I have no horse in the colonial race.

But you do, your post history is entirely pro China. Each article you’ve chosen is limited in scope, looks at only small details; whereas I’m coming at this from a contextual point of view. Why are you trying to pretend you haven’t cherry picked your references to suit your political leanings? It’s baffling.

Also, Marxist-Leninist fits, thanks for your honesty. I’m with Lenin, up until he calls for a continuous revolution against all political opponents: that’s the point at which a righteous revolution turns into tyranny.

From my point of view, colonialism regardless of the flavour of it, serves only to impoverish and destroy the lives of a large number of working people. Its the opposite of what true communism should look like.

Despite this, I actually gave China a tiny bit more credit because at least they’re building infrastructure, the USA wouldn’t have done that historically. Even if that infrastructure is a debt slavery trap.

You’re welcome to think of me as loving the USA though. From where I’m sitting tonight that’s given me such a chuckle.

All your links are media arms of the Chinese government.

All of your points are quite literally Chinese governmental talking points with no nuance and no analysis from any point of view that isn’t pro-China.

And you call my post projection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative

Much like America’s more usual approach, it’s softer colonialism than what the Brits did.

The difference this time around though is the building of infrastructure. America didn’t do as much of that during its rise or prime. That said, it’s often just another way to get the nation indebted to China, it’s not like they’re building the projects for free and often enough the debt is more than the country in question’s economy can handle.

Colonialism is colonialism afterall.

This method is built on political manoeuvring behind the scenes through intelligence assets and corruption with infrastructural incentives masking debt slavery out in the open.

Here’s the list you asked for:

Angola, DRC, Zambia, Sudan, Mozambique, Gabon, Ethiopia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Pakistan Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Iraq and Iran.

Agreed. Although with the caveat that, had there been more stringent regulations surrounding misinformation and manipulation in political and media discourse for the UK, Brexit would never have been able to occur. Leave got there (and only just) through a multitude of lies and emotional manipulation.

Direct democracy is the ideal end goal of any democratic system. But for it to work, people need to be educated, healthy, stable, and both interested and invested in the political process.

We’ve a lot of ground to cover between then and now.

Never encountered fake pot until Covid.

For some reason the increase in demand meant that the streets became filled with synthetic cannabinoid sprayed weed, pesticide sprayed weed and other adulterated products.

It definitely happened before, but it happens much more frequently now than it ever had in the past.

It happens for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. Whether thats to increase the grow weigh, the intensity of the high, the ability to spray it with synthetics after washing it for the real THC or the cheapness of spraying the plants with pesticides for bugs: all of it is to make more money without caring about the consumer.

Legalise it, regulate it, health and safety it.

Hello friend. I was also in your position not so long ago and really feel for you so much. But have hope. There is light at the end of the tunnel youre in, and you’ve taken the first and hardest step in admitting to yourself that it’s a problem. Seriously well done.

There are two things I would suggest you consider if you feel you have the energy to start to tackle this:

The first is that, I believe current methods of getting “clean” and “sober” are inconsistent in their outcomes for a reason.

Whilst total sobriety works for some people, it is my belief and experience, that going completely cold turkey and abstaining from a social and common drug like weed forever, is the hardest route forward long term. I have observed that for those that choose this path, they will always to some degree, feel the pull towards that drug regardless of the length of time they’ve abstained. It will be a constant battle for the rest of their life. To some degree this is sobriety on a knifes edge.

I saw this in the midst of my addiction and decided this wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a new relationship with my drug of choice. One where I challenged every unhealthy behaviour I’d developed with it. One where I gained control back piece by piece. One where I rewired my brain so much that I could say yes or no depending on the context and reasoning occurring inside.

And so that’s what I did. I started by weaning myself off by working out how much I smoked and choosing to weigh that amount at the start of every day. I’d then decrease this little by little every day, getting used to the feeling and effects of taking that control and running out at the end of each day. This forced my front brain to take charge amdnstart to plan where I’d have this limited amount.

Over two months I eventually whittled it down to one joint a day. It wasn’t without slip ups, but it was important that I accepted these, and instead of criticising myself, got straight back on the horse.

Once I made the jump to zero, I felt it important to give myself a length of time entirely off of it. To deal with the effects of withdrawal, such as night sweats, nightmares, vivid dreams etc.

Then once that period of time, for me six months, had elapsed, I made a list of all the unhealthy behaviours that I had built up over the years with weed. And reintroduced the weed with those in mind, challenging them each individually. This ranged from being able to say no to it when being social, to stopping at a certain point of the evening (one and done etc), to preplanning when I’d order it so that I was free and available to waste that time, so it didn’t impact my life.

For you this will be unique to your addiction.

I can now happily say I’m at a point where 80% of my addictive behaviours are dealt with. Where I am in control and weed is no longer my mistress. The balance has swung in my favour. But I still have some work to do :).

Secondly, I would advise you examine the reasons why you may have been attracted to weed in the first place.

The route cause of your issues will vary depending on your own individual history. But for me things like childhood trauma, ADHD and health issues formed the core parts of my need to use weed as a means to hide from the adult world.

Tackling these greatly helped alleviate the gut feeling of needing weed as a means to cope. Now it forms a part of my social life, as a means to accentuate and elevate a night, or a day at home, rather than a means to close off and hide.

I hope you find this helpful and I wish you the best of luck moving forward friend. Should you choose to go down this path, know that regardless of the slip ups, you’ve got this. As long as you can be gentle with yourself, you can always come back to it.

Peace and love :)