Youtube comments of Awesome Avenger (@awesomeavenger2810).
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"His policies lifted millions out of abject poverty and misery. He represented a break from years of corrupt regimes with often dire human rights records. His achievements were won in the face of an attempted military coup, an aggressively hostile media, and bitter foreign critics." -Owen Jones pays tribute to Hugo Chávez and the socialist economic miracle he brought about in Venezuela [Independent 6 March 2013]
Before being elected president, Hugo Chávez first attempted to take power by military coup in 1992.
In 2008, Human Rights Watch accused Chávez and his administration of engaging in discrimination on political grounds, eroding the independence of the judiciary, and of engaging in ''policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression, workers' freedom of association, and civil society's ability to promote human rights in Venezuela''. Chávez kicked them out of the country.
Despite being oil rich, the disastrous policies of the socialist government (praised by both Owen Jones and Jeremy Corbyn) have led to desperate food shortages, a crises in health care, and a serious shortage of other basic supplies. This has led to food riots on the streets, and what is known as the “Maduro Diet”.
The Venezuelan health minister, Anotnieta Caporale, was recently sacked because she released a report on the 30% increase in infant mortality and the staggering 65% rise in women dying in childbirth since the last time the government compiled data.
So, having lied about the Chávez regimes' human rights record, praised the complete destruction of the Venezuelan economy, ignored the arrest of opposition leaders, and helped whitewash the Chávez governments' crackdown on opposition media, Owen Jones would now very much like you to vote for another 'anti-imperialist' socialist fuckwit.
So you too can benefit from a complete breakdown in society just like our comrades in Venezuela.
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The far right in the UK are a joke. Always have been. I'm way more concerned about the rise of the far left. With populists like George Galloway, Ken Livingstone, and Jeremy Corbyn. They play identity politics to the extreme. Have made alliances with Islamist extremists. Normalised anti-Semitism. And aren't afraid to use violence and intimidation when it suits their cause.
Unlike the far left, its easy to see the far right for what it is. Afraid and resentful, they are too unimaginative to be deceitful. However, the far left are very different. They are much more subtle about how they go about things. As they have been throughout history. For example, the 'Stop the War Coalition' was basically a front for the Socialists Worker's Party. Members of its leadership are fanatically pro the Iranian regime. And anti-NATO. They also form other front organisations with 'anti-fascist' sounding names in order to appear like the good guys. As well as being anti-NATO, they are anti the US, pro-Putin, anti-EU, supporters and apologists for the worst of tyrants, and as far back as the second world war (when, for example, the British Communist Party actively worked against the war effort-until soviet Russia was invaded) have always made common cause with the UK's enemies.
There is actually little difference between the far left and the far right when it comes to politics. There never has been. They are both isolationist. Both passive when it comes to defending the interests of the UK. Both anti 'globalisation' (and, of course, anti TTIP). Both ant-Semitic. Both sympathetic to the UK's enemies (whether they be Islamists, the IRA, the ayatollahs, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Castro, or Vladimir Putin). Both contemptuous of liberal democracy. And both vindictive, hateful, and intolerant of anyone who disagrees.
Jeremy Corbyn is now the leader of the Labour Party. He is all those things. And worse.
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The way I see it, Islam's main problem is that unlike Jesus, Mohammed actually existed. And unlike Jesus, Mohammed not only claimed spiritual authority, but also earthly authority.
Jesus is an anti-establishment figure. He never held earthly power. He was the rebel. The opposition without power. And the advantage of being in opposition is that you have no responsibilities. Therefore, you can criticize, but as you have no responsibilities, you can't be blamed for anything.
By contrast, Mohammed had a great many responsibilities. He was a leader of people and, like all leaders, he had to make decisions based on compromise. He, like all leaders, had to act hypocritically. And there is the problem. How do you justify hypocrisy in man so perfect?
You basically have two options. You can yourself (if you are Muslim) be hypocritical about your faith, and condemn Mohammed's bad and less than holy actions, while at the same time holding him up as perfect. Or, you can justify his bad actions as being moral, as, being perfect, Mohammed can be without fault.
Seems to me that Islam and Muslim's need more hypocrisy (in the good sense) in their beliefs. After all, Christianity has had to learn hypocrisy regarding the old testament. When people stop justifying immoral and wicked acts on the basis of their supposed divinity, and instead bury those embarrassing parts of their religious texts away out of sight, then you get progress in religion.
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The whole concept of a 'hate crime' is ridiculous. A victim of a physical attack isnt any worse off because it was a 'hate crime', than any other victim of a physical attack. The attack was carried out with malice either way. Only when it comes to 'hate crimes', one victim is elevated above another because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc).
The problem with that is there are countless other reasons for hating people (age, class, education, wealth, politics, etc). And if you're logical, those too must be labelled hate crimes. Otherwise we're going to end up with people like Laurie Perry deciding who is more of a victim than who, based on her own personal prejudices. And they are many.
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I remember how, because of these few cartoons, Denmark's years of nazi occupation was picked over in the media. There had been Danish nazi collaborators during the war, we were told. And these cartoons somehow proved that there was still a stubborn strain of fascism running thro Danish society.
The credit for the cartoon 'controversy' was down to three reactionary imams, who Denmark had offered asylum. In Dec 2005 - two months after the cartoons were published, the three went to an Arab league meeting in Egypt. They carried with them a 43 page dossier which included the cartoons along with 3 other unconnected images supposedly of Mohammed (one of a man wearing a plastic pig mask and one of a praying man being sodomised by a dog). The imams claimed this was proof of the hateful anti-muslim atmosphere within Denmark. The country that had offered them asylum.
There were riots in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Lahore, and Libya, where some 139 people died. Western embassies and businesses were attacked and boycotted.
In France and other European countries newspapers published the cartoons as a gesture of solidarity. But in the UK, the media refused to do so. Out of 'respect' for Islam. This was very strange. Because in the UK the media has no such problems with ridiculing and disrespecting Christianity, their own 'mainstream' religion. Channel 4 even ran a debate with a live audience. And the question was asked, should channel 4 show the cartoons? The audience voted yes. But channel 4 refused to do so.
Altho the media talked of 'showing respect', we all knew the real reason why they had refused to show a handful of cartoons of a 7th century prophet. Fear. Since then we have had a new word introduced into the English language: Islamophobia. But the media has a problem. A phobia is an irrational fear of something. So were the media who were lecturing us about this irrational fear of Islam being Islamophobic themselves when they refused to show the cartoons? After all, either they had a rational fear of the repercussions of doing so. Or their fear was misplaced. In which case they themselves were being 'Islamophobic'.
Then in 2010 we had the American pastor, Terry Jones, who threatened to burn a copy of the quran. And the humiliating spectacle of western leaders practically grovelling on their knees for him not to go thro with it. We even had supposedly liberal commentators questioning why the local authorities couldn't just arrest him. For what? Is Islam really that dangerous an ideology? Is the bar really set that low? If so, don't we have a right to be concerned?
If we are to accept Islam into the west, then it no longer becomes just the concern of foreign cultures. It becomes part of our culture. And just like any other belief or ideology we live amongst, it becomes our right to ridicule, criticise, dislike, and hate it. But not just our right. Our duty too. Because whether we like it or not, Islam is part of our future now.
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Falling living standards would, of course, have much to do with spending cuts. But thats as far as some people are prepared to go. They won't attempt to recognise the massive debt the country is in. £39 billion a year wasted on debt interest repayments - thats more than the housing and environment budget combined. And something like a quarter of the entire NHS budget. So when people complain about the lack of affordable housing, they should know why.
And mass immigration impacts on the poorest of society. They end up competing with immigrants for cheap housing. And social housing. And often find themselves undercut when it comes to wages. While the middle class Guardian types see mass immigration in terms of how much less it will cost them to order a latte at Starbucks. Or how much cheaper they can get their bins emptied.
Immigrants from poor parts of the EU move to the UK to make a better life for themselves. So when they get here they start off on the bottom rung of the ladder. But they bring with them a work ethic that comes with leaving your home country and having to learn a different language. They end up living in poor areas. That's who that lady who had apparently never heard of Brexit, and people like her, people with mental health problems, drug problems, end up competing with. And they can't.
Very few people blame immigrants for falling living standards. They blame immigration policy. 300,000 extra people coming into the country every year is bound to have an impact. And its not just on local cuisine. But on things like services, the same services that poorer people rely on, more than the comfortably off.
And you can argue that public services need to be better funded, but then that takes us right back to square one again - National debt. The money isn't there.
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The Moro Islamic Liberation Front was a terrorist group funded by Gaddafi. So no surprise that he ended up in Libya. As Chanel 4 news decided not to go into their activities I thought I'd include this bit of information:
'...In March 2007, the Philippine government offered to recognize the right of self-determination for the Moro people which it had never done in three decades of conflict. However, on July 12, 2007, Islamic militants in Basilan in the southern Philippines killed 14 marines, beheading 11 of them, while nine other marines were wounded and about four fighters were killed. The fighting took place as the marines were searching for a kidnapped Italian priest, Giancarlo Bossi, on June 10, 2007.' Wikipedia.
I don't know about anyone else, but I hope Pepsi 'the queen of the Calais Jungle' never steps foot on UK soil. Perhaps the French might like to deport him to Italy, so the Italians could ask him a few questions? Either way, I could not give a shit what happens to him.
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Gordon Paterson ''...they never asked the locals what they saw or heard'' Yes they did. The Joint Investigation Team, made up of the Netherlands, Belgium, Ukraine, Australia, and Malaysia, carried out a full investigation. During the investigation, the JIT interviewed 200 witnesses, collected half a million photos and videos and analysed 150,000 intercepted phone calls.
No one disputes MH17 was shot down by a surface to air missile. Even the Russians quietly dropped their '2 fighter jets' fantasy. As for why no one has been prosecuted, ask Putin. When the Netherlands, supported by the other JIT members, attempted to set up a UN international tribunal to prosecute those responsible, Russia vetoed it.
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North Korea regularly attacks and threatens its neighbours. This includes sinking south Korean warships, shelling inside South Korea, firing missiles into Japanese airspace, kidnapping foreign citizens, all while threatening nuclear obliteration at least once every 4 months. So where does this strange idea that North Korea fears for its survival come from?
It is more likely that North Korea wants everyone to believe that it fears being attacked. After all, it regularly holds military war games of its own. And if the South demanded it stop, would regard that as an unacceptable attack on its national sovereignty. It wants nukes and the ability to threaten, blackmail, and intimidate its neighbours, because it wants aid and credit. And that's the only way it can get it.
So the very last thing the North Korean regime wants is to be left alone to mind its own business. Because it wouldn't survive. It needs aid from the South, Japan, the US, China, and the rest of the world. And the only way to get that is through blackmail.
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Before the western invasion of Afghanistan, the Red Cross predicted hundreds of thousands of Afghan's would flee the country. In reality, once the Taliban were removed from power, hundreds of thousands of Afghans actually returned to Afghanistan.
'After the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001, over 5 million Afghans were repatriated through the UNHCR from Pakistan and Iran to Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans began returning to Afghanistan in recent years. According to the United Nations, by the end of 2016 about 600,000 documented and undocumented Afghans were repatriated from Pakistan. According to the IOM, the return of undocumented Afghan refugees from Pakistan in 2016 were more than twice the number of 2015, increased by 108 per cent from 2015 (around 248,054 versus 119,279). The remaining registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan numbers around 1.3 million. In the same year, UNHCR reported that 951,142 Afghans were living in Iran. Most of them were born and raised in Pakistan and Iran in the last three and a half decades but are still considered citizens of Afghanistan' - Wiki
Cynicism about western involvement might be popular amongst some in the west, but the Afghans are voting with their feet!
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If the question of a second referendum was genuinely about giving people a say on how the UK leaves the EU, and not simply an attempt to overturn the result of the first referendum, then it certainly wouldn't include an option to remain. Which is exactly what the remain campaign are demanding.
The damage the remain campaign are doing to the unity of the country, not to mention the democratic consensus, will not be undone by a second vote, or a third, or a forth. Because if you set a precedent whereby you reject the democratic process simply because it returns a result you dont like, others will follow. If the remain campaign won a second referendum, how would they argue the result is any more legitimate than the first, when, inevitably, the leave campaign reject the result and call for a third referendum? What reasoning will the remain campaign use to explain away why their commitment to listening to the people inevitably only goes so far as them getting the result they want and no further?
A true commitment to democracy does not extend only so far as to you getting your way. The whole system breaks down if votes can be ignored. And more importantly, if the remain campaign are prepared to ignore a vote when it goes against them once, what guarantees do we have they will not do so a second time, or as many times as it takes for them to get their desired result?
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Besides, Timothy Snyder is a historian. Not an economist. Nothing he said in this interview is factual. It is only opinion. Or at best half-truths. And there are plenty of historians who would disagree with his logic.
For example, his argument is that the 'fascist handbook' advocates the use of simple slogans. This is true. All extremist ideologies advocate simplistic slogans to complicated issues.
But what he doesn't mention is that moderate mainstream political parties do exactly the same. And have always done so. He acts as if the phrase 'on message' doesnt exist. As if political sloganizing is unknown.
What is 'For the many, not the few'? if not a simplistic slogan? How about 'Bollox to Brexit'? Go on any Extinction Rebellion march and you'll hear plenty of simplistic sloganizing.
This doesn't mean that simplistic political sloganizing does no damage to political discourse. I believe it does. But that is not his argument. His argument is that using simplistic slogans is essentially fascistic. And that only fascists do this. His evidence for this is that a fascist handbook advocates for its use. Then he mentions Brexit.
Thats very dishonest.
Worse, after having clearly defined Brexit as a fascist endeavour, he then goes on to talk about the fascist tendency to create a 'Them' and an 'Us'. Once again, this is true. But apart from the fact that all mainstream moderate parties drive an In Group/Out Group mentality in politics, the very fact that his own bias has led him to already label Brexit as the 'Them', and to then label them as fascists, makes his logic extremely hypocritical.
It truly is one man's bias desperation in attempting to explain that, while the present government and those who support Brexit do not sound like fascists, do not act like fascists, and do not do fascist things, they are in fact fascists.
But by that reasoning so are every other political party in the UK.
So its basically just a continuation of project hate. The worst example of academic gaslighting I have seen so far. And history will not be kind to people like him.
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Marx was an extremely arrogant man (as you would have to be to want to remake society to suit your vision of a utopia). He was also very stupid. The most basic freedom a man can have is the right to profit from his own labour. Marxism removes that right. The individual is subservient to the state, rather than the state serving the individual. And as all things are justifiable for the good of the state, all injustices against the individual by the state are justifiable.
Which why every communist state has always been (and will always be) an authoritarian shithole.
Marx correctly recognised the danger of allowing too much power to get into the hands of the wealthy 'boss class' (no big accomplishment, as better men than him had recognised this long before him). But his answer to that age old problem was focus power into the hands of an even smaller elite: The political class. Those who run the state.
Now, under Marxism, as well as running government, making the laws you must live by, setting economic and foreign policy etc, the political class employ you, sets your wages, tells you where to live, tells you what you can read, what entertainment you can watch, and what news you get to hear. What could go wrong, right?
Obviously, Marx couldn't just come out and say that. It's basically authoritarianism, and he had to sell his idea, after all. So he simply rebranded the Marxist State as 'The People'. Job done! And this little trick has allowed Marxists to claim they are the will of the people, even as they work to undermine democracy around the world, as they always have done.
But if they don't recognise the will of the people in a democratic system, then at what point do we think they'll recognise it once they're in power? That's why it's better to watch what Marxists do, rather than listening to what they say they'll do.
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''...This article says that 'queer theory' must stop stereotyping fat people. Even Professor Lauren Berlant does it in her critical essay about neoliberalism, Cruel Optimism! Fat people have been stereotyped. And its about time we stop doing that. Like those 'for and after' pictures of fat people. Or even Professor Berlant's own work when she uses the words 'a congealed form of history that hurts' [fat congeals]. The article instead highlights the often ignored work on the subject of fatness by [academic, author, essayist, critic, poet] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Using Sedgwick's poem The Use of being Fat, this article argues the case for fatness. Leaving 'queer theory' with two questions...''
At about this point I realised I was wasting my life. And ceased to be interested in what the article, or the write up of the article, had to say.
This is a disastrous failure of both the write up of the article, and the article itself. Because if your whole career is based on ideas, then, in order to spread those ideas (which presumably you wish to do), you need to make those ideas easily understood. As there is no point being in the 'marketplace of ideas' if you don't intend to sell your wares (as would be the case in the real world).
But these are not ideas that the authors wish to sell. Outlining the basics of an idea should be of paramount importance. But instead we have deliberately incomprehensible (and grammatically bogus) writing. Designed to appeal only to (and be read by) an inducted elite.
There are only two reasons why someone would write as badly as this. 1) They wish to appear cleverer than they actually are. Or 2) They wish to disguise the fact that, despite all the work involved (and tax dollars received), they have very little to say.
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Nesrine Malik clearly hasn't watched much Guardian content. As the aim of the 'progressive' (radical) left is well known. It is to appropriate a legitimate social concern, then use it as a shield to further their own political agenda. It enables them to call those who disagree with them 'racist', 'homophobe', 'xenophobe', 'transphobe', 'Islamophobe', or 'misogynist'.
Yanis Varoufakis, the ex-Greek finance minister, is a classic example of this. As a committed leftist he became secretary of the Black Students Alliance while studying in the UK. He justified this by saying that, according to his PhD supervisor Monojit Chatterjee, "...black was a political term and, as a Greek, on the grounds of ethnicity he had as much reason to be there as anyone else."
If skin colour is political, then you can't argue against that politics without being branded a racist.
Another example was the supposed BLM demonstration at Heathrow Airport. The idea that the politics of airport expansion should be 'racialized' is ludicrous. But that is exactly what they did. And for a very good reason.
The objective of the radical left has always been to create division within society. Class warfare is now dead and buried. So they must switch their focus to other subsections of society in order to gain power. The aim is not to solve the problem. But to make it worse. By doing so they steadily build up influence and authority. Without ever having to seek a democratic mandate to do so. Until finally they are forcing university professors to undergo compulsory political education.
But if one person's skin colour is political, or their gender, or their sexuality. Then all peoples skin colour, gender, and sexuality, are political. Do we really want to live in a world like that?
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And those oligarchs are now the billionaires who support Putin. Or what do you think Putin would have done differently? Would he have continued with the communist system? The communist system was the reason why the Russian economy collapsed!
According to the IMF, World Bank, and the Central Intelligence Agency, Russia comes below Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic in GDP per Capita. All those nations suffered under Russian occupation for decades after the war. But all are now democratic. Unlike Russia. And unlike Russia, their economies are not dependent on energy sales.
The Arab Spring began in Tunisia. An Ally of the west. There it was a success. It spread to Egypt. An ally of the west. Not so successful. If the West plotted to bring down governments, why do it in allied nations? In fact, it was only once the Arab Spring happened in non Western allied nations that war was the result.
In Libya, Gaddafi was desperate to hang on to power. And was prepared to see his nation burn. The same is happening in Syria today. And what is your answer there? To support Assad's regime? The war has gone on for over six years now. Rather than shortening the war as Western intervention undoubtedly did in Libya, Russia has prolonged the war. And the death and destruction far exceeds anything in Libya. By contrast, Libya is in a far better position.
You can argue your case with Libya's GDP. But somehow I doubt that those who took up the fight to remove Gaddafi's terrorist regime would take much notice of you.
You could, I guess claim that all those Libyans were, in fact, NATO and CIA operatives in disguise. But that's hardly credible. Whichever way you look at it, Libyans wanted rid of Gaddafi and the only viable way was the use of force. But then that's what happens when you live in a dictatorship.
Perhaps you should tell us about the thousands more who have died in Syria by Russian airstrikes. And for what? Another forty years of blood-drenched Assad dictatorship? Is that all you have to offer? More corruption, brutal oppression, and injustice?
THERE IS YOUR DICTATORSHIP. That is what Russia is fighting for.
And I'm sure you live in the US. For some reason, Putin's most vocal fans are all desperately keen to tell us how they live in the west. And not Russia.
Putin's regime is built on lies. It's rotten from the bottom up. You talk of Saudi Arabia, but Russia has not one single ally that is democratic. Even its closest European neighbours want nothing to do with it. Because whereas you might not agree with fighting for political freedom, even fewer people agree with bombing the shit out of Syria for a mass murdering despot like Assad.
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It's funny that you should blame western sanctions for Russia's apparent economic stagnation. Because Russian counter sanctions were designed to harm the west in retaliation. And yet those Eastern European countries, such as Poland and the Baltics, who have far closer trade links to Russia than the rest of Europe, still out perform Russia economically!
You ask who was to blame for the war in Libya. Gaddafi. He was in charge. He was dictator. Perhaps he should've stepped down when his people demanded it? After all, what do you think would have happened in Tunisia if Ben Ali had refused to step down?
And are you seriously claiming that Libya is worse off than Syria?
