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Cake day: October 5th, 2023

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  • By the widely recognized origin of the word (the Soviet Union rolling in tanks to suppress revolution in Hungary) and what it means (people in support of that use of force and tanks to suppress civilian revolution), supporters of Israel and the US are both “tankies.” Glad we agree, good talk!

    Let me be a bit more clear:

    By the widely recognized origin of the word

    Edit: maybe I wasn’t clear enough

    widely recognized origin






  • The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising.

    This is why people don’t cite Wikipedia.





  • Have you seen the blood streaks that tank tracks create? You can look at some of the videos in Gaza if you want to.

    Try again, maybe this time with actual evidence instead of unfounded conjecture.

    Edit: To clarify, I don’t think anybody is denying that people were hurt and killed on 6/4. Let’s make that clear. If anything, the Tank Man video shows that tank drivers were under orders to avoid civilian casualties.




  • The same 6 million Tibetans living in Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan? Those Tibetans? The same Tibetans who are the ethnic majority in TAR and make up a significant proportion of the population of Qinghai?

    Oh, you meant the Central Tibetan Administration, which nets about 100 people a year leaving China. The same one that’s seeing people return to China because the economic prospects elsewhere are worse.

    Edit: the TAR, which is governed by Losang Jamcan as Congress Chairman, Yan Jinhai as Government Chairman, and Pagbalha Geleg Namgyai as CPPCC Chairman… All Tibetan. The Tibetan deputies to the National People’s Congress… Also Tibetan. Life expectancy increased from 36yo to 72yo. GDP/capita and disposable income/capita growing rapidly YoY. Billions of dollars in infrastructure investment, including the Lhasa HSR. Interesting strategy for a genocide, that’s for sure.



  • For what it’s worth, there’s still no evidence that Chinese tanks actually killed anyone on 6/4. No journalists on the ground found any indication of a mass casualty event on Tiananmen Square, which directly contradicts the claims made by protestors that there was. The same cannot be said for Soviet tanks in Hungary or Israeli tanks in Gaza, where civilian causalities are rather well-documented.




  • That’s fair, but I think it loses the distinction between different transliteration strategies. For example, phonetic transliteration preserves far more of the original language than other methods. Transliteration is a necessary component of language: most common languages lack glottal stops and clicks, but it’s still important to be able to refer to places that are named with glottal stops and clicks.

    In that regard, the TAR has always been referred to as Xizang in Chinese because the TAR covers the Ü-Tsang region. The lands of greater Tibet from the peak of the Tibetan Empire are now parts of Qinghai, Sichuan, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Kashmir. The unified region of greater Tibet has, in recent history, always been དབུས (Ü) and གཙང་ (Tsang). This is pronounced ue-tsang according to Tibetan Pinyin (phonetic transcription) and Xizang according to transliteration - running through the possibilities, I’m struggling to find an exonym in Mandarin that would be closer in pronunciation.

    The traditional name of the region is བོད་ (Bhö). The name Tibet is itself an import from the English. Given the degree of funding the Tibetan government-in-exile receives from the US (an English-speaking country), I’d suggest that the Tibetan government-in-exile has a strong financial incentive for maintaining English…


  • The legitimate government of Tibet… According to who? Even the British (who had just finished shipping opium to China, looting Chinese palaces, and had every reason to antagonize the Chinese) didn’t recognize the independence of Tibet.

    Regardless, this is the same Tibetan government that supported a caste system and ethnic discrimination, right? That Tibetan government? The same one whose leader has been called out by American media for being a pedophile?


  • Bringing up Tiananmen when there are documented instances (with actual evidence) of people getting run over by Israeli tanks and bulldozers in Gaza right now. Backed by the US government. With the US President actively spreading FUD about the scale and extent of atrocities. Nice.

    Xizang is literally the phonetic transliteration for the region of the TAR. You’re basically saying that we should keep the name Western colonialists gave a territory because Western brains would get hurt if the name changed.