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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • cygnus@lemmy.catoWorld News@lemmy.worldSouth Korea President Yoon declares martial law
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    18 hours ago

    Canada invoked the Emergencies Act in 2022 when the national capital was occupied by a convoy of antivaxers who shut down the city for days. There was some debate as to whether it was necessary and there was an inquiry afterward. The main reason for invoking it was to allow the federal government to use law enforcement since the Ottawa municipal police mostly sat on its hands during the whole debacle.




  • Which western country am I going after if I say “free Tibet”?

    It’s been years since I’ve seen or heard anyone say this, but maybe that’s just me. In any case, thanks for bringing it up — anything China-related tends to be controversial here.

    It’s never been about western overexposure or who is culturally dominant in what category, it’s about greed. It’s ALWAYS been about greed. And 700 million dollars for a monument to slavery, cultural obliteration, and toxic patriarchy is extremely greedy.

    If we were talking about the 19th century I’d agree wholeheartedly, but I really don’t think that fits here. N-D was built centuries before France (or anyone else) had ships capable of making it even a fraction of the way to SE Asia. The word “colony” was something used in a historical context while discussing the Greeks; not a government policy. The same goes for slavery, which was extremely uncommon in Europe at that time (but fairly widely practised in Africa and the Middle East). Slavery was only embraced by Europeans during the age of sail and colonisation.

    All that to say, what you’re saying is right in its historical context, but this is not at all that historical context.


  • Exactly; not to minimize what the French did (it was horrible even by colonial standards, although not quite as brutal as the Belgians) but if we went after every former coloniser like LordGimp does, there’d hardly be anyone left. I’ve never seen “anti-colonialist” people talk about expelling Arabs from North Africa, or Turks from Turkey — it’s directed only at western countries, seemingly completely oblivious to the vast tapestry of warfare and abuse perpetrated by others even while Europeans were still living in mud huts.