Gaddafi had to rely on foreign mercenaries to fight his own people. Rather like Assad has to rely on Russians to bomb his own people. But obviously, when Russia is involved and its propping up its mass murdering puppet dictator, the excuse is ''Of course civilian casualties will happen''.
Six years and Russia has done nothing in Syria, but make itself a laughing stock by sailing its antiquated carrier into the Mediterranean, crashing a few of its jets, then dragging it back home again.
And whereas the West may have gone to war against the taliban, saddam, and Gaddafi, who does Russia go to war against? Ukraine (a democracy), Georgia (a democracy). While at the same time making war in Chechnya (for a second time-and to install a puppet dictator) and Syria (to prop up a puppet dictator). And those are only Putin's wars.
And we can all put in quotes from the Guardian:
''Russia has been directly and repeatedly accused of war crimes at the UN security council in an unusually blunt session, as hopes of any form of ceasefire were flattened by the scale and ferocity of the Syrian regime’s assault on eastern Aleppo.''
''The war crimes accusations centred on the widespread use of bunker-busting and incendiary bombs on the 275,000 civilians living in the rebel-held east of the city, weapons that Moscow’s accusers say were dropped by Russian aircraft. “
''Bunker-busting bombs, more suited to destroying military installations, are now destroying homes, decimating bomb shelters, crippling, maiming, killing dozens, if not hundreds,” Matthew Rycroft, the UK ambassador to the UN, said during the emergency security council session on Syria on Sunday.“Incendiary munitions, indiscriminate in their reach, are being dropped on to civilian areas so that, yet again, Aleppo is burning. And to cap it all, water supplies, so vital to millions, are now being targeted, depriving water to those most in need. In short, it is difficult to deny that Russia is partnering with the Syrian regime to carry out war crimes.”''
-September 2016
Don't hear any concern from KGB Colonel Putin over his, or Assad's, actions in Syria!
But then I guess war is ok when Russia is propping up one of its mass murdering puppet dictators. It's just not ok when its about taking out mass murdering dictators!
Let's be honest here. You're trolling for Putin. I'm still waiting for you to tell me you're ex US military. And to copy paste that notorious Russian Troll list of American wars since 1945!
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Charlie Milroy If the EU fails completely, then it will be because it doesn't have the support of those who it supposedly represents. Remember that when the UK joined a common market, there was no talk of a single currency, an EU army, open boarders, or the EU dictating policy to member states.
I'm all for globalisation. But I still support Brexit, as the EU doesn't much represent globalisation. It has spent ten years trying to come up with a trade deal with the US (the UK's biggest single trading partner). How is that globalisation? You mean 'Europisation' if you mean anything. As the EU is a closed market. Not a global market.
The EU is simply heading in a direction that the majority in the UK disagree with. Ever Closer Union. And as has already been pointed out here, arrogantly ignored those concerns. It offered nothing. Even going so far as to snub the UK's democratically elected prime minister when he was desperate to do a deal.
Well, there are consequences to behaving like that. If the concerns of 60 odd million people are going to be treated with that much contempt, what do you expect?
If the EU is so ridged and inflexible, then it offers only two choices. Remain or leave. And the UK voted to leave. So I would say, it better get its act together fast before it falls apart completely. Because in a democracy, its the electorate that ultimately decides which direction it wants to go. Not the political elites.
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She has no intention of fixing the world. She would run a mile if anyone came up to her and said ''Ok, Jennifer, we have a slight problem with North Korea, any ideas?'' Because it's always easier to make vacuous statements about shit you know fuk all about when you're not the one who takes the blame if it all goes wrong.
Let's all not pay taxes when the person we voted for doesn't get elected! (hysterical screech of agreement from loud harpy in audience). Let's work with the vastly wealthy Hollywood elites, basking in their fame in the hope some of it might rub off on us, then when someone is finally brave enough to blow the whistle on them, let's all get up and scramble over to the opposite side of the room and act like we had absolutely nothing to do with the accused! And let's be as loud and self-righteous about it as we possibly can, pretend like we have always led the charge, and hope no one will notice our vast hypocrisy!
Let's swan in and take the kudos of being honorary ambassador for a large charity. Then, when it's made public that some of its workers may have abused their position, lets drop it like a ton of hot lead! Fuk all the good its done and can still do! Can't have that effecting my public image! (Let's hope the poor saps that actually do all the charity work don't all walk out too tho, cos that would be a real fukin disaster!).
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Russia outspends all NATO countries as a percentage of GDP on its military. Spending 4.3% while the US spends 3.1%, Germany 1.2%, UK 1.8%, and France 2.3%. And while the west goes to war against the Gaddafis, Saddams, and Talibans of the world, Russia goes to war in defence of the Assads, and against its democratic neighbours Ukraine and Georgia. So clearly, Russia, and the world, would be far better off if Russian's kicked out the KGB secret policeman in the kremlin. But, obviously, unlike the west, they can't vote out their dictator.
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As Channel 4 news explains, the emails show the council felt it was 'under siege'. And despite its considerable efforts to deal with the aftermath of the fire, found itself 'unable to convince people it could help them'.
There was an interview, where one of the survivors was sat next to her social worker, while complaining that the council didn't care and was doing nothing to help. When the social worker asked 'what about me?' the woman replied 'yeah, but you're not from the council, are you?'
The narrative was set early on. By the media and other 'interested groups'. - By people like Jon Snow, who knew exactly what he was doing when he asked that question. By virtue signalling media whores like Lily Alan (who thought it the right time to help propagate some internet conspiracies about 'the true number of deaths being hidden'). And by other assorted entertainers who wanted a few extra cheers while on stage by joining in with the 'day of rage' (sounds very Hamas).
To a point, martin corduroy is right. These are people, many of whom not from the UK, who were given taxpayer subsidised housing, and had no concept of who was doing what for them and how it was being paid for. They were utterly infantilised by the system. And by the media.
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agitbeats I think we all know that Russian second world war history is different to everyone else's. It has to be. Otherwise Russia comes across as no better than Nazi Germany. Which is true.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact divided Poland between Russia and Nazi Germany. That is a historical fact. Stalin and Hitler agreed in advance which part of Poland would be Russian, and which parts German.
The Polish border forces in the east put up a defence against the Russian invasion. But as most of the Polish army were fighting in the west against the Germans, it was a case of little more than 20,000 Polish fighting a Russian invasion force made up of 7 armies (anything over half a million men). The day after the Soviet invasion started, the Polish government crossed into Romania.
By Russia's own accounts, they suffered 737 deaths and 1,862 casualties during the joint invasion of Poland. On the Polish side, 3,000–7,000 soldiers died fighting the Red Army, with 230,000–450,000 taken prisoner. That last figure is important, because if this was not a Russian invasion, why did the Russians take prisoners of war?
And as we know, the Russians killed tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war. On 24 September, the Soviets killed 42 staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec, near Zamosc. The Russians also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September 1939. And, of course, over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians were murdered by the Russians in the Katyn massacre.
In fact, so brutal and savage were the Russian NKVD, that even the Gestapo were shocked. And many Polish, including Jews, fled into German occupied Poland to escape the Russians. During the two years following the annexation, the Russians arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens. And the number of Polish deported to Siberia amounted to (Russia's own figures) anything from 320,000 to 1 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres
By the way, Russia wasn't expelled from the League of Nations over its invasion of Poland, because it wasn't a member. It had already been expelled from the League due to its invasion of Finland. And while it is true that the Polish Government did not declare war on the invading Russians (how could they, as the Polish government ceased to exist a day after the Russian invasion?), the Russians didn't declare war on Poland either. Yet they still invaded Poland.
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Britain and France didn't annex half of Czechoslovakia though, did they? They attempted to avoid war. While Russia allied with the nazis and annexed half of Poland. A large part of Finland. And the Baltics.
And yes, you are correct. Russia didn't go to war against the tyrant Saddam Hussein. It didn't support getting rid of the tyrant Gaddafi. And it doesn't support getting rid of the mass murdering tyrant Assad.
Instead, it supports the mass murdering tyrant Assad. And illegally invades and annexes territory from its democratic neighbours Georgia and Ukraine.
In fact, Russia has always been an enemy of democracy. Which is why Russia doesn't have one single democratic ally in the whole of the western world. Instead, its forced to hang out with Iran, Assad, North Korea, and, when Beijing cares to notice it, China.
You'd think Russians of all people would learn from history. But apparently not.
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Anthony Baiocchi So why bring up Mandela in his defence? Sounds like you were engaging in some historical revisionism, in the hopes you could paint Corbyn as a great man of peace.
Well, ok. So like C.D Warnes said, how many 'loyalist' Irish terrorist members has Corbyn invited to parliament? How many times has Corbyn honoured dead UFF members? How many times did he protest against bringing them to justice for their crimes? How many of their leaders has he sat sniggering with?
To negotiate peace, as you claim, he'd have to be trusted by both sides, yes? You can't present yourself as a neutral attempting to negotiate peace, if you only ever honour and support one side, can you? How many awards did Corbyn's shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, receive from the UDA?
And why did Corbyn lie when he said he hadn't met the IRA? Surely, he'd have to, if he was 'negotiating peace' with them?
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Why is it that we learn about nazism? I would say that it is to avoid making the same mistakes. Extremist ideologies normally look for easy answers. Populist answers to complicated questions. Generally involving the undesirable 'out group'. Whoever that may be.
So if it is important to remember the horrors of fascism in order to prevent it ever happening again, then I would argue we also need to remember and learn about the horrors of communism. From Stalin to Lenin to Trotsky to Mao to Pol Pot to the Kim's. Because if we don't, we are in as much danger of following in their footsteps as we are in Hitler's.
But that's not the case, is it? Because while we make a thing about swastikas and Hitler salutes, we ignore the Trotsky/Lenin iconography. And even go so far as to teach Marxism in our universities.
Obviously, I expect the usual defence of Marxism (its not the same as fascism, its about building a fairer society, etc), but in actual fact it is exactly the same as fascism. The one gave birth to the other. Both preach the subservience of the rights of the individual to the needs of the many. Only one defines the outgroup along racial or ethnic lines, while the other does the same along ideological lines.
I have read much on both the nazis and communism. And while people rightly know of the dangers of fascism, I am fuckin appalled at the lack of knowledge about the crimes and genocides of communism. Those who propagate communist ideals either are extremely ignorant of the subject they are preaching. Or they support its crimes. Or they don't care. Which is the more dangerous?
I'm all for punching the odd nazi. But I'm equally enthusiastic about beating the shit out of communists!
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Russia is intent on destroying Ukraine. Not the west. Russia has already annexed Ukrainian territory, and is waging a small war in the east of that country. It is Russians killing Ukrainians on Ukrainian soil. Not the west.
We know this, because in their report on the shooting down of flight MH17, the JIT (Joint Investigation Team - made up of the Netherlands, Belgium, Ukraine, Australia, and Malaysia) found Russia guilty of supplying and operating the very same BUK missile that shot the plane down (since then, Russia has vetoed a UN tribunal to prosecute those responsible).
Figures for Ukrainian refuges fleeing into Russia are given by the Russian government. The same Russian government that continues to lie about its actions in eastern Ukraine (and the same regime that attempted to assassinate Yushchenko). So like everything that comes out of the kremlin, those figures are worthless.
Putin gave Ukraine a choice. Either the west. Or Moscow. Unfortunately for Putin, they chose the west. After all, who in their right mind would want to end up like Russia?.
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Having spent the best part two years telling everyone that, despite being in the majority, those who voted leave in the referendum didn't actually want to leave, its a bit presumptuous for Femi to now claim that those who voted for the Greens, the Limp Dems, and every other party that is not the Brexit party, all voted the way they did because they wanted to remain. What evidence is there for that? - Plus, of course, even if you accept his argument, leave still polled higher as the Conservatives are a leave party. They were only left out of Femi's calculations because, like so many others on the remain campaign, the tactic is to simply ignore votes that go against them.
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The Great Patriotic War begins the very day the first German soldier stepped foot on Russian territory. Although technically, it wasn't Russian territory, but Polish territory. That had been annexed by Russia in accordance with the secret Hitler/Stalin alliance drawn up in Moscow. In fact, even the gestapo were shocked by the brutality of the Russian occupation of their half of occupied Poland. It was so bad in fact, that many Jews actually fled into nazi occupied west Poland to escape the savagery of the NKVD.
The strange thing is that no one in Russia seems to ever ask why Stalin wanted a border with Nazi Germany in the first place? As was to be proved by events, both Britain and France were prepared to go to war to guarantee Polish territorial independence, so all Stalin had to do was keep Poland as a buffer state between Russia and Germany and Russia would be safe.
Only he did the exact opposite. Not only does Stalin create a border with Germany, but he delays the Russian invasion of eastern Poland until 16 days after the German invasion of western Poland. Just long enough for France and Britain to declare war on Germany. Then he sits and waits. And even provides nazi Germany with much needed war materials as it focuses on knocking out the two democracies.
Only Russia didn't count on Germany's blitzkrieg being as devastatingly successful as it was. Before Stalin knows what's hit him, the Germans turn on their erstwhile ally before, as Hitler well knew, Stalin was ready to attack him. It was a massive gamble on Stalin's side. He wanted the whole of Europe, orchestrated a war, and very nearly got it. Luckily, however, Britain and the US saved western Europe from the genocide Russia inflicted in the east. The east of Europe had to wait till the 1990's before they were finally liberated.
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Translation
''...This article says that 'queer theory' must stop stereotyping fat people. Even Professor Lauren Berlant does it in her critical essay about neoliberalism, Cruel Optimism! Fat people have been stereotyped. And its about time we stop doing that. Like those 'for and after' pictures of fat people. Or even Professor Berlant's own work when she uses the words 'a congealed form of history that hurts' [fat congeals]. The article instead highlights the often ignored work on the subject of fatness by [academic, author, essayist, critic, poet] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Using Sedgwick's poem The Use of being Fat, this article argues the case for fatness. Leaving 'queer theory' with two questions...''
At about this point I realised I was wasting my life. And ceased to be interested in what the article, or the write up of the article, had to say.
This is a disastrous failure of both the write up of the article, and the article itself. Because if your whole career is based on ideas, then, in order to spread those ideas (which presumably you wish to do), you need to make those ideas easily understood. As there is no point being in the 'marketplace of ideas' if you don't intend to sell your wares (as would be the case in the real world).
But these are not ideas that the authors wish to sell. Outlining the basics of an idea should be of paramount importance. But instead we have deliberately incomprehensible (and grammatically bogus) writing. Designed to appeal only to (and be read by) an inducted elite.
There are only two reasons why someone would write as badly as this. 1) They wish to appear cleverer than they actually are. Or 2) They wish to disguise the fact that, despite all the work involved (and tax dollars received), they have very little to say.
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Playing racial based politics is always a bad thing. Apart from the nonsensical idea that all people of a certain skin colour think this way or that, it can backfire badly. Which in many cases it has. I was perhaps too lenient when it came to my description of the twat in the video. Because it amazes me that he clearly hasn't thought his argument thro.
The danger is that what he is saying is bollox. And most people can see this. So if we don't call it out for the bollox it is, what happens when some far right asshole comes along and calls it out? How are you going to argue against him?
I don't believe that one person's skin colour entitles them to speak for everyone else of the same skin colour. I don't believe that one person with a particular skin colour cannot empathise and represent someone of a different skin colour. But if you do, then the racists have got it right. Then having a non-white MP, minister, mayor, or PM representing white constituents is bad for those white constituents. So you better vote for skin colour and not the man or woman.
As to parliament representing a wider range of 'groups'. Without getting too sociological, there will always be winners in all sections of society. And winners at different things. Not everybody has the self discipline or physical ability needed to become a top athlete. Not everybody has the talent and skill needed to be a successful artist or musician. So those that do make it to the top can never be representative of the vast majority of us.
The same is true when it comes to politics (and especially business). Basically, most people are not prepared to put in the time and dedication to politics as all successful politicians do. And you don't have to agree with their politics to recognise that there are many local politicians who work just as hard who never get anywhere near the top.
So in politics, just like in everything else, what you have is very hard working, dedicated, and self disciplined people at the top. And those people tend to be successful people. It will always be that way. No matter what system you try to implement. And in a democracy this is not a problem.
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''On 28 September 2016, the Dutch led JIT (Joint Investigation Team) gave a press conference in which it confirmed that the aircraft was shot down with a 9M38 Buk missile which it concluded had been fired from a rebel-controlled field near Pervomaisky, a town 6 km (3.7 mi) south of Snizhne.''
''It also found the Buk missile system used had been transported from Russia into Ukraine on the day of the crash, and then back into Russia after the crash, with one missile less than it arrived with. The JIT said they had identified 100 people, witnesses as well as suspects, who were involved in the movement of the Buk launcher, though they had not yet identified a clear chain of command to assess culpability, which was a matter for ongoing investigation.''
''The Dutch chief prosecutor said "the evidence must stand before a court" which would render final judgement. During the investigation, the JIT interviewed 200 witnesses, collected half a million photos and videos and analysed 150,000 intercepted phone calls''
-This is basically a copy paste from Wikipedia. But it has plenty of references.
I might just point out that MH17 was flying high enough to be safe from all but the most sophisticated anti-aircraft systems. But as Russian had, and still does, continually lie about its arming and supplying of separatists in the area, no one was to know the danger.
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Then by your own argument, the EU itself must be built on what it is NOT rather than what it is. It is a club that defines itself by who is a member. And who is not a member. And that is based around the European cultural identity. We can see this in the way that Europe is fine with 'freedom of movement' between European nations. But not with freedom of movement that includes non European nations.
In a truly multicultural society, where unlike, for example, eastern Europe, the UK has a large population of non-European ethnic minorities, that loyalty to European culture is not there. Unlike most of Europe, the UK has always been a global player. And its diverse population and ties to non European cultures proves this. That is why the UK has not seen the rise of the far right, as many other European countries have
Altho, I will admit that the rise of le Pen in France rather undermines my argument a bit, as France also has a large non-European population. Or, perhaps, you could also say it actually supports my argument.
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Corbyn's red lines are:
◾Fair migration system for UK business and communities
◾Retaining strong, collaborative relationship with EU
◾Protecting national security and tackling cross-border crime
◾Delivering for all nations and regions of the UK
◾Protecting workers' rights and employment protections
◾Ensuring same benefits currently enjoyed within single market
Now, the first line has nothing to do with Brexit at all. The second very much depends on Brussels. The third, again has nothing to do with Brexit (Corbyn would fail on this completely btw). Neither does the forth. Or the Fifth. And the sixth 'Ensuring same benefits currently enjoyed within single market' is impossible unless the other side agree. And they have stated clearly that they won't.
So clearly Commissar Corbyn is playing politics at the expense of getting the best deal for the UK. So when I ask 'what happens if Brussels says no (to ensuring the same benefits currently enjoyed within the single market), and you say ''er, none of that makes sense'' it shows you haven't the slightest clue of what Corbyn is demanding.
As for your complete lack of confidence in the UK's ability to make trade deals with America and India and Jamaica and Australia, I would simply ask, if Australia, Jamaica, India, and the US can make trade deals, then why not us?
And spare me the NHS Fear Campaign. Labour play that card during EVERY SINGLE ELECTION!
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+John Constantine. How about before we go to the Yalta Conference, we stop off on the way at communist Russia's alliance with Nazi Germany and its invasion of Poland in 1939?
Stalin could have had his 'buffer' state then. And it would've been a very effective buffer state, seeing as both France and Britain were prepared to guarantee its sovereignty. But that's not what the soviets wanted. Their invasion of Finland and the Baltics had proved this. They wanted to expand. They wanted war.
And why do you think the soviets would've wanted war? You know something of how and when the revolution got started, I assume? Check back a little further to the birth of the soviet state in Russia. How it came about. And ask yourself why Stalin would've wanted a border with Germany. If he was thinking defensively.
Russia began the war alongside their Nazi German allies. The soviets were entitled to nothing. Eastern Europe is not a collection of buffer states. They are countries with as much right to independence as Russia or any country in Europe. As soviet Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia and Hungry showed, they weren't buffer states. They were part of soviet Russia's empire.
You can mention the number of Russian casualties. But so what? The communists butchered their way thro Russia, the Baltics, Ukraine, and Poland (even the gestapo were impressed by their brutality in Poland!) resulting in well over 20 million deaths! Before the war had even properly got started.
And since when has casualty numbers justified military annexation anyhow? Germany had over 7 million war casualties. Should they have been able to cash them in for Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Czechoslovakia at the end of the war?
Far from the capitalist west arming, supplying, and allying with Nazi Germany, it was that other genocidal ideology who is responsible for that: Communism. And, if you were to ask who benefitted from the war, you would just have to take a look at a map of Europe in 1950 or whenever. And the answer would be clear.
So to claim that Stalin was no imperialist is factually wrong. He started the war alongside his Nazi allies. And ended it with an empire bigger than Russia's Tsarist empire . And far, far, more savage and brutal.
