You’ve shifted from discussing VPNs to hypothetical “higher powers” that aren’t relevant to normal users.
Sure, if you’re a high-value target, a VPN alone won’t protect you. But for everyday use, it still meaningfully reduces who can see your data.
Security isn’t about being invisible, it’s about reducing exposure. Dismissing that because “someone might still know” isn’t analysis, it’s just nihilism.
That’s basically a conspiracy claim with no evidence. Audit firms have reputations to maintain. Their entire business depends on credability. Plus many audits are public. If all audits were controlled by shadow buyers, every industry audit would be meaningless.
Your condom analogy only works if failure is guaranteed. With a reputable VPN, it isn’t. You’re not eliminating trust, you’re choosing a provider with audits, legal accountability, and a track record instead of defaulting to your ISP. That’s not perfect security, but it’s clearly not the same as “a poked hole.”
You’re right about one thing. You still have to trust someone. A VPN doesn’t eliminate trust, it shifts it from your ISP to the provider.
The difference is that reputable VPNs are audited, operate under stricter legal frameworks, and have a business model built on not logging user activity. That’s a very different risk profile than “you can’t trust any of them.”
Think of it like this:
Your ISP is a glass car. A bad VPN is tinted windows. A good audited VPN is an armored vehicle.
A tank could still destroy it, but you’re no longer an easy target.
A lot of people exaggerate what VPNs actually do. They’re not magic, but they’re also not useless. They reduce risk, which is the entire point.
You clearly haven’t done a lot of research then. Lots of VPNs have no logs policies, those VPN providers have been audited, and their claims of no logs hold up.
Take Proton VPN for example. They’re based in Switzerland. According to Swiss law, If you collect data, you must justify it, protect it, and be transparent about it. Proton wouldn’t risk their entire business on the assumption that they won’t be caught lying. Why do you think so many companies set up their headquarters in Switzerland?
Funny. Nord has a bit of a tainted reputation though. I wouldn’t touch them with a 10ft pole.
I still wear a mask too. But mainly for privacy reasons.
I once heard an analogy which is applicable in this situation.
“If people buy drugs from one dealer, and that dealer gets arrested and sent to prison, do all of their former customers just stop buying drugs?”
Self-defense and protecting civilians are not mutually exclusive. That’s literally why the laws of war exist.
I didn’t say you supported deliberately targeting civilians.
My point was that attacking military targets inside heavily populated areas will inevitably kill civilians. That’s why civilian protection is a central principle in international humanitarian law. The rule has to apply universally.
So just to be clear, are civilians legitimate targets as long as they live in the “wrong” country?
We’re working from fundamentally different priors. I don’t think global politics reduces to a single economic contradiction. I’ll leave it there.
In realism, the opposing tendencies are expansion of one state’s power and balancing by others to preserve sovereignty. In institutionalism, it’s integration versus fragmentation. Neither requires framing global politics as capital versus labor.
Calling imperialism the principal contradiction is a theoretical commitment, not an empirical conclusion. Other schools like realism or institutionalism would identify state security competition or balance-of-power dynamics as primary.
Talk about cultural chauvinism.
The implication here is: “You people are detached, soft, and incapable of understanding real war.” That’s not an argument. That’s a moral superiority pose. It frames one group as hardened realists and the other as naïve spectators. Historically, that kind of framing is how conflicts get emotionally escalated. Dehumanization rarely begins with slurs. It begins with sweeping generalizations.
And the irony is thick. You’re accusing me of only conceptualizing civilian deaths, while simultaneously minimizing the reality that modern warfare absolutely does kill civilians. The idea that wars are cleanly fought “between armies” belongs in the 19th century, not the 21st. Civilian harm is a central moral and legal issue in contemporary conflict. That’s not Western fragility. That’s international humanitarian law.
Lenin’s framework is one influential analysis of capitalist imperialism. That doesn’t make it exhaustive. Modern geopolitics also includes state security competition, regional spheres of influence, and non-capitalist power projection.
Imperialism as a concept predates Marxism and isn’t reducible to Lenin’s model. We can debate which framework is more useful, but pretending there’s only one definition isn’t serious.
And what about the innocent people who voted against the fascist government? They deserve to die too?
Depends on your definition. The U.S. fits the definition of “Informal Empire” pretty well, but it’s definitely not an old school empire like Rome or Britain
Some hospitals use AI to scan patients and find signs of illness before it becomes a problem. I’d say that’s a pretty good use of AI.