These are a lot of assertions that you’ve stated as fact without any proof - can you provide independent non-government sanctioned sources for your claims?
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Cake day: December 3rd, 2024
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17·4 months agoOr I’m guessing just people with certain “jeans” will count as “American”?
67·4 months agoSo you consider a state censoring all it’s citizens from discussing certain words and topics to not be authoritarian?
17·4 months agouhm idk who’s not familiar with Thiel but the blueprint of his “utopia” - “The Sovereign Individual” was literally co-written by no other than William Rees-Mogg a conservative house of lords cross-bencher who’s also the father of two other conservative MPs that have served in the UK Parliament.
the 2014 reprint of the book has a foreword by Thiel, where he says that it’s “the most influential book he had read”
so as usual the theoretical frameworks have been drafted in the heart of empire and implemented in the “land of the free”
The article you’ve linked says they’ve forgiven less than 5% of the total amount lended so not sure I’d classify that as “frequent”
Further, the PRC does not require austerity politics or otherwise giving up sovereignty over the recipients economy, they pay for infrastructural development.
I agree this is definitely a good thing but I want to acknowledge they do also directly profit from all this development - they’re not doing it to help others for the socialist ideal but for strategic geopolitical goals
they just fundamentally don’t have the same mechanics that force imperialism in the west, like huge private monopoly and falling rates of profit.
But they still operate in the same system which is why even their renegotiated loans never fall below the 2% inflation rate.
Idk I can understand critical support of China when it comes to challenging western imperialism I just don’t agree with their approach of rejecting egalitarianism and enforcing material inequality as a means to supposedly reach communism
So you’re saying that China didn’t extend or take advantage of western debt traps for their own economic and geopolitical goals?
So
- Sri Lanka desperately needs $1.12 billion to avoid defaulting to Western bondholders
- China provides that cash immediately
- In exchange they get 99-year control of a $1.4 billion strategic asset
- Sri Lanka still owes them the original construction debt
- China now controls 70% of future port profits for a century (or two)
And look I’m not claiming that this crisis wasn’t caused by western imperialism - but calling it a “trade” or “multilateral exchange” when China very obviously took advantage of a country in crisis for almost exclusively their own benefit is disingenuous.
Do you really see no issues with such predatory lending (irrespective of it being done by the IMF or BRI)?
Didn’t Mao do the Cultural Revolution specifically to prevent (not that it was implemented well or that it worked) what he saw the USSR was becoming and wanted to prevent China from following in the same capitalistic footsteps?
As in do you believe the person who said
(2) The imperialist powers have forced China to sign numerous unequal treaties by which they have acquired the right to station land and sea forces and exercise consular jurisdiction in China, [17] and they have carved up the whole country into imperialist spheres of influence. [18]
(3) The imperialist powers have gained control of all the important trading ports in China by these unequal treaties and have marked off areas in many of these ports as concessions under their direct administration.[19] They have also gained control of China’s customs, foreign trade and communications (sea, land, inland water and air). Thus they have been able to dump their goods in China, turn her into a market for their industrial products, and at the same time subordinate her agriculture to their imperialist needs
would approve of the belt and road debt trap or the actual 99 year lease China used to take over the port of Colombo in Sri Lanka ?
Or is it fine to exploit other countries if the people in your country benefit?
Even then you believe they’re socialist when Deng Xiaoping says (and Xi repeats this “common prosperity” rhetoric) that
“Our policy is to let some people and some regions get rich first, in order to drive and help the backward regions, and it is an obligation for the advanced regions to help the backward regions.”
So you recognize the failure of neoliberal “trickle down” economics but refuse to accept that if the same capital accumulation happens in a “socialist” country its suddenly not a problem?
And you really think that Jack Ma and his family won’t fight tooth and nail to keep their private jets and offshore million dollar houses instead of forgoing them voluntarily for the good of the socialist project? please…
5·6 months agoI believe nuanced discourse is very important - especially when it comes to children and their safety.
With that said I can’t help but think this author despite (seemingly) in support of trans people - has written a fair few articles that go against trans inclusion and none for. Again that’s fair and everyone is entitled to their opinion (even when written with the authority of a national paper)
What I find strange however, is the inherit contradictions of the authors overall position.