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The Zeitgeist If, as you claim, eastern Europe was occupied by the 'soviet union' and not Russia, and the soviet union no longer exists, then by what right has Russia to demand anything from the territories the soviet union formally occupied?
You have already claimed that it was not Russia who occupied those countries. And that Russia was just part of the soviet union like any other part. If that is the case, then it it's just a question of one half of the soviet union wishing to join NATO. While the other half doesn't.
And where does punishment come into it? Eastern European countries simply wish to make their own alliances and pursue their own self interest. Just as Russia continues to do. Does Poland demand that Russia consult Warsaw before Putin makes alliances with the Chinese? Do the Lithuanians claim the right to dictate Russian foreign policy with Iran? After all, they were as much part of the USSR, yes?
In 1991, when Boris Yeltsin raised the question of Russia entering NATO, did Belarus invade Moscow? When Putin said in March 2000 that ''...We believe we can talk about a more profound integration with NATO'' and said he couldn't see any reason why Russia should not join NATO, did Ukraine invade southern Russia?
Why not? After all, someone in the US had given a verbal promise not to expand NATO, right? And Russia was, after all, just a part of the USSR like any other country.
Your problem is that you care nothing for the rights and freedoms of eastern European countries. You are just desperate to appease Putin because he threatens war.
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Tiger Eye Are you seriously telling me that dialogue with terrorists involves being their friends, honouring their sacrifice, holding respectful silences in memory of dead terrorists, attending their meetings, celebrating their victories, and receiving awards from them in return for your support?
If that is the case, if you are going to stretch plausible deniability to that degree, then how will you ever be able to condemn others who support political violence and murder? Or those who support far less? How about the BMP? Or the EDL? Are we to take their denials of racism as seriously? What about Tommy Robinson? Can you now judge him?
No. Of course you can't. Not now. The Left's hypocrisy and double standards are a fuckin disgrace. Perhaps you might want to educate yourself on Corbyn's past? Perhaps you might like to take a look at the type of filth he mixes with in the 'Stop the War Coalition'? And then see if you can find anyone in the BNP or the EDL or England First (or whatever the fuck they're called) that comes anywhere near the level of viciousness and bigotry of those Corbyn supports. Let alone anyone in Ukip or the tories.
If political violence is acceptable for one, then it is acceptable for all. And you have no argument against that. Because every lie you've ignored, and every time you've wilfully turned a blind eye to reality, will be mirrored by your opponents. You won't be able to shame them, because you yourself are as guilty.
As for your other question, I have repeatedly told you I have nothing against Khan. But as for his family links to Islamic extremism, go look it up.
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+Aaron Paul After the breakup of the soviet empire there were many Russians who found themselves in newly independent countries. Unwilling to return to Russia (after all, as you said many had been born where they lived), they were also unwilling to give up their Russian identity.
After the collapse of the Third Reich many Germans found themselves in the same position. Nazi Germany had encouraged German colonisation of eastern Europe in an attempt to snuff out occupied eastern European culture. And as I'm sure you know, they were ejected with the fall of Hitler's Germany.
The two examples are not exactly the same. German families were literally given the choice of whichever house they wanted. And the owners were then forcefully 'removed'. I haven't heard that the same happened with Russian 'colonisers' of the Baltics. But it is a fact that Russia worked hard to stamp out the cultures of those it occupied. And like much of eastern Europe, Latvia suffered terribly under Russian occupation.
So while the two situations are not entirely the same, the results are that there are many Russians still living in eastern Europe who do not consider themselves citizens of the country they live in. And just as the kremlin did in Transnistria in the early 90's, Putin is more than willing to use those Russian minorities to cause trouble (as he did in Ukraine).
The situation requires a fine balance of fairness, and understanding of Latvia's recent history and a recognition that Latvia and the other Baltic nations have a right to exist. And to make their own policies on Latvian citizenship.
As for NATO enlargement, there never was any agreement on not to expand eastwards. It was not mentioned in any treaty or document. As Russia had no right to demand anything from the countries they had occupied for so long. And besides, Putin himself at one time brought up the possibility of Russia joining NATO sometime in the future. He didn't feel the need to ask permission from Belarus or China, so why should the Baltics have worried about getting permission from Russia before joining NATO?
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Aaron Paul The reason why the OSCE didn't want anything to do with Putin's fake referendum is because it was illegal and vastly corrupt even by Russia's standards. Besides, if the OSCE had monitored the 'vote' there, what is to stop them doing it in, say, Kaliningrad after a German invasion? Anyone could pick apart Europe by annexing ethnic enclaves. You could pick apart Russia easily.
Kosovo had to wait years for its independence. It followed a long and very bloody war. While Crimea wasn't getting independence. It was simply annexed by Russia.
As to your possible alternate Ukrainian reality, you forgot the part when Yanukovych ordered Russian nationalists to gun down Ukrainians on the streets of their own capital city. You forgot the vast corruption (even by Ukrainian standards-Transparency International named President Yanukovych as the top example of corruption in the world). You forgot his breaking of the Ukrainian constitution. And you forgot the broken promise.
And that promise was for Ukraine to seek an Association Agreement with the EU. Putin's big mistake was to offer an ultimatum. You can either trade with Europe. Or trade with Russia. You can't do both. In order the ratchet up the pressure, Putin changed Russia's customs regulations on imports from Ukraine. So that in August 2013, the Russian Custom Service stopped all goods coming in from Ukraine.
Ukrainian's were given the choice between the EU (with all its faults) and Putin's 'Customs Union' of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, Did they want to be another Estonia or Poland. Or a Belarus? Ukrainians chose the EU.
In any western democracy, if a president or prime minister used armed thugs bussed in from an ethic enclave to kidnap, beat, and shoot people down on the street, they would've lost power overnight. But that is exactly what Yanukovych did. Then when an agreement had been signed with opposition groups that would have allowed him to remain in power, Yanukovych lost his nerve and fled the country. Calling on Russia to send in troops to reinstate him to power.
It was too late for Yanukovych's regime. But the Russians invaded anyway. They annexed Crimea outright. And crossed the border into eastern Ukraine, seized public buildings, and handed them over to far right nationalist Russian gangs. The evidence that the Russians were there is overwhelming. The so called government of the 'People's Republics' were even headed by ex-Russian military.
So now we have pretty much the same as what happened in Moldova and Georgia. Nationalist Russian separatists armed and financed by the kremlin. Another war. Relations between Russia and Ukraine ruined for a generation. Yet another enemy added to the Kremlin's long list. A reinvigorated NATO. And all because of Putin's zero sum foreign policy.
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***** Stalin killed more Russians before the war than Hitler did during it. The estimate is around 20 million. Although it could easily be double that.
The gulags were nothing like normal prisons. They were a feature of Tsarist Russia, but were massively expanded by Stalin. As well as holding political prisoners, the gulag concentration camps were home to whole sections of society that were considered enemies of the state. Such as the Kulak peasant class who had most to lose from communist collectivisation. And whole ethnic populations were deported on mass to gulag concentration camps from the Balkans and other 'liberated' countries after the war. Never to be seen again. About 14 million people were in Russia's concentration camp system from 1929 to 1953.
As for your list, I notice you have included such places as France (1941-1945). Along with other European nations the US helped liberate from nazi Germany. It seems you have done the same as regards to the first world war. So clearly your list does not take into account the historical context of any of the countries mentioned.
I wonder how large Russia's list would be using the same criteria? You would most certainly have to include any country Russia fought against during world war one and two as you have in your US list. But of course, unlike the US, the Russians never liberated anyone after the war. They simply added Russian occupied Europe to their Soviet Empire.
And as has been already pointed out, Russia has a far longer history than the US. So any list of countries invaded and occupied by Russia would be vastly larger. And would naturally include any country Russia has ever gone to war with. Along with modern day Syria, Ukraine, Germany, Georgia, and many others. As well as any other country where slightly more than a handful of Russian solders happen to be stationed.
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JDrakeify Germany is able to have strong labour laws because it operates within a protectionist economy. The EU. Europe could not compete with the Chinese or other Asian countries in an open market. So it puts up trade barriers. Which the EU is threatening to do to the UK. So, in that instance, it would be beneficial to the UK to undercut EU corporation tax and regulation.
Remember, the UK originally joined the common market. When there was no talk of a European parliament, single currency, open borders, European law, or ever closer union. These are all things that have come about, not thro economic reasons, but because of political reasons.
The UK still wants to be part of that single market (as the polls show). The market it originally joined back in the 70's. It just doesn't want the political union.
The proof that the EU is a political project, rather than an economic one, is that in order to punish the UK for leaving (and dissuade others from doing so), it is prepared to eject the UK from its single market. Something that will undoubtedly harm the EU economy itself.
So, in this instance where the EU is prepared to harm us and itself simply for political reasons, we are within our rights to act solely within our own interests. In other words, you cannot preach international economic solidarity while you use economics as a political weapon.
And nobody said capitalism was supposed to be fair. But it is. It's far fairer than, for instance, the socialist economic model. Where power is in the hands of a political elite, rather than in the hands of the individual. Remember, large multinational corporations are simply successful small businesses. And in a free society people are free to buy their products or not. Just as people are free to work for them or not.
Large multinational companies don't just spring out of nowhere. They are the result of decades or more of planning, investment, innovation, and risk taking. Most have outside investors. Shareholders, lenders, banks, and pension funds. All expecting their cut of the profits. Profits aren't simply hoarded away in a giant safe at the top of their corporate HQ. They have the future to be concerned about. Because if they get it wrong, its not just the top man that loses his job.
I know you already know this. But your argument seems to be ''now that you're a success, you're public property. And we get to decide how much of your own profit you can keep!"
But in a free society, taxation cannot be about redistribution. After all, taxation is not redistribution. Taxation is about paying for the services that a first world society demands and needs. You can argue for redistribution. And say that you will use the tax system to do it. But that is not something that can be imposed on a free society without first getting its consent.
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Simon Meekers It appears to me that Varoufakis is just desperate to unload the blame onto someone else. As I already pointed out, if the ECB had stuck to its own rules, Greece would never have been allowed to join the euro in the first place.
But apart from shifting blame, his argument doesn't make sense. If his criticism is that, during extreme circumstances, the ECB broke its own rules, then logically according to him they should have stuck with those rules and forced Greece out of the euro.
But hold on, who was Greek finance minster at the time Greece was offered the deal? Wasn't it Varoufakis? Clearly both the ECB and Varoufakis believed that, above all, the best case scenario was for Greece to remain within the euro. If that was not the case, and the ECB was wrong. Then Varoufakis was also wrong.
If Varoufakis believed that it was preferable that the ECB should have stuck to its own rules and forced Greece out of the euro, then he and his party should have either rejected the deal. Or announced that Greece was pulling out of the single currency.
Ultimately, the decision to accept or reject the ECB deal was down to the Greek government. And Varoufakis was finance minster. Is he now saying he made the wrong decision? The worth of any minister of finance is how to deal best with the economic situation he or she is presented with. You don't win points by saying you don't like the problem and that you would prefer to start from somewhere else.
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Simon Meekers And again, It is German money we are talking about here. Do you think it's Danish taxpayers who will foot the bill? Or the Estonians?
What I am saying, is that you cannot have a single currency without a single economic policy. That is the fault at the heart of the euro. And while national governments are responsible for their own tax and spending, they will, quite rightly, look out for their own taxpayers.
A central bank can work in a sovereign country, because its interests are tied to the interests of a single national government. That is not the case with the ECB. It is not dealing with a single government entity. But with multiple governments who are all answerable to their taxpayers in a way that the ECB is not.
I also believe I'm right in saying that one of the cast iron guarantees the Germans insisted upon during the setting up of the single currency, was that they would not end up paying for the irresponsible state spending of other euro members. Which, as it turned out, they ended up doing in the end anyway.
So again. In my opinion the German government was correct in using its weight to get the best deal for Germany. If Varoufakis did not like the deal on offer, he should've rejected it and pulled Greece out of the euro. You cannot ignore the rules when it suits you (as Greece did), and then expect other euro members not to do the same.
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Considering that when socialism is tried, and when it inevitably fails, it is disowned by socialists (the same with communism), what socialism and/or communism actually is, and how it would actually be implemented, varies depending on who you talk to (rather like a religion).
So, lets take it that socialism/communism is at its most basic the 'worker owning the means of production'. Collectivisation. Yes?
Collectivisation requires the individual to be subservient to the group. Rather like a worker ant. The product of his labour is not his, but the property of the 'collective'.
Now, considering a libertarian believes in freedom of choice, political freedom, voluntary association, and the primacy of individual judgment (cut and paste job), how could a libertarian be part of a collective in a communist state?
Surely the ownership of the individuals time and labour would be considered his own if you were a libertarian? You could, of course, claim that the libertarian is at liberty to voluntarily join a collective. But then a libertarian would also be at liberty to voluntarily join a one party fascist state. At which point, the label 'libertarian' would cease to have any meaning at all.
So basically, the word 'libertarian' when put next to the description of someone who is a communist is simply meaningless. It just means the person has, of his own free will, decided to opt for communism.
Well, duh!
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Connor Ovington You said ''...you have no idea on the strain when we're kicking out foregins left, right and center''
Then I asked you how many foreign doctors were being kicked out. You now say... none.
But by the tone of your comment, it seemed very much like the Gestapo were rounding people up in cattle trucks?
As for the 'increase in hate crime', the reality is that the definition of a hate crime is now so wide that all it takes is for someone to believe a hate crime has been committed, for it to be investigated as a hate crime.
For example, in a speech, Amber Rudd, the home secretary suggested tightening rules that allow UK firms to recruit workers from overseas. The police then investigated the 'incident' as being a suspected hate crime.
After the referendum, an anti-hate crime website (no doubt hoping to drum up some custom) polled the specific question ''Have you been a victim of hate crime since the EU referendum?''
It was enough for you to reply 'yes', for that to be reported by the news media as evidence of a rise in hate crime since the referendum. No police report filed. No investigation. No prosecution. Just a statistic.
The news media made much of the murder of a Polish man. But where was the evidence that the murder was at all linked to the EU referendum? Channel 4 News led with a story of a heated road rage incident, where a guy shouted 'Fuck off back to where you come from!" That, apparently, was a hate crime. And somehow connected to the EU referendum.
Now we know that anti-Semitism has been on the rise. And anti-Islamic hate crime also. But that is in line with the rest of Europe. In fact the area with the largest increase in anti-Islamic hate crime has been London (not long ago the BBC reported hate crime against Muslims had increased threefold within the capitol). And London, as we know, voted to remain within the EU. So, I guess that proves remain voters hate Muslims, yeah?
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Danny Walker My point was, that even if the whole population of Qatar are not all millionaires, the problem there is certainly not one of poverty. The same is true of Saudi Arabia. In fact, poverty does not figure in the reasons why individuals in the west join and fight for Islamist groups.
It cannot be because of injustice either. Altho that certainly helps to bring about discontent. And, as in Syria, discontent is the ideal breeding ground for Islamic fascism.
So the problem must be one of ideology. And we know where that ideology comes from. And it has nothing to do with the west. Quite the opposite. After all, you don't blow yourself up in the middle of a crowded Afghan marketplace unless you truly believe you will end up sitting at the right hand of mohammed. The reality is, that elites in the middle east and among other Islamic regions fear the power of islam as much as the west does. If not more.
Grievance against the west is a strong recruiting tool. And useful too. Because many Arab governments spend a lot of effort on channelling discount away from them. And towards the west and Israel.
Then we have the Useful Idiots at home. The ones like this Theo Padnos. Who do their best to convince muslims in the west that they are desperately oppressed. And that the Islamic worlds problems can all be laid at the feet of the west. Or Israel.
I think I'm right in saying that Theo Padnos is a convert to Islam. So of course, he couldn't possibly lay the blame where blame lies. And Owen Jones, a keen supporter of any anti-western grievance, isn't about to ask him any difficult questions.
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There never has been any such time in history as 'pre-capitalism'. In such a situation where 'everyone works on the land', there would still have been a bartering system even if no currency was involved.
And yes. Poverty is relative. But not everyone needs to run their own international corporation. And you don't measure poverty against multi-billion dollar businesses. There would have still been (real) poverty in your mythological 'pre-capitalist' history. And with no large corporations, there would have been no modern medicines. No research into disease. You would have died at thirty two. Of toothache.
=(
People in the west are living longer, healthier, and enjoying a higher standard of living than at any time in human history. And no system has, or will ever be able, to do away with 'power relations'. But once again, in the free capitalist west, we see generations growing up with more freedoms, rights, and privileges than ever before.
And 'Unpaid domestic labour'? You mean looking after yourself and your family, surely? And who should pay a woman (or a man for that matter) to clear up their own mess at home? You? Me?
Nah.
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I haven't deleted any comments.
The phrase 'means of production' in Marxist jargon may only include tools, machinery, buildings, and capital. But then Marxism is a deeply flawed political theory. My argument is that the worker himself is the means of production. The tools, machinery, buildings etc. didn't just appear out of nowhere. They were built. By people.
Nothing gets done without the worker. In a capitalist economy, the worker is recognised as being part of the means of production. He owns his own time. And may hire himself out to an employer in return for a wage.
In capitalism, the worker truly does own the means of production. He owns the results of his own labour. In the communist system, the results of his labour suddenly become 'the means of production' and are then taken from him by the state. This theft is poorly justified by defining the 'state' as being 'the worker'.
Only, as I have already pointed out, that is an impossibility. The state cannot be the worker, because not everyone agrees. The mantra 'the workers own the means of production' is simply political spin. And defining the means of production in such a narrow way is all part of the spin.
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+Mustafa Ibrahim This is the last time I will give you a history lesson. In future I will simply type 'bollocks' when you attempt to rewrite historical events. As regards to Afghanistan, when the Russians invaded, the Mujahideen formed to drive them out of the country. In its cold war against communism, the US supported the Mujahideen (it did not create the Mujahideen). The Taliban (and if I'm not mistaken Osama bin Laden) were one of many groups within the Mujahideen. After the Russians were driven out, aided by Pakistan, the Taliban waged a war against their previous allies and took power. And yes. Many Afghans fled the country. As for western governments not listening to Gaddafi, it seems to me that the real problem was the Libyan people had stopped listening to him. Or have you also bought into the idea that the uprising against him was simply a wicked plot by the evil democratic nations of west (aided by those pesky Jews). Obviously, being a reactionary, we know who's side you would have taken. But western governments were faced with a choice. Do they support Gaddafi (a vicious and perverted despot that had armed and supported terrorism against the west)? Close their boarders and look the other way? Or actively support an uprising against him. In the event they chose the third option. And unless you can make the argument that the war against Gaddafi would have ended on the very day he died anyway, the West's actions shortened the war. In fact, if the west hadn't have gotten involved, one of three things would have happened. 1) The rebels would have eventually won out. 2) Gaddafi would have eventually won out. Or 3) Like Syria, the war would still be going on. Either way, Libya would be in a worse state than it is today.
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Bad start. She holds up an attack on an enemy nation that ended a war, that would have undoubtedly cost many more thousands of allied lives had it continued, as a reason to get rid of nuclear weapons. I suspect that had she a brother, father, son, or heaven forbid, herself on the front line then she might have thought differently. She is selective in her concern for casualty numbers. Ignoring the rape of Nanking, for example, where 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese were butchered by the Japanese. And all without the use of a nuclear bomb. It was clear that the Japanese needed to be defeated. And it is clear that had they themselves been armed with such a powerful weapon they would have had no hesitation in using it. In such a situation it is self defeating to play the notion of moral equivalence.
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Elis D Do I think Russia's involvement in the Spanish civil war is the same as the US and UK's involvement in the Russian civil war? Well, no. In Russia, the US and UK were fighting Lenin and the spread of a genocidal ideology. In Spain, Stalin (a genocidal tyrant) was fighting another tyrant (Franco). And when all is said and done, Stalin was far worse than any fascist in Spain.
So, yeah. It was different. But then that still doesn't answer my question. What right did Russia have to involve itself in Spain?
And clearly you don't know much about the Russian revolution. By their own words, the Bolsheviks were revolutionaries. Therefore, by your definition of the Whites, the Bolsheviks weren't the legal government in Russia.
And your accusation was that the west helped the nazis. But as we know, France and Britain declared war on nazi Germany. And the Battle of Britain was going on while Russian was still allied to nazi Germany. Part of the Hitler/Stalin pact was that Russia would provide Germany with war materials. Which they did. Right up until the German invasion of Russia! In fact, the German's actually found whole train carriages of materials waiting to be sent to Germany when they crossed the border!
So we have Russia helping Germany to avoid the restrictions placed on them by the Treaty of Versailles. Helping the German's to rearm. The Hitler/Stalin alliance against Poland. The Dividing up of Eastern Europe between nazi Germany and Russia. The supply of war materials to nazi Germany from Russia. And, of course, some 1,400 German scientists and engineers sent off to Russia to assist in the organization of Russian missile production and design (rising to 3,500 including their families).
