The USA is heavily invested in China - does that make China a province of the USA? Does IMF investment in Africa/Asia mean that the West is morally justified in invading them whenever they decide to buy weapons off Russia?

Nah the west pulls plenty of shady, awful crap but that’s just a reason for the west (and everybody else) to try to be better - it shouldn’t be used as an excuse for other countries doing evil shit.

Idk their economy definitely has benefitted from stuff like international shipping (which their “world police” have been essential in protecting) it’s just that they allow their oligarchs to seize most of the profits. Their government definitely didn’t take up the role out of the good of their hearts!

The Americans doing bad shit doesn’t make it alright for China and Russia to do the same bad shit. Is it alright to keep slaves just because the yanks used to do it too? Is torturing and executing prisoners acceptable behaviour to you?

Oh okay so the RoC is an independent country and the PRC is just a rebellious region of the legitimate Chinese government then?

Honestly being vegan with modern farming and food production techniques is pretty easy, especially when compared to being vegan in the past - though if al-Ma’arri managed to live into his 80s while being a disabled, atheistic vegan in the middle east in the late 900s/early 1000s AD then it probably wasn’t exactly impossible!

If you live in a country like the USA you can already buy non-animal dairy! Unfortunately it’s illegal where I live (thanks to the Green party) but a lot of dairy companies think it’s the future as it has a fraction of the environmental impact and none of the cruelty associated with industrial cattle farming.

You gonna demand sanctions for every single country that hunts a wild species that’s classified as “least concern”? I think you’ll struggle to find any countries that don’t pull shit that’s at least as inhumane and environmentally harmful as killing some 100-150 whales per year.

I very intentionally did not say that whaling is good, because it’s not. However, I believe that it is hypocritical to call for the banning of Icelandic whaling without also applying the same zeal to banning other forms of harmful commercial seafood, and that whaling is somewhat used to distract from the harms of more “normal” seafood.

They might be getting Europeanness confused with EU membership - I wonder if they think Switzerland and Norway are part of Europe?

Dog farms are no more unethical than pig farms.

Mink whaling is more responsible and sustainable than a lot of commercial fishing - compare the impacts of hunting a species that’s classified as “least concern” with deep-sea trawling, the hunting of certain endangered species of tuna, or the use of the eggs and/or young spawn of endangered fish as caviar or whitebait!

Whaling definitely needs to go but (non-Antarctic) whaling gets an oversized amount of attention and it’s not unusual for people who are opposed to it to be financially supporting even more destructive forms of kaimoana.

The US government doesn’t believe that international laws apply to them - and they’re kinda correct, nobody has a big enough military to really stand up to them.

From what I’ve heard there’s just been a lot of unpleasant cases here on the south island and there’s been some kind of administrative rearranging that’s led to the guy I know having to identify a few more bodies than usual.

I just kinda liked beehaw when I was first switching to lemmy - was one of the first few people to join the Te Wai Pounamu community when it initially got started a few months back though!

Is the whole Amazon obsession just a North American thing? I’ve bought like 4 things from them in my life and nothing since about 2016 and I haven’t felt at all inconvenienced. From my perspective it’s not too hard to either buy from local companies, directly from foreign manufacturers, or from aliexpress if all else fails; that may just be because I’m not American though!

Since giving waterboarding a go I’ve found myself disgusted by any government that allows the use of waterboarding on anybody - governments that encourage it are even worse, and the way the Americans handled Gitmo is fucking disgraceful.

New Zealand!

Nah, New Zealand. Got plenty in common though - we still share a king and all that!

I used to think that until I tried going without my prescribed cbd oil and I definitely noticed that I was a bit more anxious and had more unwanted side effects from the flower that I’m also prescribed!