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What about ICE in USA today?

The anecdote is even dumber than I expected. Yes, in order to avoid becoming Europe, and during wartime, the US adopted some of the tactics traditionally used by dictatorships, such as deporting people that came here illegally.

Ultimately US power is a mix of soft and hard power and you are squandering the soft power under Trump, alienating those who were formerly closely aligned to your values- because your values has changed to that of a global bully and authoritarian despot.

Nonsense. We were hated long before Trump started defending the border. The things you're calling "values" are patterns that were literally killing us. No country can survive the toxic combination of mass immigration and a nanny state. You would not tolerate mass immigration from Japan to your country.

In what sick world is Trump a despot and the IRGC are freedom fighters?

NZ authorities are warning NZers not to travel to the US as the new visa rules mean you are required to show all social media posts for the last 5 years and can face immediate ban and forced removal from US with zero right of appeal. The USA is becoming a police state.

They should tell you to migrate to California and start planning arson and assassinations with the other leftists. You won't get deported from here.

You don't actually believe Trump is a dictator. You're literally just butthurt that you lost the election because you wanted us to sell out Taiwan, because you have some kind of ethnic grudge and you're convinced that stomping on the best of Asia militarily is actually a way to stick it to the white man, even though the half-white US is a minority of the anti-communist coalition.

Don't worry, the US will be balkanized and irrelevant soon enough. It doesn't matter. Support from a third of the US is more than enough to topple the PRC. Again, the communists' fight is with God, not the US. They're doomed.

China is showing a new model where you develop your economy on your terms- you do not dictate to trade partners what they should do and certainly do not invade them, assassinate their leaders or kidnap and threaten them with being bombed back to the stone ages.

Oh boo-hoo. Poor "ser rico es malo" Maduro got kidnapped when he was just minding his own business not hurting anyone, trying to lift Venezuela out of poverty. Who is this argument for? There's no way you actually believe this.

Look in the tech and administration departments of your universities.
Lots of Chinese faces.

Look in the tech departments of Apple, Google, Meta etc - predominantly Chinese faces.
Modern China celebrates and encourages engineering and technical learning skills.
Chinese kids love to learn science and engineering.

They now run the engine rooms of your top companies and learning centres.
You lost the trade war and the skills war.
Without those Chinese engineers and technicians you would not be able to produce anything anymore.

Your entire country has been infiltrated with Chinese in positions of power and without them you would collapse in a sad sprawling heap of ideocracy.

Even with them you are.

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Uh huh, racial resentment. I get it. I can relate.

What does that have to with your attempts at turning Taiwan communist? We don't care that you're better at math. That's not the reason we're going to war. We're going to war because you're the antagonistic dictatorial rogue state, not us.

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I am not seeking to turn Taiwan communist.
Neither is China or anyone else.
China today is not a communist nation despite the name of the ruling party.

China today is a mixed economy- a hybrid of state capitalism and free enterprise.
Much like most of the west was until the neoliberal era of the 1980 till present.
Ever since the neoliberal era of bankers and corporate dictating government policy the wests economic position has worsened.

If you do not understand this it is difficult to see how you could understand the absurdity of your claim that anyone is trying to make Taiwan become communist.

Taiwan has been a client state to the US, subservient to US military and monetary tributes ever since the 1950s.

Modern Taiwan has far more economic ties with mainland China than it does with the US.
The US is abandoning its support for Taiwan and reshoring microchip production to USA because it is clear that Taiwans future is much more closely aligned with mainland China than the declining US empire.

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China today is not a communist nation despite the name of the ruling party.

Really? Change the name then. Or change the party. How else do you expect me to read the situation when it's in the fucking name and the regime itself explicitly states a commitment to socialist ideology?

Taiwan is not a vassal of the US. That's pure projection because you want to make it a vassal of Beijing, which they don't want.

The US is abandoning its support for Taiwan

You wish. I know Trump and I can see what he's doing. Taiwan is a red line. If the government didn't support Taiwan then they'd have to be replaced immediately, then you really would be dealing with a rogue state and one that would be far more likely to abuse nuclear weapons than Trump. You're not getting Taiwan.

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Might as well ask Trump to change the name of his party to Ideocracy Cronyism USA.

Not my place to tell people to change the names of their organisations...I am simply a neutral but interested observer from New Zealand.

Taiwan is militarily and monetarily subservient tribute state to the USA.
Just like S.Korea, Japan, Canada, Australasia, the UK, EU and many more.

Enjoy your global hegemony while it lasts.
Empires come and go.

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You have everything backwards. The USA is the tribute state to the Republic of China. Whatever we do with our military is entirely up to them.

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Trump using ‘excuses’ not to ask Congress for war powers authority in Iran

Donald Trump is using “excuses” to avoid asking Congress to approve his war on Iran, which, under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, he should now do, said Douglas Silliman, a former US ambassador to Kuwait and Iraq.

“To my reading of the law, from 60 days when a conflict involving US forces starts, a president must go to the Congress to continue,” Silliman told Al Jazeera.

“The problem is it’s never really been fully implemented and … the administration is redefining the timeline of the war to say that they don’t have to do this,” Silliman said.

“I think they will continue to find excuses … not to approach Congress until they absolutely have to,” he said.

Silliman said he believes Trump wants to undermine Congress’s legal authority to weigh in at all on the war.

“I  think it is more a matter [that] the president doesn’t want to be seen as asking for permission for doing something that he believes he can do on his own authority,” he said.

“He thinks that as commander-in-chief, this entire law and the concept that he must go to the Congress is unconstitutional. I think members of Congress, even on the Republican side, would disagree. But, again, this comes down to whether or not the president thinks that this is a win for him or if this is something that he might not completely win.”

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