And again, you clearly don't know your Russian History if you believe that the soviets 'never acted like the nazis'. In occupied Poland, for example, the Russians impressed even the gestapo with their brutality. And just ask anyone from the Baltics about the savagery of the Russian occupiers. They will be more than happy to tell you all about it. As I believe its is part of their school curriculum. And I'm pretty sure you have heard of Stalin's genocides in countries like Ukraine (they certainly remember it, even if Russia has forgotten).
And France, Britain, and the US had no such military alliance with Germany. Certainly nothing like the Soviet/Nazi pact. So I have no idea what you are talking about there. But blaming the west for Russia's alliance with Hitler is just so typical of the pathetic bullcrap Russia makes up in order to absolve itself from it own actions. Like allying with nazi Germany was the next logical step to take if Russia couldn't ally with the west!
''...About Finland, they supported Hitler and had german bases on its territory long before ww2 started.'' Rather like Russia then? And seeing as Germany hadn't yet attacked Russia, and that Russia in any case went on to ally with Nazi Germany, what excuse was there for Russia to invade Finland? Your logic is confused and makes no sense.
''...As we saw, soviets were right, finnish government were nazi collaborators'' Rather like the Russian government. Who, as we know, willingly allied with the nazis. Russia collaborated with the nazis. Out of choice. The Finish allied with the nazis, because they wanted the land back that Russia had annexed.
Everything you have said about Russia's ww2 history matches exactly what every Russian is taught. From the blaming of the west for Russia's alliance with Nazi Germany, to the denial of the vast genocides carried out under Stalin. All bullshit lies. Because if there are no second world war heroes in Germany, then there are none in Russia either.
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Your little link there didn't say anything that we don't already know. No party can ever represent the majority on all issues. As an individual can support a particular party on one issue, while disagreeing with it on another. All individuals weigh up the pros and cons before voting for any party.
It reads, ''Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence''
All this is saying is that big business has more influence on government than the average voter. But then so what? Large businesses represent many more people than just the single voter. And as for 'mass-based interest groups', they rarely represent more than single issue politics. You can campaign for more government spending in one sector, but its the government that has responsibility for the bigger picture.
''Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.''
Don't quite know what the 'if still contested franchise' means. Unless it refers to illegal immigrants within the US. But the proof is all there. Regular elections. freedom of speech and association. As well other human rights and privileges.
Then Eric Zuess chips in: "American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media)," he writes. "The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious 'electoral' 'democratic' countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now."
But then Eric Zuess would say that, wouldn't he?
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'povety misery and perpetual war is a result of your beliefs: capitalism and empire'
No it isn't.
Take World War Two, for example: Soviet Russia armed and supplied Nazi Germany right up to the very moment the first German soldier stepped foot on soviet occupied East Poland. While the west was attempting to enforce the Versailles Treaty, the soviets were busy helping to train Germany's future tank divisions. The soviets believed, just as had happened in Russia itself, that communism would be spread with the aid of another world war.
Afghanistan: Again, the soviet invasion so destabilised and wrecked the country, that Afghanistan is still yet to recover.
Korea: Started by the communist North (and backed by the soviet Russians and communist Chinese) the Korean war cost nearly 3 million casualties.
Vietnam: Who were the Americans fighting against? The VC. The Vietnamese Communists. After a war costing 1.4 million casualties, the US was finally out, and the communists set about imprisoning over 300,000 Vietnamese into soviet gulags.
Those are just 4 examples. And they prove that war and imperialism has nothing to do with capitalism. In fact, Marxism is an expansionist, imperialist ideology. Most often spread by the use of creating instability and violence. And once those who advocate it gain power, the authoritarianism they enact is very often far worse than anything that went before - Soviet Russia, North Korea, Ukraine, Vietnam, Poland, Crimea, Communist China, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Latin America. All in the space of a couple hundred years.
While I live in the capitalist west. And enjoy better health, wealth, more freedoms, privileges, and rights, than at any time in human history.
So go scuttle off back under your rock.
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I'd just like to point out that, yes, many, many people do indeed believe that Jeremy Corbyn is out to spread hate (many of them, for example, are Jewish people). And you can see why when you consider the individuals, groups, and organisations he supports and mixes with. So I have a hard time understanding how Alexander Blanchard, supposedly a researcher on Political Violence at Queen Mary University, manages to claim otherwise.
Because interestingly, one of the guys arrested for harassing (hurling abuse at) Anna Soubry MP (as mentioned in the video above) was a lad named Max Hammet-Millay. And max was briefly interviewed a couple years before the incident by Vice news at an anti-tory demo (easy to google this). Holding a F*** Theresa May banner in one hand, and a JC4PM (Jeremy Corbyn for prime minister) banner in the other.
It shouldn't take a researcher into political violence from Queen Mary University to work out what happened there (and just as well) - One moment it was seen as ok for him to hurl insults at conservative MPs. Then suddenly it wasn't (Soubry was a conservative MP). And this was purely down to which side of the Brexit debate he happened to be on.
Because for Hammet-Millay, his language was no worse than the language he and others had used at other demonstrations. And the target of his language was the same (tories). And his views about membership of the EU were (originally) no different to Jeremy Corbyn's (before becoming labour leader, Corbyn was viciously anti-EU, and his speeches on the subject were as bad, if not worse, than anything said by Nigel Farage). So from his point of view, his only crime was not to keep up with the change in political direction of those around him. From anti to pro-EU.
If Max had hurled that same abuse at Farage, rather than Soubry, or if Soubry had been pro-Brexit, he would have been cheered on by those who now condemn him.
So clearly this issue is purely a question of political bias. Alexander Blanchard might not consider Corbyn a hateful figure, therefore he puts him in a different category to Farage. But others will and do disagree (and knowing Corbyn's past I'd say they have very good reason to). Therefore, unless we all don't want to end up with milkshake all over us (Blanchard included), might it not be a good idea to just not throw stuff at people we disagree with?
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Again, you are simply repeating old soviet propaganda designed to avoid the truth of Russia's war guilt. Russia didn't need to invade Poland to defend itself against Germany. That's just ridiculous.
The US didn't supply Iraqi with chemical weapons. In fact, as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute study shows, the Soviet Union and her satellites were the main suppliers of arms to Iraq. It's the reason why Saddam's forces drove T72 tanks, flew Mig aircraft, and fired off Russian made Scud missiles into Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIPRI_Arms_Transfers_Database,_Iraq_1973%E2%80%931990
The Gaddafi regime had appalling human rights. And to be honest, plenty of countries have a higher standard of living than Russia. Including, now that they are free from Russian influence, much of eastern Europe. And many people attempted to convince Gaddafi to step down. But he ignored them and war followed. Luckily, unlike in Syria (where Russia still props up its puppet Assad), Libya missed out on six years of all out war.
And let me guess, Russia never invaded Ukraine and Georgia, just like it never invaded Poland, right?
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Paul Horwood2 You may well ask. But then the Communist Party of Great Britain was a member of the Stop the War Coalition, and they explicitly supported the Gaddafi regime during the uprising against him. As for the Assad regime, StWC vice-president Kamal Majid claimed, during a speech at a conference organised by the 'New Communist Party', that the Assad family had 'a long history of resisting imperialism'.
Take a look at its leadership: Kamal Majid (former vice president, founder member of the Stalin Society), George Galloway (who works for Tehran's propaganda channel 'PressTV'), Kate Hudson (former communist), Andrew Murray (former member of the communist party), John Rees (member of Galloway's Respect party), Salma Yaqoob (member of Galloway's Respect party), Chris Nineham (Socialist Workers Party), and, of course, Lindsey German (Socialist Workers Party and Respect candidate) who was interviewed above.
The Stop the War Coalition is what's know as a 'front organisation'. It is not so much against war, as against wars that remove dictators they see as sympathetic to their cause. That's why you will never see the Stop the War Coalition demonstrating against the Syrian regime's war against the people of Syria. - And let's be honest here, the extreme Left have a long history of supporting brutal dictatorships.
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It's well known that Assad buys oil from ISIS. Maybe not in Russia, but then if they have such a piss poor grasp on what is going on as you do, they won't know what everyone else knows.
Up until recently, the FSA have been the only group fighting the spread of ISIS. While Assad and the Russians have concentrated their attacks on the FSA. But you better tell the Russians that the FSA are ISIS, because they've been holding talks with them Kazakhstan! Putin talks to ISIS now does he?
There are no US troops occupying Ukraine. Plenty of Russian troops there tho. The Ukrainians keep capturing them! And when it comes to corruption, I hardly think Russia can be pointing fingers at Ukraine. Russia is ruled by secret policemen, thugs, and crooks!
You mean to say the Ukrainians are as happy to live on their knees as the Russians? I don't think so. Putin poured billions more than the US did into Ukrainian politics. Corrupting Ukraine's elections so badly they had to be re-run! The Russians even aided assassination attempts against Yanukovych's political opponents! Just like they do in Russia!
And no, they weren't Georgian troops. It was before the Russian invasion even started. Russian attack helicopters lunched an unprovoked attacks on Georgian civilians.
Assad is no 'progressive'. He's just a tyrant like all Russia's other allies. Like I said, Russia only ever goes to war to prop up it's puppet dictators. Either that, or it attacks its neighbours. And annexes their territory. Then ethnically cleanses the area as it did in occupied Georgian territory, east Ukraine, and Crimea.
Still bitching about your collapsed Russian empire, I see? Worried about US bases? Maybe you should stop invading your neighbours, then you might actually have normal relations with them? You lost! People want democracy! Not your KGB secret police crook and his genocidal puppets!
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Don't take my word for it, look at history. You will find it proves my case time and time again. Fascism and Marxism are one in the same. They both subjugate the rights and freedoms of the individual to the state. Rather than the other way around. With the exact same inevitable results.
I can point to Stalin, Pol Pot, the Kims, Mao, as examples. All following the same arrogant ramblings of an overly educated ignoramus with a god complex. And those are just the big names. There have been many, many more.
By contrast, fascism has a far lower body count. Even when you factor in fascist dictators like Franco or Mussolini. Neither of which advocated genocide of whole peoples. So the notion that genocide is at the core of fascism is false. I don't know where you get that idea from. They actually promise pretty much the exact same thing as your average communist (as my above quote proves). After all, Mussolini was a socialist.
Communism will (and always has) infringed on the rights and freedoms of the individual. Its core values are unnatural and authoritarian. It is built on the idea of subservience to the state in the name of equality of outcome. An impossibility no matter how authoritarian the system.
This would be bad enough, but when you advocate its implementation through violent revolution, as many socialist revolutionaries do, (even within democratic systems), you then hand power to the most violent and ruthless in society. Which is the reason why Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin came out on top. They were ruthless men with no compassion. Totally blinded by their unworkable ideology. And willing to expend the lives of many millions in pursuit of their socialist utopia.
But the correlation between fascism and Marxism doesn't just end there. Because both ideologies believe absolutely in the purging of society. The removal of undesirables or 'enemies of the people' (in actual fact, enemies of the ideology). Stalin believed another war in Europe would be the catalyst for the further expansion of Marxism. And his rearming of Germany after the first world war was calculated and deliberate. Because as with fascism, communism believes the ends justifies the means.
Don't know if you've ever heard of Eric Hobsbawm. He was a British Marxist historian who died not long ago. Just before he shuffled on, he was asked in an interview whether he thought the sacrifice of millions of lives in Stalin's soviet empire would have been worth it, if the result was his longed for communist utopia. The rancid old fucker replied 'yes'.
He went on to say, ''...In a period in which, as you might imagine, mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal, the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing" but, unfortunately, "[the] Soviet Union was not the beginning of the World Revolution"
There have always been the ideological puritans who somehow believe suffering is virtuous. That you have to suffer before being reborn. It comes from the belief that the victim is righteous. And therefore pure. The same goes for society as a whole. Or, when you break it down further into multiple subsections (race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, religious creed, etc), that the minority is by definition more virtuous than the majority.
It's a pretty biblical way of thinking. But then we all know about the purges and genocides in the old testament (the flood/Sodom and Gomorrah). And Lenin remains to this day immortalised in formaldehyde like a deity.
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Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there were no NATO bases in the Baltic countries. None. The US was winding down in Europe. The fact is, those unfortunate enough to share a border with Russia want NATO membership. And Russia's aggression towards Ukraine, and before that Georgia, and before that Moldova prove the wisdom of NATO membership for countries like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there are now NATO bases in the Baltics. Because their governments have requested them. Putin's own actions have strengthened NATO and isolated Russia.
Ukraine is a sovereign country. It is not a buffer state. Like Russia, it can join any alliance it likes. It can join NATO or the EU depending on whether those organisations accept it as a member. Even Putin himself considered joining NATO. But did China invade Russia? Did Ukraine invade Russia?
Take a look at Russia's isolation. It's closest allies are Belarus, Assad in Syria, and Iran. What does that tell you?
Your 'analysis' that the US, EU, and Russia are all equally to blame is a copout. It says nothing about Ukraine. Or about what Ukrainians want. It simply plays it safe. I'm sure you will get good marks.
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@steele_heart77 He released information stolen from the US that put those working alongside US forces in Afghanistan at risk. When asked by the Guardian about this, he replied ''If they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."
He also handed stolen US diplomatic cables about Belarusian dissidents over to one of his colleagues, a guy called Israel Shamir. Who then handed the information over to Alexander Lukashenko's (president of Belarus) chief of staff, Vladimir Makei. And as I'm sure you know, Belarus has an appalling human rights record.
Assange has a very odd view of the world. Meaning that he is more than willing to play useful idiot to any regime that is basically anti-western - No matter the cost to genuine human rights campaigners around the world.
He likes to claim that US and western aid to such people is somehow tainted, simply because it comes from the west (while at the same time he himself has no problems working for Putin's propaganda channel RT). In other words, he is making out that western aid in the promotion of liberal democracy, free speech, and human rights is worthless and of no value - Something that real human rights campaigners in countries like Afghanistan and Belarus would strongly disagree with.
You can't be a campaigner for free speech and the promotion of human rights while remaining neutral on such things. And yes, there are some things that western governments do need to keep secret.
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The far right are at least upfront about their hatreds. And you can see them coming a mile off. But with the mainstream left having been hijacked by the extreme left, we now have hatred sold as virtuous morality and the legitimisation of political violence.
No party campaigned on a platform of white Identity politics, for the far right, or in support of islamophobia during the referendum. But it is a fact that the present Labour leadership supported IRA terrorism, supports Islamist terrorism, and makes allies of anti-Semites, Stalinists, and supporters of the Iranian regime.
If the far right has crawled out from under their rock, then it is a direct result of the left playing identity politics with race, religion, and sexuality. Anything that gives them a seat at the table. And it's hard not to imagine that any rise of the far right is exactly the result they wanted.
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Aidan Kelly Ever since Galloway was kicked from the Labour party, he has been increasingly desperate for support. And like many on the extreme left, he has found that support playing to the prejudice of the Muslim community.
Galloway supports the Assad regime in Syria. He also supports the Iranian regime, as well as working for their Press TV propaganda channel (that same channel that got removed from UK airwaves for working alongside the Iranian security forces in torturing televised confessions from Iranian dissidents). Both regimes have far worse human rights than Israel.
In fact, while Galloway has nothing good to say about that region's only democratic state, he is always very quick to defend the bloodthirsty regime in Damascus. Even going so far as to parrot Assad's propaganda to cover the regime's use of chemical weapons. Blaming it instead on Israel. Obviously ...Because the Jews have to be behind everything.
''...Here's my theory! ...Israel gave them [al Qaeda] the chemical weapons! So that they would use them. So that they would bring the international community into the final destruction of Syria!''
Assad couldn't have put it better himself. But what Galloway fails to mention in his 'theory' is that Russia, Assad's ally, has vetoed UN investigations into the use of chemical weapons numerous times. And you can bet it didn't do that to help cover for Israel.
Galloway knows this. He couldn't not know this. But it pays to play old prejudices (literally, in Galloway's case - as in 2014 he made over £100,000 that year working for Press TV).
So either the man is a massive hypocrite. Or he just doesn't like the Jews. Or both. Either way, he plays to the anti-Semitic crowd. And he knows it.
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It must be remembered that it wasn't South Korea or the US that started the Korean war. That would be down to the North Korean regime put in place by Stalin. The war was itself instigated by Stalin. And remember, South Korea is a successful democracy. Whereas North Korea is a third-world communist shithole. So clearly, it would have been in the interests of the unfortunate North Koreans for the Americans and their UN allies to have won the war the North Korean leadership started, and to have driven the Chinese out of Korea completely. Sadly for North Koreans, that did not happen.
The North Korean's have never been interested in normalising relations with the US or South Korea. To do so would fatally undermine the North Korean regime. As the threat of US invasion is vital to the regime's hold on power. While in reality 30,000 US troops based in the South are no threat at all.
Funnily enough, the biggest threat to the North Korean regime comes not for the US, but from China. Pyongyang fears regime change from Beijing far more than from Washington. And if there is a coup in Pyongyang, it will be down to the Chinese. And they will have to act, if the Kim regime becomes too much of a liability.
Korea is unfortunate in that it has China as a neighbour. The North Korean regime exists because it is not in the interests of the Chinese and Russians to have a unified and democratic Korea. The Chinese regime has little interests in the rights and freedoms of its own people, so is unlikely to care too much for the rights and freedoms of the Korean people.
North Korea wants nuclear weapons because the survival of the regime depends on it. They themselves withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty they had signed up to. Because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) required North Korea to allow inspections of its nuclear research facilities. As the US was paying North Korea in aid as part of that agreement, the North Korean regime was breaking the terms of the agreement. Not the US.
In other words, it was the North Korean regime that refused to KEEP IT'S PROMISES.
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I agree. You won't see the 'Stop the War Coalition' demonstrating outside the Syrian embassy, or the Russian embassy, or the Iranian embassy. Because they have no problem with wars fought in defence of mass murdering dictators. Only with wars fought against mass murdering dictators.
Corbyn only preaches peace, pacifism, and fluffy bunnies, when its in defence of something he cares little about. In other words, western liberal democracy. But when it furthers his own ideology, he's more than willing to sit with violent sectarians and terrorists. He's a gift for Iran and the kremlin. Some 6,500 Russian twitter accounts backed him in the last election. Because they know he'd be a pushover. Actually, he wouldn't even stand up to begin with.
He's praised the kremlin's propaganda channel, RT. And has worked on the ayatollah's PressTV. With that in mind, he's really not the best person to give an opinion on a free media.
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@usxnews1834 Poverty does not lead to people stabbing someone else with a knife. As I said, this is a problem with young males. Abuse has nothing to do with poverty, as it can and does happen in all families regardless of their income. And we already have free education in the UK.
Policing is an issue. Because if a kid is brought up in a lawless community where he doesnt feel safe, he's more likely to get drawn into gang culture as a gang offers protection.
And this is why kids often say they carry knives - for protection. What they mean is, in their world its dog eat dog - and in that situation social status is all important.
That culture then becomes his way of life. Which in turn leads to criminality which restricts his later prospects. Then he has kids. Then he walks out on them. Because thats the world he grew up in.
Its not really fashionable to say this, but society functions better when we all adhere to certain standards - poor working class housewives scrubbing their doorsteps back in the 1940s, because they don't want the neighbours looking down on them, that kinda thing.
But if you teach a generation they have rights, but no responsibilities, that no one should judge them, and worse, its ultimately all the fault of 'society', then communities start breaking down.
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Absolutely. Good role models are vital for any young generation (and older ones too). The trouble is, that is not something that can be socially engineered by the political class. And neither should it be (-actually it can. But we don't want that) Unfortunately, those who do have the ability to influence such things have tended to push a culture of grievance, victimhood, helplessness, and lack of self-responsibility. More often than not the buzz word is 'disenfranchisement' (which basically means 'the majority don't agree with me')
Sure, society isn't equal. But then it never has been and never can be. Some people are born with disability. Some people are born with a natural talent for mathematics, or art, or athletics. Some people are born into wealthy families. Some are born into families who couldn't give a shit. So when you talk about 'inequality' you are talking about a whole range of issues outside the control of those who manage society.
And do we really need or want parliament to be more representative? If the majority aren't prepared to put in the work and dedication required to make it to the top in politics, or business, or anything else (maybe they have other priorities), do we really want them in the top jobs? After all, if you were investing your savings into a start up business, who would you trust more. The guy who puts in the effort? Or the guy that just turns up?
Saying you want to eradicate poverty is a noble aim. And we can all argue about the best way to bring that about (that is what most politics is-we all agree on the destination, but argue about which direction is best). The problem starts when you compare the top 1% against everyone else. Then call that 'inequality'.
And we don't have to look to far back into history to see the results of engineering society to eradicate inequality to see how that will turn out.
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***** In an ideal world it wouldn't hurt. But like I said results speak for themselves. And as I'm sure you're aware, the economy is not an exact science. So in the end it comes down to who people trust the most.