Let’s take the OP article for example - it argues that blockers and hormones should not be prescribed to children unless there’s a lengthy process to determine if that’s the best course of action - which may or may not be valid. However, in another article the same author also argues “Every spot taken by someone with a male athletic advantage is an opportunity closed to a female rival.” and again platforming “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete” - which on their own seem sensible but when you put both positions together the argument becomes “kids shouldn’t transition and adults that have gone through agab puberty shouldn’t play competitive sports therefore trans people just shouldn’t be in sports period” - which I feel is a much harder position to defend on it’s own (something something motte and bailey)
I guess I’m saying that yes we should have nuanced discourse but maybe your best messengers for this discourse shouldn’t also be saying “In this climate, who would challenge someone with a beard exposing their penis in a women’s changing room?”
262·8 months agoI hadn’t noticed how pro-cop some feddit.org users are but a cursory glance at people taking police reporting at face value and then openly defending cops punching people in the face with “it’s out of context” reasoning is just surreal.
It reeks to me of living in a bubble your whole life and never having experienced police repression - so your only response is “it can’t be the police, they’ve never done anything against me, it must be the protestors that are wrong”
Usually I’m one that hates leftist infighting but defacto trying to suppress a genocide because the “law says so” is rather weak. Still I totally understand wanting to protect yourself from repression but surely if you cared about both justice and your well being you would just hand over the community to someone else? Unless of course you actually agree with the “law”…
btw the top 10% is 800 million people so if you’re from the west you’re more than likely part of that figure.
doesn’t mean it’s your fault but if you’re not actively doing something to prevent it then you are part of the problem…
Surely no conflict of interest from a blog that sells a Bluesky powertool…
Also did the Turkish government hack Bluesky’s email systems and send people emails notifying them their accounts were restricted in Turkiey or is this also “Bluesky not cooperating with Erdogan the way other platforms have.”?
idk i think our incentive should be to cure diseases with public funding and make people healthy instead of for profit but what do i know
You mean the ban defined by the International* (Norwegian) Holocaust Remembrance Alliance? The IHRA that defended Norway’s commemoration of the nazi Knut Hamsun? The same IHRA that defines antisemitism as “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”?
Though I’m guessing you mean specifically “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
Which I thought I made pretty clear with the parallel between apartheid South Africa and apartheid Israel - just as I believe the colonial state of the US has no right to exist - so I believe that the colonial state of Israel has no right to exist either.
So when I hear people chant “From the river to the sea” - I (and solidarity scholars) don’t see that as a call to violence against Jewish people - but as a reclamation of a slogan originally conjured up by Zionists for the equal rights of everyone in the Levant independent of their religion.
Right so you would have upheld and supported the 1982 Internal Security Acts in apartheid South Africa that outlawed chants like Mayibuye iAfrika because you “respect the law”
Thanks for telling on yourself.
Valid, those sources do paint a pretty appalling picture of Ukraine and it’s massive Neo-Nazi problem - I can argue on the specific numbers as they don’t fully reflect what you said but I agree that there are real issues with Azov’s integration, Bandera glorification, and the disproportionate far-right influence.
However, I’d ask you to also acknowledge that Russia has an equally serious neo-Nazi problem that fundamentally undermines the “denazification” justification for the invasion. And I don’t think it’s whataboutism to pointing out that the stated moral basis for the war is hypocritical. And this is clearly established by both Russian state and independent media:
1.Putin himself admitted Wagner PMC was fully state-funded:
2.Wagner’s neo-Nazi leadership:
3.“Rusich” leader Aleksey Milchakov - is an openly psychopathic Nazi:
4.Neo-Nazi Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) founder Denis Gariyev received at least 15 million rubles worth of government contracts from Russia’s FSB, FSO, and Ministry of Internal Affairs
5.Putin’s contradictions:
So my point overall: Ukraine absolutely has a far-right problem that needs addressing and the US and Europe are propping them up as they align with their neoliberal and geopolitical values. But Russia claiming to “denazify” Ukraine while:
…makes “denazification” a cynical propaganda justification rather than a genuine moral concern.
So I think if we’re serious about being anti-imperialist we have to recognize that if it’s bad for neolibs to use Nazis in Ukraine for their imperial interests then it’s also bad for Russia to use Nazis for their own imperialist goals.
It’s possible for two imperialist forces to be bad - and you can then start comparing which is worse but at that point you’re doing imperialist apologia which imo isn’t a serious critique for a socialist to be doing.