I think it’s a very useful definition of imperialism, actually. It captures the new, informational-based methods of attack that have become so common in just the past couple decades. Economic and military (the original) imperialism are simply other methods. I am well aware that some communist thought tries to equate imperialism with global capitalism, making them identical. This is actually less useful imo.

You don’t think exerting authority over foreign people is functionally a form of imperialism, in basic principle?

Anyone that tries to subject others to their control is practicing imperialism, in the modern form anyway. It used to mean something else. It’s certainly not just the US, though we’ve done our fair share.

You can usually determine whether someone is trolling or not with some discussion. Just because someone says lgbt does not give them carte blanche to say whatever they want. If you really want to detect trolls, you need to remember some of them pretend to be lgbt just to cause more chaos.

It’s not “both sides-ing” to assert that no position should be immune to criticism. No matter how underdog they are. Being an oppressed underdog should not give someone license to just do whatever the fuck they want like you’re some fictional char like Batman or something.

Not if my suspicion applies to imperialists as well. It’s not trolling if it helps keep you safe in an online world.

It’s just healthy suspicion man. If you expect me to just apply some kind of universal trust to a country of human beings on Earth, you are sorely mistaken. People are people. No country on Earth is some holy union of people above being concerned about, that somehow does no wrong. That’s just some weird, misplaced faith.

Again, I’m not forming an opinion yet. I apologize that this does not align with your very clearly pro-Chinese opinion. It is not China-Bad, it is China-is-a-country-and-countries-act-in-their-own-interests. These ideas are not harmful, they simply question your faith I suppose. I’m not trolling, I am dead serious in my position.

… you seriously asking me to provide evidence of any Chinese military research facilities? You understand how silly that sounds? Where do you think their hypersonic missiles came from, gifts from some UFO or something? I suspect the technology was researched through the scientific method.

Transparency is generally the key to securing trust. Otherwise yes, suspicion should be a default position. I don’t fully trust my government, I’m certainly not going to trust someone else’s.

From something I read yesterday he apparently talked about the UK helping them with targeting and intelligence with personnel on the ground. If I remember right.

It’s not exactly surprising news, so to elaborate, I think the criticism towards him has been exaggerated. Likely for political purposes.

In other words no, just the words of the governmental body. My goalpost there has been pretty consistent. I’m not tossing any accusations whatsoever, despite apparently offending you. Just pointing out that national security concerns can be alleviated, there is a viable, diplomatic path forward for that. Since I am not an expert on the subject matter, I simply do not know if that has been attempted in earnest or not. I’m just being cautious before simply giving completely blanket trust to a country, I’m withholding my judgement and not yet forming an opinion.

No, not anything. Studies on, oh, let’s say emperor penguins would be difficult to militarize. Or, atmospheric studies using ice cores. But many things, yes. Hand-waving them away and tossing casual insults about it is silly regardless.

The article cited signals intelligence. I’m not with the NSA or anything, so I’m pretty much just going off the article.