As for disenfranchisement. The definition is: To deprive (someone) of a right or privilege. To deprive (a place) of the right to send a representative to Parliament. To deprive (someone) of the rights and privileges of a free inhabitant of a borough, city, or country. (I know u know this already, I'm just pointing out how the word is being misused).
None of this applies to modern day UK. People simply disagree on how things should be run. And that is nothing new, surely.
And I would have to disagree that advances of humanity cannot be attributed to the right to vote. The only other thing that comes close, is war. Democracy is the ultimate expression of capitalism. Each individual politician or political party must sell themselves to the voter in order to gain power. And once in power they have a self interest in keeping the good name of their 'brand'. And the only way they can do that is to focus on the needs of those who can vote for them.
There's this Rumanian youtuber called Vee. You might have heard of him. Idk. Anyhow, he's a bit too much to the right for my liking, but he makes some good points now and again. He's just old enough to remember how things were in Rumania under Ceausescu. He talks about the history of his country. About how, before communist dictatorship, Bucharest was known as Little Paris (I forget the exact term but u get the idea). He talks about how the fountain pen was invented by a Rumanian. Then goes on to list the achievements under communism. None.
Because non-democracies have no incentive to better the lives of their people. They have no free press or independent judiciary. All the things that a democracy needs. They have no rule of law, only what is most convenient for those in power. And, ultimately, who would invest in a country where those in power can take everything you own or have worked for away?
Churchill's quote wasn't a criticism of democracy. Because he knew that everyone who holds power always wants more time. And even the worst of dictators don't consider themselves to be bad. They just believe the ends justify the means. And they can get away with that because they have no opposition.
I think I've just written you a novel.
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This is Wikipedia on the first Italian fascist manifesto 6 June 1919.
'...The Manifesto supported the creation of universal suffrage for both men and women (the latter being realized only partly in late 1925), with all opposition parties banned or disbanded; proportional representation on a regional basis; government representation through a corporatist system of "National Councils" of experts, selected from professionals and tradespeople, elected to represent and hold legislative power over their respective areas, including labour, industry, transportation, public health, communications, etc.; and the abolition of the Italian Senate. The Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage, worker representation in industrial management. equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of their profits. It also called for the creation of a short-service national militia to serve defensive duties, nationalization of the armaments industry, and a foreign policy designed to be peaceful but also competitive.'
This could be any manifesto on the left or right.
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''London Labour MP has sparked outrage by saying IRA terrorists should be "honoured" for taking part in their "armed struggle".
John McDonnell, member for Hayes and Harlington, made his remarks at a gathering in London to commemorate the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, according to the Sun.
The MP praised the "bravery" of the IRA, whose "bombs and bullets" had resulted, he said, in the peace process in Northern Ireland. His remarks have been condemned by politicians and the family of one of the IRA's victims. Mr McDonnell told the meeting: "It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle.''
"It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table." Bobby Sands, 29, starved himself to death in prison more than 20 years ago.
Mr McDonnell told the Sun the deaths of innocent civilians was a "tragedy" but it was "as a result of British occupation in Ireland".
Following the reported comments Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said Mr McDonnell's remarks were worse than anything the suspended Labour MP George Galloway had said about Iraq.
"Mr McDonnell's remarks about the IRA, apart from being completely wrong, are crass, insensitive and an insult to the thousands of British people, police and servicemen who have been murdered, maimed or bereaved by the actions of these terrorists," he said.
The Upper Bann MP added: "He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately."
'Grossly insulting' Democratic Unionist MP Nigel Dodds and Ulster Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson also condemned the MP's comments. The father of one of the IRA's victims said his views were "grossly insulting".
Colin Parry's son Tim was killed at the age of 13 in the 1993 Warrington bomb which also killed a three-year-old boy. "I find them (the comments) incredible. On a personal level, they were grossly insulting and insensitive", he told BBC Radio Merseyside. "His political point is utter nonsense. The man is crass beyond belief. 'Praising murderers' "For him to think my son's death was justified in political terms is about the greatest disservice he could do to my son and my family."
A Labour Party spokesman said Mr McDonnell's views did not represent the party's views. "The Labour Party unreservedly condemns all atrocities perpetrated by the IRA and other paramilitaries." Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Quentin Davies said: "It's almost unbelievable that an MP should heap praise on those who have murdered our fellow citizens."
Mr McDonnell's constituency includes Heathrow Airport, which was the target of IRA mortar attacks nine years ago. He is also the chairman of the socialist Campaign Group of MPs and a member of the all-party Irish in Britain group in Parliament.''
-BBC 30th May 2003
I will provide the link below...
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+schumiisking Did I say McDonnell supports terrorism in general? I don't know if he supported Unionist terror groups as well, but he did support the IRA. He supported their brave 'sacrifice'.
And Bobby Sands was not an activist. He was a terrorist.
''Upon his release, he [Bobby Sands] returned to his family home in West Belfast, and resumed his active role in the Provisional IRA. Sands and Joe McDonnell planned the October 1976 bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry. The showroom was destroyed but as the IRA men left the scene there was a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Leaving behind two wounded, Seamus Martin and Gabriel Corbett, the remaining four (Sands, McDonnell, Seamus Finucane, and Sean Lavery) tried to escape by car, but were arrested. One of the revolvers used in the attack was found in the car. In 1977 the four were sentenced to 14 years for possession of the revolver. They were not charged with explosive offences.''
-Wikipedia
Bobby Sands the 'activist'? That's 'activism' is it? Let's just hope others don't follow the lead.
As to your desperately laughable question, 'where is the proof that he supports terrorism?' You read it there.
“It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA.”
The IRA are to be honoured for stopping their terrorist attacks. The fact that anyone would ask such a question says everything you need to know about the Labour party under Corbyn.
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+Katie Actually he is right. You clearly know fuck all about the middle east if you think it was stable when Saddam, Gaddafi, and all those other bloodthirsty despots were in charge. You also ignore the fact that when it comes to Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia, it was the people of those countries that decided it was time for their dictators to go. So to say they brought stability is as stupid as saying a boat floats. Right up until it sinks. When it comes to Assad, he could have stepped down and none of this would have happened. But he decided to fight until the last drop of blood (not his own blood obviously). Had the world stood as one against him, Syria might be like Tunisia. But unfortunately for the Syrian people Assad has Russian support. And Putin couldn't care less about freedom and democracy in Russia. Let alone Syria. He desperately wants to keep hold of his Mediterranean navel bases on Syria's coast. So he just keeps on selling attack helicopters, missiles, and bombs. And even joins in with indiscriminate bombing himself. As for ISIS, Putin is far more interested in attacking the Free Syrian Army. What do you think that Russian jet shot down by the Turks was doing near the Turkish boarder? They weren't bombing ISIS. They were bombing Turkmen tribesmen. Putin and his bloodthirsty puppet Assad want to knock the FSA out of the war. To force the west to chose between ISIS and Assad. But until Assad is gone, there will never be peace. So compared to Syria, Libya is a haven of tranquillity.
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Actually, the UK does have a pretty strong hand. The UK market is as important to the EU as the US market. In other words, it trades as much with the UK as it does the US. Meanwhile, the UK's biggest single market is the US. And, thanks to the EU, we don't presently have a trade deal with the US.
The EU, and those who support it against the UK, will try to sell the lie that the UK desperately needs a trade deal with the EU. And yet we don't have a trade deal with our biggest single trading partner?
It's also not in the EU's interest to piss off perhaps the second largest contributor to NATO. Presently, the UK contributes sizable forces to Europe's defence in the east. So making an enemy of the Brits at a time when Putin is redrawing the map of Europe is not wise at all. There was a very good reason why May mentioned the UK's roll in Europe's defence.
Every time Europe's chief Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, opens his mouth he increases support for the governments tough line on Brexit talks. Unless, of course, you're a Limp Dem. Or a supporter of Jeremy 'Wave The White Flag' Corbyn and his confused shadow cabinet. In which case you back the opposing side against the UK, obviously.
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I don't tend to watch them. But I have seen many people of all skin colours talking about their health. And at no time did I think ''Well, they look different to me. I can't possibly have anything in common with them!"
How do people of colour tend to be more marginalized? Are they refused health care because of their skin colour?
The UK is a majority white country. If you lived in Japan, you would expect to see Japanese people as being the 'default human beings'.
And what issues are particular to 'people of colour'? Can't be anorexia or bulimia can it? And are there issues particular to non-blacks, or non Asians? Clearly there must be.
And if experiences of white people in society are not the same as the experiences of black, Asian, etc. people, then you have your answer as to why there are very few programs discussing 'non white health issues'. The majority of people in the UK are white. And they couldn't possibly have empathy with non whites.
In fact, if we are to take your claims seriously, and accept that the experiences of white people are not the same as black or Asian people, etc, then non-white people would be overrepresented in the media. As the UK is a majority white country.
Non-white people would most certainly be over represented in politics. As non-whites are the minority in most constituencies. And people of one skin colour couldn't possibly vote for someone of another skin colour (because their experiences are not the same).
So, following your argument, we better get rid of all those non white tv presenters, doctors, teachers, politicians, etc. And forget about ever having a non-white prime minister. After all, how could he or she possibly represent white people in a majority white country?
Are you prepared for that type of segregation? Because if what you say is true, then the racists are right.
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++John Constantine. And now we get to the part of your post where you show your true colours. You quote Donald Trump. ''Obama and Hilary are the founders of ISIS''
Obviously, the fact that this is untrue doesn't bother you. Your pathological hatred of an imagined 'western imperialism' means that you will quote anyone, even a billionaire globalist, if he says something that justifies your claims.
This is why you are also willing to wade thro the blood and corpses of the Syrian war to point the finger at Saudi Arabia (western ally-convenient target). And, of course, Israel (you are a Corbyn supporter, after all!).
It's not Assad _that's_ at fault, its them others!
It's western imperialism again, isn't it? Its never Stalin, or Castro, or Mao, or Gaddafi, or Saddam, or the ayatollah, or Assad, or Kim, or Pol Pot, or Ho Chi Minh. Its the one place where people actually have all those rights, freedoms, and privileges that, no doubt, you claim you want.
So much for your 'revolution'.
Communism is the problem. Its not because it has just been badly implemented. It's what happens in a one party state. I will assume that you're no just some worthless little cunt that wants to round up everyone who disagrees with you and put them in a gulag concentration camp (altho you're happy to defend exactly that), and instead think that you have at least thought critically about some things.
You might feel that it is unjust that wealthy individuals and corporations get to employ millions of people. Too much power in the hands of a small elite (the 1%), you might think. They can hire and fire people. People that they don't much like. So, if that is the case, I ask you, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT TO GIVE THAT POWER TO A ONE PARTY STATE?
What could go wrong, right? I mean, its not like anything bad has ever happened?
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+John Constantine. Quite clearly I have addressed your claim that communism is not an oppressive and imperialistic ideology. I have pointed to the fact that it was spread throughout Europe by conquest. Enforced thro violence (the soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and Hungry). And it attempted to spread further (Vietnam/Korea).
The idea that soviet Russia had any legitimate claim to annex territory simply because of fear of its neighbours, is to argue the same case for nazi German's invasion and annexation of Polish territory. The fascists feared the communists, as much as the communists feared the fascists. And just like Russia, Germany too had been attacked by its neighbours.
The weakness of your argument as to the wests non intervention in Germany is glaringly obvious by your own defence of soviet Russia. You say that the west was aware of the nazi concentration camps and of the other horrors that went on. This is true. But it is also true that the west was aware of the gulag concentration camps under the soviets. And of the soviet ethnic cleansing that went on in Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics, as well as in Russia itself.
And yet why aren't you arguing that the west should have invaded soviet Russia? Is it really as simple to you as fascisms victims matter. But communisms victims must be ignored, or worse, denied?
The victims of the soviet system far outnumber those of the nazis. But you justify soviet action as being born out of necessity. You say this was because it was threatened by its enemies (every communist regime, every dictatorship, uses this same excuse). It doesn't seem to have occurred to you that there might be good reason to be an enemy of communism and all the evils that come with it.
Have you heard of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact? And its secret clause that divided Europe up between the fascists and the communists? I think it was only in the 90s that Russia finally admitted its existence. Altho it had been known about for long before that.
It was not the case that Germany invaded Poland, forcing the soviets into their own invasion of Poland. Ribbentrop was invited TO MOSCOW. And that is where the plan for the invasion and partition of Poland was formalised.
Communism was as big a threat to Europe as fascism. Soviet Russia began the war as an ally of nazi Germany. It started the war along with nazi Germany. It invaded an annexed territory just as nazi Germany. But unlike nazi Germany. It won. And half of Europe paid the price.
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+John Constantine. But communism can only ever exist thro a one party state. You could only ever appropriate the property, and the right to own property, and the 'means of production', thro a one party state system.
You do realise what that means, don't you? It means, EVERYTHING is controlled and run by the government. That 1% of the elite that control everything that you are so concerned about, GET'S SMALLER. Not only do they run the government, the police, the courts, the army, the budget, education, and health. They now employ everyone. They now run all the media. Every business. Every factory. Every school. Every store. They, THE GOVERNMENT pays your wages and decides where you work.
And where is the opposition media in a communist state? Where are the lawyers? THEY WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT!
You don't even trust the tories we have in power now. In the system we have now. Are you really telling me that you want to give politicians even more power and authority?
And don't try to hide behind what the US did in Chile. I can point to what we have in the west. I can say it is worth fighting for. And hundreds of thousands of Syrians would agree with me. What can you point to? Where is your communist utopia?
Politically, your communist ideals amount to a whole heap of worthless shit. Economically, they amount to a whole lot less. Millions of 'enemies of the revolution' are put to death. Concentration camps are filled up with counterrevolutionaries. But, despite that enormous cost, what have you got to show for it?
In other words, how are you measuring the worth of your ideology if not by its results?
Saudi Arabia may be a backwards and repressive dictatorship, but Assad is worse. Kim is worse. Saddam was worse. Stalin was worse. Mao was worse. Pol Pot was worse. You express sympathy for the soviet empire because it had enemies. But then so does the Saudi regime.
Yup, they stone adulterers. They murder gays. They don't allow women to drive. They don't hold free elections. They have a fuckin appalling human rights record. But guess what, they're not presently killing their own people in the numbers that, say, the Assad regime is. In other words, one the list of world priorities, they are not number one.
The Arab spring actually showed very well how the world works. It began in Tunisia, an ally of the west. And because of western influence, Ben Ali, its dictator, was forced out of power. Egypt was also an ally of the west, and altho its uprising wasn't successful, it avoided war.
The two places where the tyrants clung onto power, where war was guaranteed, Libya and Syria, were the two countries where the west had no influence.
You think that the west should've stayed out of Libya. But what do you actually base that argument on?
It can't be because you care about Libya's future. It's people believed it had no future under Gaddafi. Can't be because you care about Libyan casualties. Unless you make the ludicrous claim that the war would have stopped on the very same day it did without western intervention. It can't be because you think that Libya is worse off today, because the uprising had already begun. You had no say in that. That was the decision of the Libyan people. You just had to decide which way to jump.
If your problem is that Libya is a mess today (at least it's not as bad as Syria), then your argument is with the Libyan people. What an ungrateful bunch of fuckers! Would you have been prepared to have argued the case for the continuation of the Gaddafi regime, I wonder?
I would dearly have loved to have seen that. Would you have waved your revolutionary flag while you did so? Would you have talked about the inevitability of a revolution? Would you have complained about the power all being in the hands of a tiny elite?
Hardly likely. Not if you were arguing _in_ favour of the status quo.
Some revolutionary you turn out to be!
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+John Constantine. You've clearly got it all figured out. But unfortunately, it doesn't begin well. You start by saying you would legalise state theft. You would appropriate property without compensation. Which essentially means that individuals or companies would no longer invest in the country (after all, what company would invest in a country if their investment is likely to be stolen from them?).
This is the fatal weakness of communism. There is certainly no communist system that runs as efficiently as the capitalist system. So economically speaking, the state ownership of 'the means of production' is a step backwards. In other words, you would be taking away the basic freedom of an individual to profit from their labour for no good reason other than for ideologies sake.
You then go on to further erode the individual's rights by saying that you would set a limit on the amount of money they are allowed to make. No doubt this comes about by the mistaken belief that those who are economically successful (the boss class) just sit about all day with their feet up on their big desks smoking fat cigars and hiring and firing people at their leisure.
The only trouble is that this idea is utter bollox. The people who you are punishing, and therefore discouraging, are among the hardest working in society. The most motivated. And they would leave. You say ''Let's see how many emigrate if there are no home companies to poach them for higher wages''. But they would leave the country altogether. And, as I'm assuming that you want the best of higher education, the brightest and most motivated of those out of higher education would follow them (lets see you dream up a way of forcing them to pay extra on their visa when they have nothing-perhaps you could do an IQ test?)
You're not talking equality of opportunity here. But equality of outcome. You have set a narrow margin of what you have deemed acceptable success. And you will use the state to inforce it.
This is not a utopian society you are dreaming of. But an authoritarian society. As has been proved time and time again, the economics of your system would be of no benefit to wider society. In fact, it would be quite the opposite. So why do it?
The real reason is, of course, the need for control. You might like reading your anarchist writers. They allow you to see yourself as anti-establishment. But at heart you are an authoritarian. You want what you consider to be a perfect society. And you are very much prepared to limit people's freedoms in order for that to come about.
You have shown your vindictiveness (and therefor unfitness to be trusted with authority) against those who disagree with you here: ''...For those that do elect to leave - good riddance. They will have to pay for an exit visa to leave the country as well, calculated at a rate to include refunds to the state for the benefits they have accrued from health and education and compensation for their economic crimes if they have been bankers and traders'' (what if they had private healthcare and/or education-which most will?).
Chilling words. You have in those few sentences created a system whereby the law can be changed retrospectively in order for you to enact vengeance on those you have a prejudice against (it goes without saying that their only crime would have been to be non-state bankers and traders). And so now you cant even leave your dystopia without being fleeced on the way out. Getting to look more and more like Cuba with each sentence!
Predicting economic crashes sometime in the future is as easy as predicting war. And populist politics and the promise of a perfect society are nothing new. But except for small groups of deluded self-proclaimed radicalists, the world is moving towards capitalism. Not away from it. And the results are undeniable. Take a look at China. Millions have been lifted out of (real) poverty with the ditching of the old outdated reactionary authoritarian ideology of state control.
No doubt this is disheartening to you. Because you want to control society. You don't see the rule of law as a way to safeguard the rights of individuals. But as a weapon of control. Which is exactly how all dictatorships begin. Your ideas have been tried over and over with the same predictable results. And its not a good sign that, just like all dictatorships, you simply blame others for its failings.
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''...It would be the lawful appropriation of wealth that has been either unfairly amassed or in need of redistribution''
So you would have to apply the law retrospectively in order to make something that was legal at the time, suddenly illegal now. And then use that retrospective law to 'appropriate' (steal lawfully earned money or property) from individuals. Dress it up in as fancy words as you like, its still misuse of the law.
Then I read further. And altho we're only three paragraphs in, I see this ''...Any Board of Directors instituting such policies will be deemed to be commiting acts of Economic Sabotage against the people which would be made criminal offenses of the highest order''
Pretty sickening stuff. Why is it that you types always hide your own prejudices with phrases such as 'enemies of the people'? Do you really know fuck all about the evils of the ideology you're advocating? 'Economic Sabotage' is straight out of the history books. And when your workers utopia fails miserably, which it inevitably would, you'd be looking for scapegoats. And prosecuting your opponents on acts of treason against the masses.
''They will be co-opted to help the implementation of what we want to achieve. They know the alternatives are acts of criminal sabotage''.
In your authoritarian state, everyone would be subservient to 'The People' (the state). The rights of the individual would be taken away. And this would be justified as being in the best interests of 'The People' (the state).
You claim this is a third way. But no it isn't. It's old. It's been tried many times before. It's communism.
The west is successful because it guarantees the right of the individual. And the rule of law is there to protect their rights and freedoms. Not to direct their lives. That is an abuse of power.
The reason why communism fails so brutally is shown in your thinking. Because once you stop treating people as individuals with minds and opinions and priorities of their own, and instead label them as simply cogs in the machine that drives the state, then anything 'in the name of The People' (the state) becomes permissible.
What you have there is fascism. Which is no different from communism (two sides of the same coin). The individual is expendable. A slave to the state.
And if you are prepared to take the rights and freedoms of the individual away in the name of the 'greater good', then you are following in the footsteps of every other fascist/communist dictatorship that came before you.
Like I said, you enjoy reading 'anarchist' writers because it allows you to indulge in the fantasy of being somehow anti-establishment. But you aren't that at all, are you? You're quite the opposite. You're an authoritarian.
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You clearly are a communist. And an authoritarian. You play at being anti-establishment, but your real goal is to implement your fascist one party state. Your contempt for democracy is all too clear. You talk about revolution. But why would there be a need for a revolution in a free democracy?
The answer is that people aren't voting the way you want them to. So, rather than admit that the majority don't want the childish badly constructed plan you have mapped out for them, you need to claim that democracy doesn't really exist. And that the system we have now is simply a sham.
The only problem you have is that results speak for themselves. Capitalism has lifted millions out of real world poverty. We now enjoy better living standards, rights, freedoms, and privileges than ever before in human history. But you want to turn the clock back to the old authoritarian style of doing things. Arbitrary laws. Subservience to the state. The removal of personal rights and freedoms. And eventual full on dictatorship.
Obviously, you would do away with democratic accountability. That much is clear by your contempt for what we have now. Your inability to recognise true dictatorships, such as in Cuba under Castro, is not a good sign.
''...[the Castro regime] is a popular government and has done an enormous amount to lift it from being the brothel of US capitalists and has given free health care and education to its people''
And again ''...its even clearer than Cuba that the regime was very popular with most of the people''
In other words; The Castro regime is popular. No need for free elections.
You're like something out of the history books. I've studied pre-revolutionary Russia, and post-revolutionary Russia. And the words you speak and the phrases you use, are pretty much the same as the Leninists and Trotskyists and Stalinists.
Communism was built on lies. It was neither economically viable (let alone successful) nor socially beneficial (very much the opposite). So in order to try and sell it to the masses, its supporters, like you, have to pretend it isn't communism. In other words, you have to lie.
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+John Constantine. You are correct. I don't like authoritarianism. I don't like communists or fascists. Their ideologies are built on hatred. To me, you are no better than the extreme right.
Estimates to the number of victims of the Castro regime in Cuba are around 70,000. Today, Chile is considered one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations. Whereas over fifty years on from Castro coming to power, Cuba is still dirt poor. With only the regime elites enjoying the benefit of the 'revolution'.
Not interested in your refighting of old battles. The minors unions were militarised by the far left. And the fact that you would use the disaster that was Hillsborough is just another example of how low you will go.
The riots in 2011 were simply the opportunistic criminal element of society jumping on the bandwagon of the police shooting of a local criminal. Austerity measures hadn't even begun. And it was only once the majority (the 99%) began to fight back against the looters, arsonists, and various other criminals, that the riots stopped. That's real people power for you!
I have no problem looking at my own ethics. I can say that just as during world war 2 the free democratic west allied alongside the evil of soviet Russia in order to defeat another evil, so too did the west do the same during the cold war.
And the results speak for themselves. The free democratic west is as strong as ever. But apart from a few dinosaurs who still peddle the myths of Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, and Castroism, where is your glorious communist revolution now?
You are reduced to working out of the gutter. Apologists for the very worst of regimes. Skulking about the fringes of criminality. Third-rate rabble rousers spreading hate, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. Willing to work with anyone. With absolutely fuck all to show for decades of promoting a dead and buried ideology that never was.
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Like I said, whereas Chile has moved on, Cuba is still suffering from the brutality of the Castro regime. It's funny how you continue to blame the US for the crimes of Castro's 'revolution'. All that aid the soviets poured into the country. And Cuba was and still is free to trade with whoever it likes. Just not with the US. But then why would it want to? Why would the superior communist system need to rely on trade with the hated capitalist west? With its worst enemy?
The reality has always been that the trade embargo by the US is just a smokescreen for the incompetence of the Castro regime and its unworkable system. Cuba is dirt poor. Have you seen their hospitals? Have you seen their housing? That's real genuine poverty. While the rich and vastly corrupt revolutionary regime elites live a life of luxury.
Oh, right. I forgot. You're a useful idiot. You believe everything that is told to you by a one party dictatorship that controls all media and stamps out any dissenting opposition. What a sucker.
And yes, if you attempted to enforce your authoritarian fascist system on the UK, I would have no problem in apposing that. I don't believe you have the right to dictate to people how they live their lives. I don't believe you have the right to force your oppressive dystopia on others.
North Korea is as true to the communist system as any communist regime could be. In North Korea, the state controls everything. They are both your government, your employer, your law courts, your media. They tell you where to work and how much you will get paid. They tell you where you will live. They tell you what you will eat (the government hands out rations). They tell you what you can read. What entertainment you can watch (there is no privately owned media). They control what you wear (the government decides what is acceptable and fashionable). They even dictate how you can cut your own hair.
Really. You'd love it there. You could drive around in a government car with the rest of the useful idiots and tell everyone there just how lucky they are not to live in the capitalist west. You could even help spread the regimes propaganda about how the US was responsible for the Korean war. They'd treat you like a VIP. You'd get to feel important. People would listen to you. They'd have to.
As for China, you do know that since the regime switched to a more capitalistic system, its lifted millions of Chinese out of real world poverty? Isn't that an improvement? They now get to enjoy a lifestyle that you take for granted. And better still, once you ditch the oppressive communist system and open up to capitalism, you turn everyone into consumers!
Now the people begin to realise that they have a choice. They don't need the government to tell them what to wear of where to work or what they can do with their time. And eventually, once the middle classes are large enough, what's left of the communist system will be ditched and consigned to the same dark corner of history as it has been in Europe.
That's one of the reasons why communist dictatorships, like North Korea or Cuba or the Soviet Empire, try their best to keep the people under control. They like to limit what they read and what they watch. Because otherwise people start asking questions. And then the game is up.
Still desperately clinging on to the riots in 2011 like they were some kind of revolutionary movement, are we? The looting and burning of people's homes and businesses wasn't big enough a clue as to what they really were? Mark Duggan was a revolutionary? A hero of the downtrodden 99%? Sad.
You're just dreaming of a revolution that will never happen. Democracy creates stability. Its strength is that you don't need to have a revolution to kick out an unpopular government. Once enough people want rid of it, they just have to vote it out of power.
Boring, I know. You don't get to break windows and loot stores and set fire to police cars. You don't get to play the romantic anarchist. But in the long run it makes for better government. And it means that you don't have to have fighting on the streets every decade or so.
Trouble for you is that rather than just banging on about Pinochet and Chile and Hillsborough and Scargill and the minors, you'd actually have to have an alternative system that others would want to vote for. You'd have to convince them it would work. You don't like austerity, you say? Then perhaps some kind of new tax to pay for everything you promise in your communist utopia? You could call it the Poll Tax. Don't like that? Then plant a magic money tree or learn how to turn lead into gold.
Then perhaps people might trust you to run a local council for a while. Just to see if you're up to it. It would be boring. You'd have to deal with everyday problems. And people wouldn't be interested in hearing how the US kicked out the leftists in Chile. Or how you stopped someone rich from being quite so rich. They'd just want their bins emptied.
Not interested in your fantasies concerning MI5 or MI6. But I guess it makes you feel rebellious and edgy if you make believe they give a shit about you or your 'revolution'. They don't. Nor does anyone else. You're whole worthless ideology is a joke.
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Cuba doesn't actually have free education. Because it's all paid for out of tax. Just as it is in the UK and the US. The Cuban regime isn't giving anything away for free. Because the money comes from the Cuban people. Same with health care. That has suffered badly thro decades of underfunding.
You say that your policy would be to allow investment to take place abroad, but not at the expense of any investment here. So are you assuming you'll have some resources left over to invest overseas? Who decides what is or is not at the expense of internal investment? Your commission? Will they be prosecuted for economic sabotage if they get it wrong?
No, wait. Because who would know, right? You'd control all the media. No one would ever know.
And yeah, there is always saboteurs in Cuba. Much like in your dystopia, anyone who disagrees with the State is a saboteur. Lenin did the same. And Trotsky. And Stalin.
You clearly know fuck all about anything you're talking about. Crime and corruption were endemic under communism. As was real poverty. So bad, they even had to have night curfews. Obviously, crime rates were never admitted to. Because there was no opposition media. There was no opposition. They were all sitting in jail.
To answer your question, if I believed that a political party in power were to introduce authoritarian laws, lock up those they don't like, and take away people's rights and freedoms, yes. I would be against them. This is not as big as deal as you would like it to be. Had people resisted Hitler's national socialist party in 1930's Germany, who knows what might have been averted?
Will there be economic crashes in the future? Of course. And the exact same thing would happen under your system. Only, of course, what with the State running everything, it would be far more disastrous. Your command economy, and that's what it is-even tho you're too stupid to realise it, would be totally dependent on the decisions of a very small political elite.
And who would be around to criticize that elite? You say you would allow political opposition. But who would support them and how? You couldn't set up your own newspaper (the printing press revolutionised European politics-all newspapers would now be in the hands of the State). You couldn't set up your own media (there goes the freedom of speech).
Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But despite the untold misery, poverty, oppression, death, and destruction that Marx unleased on the world (or perhaps because of it), you still think it will work. Because this time you will get it right.
I doubt that very much. Your bitter, cynical, and divisive ideology remains in the past. Where it belongs. Along with the sad, resentful lunatics who preach it.
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Rspsand07 Firstly, the official language of Ukraine is and has always been, of course, Ukrainian. Just as the official language in France is French. In Germany its German. And so on. What do you expect the official language of Ukraine to be? Samoan?
Secondly, Ukraine has never had a law on the official status of the Russian language Ukraine recognizes 18 minority languages as “regional” languages: Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Armenian, Gagauzian, Yiddish, Crimean Tatar, Moldovan, German, Greek, Polish, Romani, Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian, Ruthenian, Karaite, and Krymchak. And none of that has changed.
I can understand a civil war breaking out because of the murderous actions of a brutal dictatorship like, say, the Assad regime in Syria. But a civil war over a ban that never happened of a law that never existed?
Obviously the 'civil war' in Ukraine is nothing but yet more Kremlin lies and propaganda. Which is why the Ukrainians keep capturing Russian soldiers. Which is why we all see those prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Moscow!
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If this lady's ex-partner was on here complaining about David Cameron's views on one parent families, I would have the exact same opinion.The issues surrounding one parent families are well known. And there is much evidence that they have a detrimental effect on wider society. This is not the fault of David Cameron. Or the government. Because, as you can imagine, no one in their right mind would want any government telling them who, and who not, to have kids with.
If she is having no problems raising her children, then what is she complaining about? If, on the other hand, she is, then who, ultimately, should take responsibility? She can blame her partner. But it would still have been her choice to have children with him. So while this lady is on here flaunting her grievances, in this matter at least, she has no one but herself to blame. Not David Cameron. Not the Tories. Not the government. And not Society. Only herself.
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The Zeitgeist Yes. I have heard the 'leaked' phone call. In the call, the Estonian foreign minister, Urmas Paet said he had been told snipers responsible for killing police and civilians in Kiev were protest movement provocateurs rather than supporters of then-president Viktor Yanukovych. Ashton responds: "I didn't know … Gosh."
During the conversation, Paet quoted a woman named Olga – who the Russian media identified as Olga Bogomolets, a doctor – blaming snipers from the opposition shooting the protesters.
However, Olga Bogomolets, the doctor, who allegedly claimed that protesters and Berkut troops came under fire from the same source, said she had not told Paet that policemen and protesters had been killed in the same manner, that she did not imply that the opposition was implicated in the killings, and that the government informed her that an investigation had been started
The Estonian foreign ministry said: "Foreign minister Paet was giving an overview of what he had heard in Kiev and expressed concern over the situation on the ground. We reject the claim that Paet was giving an assessment of the opposition's involvement in the violence."
Who knows what really went on? But it's certain that Russian special forces were on the ground there. Just as they were, and are, in eastern Ukraine. Moreover, we do know that police units had been given the order to kill protestors. We saw them. And I believe (altho I'd have to check), that Yanukovych's own security adviser at that time was Russian.
So you would have to ask yourself why it would've been necessary for the 'opposition' to snipe at the demonstrators. When the police were already shooting them dead in full view of the worlds media?.
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+James Johnson.
Corbyn says he would never push the button. So, unless the labour party scraps trident, the UK would be paying for a useless nuclear deterrent. Well done Commissar Corbyn, you've managed to have the worst of both worlds.
He has called the IRA his friends. He mixes it with Hamas. His chancellor believes that the IRA's 'sacrifice' (planting bombs in places where there are civilians-a war crime-then running away) should be honoured. I know, you'll pretend that he was in some way responsible for the Good Friday Agreement. But he wasn't. He was very much on one side. And besides, if political violence is acceptable for one, its acceptable for all, yeah?
He is close allies with the Iranian apologists in the leadership of the so-called Stop the War Coalition (the reason why you will never see demonstrations by the STWC against Assad or Russian actions in Syria). He has also worked for the Iranian regime's Press TV propaganda channel.
He is good friends with George Galloway. The two always sat together in the Commons. How do you not know that Corbyn is a friend of Galloway?
We don't know his policies. He says he will spend a shit load of cash and somehow hope that will wipe out the UK's debt. He announces one policy one day. Then his party bin it the next. Free giveaways are more his style. They're popular, and he only ever likes to be associated with popular giveaways. Everyone gets more holidays! Fuck the cost to the economy! Because like all socialists, he's very good at giving away other people's money.
The guy is a fraud. He talks like nobody but Jeremy Corbyn has a conscience. He doesn't like war. Good for him. Nobody does. Nobody, not even ISIS, would want to fight if they could get what they want without fighting. But that doesn't answer the difficult questions that need an answer when you are the one with the responsibility.
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Uros L Stalin was every bit as bad as Hitler. The war in the east was simply between two mass murdering genocidal dictatorships. So why should anyone care about those Russians who fought for Stalin? They were as bad as the Germans who fought for Hitler.
The history of Russia's soviet empire is just one long list of misery, oppression, and genocide. I have sympathy for the millions of Russians who were victims of Stalin's murderous regime. Just as I have sympathy for the Germans who were victims of Hitler. But it was the western allies that brought freedom to Europe. Those unlucky enough to have been 'liberated' by the Russians continued to suffer until the final collapse of Russia's soviet empire.
Stalin's alliance with Hitler served Russia well up until the German invasion. Stalin added more territories to his empire. Expanding his brutal regime into Finland, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and others. The Russians carried out mass deportations of whole ethnic groups and wiped out anyone who opposed them.
The brutality of the Russian occupation was such that, when the Germans began their invasion of Russia, many Latvians, Estonians, and Lithuanians were only too happy to join the fight alongside Hitler. And the same can be said for many Ukrainians who fought for Germany. This is of course something that many Russian propagandists like to highlight. 'The Ukrainian's joined the nazis'. But they conveniently ignore the history behind it. Because like the Baltics, if you know Ukraine's history, and what Russia did there, you'd know why they joined Germany.
For eastern Europe there was no liberation after the war. They remained part of Stalin's empire. When the Russians returned to the Baltics, they exacted a terrible revenge against the people there. The numbers of people who were exiled to gulag concentration camps in Siberia run into the hundreds of thousands. And remember, the Baltics have only ever had a small population.
But of course, if you already knew all of this, you would understand why the Baltics and eastern Europe in general don't want Russia back. And you would understand why they don't trust a KGB man in the kremlin. And as we can all see what Putin is doing in Ukraine and Syria, and what he did to Chechnya and Georgia, you would also understand why they are correct in thinking that.
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Uros L Saddam was a dictator. One of the worst. People often say that dictators bring stability. But they don't. Saddam didn't. Gaddafi didn't. And Assad didn't. Because eventually, if people can't get rid of a leader by legal means, they will take to the streets and do it by force.
It happened in Russia several times. It happened recently in Syria, Tunisia, and Libya. If they're lucky, and they fight for it, they get something better in its place. Often they get something worse. Either way, they suffer decades of dictatorship. And the cost of having to remove it.
That's the beauty of being able to elect your government. You can get rid of it peacefully and without cost to life.
One of the ways to tell if you live in a dictatorship is whether or not the media can criticize those who hold power. In the west, that's normal. You can watch CNN, Fox, BBC, whatever, and they all freely criticize the government.
No media in Iraq or Syria or Libya or North Korea would have ever dared to have done that.
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Wow. Who knew ending wars was as easy as 'stop pissing people off'? How would that work then? Like, in Syria? Or Libya? Or Afghanistan? Because us desperately not pissing people off won't stop the bad guys there, will it?
Oh, shit! I made a moral judgement! I said 'Bad Guys'! I forgot it's all relative now, yes? Don't want to be culturally imperialist! Someone comes along and takes your kids away to force them to fight for the Jihadist cause, who are we to say that's not right?
And, yeah. It has to be the fault of the west. Because there was no history anywhere in the world until the west arrived. No wars. No conflict. Nothing. It was a haven of tranquillity. And then there's the age old Leftist conspiracy: It's all down to those evil capitalists. Funnily enough, that was what many on the far left said about fighting Hitler.
The fact that dictators like Saddam, Gaddafi, and Assad, were armed, not by the west, but by the soviets isn't important. In fact, if you were to look at the countries effected by the Arab Spring you would notice that the regimes that were closest to the west (Tunisia, Egypt) managed to avoid war (Tunisia removed their dictator, Egypt still has a way to go). Whereas, those regimes where the west had no influence at all (Iran, Syria, Libya) either erupted into all out war or the Arab Spring was quickly stamped out.
I suggest that if you were in Syria or Benghazi, and you heard that ISIS or Gaddafi was on his way to your town, you would not see the fight against them as 'expanding wars'. You talk as if there is no cost to inaction. But there is. History shows us there is.
Corbyn may think he can try diplomacy. But what has he got that ISIS or Gaddafi or Assad can't take? Do you think these people are playing? Dangerously naive.
In the meantime I would rather have a party that will make necessary decisions. Unpopular, but necessary realistic decisions. Because I don't want the country to get worse. And it can. If you think we have austerity now, take a look at Greece. Go take a look at Venezuela. Because wringing your hands over mass unemployment and hospitals running out of drugs, and food riots won't make any difference to reality then.
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It could very well be that the Conservatives are an evil subhuman species that lack normal human empathy, and who want to kill off as many people as possible. Just because. Or, it could actually be down to the fact that this country has massive debts. And in order for our economy not to collapse completely, we need to be making cuts.
I have no idea what documentary you are talking about. But nothing you have said refutes my claim. In Syria you have a war that has gone on for six years. Because not only does Iran back Assad, but also Russia. And those countries have no interest in the rights of their own citizens. Let alone the rights of others.
''...Question, if you or your kids got drafted into a war that you didn't agree with... as in WW2, any able bodied man over a certain age is now in the war... isn't it the same?''
In asking that question, you have proved my earlier point. That the left now stands for nothing. To you, fighting for ISIS or the Taliban is basically the same thing as fighting against fascism. You are unable to make a moral judgement between the two. As, to you, all morality is subjective.
So now you cannot see the difference between fighting against fascism. And fighting for fascism. Because to pick a side, and to make a moral judgement, would require you to admit that sacrifice for the greater good (in this case, safeguarding our rights and freedoms against political or religious fascism), is sometimes a necessity.
Your logic is driven by the need to avoid necessary sacrifice. So to you, all things are negotiable. They must be. You believe that you can negotiate with ISIS or the Taliban, or fascism in general, because to fight against them would require you to make a moral judgement against them. And to follow that judgement thro. At which point there would be consequences. And you'll do anything to avoid responsibility for the consequences.
Of course, it goes without saying that in the above case, you expect it to be others who live with the consequences of negotiation with the Taliban or with ISIS, rather than you (the Afghans or the Libyans or the Syrians). It's enough for you to mention Saudi Arabia for your conscience to be clear. The fight is going on in Afghanistan and Syria and Libya, but you can't get involved there because you say we'd have to declare war on Saudi Arabia as well (???). Any excuse.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the economic consequences of ignoring the massive debt we are in today, there is no negotiation. You are dealing with economic reality. The numbers do not add up. And no matter how much you plead or beg or how often you point out the rusted paintwork in your local park, the numbers will still not add up.
You can't avoid this one. You might like to think we can. You might like to think that everyone can have everything, and we can all go on spending what we do not have and there will be no consequences. But I don't believe you. And thankfully most people agree with me. Because we know that 'sorry, we got it wrong' won't undo the consequences of you doing nothing. As usual.
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The Legislative Assembly of the Russian Leningrad Region has prepared a draft law that would essentially prohibit children younger than 14 years old to use social media, Russian lawmaker Vladimir Petrov said.
MOSCOW — According to the draft bill, the administration of social services would have to check the identity of everyone who wants to register, including both Russian and foreign citizens. Violation of the law would be punishable by a fine of 100,000-300,000 rubles ($1,790-$5,360) for the owner of the website and of 1,000-3,000 rubles for the user.
"For the sake of public security we need to introduce the principle of general verification of all users [They want to know where you live], and that is only possible from the moment a citizen gets a passport, at 14 years of age. No one is trying to introduce censorship or limit the freedom of speech, verification and strict identity control will only increase the value of public opinion and virtual communication," Petrov said, as quoted by the Russian Izvestia newspaper.
Users would also be allowed to only create one page under their real names, with the violation punishable by fines both for the website and the user. Several other restrictions would be introduced for the users under 18, such as the ban on selling any goods to minors via social media.
The draft bill also prohibits spreading information about unauthorized rallies and demonstrations, as well as publishing other people’s correspondence without their consent. [No publishing incriminating emails]
According to the newspaper, the draft bill is expected to be introduced to the State Duma on Wednesday
-Sputnik News
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Any deals will no doubt be discussed openly. There will be two sides in any agreement reached, and an open discussion is as much in the EU's interest as it is the UK's. However, neither side can be making promises before the deal has been finalised. The UK, for instance, cannot be making guarantees over EU citizens resident in the UK without knowing that any such guarantee would be reciprocated. That would be plainly ridiculous.
But a vote against any exit deal is not a vote to remain. It would simply be a rejection of any agreement reached. Which, presuming those who voted against any deal (along with Gina Miller and her supports) care at all about the UK's future relations with the EU (and don't just want to sink the ship because they didn't get their way-something that, quite rightly, would be unforgivable), would be very unwise.
As for Theresa May not having a plan, neither does the EU. One moment the principle of free movement is sacred. The next it is not. A good deal with a post-Brexit UK is as much in the interests of the remaining members of the EU as it is for the UK. With Trump's election, the rise of the far right in France, a stagnant economy, and an aggressive Russia on its eastern boarder, Europe is not in any position to be making enemies.
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***** Much like a German neo-nazi would deny the crimes of nazi Germany, I would expect nothing more from a Russian nationalist Putin supporter than to deny the crimes of soviet Russia. And Russia has indeed invaded modern day Georgia and Ukraine. Once again, only nationalist Russians continue to deny this truth.
I included Germany in my very short list for the very same reasons you included it in your list. Or did you just cut and paste without reading it? I included modern day Syria for the same reasons you include Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
''...Not even to mention that Russia has never practiced Western style of taking other countries as "colonies" to suck dry their wealth policy,''
It most certainly has. During the Tsarist Empire, Russia expanded east and south into the Caucasus at the expense of the Persian Empire. In Crimea, for example, the Russians deported pretty much the entire ethnic Crimean Tatar population. Don't you know Russian history?
''...in fact Russia has always heavily invested in the territories it has gained trough conflicts that were usually started by the West AGAINST Russia.''
I guess you should try convincing the entirety of Eastern Europe of that. As many countries are yet to recover from Russian soviet occupation.
''...Oh and Russians never liberated anyone? Not even from Ottoman rule? Or even from under Nazi occupation? You must have something wrong in your head then.''
No. The Russians never liberated anyone in Eastern Europe after the war. They simply carried on doing what they did before the war. They annexed whole countries to their soviet empire. It was basically just one genocidal tyrant taking over from another.
''...meanwhile USA has only increased its colonial hold on Eastern Europe trough NATO''
Eastern Europe is now part of the democratic world. They are members of NATO by choice. The only way you can claim they are 'colonised' by the US is to deny that they are democratic. Which is seen as an insult by a great many Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, etc.
Up until recently, there were very few US troops based in Eastern Europe. Just a couple of training bases in Bulgaria and Rumania. This has changed since Russia's invasion and occupation of Ukraine. And a force of some 4,000 NATO troops are to be sent to Poland. This is hardly surprising given Poland's history with Russia.
As for 'Russophobia'. This comment thread started off about Putin and his fake elections. But as always, Russian's have to turn everything into a rant against the US. You all seem completely obsessed by the US. Just like the North Koreans. And we all know what North Korea is like, don't we?
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+Brad Hinburg. I apologize. I actually meant to say £30,000 a year. The average national wage is around about £28,000. And that is not poverty.
Nevertheless, it is not true that a tax haven is a place where progressive taxation is barely levied at all. You simply need to undercut taxation in other similar countries. Scotland's SNP had the same idea in cutting corporation tax in Scotland to attract more investment, for example.
If, on the other hand, we are talking about attracting super rich individuals to the UK, then, as the Super rich do not tend to use public services such as the NHS, and the state schooling system etc, but still pay in to them, there would be no overall loss of tax income.
That is putting it extremely crudely, I admit. But there is a reason why high taxation on the wealthy doesn't always bring in as much money as lower taxation. And that is because the super wealthy are the most economically mobile in society.
If Brussels were to play dirty over the UK's exit of the EU, then we would be under no obligation not to undercut the EU's taxation policy. If it worked, that is.
My point is, that it sounds pretty retarded to simply stick to the redundant political dogma of 'tax the rich until the pips squeak' if it brings in less cash.
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Lenin was a cold blooded genocidal killer. And Marx was wrong on everything. So its not hard to see why Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin went the way they did. Marxism is all about the subjugation of the individual to the state. Altho, of course, it's not called a state.
That's how a lot of Leftist thinking works. Don't like the idea of a state? Rename it something else. Job done. The state no longer exists. Marxism is built on lies. And Marxists are expert liars. Especially to themselves.
Capitalist democracy is far superior. Capitalism and democracy work best together. Because, just like a salesman selling his product, political parties must sell their product to the people. And no one wants sell faulty goods. Or they go out of business.
Marxism is all about power and control. And that's what Marxists want above all else. Control. The capitalist system is seen as too chaotic. People are free to live how they please. Which is like garlic to a vampire to a Marxist.
The massive flaw in Marx's thinking (a flaw that has cost the lives and caused misery of many many millions) is that, whereas capitalism separates the state from how the individual profits from his labour, Marxism does the opposite.
So Marxists complain about global corporations having too much power, when they themselves want that power. And much much more. Because, if we are not to trust the big corporations. And if we are not to trust those in political power. Then ffs, why would we give those in political power the power of the big corporations too?
You are effectively making those who govern (and who therefore have the power of the state behind them) your employer. But more than that, you are making them the only employer. In a one party state. So now the same people who make and enforce the laws employ you, set your wages, decide where you live, educate you, decide what you read and what you watch. They even decide what food you eat! What could go wrong, right?
It's wide open to abuse. Which is why every single time it has been tried, it has been a pitiful disaster. And only a deeply flawed mind could concoct such a bad system. A deeply flawed mind. And an arrogant one. Arrogant to assume that he has the right to control the lives of others, and to decide what's best.
And that's what Marxist's want above all else. Control. Which is why they hate independent media. I know Christopher hates independent media. Because he can't control it. For all Christopher's talk of 'free thought', he actually means people should think the way he does. As an example, this is a quote from Christopher from another post:
''...We need mandatory politics educations for all students as well as a system that encourages free thought''
Have you ever read a more chilling sentence in your life? If you read history, you would instantly recognise the type of people who say such things.
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Christopher Stewart Within a free capitalist society the worker has ownership of his own time. Therefore, he is at liberty to use that time to his own personal benefit. So, once again, taken at its most basic, he can decide to use his time (labour) to benefit himself.
You can say that in a capitalist system the worker doesn't actually own the product of his labour (a worker who makes cars doesn't own the car, he is paid for making it). But then the same would apply in a collective car factory (the worker doesn't own the car either).
So what is the difference between capitalism and communism?
The difference is, that in a capitalist system, the worker is free to use the results of his labour (his wages) to set up his own small business. And others are free to work for him. And in turn be paid for their time (labour).
Yes. The worker is beholden to work for his survival. But then can you think of a system where that would not be the case? Slavery, perhaps?
What the value of his labour is worth is dependent on what people are willing to pay. If his skills are particularly valuable to society, then he will be paid more for his time than others.
The next part of your post is a bit more complicated. Mainly because you have declared that in a 'libertarian socialist' society, there is no state. Once again, we have the problem with definitions. What is a state? And who decides what it is?
Ignoring that. You go on to claim that in such a society the ''...individual has total control over their private life''. What are you defining as his 'private life'? His time? How much of an individuals time is his own? Surely, if I were to ask a libertarian, the answer would be 'all of it', yes?
Secondly, you appear to be suffering from the Marxist belief that the 'boss' class do no work. While that may be true when it comes to physical labour (but certainly not always), it is actually a pretty juvenile view of how the world works.
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''no one is taking away a persons right to profit from there own labour. except the capitalist boss''
That is exactly what you are advocating.
''...You wish to live in a society where artists have to conform to what a market wants. where market interactions are an indicator of how "talented" an artist or writer is. or how "innovative" a new inventor is.''
Yes. What is the market at its most basic? Buyers. Customers. People. So your question actually reads ''...You wish to live in a society where artists have to conform to what people_want. Where _people decide how "talented" an artist or writer is. Or how "innovative" a new inventor is''
What is wrong with that? I thought the whole idea of Marxism was to empower the people? Is that not true?
''...I want equality of opportunity for all . make a society where the athlete can train...''
The first part of that sentence is in contradiction to the last, surely? What makes an athlete, an athlete? Physical prowess. But all people are not physically equal.
''...or the writer can hone his craft without the need to conform to what markets [people] demand''
Well, ok. So what's stopping them? People have the freedom to spend months writing a novel that no fucker wants to read. We have that now, don't we?
''...in fact theres a consistent theme of artists being attracted to left wing ideologies which I'm sure even you will admit. this is because art isn't necessarily about money.''
That is very true. But all people are not equally artistically talented. Therefore, if we want a world where all are equal, perhaps we should prohibit artists from making a profit from their work. Somehow I'm guessing not many would sign up to that tho.
''...Van Gogh was an abject failure within his own lifetime, so by your own economic system whats the point?''
Idk. Did anyone ask him? Either way, whatever his answer might have been that should not stop other artists from making a profit.
''...but if you reduce art or athleticism to success or failure on market terms like you're doing, your ancap paradise is going to have shite choons m8.''
But isn't good art or music subjective? What is your answer here? Are you advocating that we should do away with art or athletics altogether. Or are you saying that all athletes and artists should be paid for their work regardless of their ability and/or talent? I can see why some artists might be attracted to that idea, yes.
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''...Blah blah blah, rich toffs, blah blah blah, evil bankers, blah blah blah, hated tories, blah blah blah, downtrodden working classes, blah blah blah, glorious revolution, blah blah blah, inevitable fuck up''
Sounds like what its always sounded like.
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Zak H No, nobody promised to spend £350 million on the NHS. The leave campaign was made up of people from all parties and none. You seem not to be aware that it was a referendum. Not an election. In other words, THERE WAS NO MANIFESTO.
Where any money saved from having to pay huge amounts of cash to Brussels every year went depends on who is in government. The point was, that being outside the EU means we can decide where to spend our own tax money.
Edgy concept, I know. But plenty of other countries do this.
''As for dangerous foreign nationals, that is yet another assumption. Of course there are threats but the current immigration crisis is largely fueled the refugee crisis. It is not just torture they fear, but death itself. I'd say a bit of human compassion is required in these situations instead of a 'tough shit' attitude''
We are talking of individuals who are a threat to the country. NOT refugees as a whole. If people were confident that the government could expel those who are plotting terrorist attacks, or who support terrorism, or who commit crimes while they are here, then it would go a long way in helping the cause of refugees. At present, once you step foot on UK soil, you are here for good, no matter what you do.
So yeah. If you come here and wish to support jihadism against us. Or commit any other crime (and I don't just mean shoplifting). Then tough shit if you get sent back!
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So your list of reasons why Muslims join ISIS is basically anyone who dares to question Islam. With the BNP, EDL, and PEGIDA thrown in to make it look legitimate. One, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is an ex-muslim who campaigns for women's rights. An extremely brave, caring, and good person. And Sam Harris is a liberal atheist. Until, I suppose, he criticises Islam. In fact, Islamic terrorism was around long before PEGIDA and the EDL. So they cannot be the reason. Your little wish list doesn't explain anything. As most Islamic terrorism is carried out against Muslims in Muslim countries. Basically, you seem to think by using the word 'Islamophobia' you can silence anyone who disagrees with Islam. It don't work like that tho. Islam is a belief. And just like any other belief, whether religious or political, it is open to ridicule, criticism, and dislike. That will not change. And the more you attempt to explain away Islamist terrorism by pointing to insignificant incidents like the one in this news report, the more fuckin ridiculous you look.
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And yet the EDL, BNP, UKIP, the daily mail, the express, the sun, fox news, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, PEGIDA, Tommy Robinson, Pat Condell, and Britain First do not exist in Muslim countries. But Islamic terrorism does. So clearly you are wrong to say those listed are responsible for Islamic terrorism.
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You seem to be implying that the three people in this video are now members of ISIS. They aren't. And no, the victims of ISIS in Islamic countries are not 'just as Islamic' as the terrorists. ISIS represents an extreme version of Islam. Moreover, ISIS has recruited followers from all over the world. So, once again, the reason why people join ISIS cannot be the EDL, BNP, UKIP, the daily mail, the express, the sun, fox news, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, PEGIDA, Tommy Robinson, Pat Condell, or Britain First.
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CJTaylor 87 War for an oil pipeline? How can that be? After all, the Arab spring started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt. Both allies of the west. If the war in Syria was just a western plot to topple Assad and build a pipeline, why begin the uprising in western allied nations?
And Assad brought stability? You mean, right up until the moment he didn't, don't you? Surely that's like saying, this boat floats... Until it sinks.
You also seem to have forgotten that all three, Saddam, Gaddafi, and the Assad regime were enthusiastic supporters of terrorism. And that a least two, Saddam and Gaddafi, brought war and destabilisation to their regions. So most certainly couldn't be described as stabilising regimes.
We know the answer to the problem in Syria. And that's for Assad to step down. He should've done. Right at the beginning. Unfortunately, unlike in Tunisia or Egypt, he had allies that were quite prepared to back him if he went medieval on his own population. So he stuck around. Knowing that both Russia and Iran would stick by him no matter what. And so you have Assad and Putin fighting till the very last Syrian.
And the bonus is, that Syrians are fleeing their country into the west! And what with Putin's funding of extremist far right parties in Europe, that all helps to spread destabilisation there as well.
Its like killing two birds with one stone!
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Feudalism, like slavery, never existed as an economic system in of itself (to my knowledge anyhow. Altho I'm willing to believe that may have been the case in the Aztec empire or someplace like that at some point. idk enough about south American history to say). In other words, you had the capitalist system working alongside it. For instance, you had freemen, artisans, mercenaries, moneylenders, the merchant class, etc. And they all expected to be paid for their services. After all, that was the very reason why the nobility and the churches raised their own taxes. You could point to Tsarist Russia, I supposed. The peasant classes had to work for free for a certain number of days on their master's land. And got the weekends off or whatever to work for themselves. That system pretty much continued right up until the revolution. But even then you still had the professional classes who worked for themselves.
I was gonna put in a bit about a command economy here. But I can't now be bothered. All that matters is that its shit.
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You seem surprised that labour is the means of production. If not, how then do things get built? How does the produce get farmed? Do these things come into being by themselves independently of manual labour and/or time? You seem to be quoting a mantra without even thinking about what you are saying.
You even said it yourself ''...A feudal serf generally owns the means of production, but not the land...''
Well, if the land isn't the means of production. And now, according to you, the serf isn't the means of production. Then what the fuck is
the means of production? Magic beans?
Under communism, nobody owns anything but the (one party) state. And as history has proved time and again, all communist theory inevitably evolves into tyranny. Essentially it teaches that private ownership of industry leads to a corrupt boss class. If that is true then, you certainly don't want to hand it over to a one party state. One party states already have more than enough power as it is. You want them to now decide where you work and how much you get paid too?
How stupid are you?
The workers own shit. They don't own the factory or the machinery or the tools. The one party state does. You can be a gullible idiot and buy into the 'workers are the state' propaganda. But its just meaningless Marxist bollox. How are the workers anymore 'the state' than in a multi-party democracy?
How can a one party state possibly represent everyone? In a multi-party liberal democracy any party must sell itself to the electorate if they want power. And the existence of opposition parties means that no party in government can afford to abuse their power without risking the loss of that power.
How can a one party state possibly represent everyone? You live in a liberal democracy. And I'm betting that you don't see the current government as representing you. What is there to prevent the one party state from abusing its power? The media? The media is controlled by the one party state. The courts? The courts are controlled by the one party state. The unions? The unions are controlled by the one party state.
You can afford to piss off your boss in a capitalist system. Because you can always go work for someone else. But you sure as hell better not piss off the one party state because they are your boss. They're the only boss. And they control everything. The courts, the police, the health care system, education, the stores. There is no one else.
So maybe you ought to stop being so naive. And go rethink the whole 'under communism the workers own the means of production' bullshit. You read it somewhere. It sounded cool and you got the tee-shirt. But its worthless bullcrap.
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''...After only a few weeks of lectures (at the university of Essex), Varoufakis switched his degree to mathematics. Whilst at the University of Essex he joined a variety of political organisations including ComSoc (the University Communist Society) and the Troops Out Movement, which campaigned for a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. He also became involved with the African National Congress, Palestine Liberation Organization, and other organisations such as those in solidarity with Chile. Varoufakis was also elected as secretary of the Black Students Alliance, a choice that caused some controversy (given that he is not black) to which he responded by telling them, according to his PhD supervisor Monojit Chatterjee, "that black was a political term and, as a Greek, on the grounds of ethnicity he had as much reason to be there as anyone else.'' Wikipedia.
''Black was a political term and, as a Greek, on the grounds of ethnicity he had as much reason to be there as anyone else''
See what I'm saying?
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shannon Rice If 'austerity' (which we presently don't have) doesn't work, then why are the IMF and ECB advocating austerity in Greece? Shouldn't they be massively increasing Greek borrowing, rather then the opposite?
What Corbyn is advocating, massive state spending on infrastructure, is most certainly no golden rule. Success relies on many factors. Many outside government control. And there are plenty of economists that argue that it actually damages the private sector. The sector that makes the profit. That creates the employment. That pays the taxes. That provides the public services.
Add to that the fact that Corbyn has never run or managed anything in his entire 'career', and you have lights out for the UK.
As for the rest of what you said, I have no idea what 'empowering ourselves, each and everyone of us, together, democratically' means. And I suspect neither do you. No offence, but it just sounds like vacuous bullcrap to me. And that's not gonna pay the bills.
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+Nayden Spirdonov Trump is a symptom of the liberal left and its decades of moral relativism. They couldn't back the removal of the Saddam regime in Iraq or the fight against the taliban in Afghan. Because Bush did it. They came up with excuses as to why the west should never intervene anywhere. It was all about oil. Or Bush and Blair would just replace one dictator with another. Or some other bullshit. They could go on million man marches against Israel. But had nothing to say about Assad or Iran. They did their usual thing of playing identity politics. What right have we to impose western values and freedoms onto others?
Well, the result of that is that now people are more willing to think in terms of 'them and us'. If its wrong to stand up for western values abroad (because all value systems are equal and we have no right to judge). Then the same applies at home. If we have no rights or responsibility to intervene in the 'Muslim world' because we're not part of the Muslim world, then we have no responsibility to except the Muslim world into our world. If western values are not for them, then why would we want them here?
Trouble with that theory is that it's bollox. What happens just across the Mediterranean has an effect on us. We've all seen that. We now have hundreds of thousands of people fleeing into the west from Syria. We all know what should've happened. Assad should've been removed. But, because that would be intervention in the muslim world by the meddling Imperialist West (and because if we had intervened it would most likely have been only about oil like we're told it always is by the liberal left), we did nothing. And now we have the result.
There are consequences to playing identity politics. To creating a 'them and us' society. And Trump is the result. He's not responsible for it. His opponents are. And what you have just said is the logical conclusion to that.
I cant argue against your general point about Islam. It needs to reform. But it won't unless we insist upon it. And do we really trust those who make excuses for it, who are willing to censor the news for it, to make that argument for us? Nope.
Nazism isn't banned in the UK. You cannot be arrested for being a Nazi. What destroyed it as an ideology is that it simply became unacceptable. No one would attempt to portray your average skinhead nazi as a victim of history. His nazism wouldn't be excused because he was poor or felt disenfranchised. He would never appear as a sexy front cover to Rolling Stone magazine. He wouldn't be a 'victim' of extremist grooming. He would just be condemned. And rightly so.
Liberal thinkers have fucked up. They have played moral equivalence so hard and fast and are so far up their own asses that they can't stand up for western liberal values.
We can look at it like this: If you had confidence that any of those refugees fleeing into the west would be automatically removed from the country if they were found to be sympathetic to ISIS or some other Islamist group, would you be slightly more willing to except refugees as a whole? But you know that they won't. It took ten years to get rid of that last big name hate preacher. And you know that once they are here, here is where they stay.
We do have an intolerant, violent, and regressive religion living amongst us. Not all Muslims are like that. But a sizable minority that would never be ignored if it were within the 'mainstream' white community are. So the problem is what to do about it. Mass deportation? Nope. Cos I don't want to live in a society that thinks that is the way. So I say we work with the moderate and secularist muslims. We stand by our principles and stop thinking in terms of them and us. Because if islam is part of our society we have a right to demand that it change. And to demand that it change now.
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Trident is a submarine based weapons system. There is always at least 1 sub somewhere under the sea. The very minimum required is a fleet of three vessels. This is so that if one or two is in need of repair, there is always one out on patrol.
There always needs to be at least one out on patrol. Because in the event of a nuclear attack it would be too late to launch a sub. Not only that, but if during heightened tensions with a possible enemy it were known that nuclear armed subs were being sent out, it would heighten tensions all the more.
The subs constantly monitor news and current events so they know what's going on. There is a set of procedures that the crew will go through in the event that the UK has been hit. One, I believe, is to check if BBC Radio 4 is still broadcasting. But its obviously far more than just that.
In the event of a nuclear attack on the UK, the subs captain goes to a safe in his cabin. Opening the safe he will find the launch codes and a letter written by the prime minister. When a new prime minister is elected, this is one of the very first things he or she must do.
What the letter says is never divulged. Only the prime minister knows what is says. And when a prime minister leaves office, it is destroyed without being read. The letter will be the prime ministers last instructions on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack on the UK.
It might say launch a retaliatory attack. It might say don't launch a retaliatory attack. Or it might say go to the nearest friendly port and put your vessel under the command of an allied power. Pretty sobering stuff.
But then the defence of 60 million people isn't to be taken lightly in a world were less friendly nations are also armed with nuclear weapons. The idea of a nuclear deterrent is not to be used. But to deter. If an enemy nation thinks that there is a good chance that if they launch a nuclear attack on the UK, then the UK will respond with a nuclear attack of its own (regardless of the UK no longer existing), it makes a nuclear attack on the UK far less likely. So trident does it's job just by being there.
Obviously, if the UK didn't strike back, then the rest of the world would be faced with how best to deal with an aggressor nation that launched a first strike and got away with it. Having already launched a first strike, it would be likely that those countries closest to it would very quickly capitulate.
What other nuclear armed countries like the US or France would do is anyone's guess. But if the UK failed to act in its own defence it might possibly be the case that no one else would act in the UK's defence either. If they did launch a retaliatory attack in defence of the UK, well, then most likely they too would be targeted. So you have three nuclear attacks instead of two. What the world would look like after that idk.
If you are prime minister, these are things you actually have to think about. Like I said, one of the very first things a new prime minister does is to sit down and write that letter. So those questions are important. But the only use of a nuclear deterrent is that it deters. It doesn't deter if you tell everyone you would never use it. So, in the event you know for sure you would never use it. And you put that in writing to the captain. What is stopping you from lying and saying you would?
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Once Russia has managed to crawl its way out of the eighteenth century. And has free media, open and fair elections, basic human rights, freedom of speech, and an independent judiciary, then it might have something to say worth hearing.
I can think of no open free democracy that see's Russia as a friend or ally. And Russia most certainly has nothing to offer when it comes to advice on the middle east. Its disastrous war in Afghanistan destabilised the region for decades. And if the only answer to the problems of the Arab spring is more blood drenched Assad dictatorship, then that clearly hasn't worked. As Russia's war in Syria has gone on for six years, and despite continued promises from Putin, carries on.
Sputnik and RT are spreading false information and lies. That's what the kremlin set them up to do. The exact same people (the KGB) who kept Russian's on their knees behind their iron curtain are telling them the exact same lies as they did before. And you call the west brainwashed?
We can criticizes our governments. We can vote them out of power. Its the reason why the EU, and the west in general, has absolutely nothing like the vast level of corruption as there is in Russia. Tell me who will win Russia's upcoming elections? I think we both know, don't we? And yeah, you'll tell me about Putin's popularity ratings, but isn't 90% popularity the mark of any self respecting tyrant? After all, everyone loved Gaddafi, didn't they? And Kim Jong-un has very high popularity ratings too. And Stalin was loved by all.
I guess its all down to a free media. And what the people get to hear about what those in power get up to. Which is why Russian media is a joke. A bad joke. Macron was 100% correct. Sputnik and RT are nothing but worthless kremlin propaganda peddling lies and conspiracies.
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Foujiz It worked in Tunisia. But what is your alternative? For Putin to cling on to his puppet in Syria, and for the war to go on for another six years? Your dictatorship hasn't worked, has it? The instability you are so afraid of happens anyway. Because dictatorships are inherently unstable. Because if people can't peacefully remove unpopular governments, then they have no alternative but violence.
You judge everyone else by the failures of Russia. The USSR might have fallen only 26 years ago, but eastern Europe, who suffered under soviet Russian occupation for just as long manages to make democracy work. Why can't Russia? Are the Russian people somehow incapable of deciding who should govern them? In which case, what possible interest should the west have in listening to their advice?
And if I don't think the BBC or the Times is truthful, or I think they are too left wing or too right wing, I can watch Sky, Fox, CNN, or read the Guardian. What can you do in Russia if you don't like the bias? Who dares criticize the KGB guy in the kremlin? Sputnik? RT? And did the BBC or the Times or CNN or Sky spread lies and conspiracies about Macron? The worth of any free media is that it can criticize those in power. And that is not something that the west needs a lesson in from Putin or the kremlin!
Western leaders are as corrupt as Putin? If that were true then we would be no better off than Russia. You judge everyone by the low standards of the kremlin. But what did the kremlin tell you about US elections? That Clinton (the 'establishment') would win. Because the US isn't really a democracy and the 'establishment' always win? But she didn't win, did she? Can the Russian's get rid of their establishment?
One of the reasons why dictators like Putin have to lie about democracies, is because they don't want their people to think that there is any such thing a real democracy. Its all a sham! Its all fake! And Putin does that because if there's no such thing as democracy, there's no point in people demanding it!
So the dictator (Putin) sells a lie to his own people. And gets to stay in power for as long as he likes. And he steals from the Russian people and RT and Sputnik cover for him. Russia now exports only gas and cynicism. Same shit the KGB drummed into their people during the soviet days. And they continue to believe it! And you call westerners brainwashed?!
As for your stronkman Putin, you say he doesn't let others tell him what to do. That is true. The Russian people least of all can tell him what to do. But after all the chest thumping and strutting about the world stage, where has that got Russia?
Thanks to Putin, Russia is now despised by its closest neighbours. Take a look at Ukraine. If you know anything about Russian/Ukrainian history, you will know how close they were. And yet Putin's invasion of Ukraine has turned the Ukrainians into bitter enemies. Ukraine is now banning Russian media, because, just like in the west, Putin is spreading his filth and lies against them.
You only have to take look at the comments on any news item on Ukraine to see the hatred that the kremlin has unleashed on the Ukrainians. Putin did that. Everyone can see it. And the result is that Ukraine has completely turned its back on Russia. All because Putin believed that, like the Syrians, the Ukrainians should only have what Russia has. A vastly corrupt and brutal dictatorship.
And the result is that Putin has isolated Russia even more. Revitalised NATO. And brought sanctions onto Russia. By the standards of any normal country, that would be classed as a massive failure of foreign policy. But because Russia is different, because it has lower standards, its seen as a success.
So perhaps Russian's shouldn't be quite so quick to give advice to the west after all?
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I see. So wanting democratic accountability is now the preserve of the nationalists? I guess that would include the SNP? ...Oh, no. Wait. Because wanting control over those who govern you is only acceptable when it's the left who has the control. So much for democracy.
And yes, you've already done your sneering about cheap Union Jacks.
You talk about Le Pen, Wilders, Trump, Putin, etc, and I would agree with you. I detest them, more than I detest you. But you are the very reason why they are gaining popularity. Because you can only piss on people for so long before they take offence.
I see no English nationalism. All I see is a shrill sanctimonious and hate-filled left that has lurched so far to the extremes that it has completely lost the plot. I'm glad May is where she is. And I'm glad that Farage came along when he did. Because looking at the alternative, at the le pen's, PAGIDA's, Trump's, and Wilders, it could all be very different.
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The reality is that if you are a member of the EU, you do indeed give up democratic accountability. The UK is a minority in the EU parliament. And the EU parliament legislates for all member states. Making the UK a minority in its own governance.
The test of any democratic system is can you get rid of those who govern over you? And as far as the EU is concerned, the answer is no. There are no if's or but's. The lack of democratic accountability is not excused simply because some people don't like the present government. And therefore think it acceptable to ignore the democratic process.
And you couldn't be more wrong about the lurch to the right. Socially, there is little difference between the Conservatives and Labour before Corbyn and his clowns took over. Can you think of any?
It is not the UK that has lurched to the far right. But the Labour party that has lurched to the far left. You now have the shadow chancellor reading from Mao's little red book. You have the demand for equality of outcome over equality of opportunity. You have 'inequality' rather than 'poverty'. You have a Labour party made up of Trots and useful idiots. And you are left wondering why the rest of us aren't following?
You complain about the attitude "forriners wot don't speak English on the bus". But have you ever considered why that might be important? A society is not simply a random collection of people dropped haphazardly about a landmass. Shared values do matter to people. Language does matter to people. After all, why do you think that politicians on both the left and right talk about 'communities'?
You say that May is 'desperate to appease the Brexiters'. You mean she is carrying out the will of UK voter, surely? In a way that, no doubt, you would expect the prime minister to do if the remain side had won. Yes, Brexit means Brexit. It means the UK leaves the EU. It means that the UK voter elects a sovereign parliament. And UK law is sovereign in the UK.
And what is so bad about the cross of St George? Or a nodding bulldog bobble-head? Is that your worst nightmare? That, (gasp!) people should actually take pride in their nation? I see a lot of hysteria from the hard left about the rise of the hard right, but I don't see the evidence. Not in mainstream politics. The tories aren't the far right. Neither are UKIP.
Certainly there has been a backlash against Islam. I'm no fan of the ideology, but its sickening to see how some are willing to dehumanise a whole (varied) group of people simply as 'the Muslims'. This has encouraged the far right all across the western world. But again, this is because the right people are not saying the right things. When you refuse to say the truth, when you lie to hide reality, no matter whether you do that for understandable reasons, all it takes is for someone like Trump, or le Pen to come along and say what everyone knows to be the truth, and suddenly they are the only ones talking sense.
All I see is a very vocal hate-filled extreme left doing what the extreme left has always done. And that is to denounce their mainstream political opponents as fascist. And we know from history that has always been their favoured tactic. But its very dangerous to be doing that. Because if you call the tories and UKIP 'the far right', and most people can see quite clearly that they are not, then what are you going to call your le Pen's and PEGIDA's?
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Once again, that is not what racism is at all. Racism is and has always been part of the human condition. It is based on the fear of the 'other'. It is a way of thinking that is common to all peoples. And not some Marxist bullshit conspiracy theory dreamt up in order to make political capital out of a negative trait.
What research would you suggest I do? Take a course in the humanities, perhaps? Fear of the unknown is a survival mechanism, that has largely been made redundant in the western world. But it still persists. For your crackpot political theory (and it is a political theory) to make any sense, you would have to ignore the fact that privilege exists in all cultures, even in the most homogenous of cultures, and always has and always will, without the need for Marxist oppression politics. Racism also exists in the most homogenous of societies. Therefore, neither of these are particular to white cultures.
Furthermore, racist views are held by individuals, not power structures. Individuals are responsible for their actions and words, not the system, or the 'privileged'. Essentially, your theory abdicates personal responsibility for an individuals thoughts and behaviour onto others. And because this is a Marxist-driven theory, that responsibility is laid at the feet of the more successful in society.
Your theory is basically scapegoating. You know what scapegoating is, yes? It's an old Jewish ritual where the sins of a community were cast out onto a goat. And that goat was then sent off into the wilderness. Basically, an act of abdicating responsibility for your sins onto something (or someone) else.
So best rethink your worthless parroted theory. Because it might sound pretty cool in an echo chamber, but anyone with half a brain can see it for what it is.
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Russia is very keen on encouraging nationalism and separatism in western countries. Putin funds a supposed 'Anti-Globalization Movement' that hosts separatist movements from the UK, France, Spain, Italy, and the US (Texas and California). Many of them are ultra-nationalist. But basically its just western separatists. Obviously no Eurasian or Asian separatists. Not the Karakalpaks, or Uzbeks, or Siberians, or Chechens, or Tatars, Uyghur or Tibetans. When he annexed Crimea, he bussed in a few of them to 'observe' his 'referendum'.
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@randomdaveUK If parliament rejects May's negotiated deal. And it rejects 'no deal'. And the EU has refused further negotiations. Then that leaves only one option. To remain.
But parliament has already voted to implement article 50. Every major party promised before the referendum, during it, and after it, to respect the result. They did the same just before the last general election (apart from the limp dems, who make a habit of breaking promises).
So voting against a 'no deal' Brexit is effectively voting against something they have already voted in favour of. And it makes any negotiations impossible, because, as we are seeing, all Brussels has to do is to refuse to negotiate, and, following the logic of a vote against 'no deal', the UK is forced to remain.
This is the very obvious flaw in telling the side you are negotiating with 'We're leaving the EU, and if you dont give us a good deal we wont leave'.
Any halfwit could see the result of that negotiating tactic. Which leaves the question, is parliament really that stupid? Or are they purposely undermining their own negotiations?
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As it was removed as spam, and as restore comment does fuck all as usual, here is Slados1's comment.
Nothing "fascist" about blocking individuals coming in from foreign countries deemed as highly unstable, as harboring terrorists and therefore classed as security threats by two separate administrations. Nothing "fascist" about criticizing a lying media outlet, Obama did the same thing... was he a "fascist" too perhaps or would that only apply to the elderly white US president?
Please list the media outlets "banned from attending press meetings".The Prime minister of Israel obviously begs to differ when it comes to Trump's alleged "antisemitic campaign" and/or similar attitudes... two months ago Netanyahu, to the contrary, thanked Trump personally for his "deep commitment to Israel’s future" and he also characterized him as "great friend to the Jewish people" in a previous meeting.
Appears that Obama was the one playing favors with Islam (you know, the ideology adhered to by those that top all of the statistics on antisemitic attitudes and regularly preach the annihilation of the one and only Jewish state and Jews as a people). Netanyahu has continually expressed elation in dealing with Trump as opposed to the poor relation he had with Obama.
Not to mention that Trump's son in law is Jewish and incidentally also serving as White House Advisor. Another Jew put into office by Trump himself... that's some alt-right anti-semite right there, just horrible... Oh, yeah... his daughter also converted to Judaism. That must have upset your imaginary antisemitic President to no end--- I mean, he's literally Hitler... right?
Not enough Jews? OK, here's some more:
Stephen Miller; Trump's senior advisor for policy
Boris Epshteyn; senior advisor on Trump's "antisemitic and racist" 2016 presidential campaign
David Friedman; US ambassador to Israel
Jason Greenblatt; United States Special Representative for International Negotiations Steven Mnuchin; United States Secretary of the Treasury
Name all the "racist" talking points from his campaign. Are you referring to the focus on people entering the US ILLEGALLY near solely from the neighboring corrupt and unstable nation called Mexico? You know... the ILLEGAL immigrants? They weren't the focus by virtue of skin color, you know, although I BET you love to obsess about race and skin color yourself... it's their clear and undisputed violation of US immigration law that kinda does it... by millions in numbers to boot. Bummer, right?
Yeah, really... what could possibly be "fascist" here?
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@Aaron Giles The EU decided to make Brexit as painful as possible, in order to stop the UK from leaving. And they used the Northern Ireland border issue to do that. Those who campaigned for remain have now gone back on their promise to respect the referendum result. With the leaders of the Lib Dems and Greens both saying that if they got to rerun the referendum, they still would not accept the result if it went against them a second time.
Along with the labour party vowing to vote against any leave deal the tories put forward (and even their own deal, if they were in a position to make one), the EU doesnt see it worth their while to negotiate. Because its unlikely parliament would ever vote for any leave deal no matter what it is. So why would they bother?
So we have a combination of EU high risk taking in the hope of preventing the UK from leaving, along with parliament going back on their word and voting against anything that makes Brexit possible, pushing the country towards a no deal Brexit. Pretty ironic, really.
This could have been avoided if the remain campaign had recognised the referendum result as they promised they would. Thats why we put things to the vote, after all. Because they can't win. Even if they got their hoped for rerun of the referendum, and somehow won it, the remain campaign would now simply do as they did and ignore the result. Because you can't opt out of the democratic process when it goes against you, then opt in when it goes your way, and expect others not to follow your lead.
I don't like throwing the word 'traitor' around. But I know a lot of people who voted leave do. And you have to admit that in some respects they have a point. Why is it that we had Blair and others from the remain campaign running off to Brussels to give advice on how best to undermine the UK's negotiations? Can you imagine that being a thing at any other time? And why is it that, having lost the vote, the remain campaign are now cheering on nationalists working to break up the UK, like, 'if I can't get my way, no one gets anything'?
Many people need to be reassessing their loyalties. The democratic process? Or Brussels? You can't have both.
But you are right. When this all over, everyone is gonna have to get along with everyone else. Because the world is not going to come to an end. The sky is not going to fall. And remainers will not be vindicated by saying 'I told you so' just as their longed for apocalypse descends. Life will go on.
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Let me ask you a question. Have the BNP leadership ever advocated terrorism? Have the BNP leadership ever supported political violence against their opposition? Have the BNP leadership ever been sentenced for acts of terrorism? The answer is no. But we don't need to wait for any of that happen to recognise what they truly are.
It's stretching plausible deniability to say that, with both Corbyn's and McDonnell's history, they are not political extremists. Judging them by their past actions, that is exactly what they are. After all, if you can judge a man by the company he keeps, what does that say about the present Labour leadership?
Hatred of your (moderate) political opponents is a sign of extremism. If Laura Pidcock was a better person, she wouldn't go there. I don't believe it is a coincidence that, while loudly signalling the virtues of tolerance and respect, Corbyn encourages, and has always encouraged, the exact opposite.
It doesn't matter to me how popular Corbyn is, I'm not willing to go along with revisionism just for the sake of the party. I don't believe that voting for him is an automatic ticket to communist dictatorship. But then I don't believe that voting Trump results in fascism. I do believe, however, in the slippery slope theory. And the idea that if you justify political violence, others will follow your lead.
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France and Britain were guilty of nothing more than not going to war with Germany over Czechoslovakia. But then, neither did Russia. Whereas both France and Britain eventually did declare war on Germany, Russia willingly allied with Hitler and the two carved up Europe between them.
The Russians actually helped build the nazi war machine that was eventually turned against them. As the two co-operated closely in the development of armored vehicles at Kama, near Kazan in the USSR. This allowed Germany to circumnavigate the Versailles Treaty that prohibited tank development inside Germany.
Stalin actually wanted Germany and the western allies to go to war. That is why he delayed his invasion of Poland (the invasion he had planned along with nazi Germany) until 2 weeks after the German invasion. And it worked. As the western allies, France and Britain, declared war on Germany. Not Russia.
The soviet union was a one party state. Just as in nazi Germany, all research and development was conducted under orders of the party. Including its space program.
Soviet estimate of the number of German POW's who died in captivity are around 350,000. German estimates, however, are around 1 million. After the Battle of Stalingrad, for example, where the Soviets captured 91,000 German troops, in total only 5,000 survived Russian captivity.
The German military used the Soviet Union's refusal to sign the Geneva Convention as a reason for not providing the necessities of life to Soviet POWs. And the Soviets similarly killed Axis prisoners or used them as slave labour.
In fact, many soviet POW's released from German captivity were immediately sent to Stalin's gulag concentration camps. As they were seen as having turned traitor against the glorious soviet empire.
Estimates of Stalin's mass genocides range from 20 million or higher. Whole areas were ethnically cleansed. Ask anyone from the Baltics, or anywhere that suffered under Russian occupation.
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France and Britain managed to get Hitler to sign up to an agreement that gave Germany the Sudetenland. They thought they had avoided war. But Hitler took the rest anyway. There was, of course, nothing to prevent Russia from doing what you criticize France and Britain for not doing. And that is, to guarantee the territorial integrity of the whole of Czechoslovakia. And go to war with Germany. But it didn't. And in a year's time, Russia and Germany were allies.
And both France and Britain went war in 1914 in defence of little Slavic countries.
What you may think of France and Britain's lack of preparation for war makes no difference to the fact that both countries declared war on Germany in response to Hitler's invasion of Poland.
If everyone was aware of what Hitler had said about taking Russia, then why did Russia ally with him? And the fact that Russia had such a high casualty rate doesn't make Russia more of a victim than, say, Poland, or the Baltics, or Finland. Russia was like a thief who falls victim to theft.
''USSR took Nazi scientists at gun point, and they were not given vast freedom and lots of money like their SS counterparts''
Russia has its own SS. The NKVD. They impressed even the gestapo by their brutality in occupied Poland.
Unlike Stalin, the western allies signed the Geneva convention. And I certainly wouldn't take soviet figures seriously. Remember, it wasn't until the 1990's the Russia finally admitted to the Katyn massacre in Poland (carried out by the NKVD).
Of course you would deny the true horror of Stalin's crimes. Just as some still deny the true horror of Hitler's crimes. Just as there were those in Germany that claimed it was not Hitler but those around him, so too there are those (still) in Russia that claim that Stalin 'didn't know'.
But Stalin did know. And like Hitler, he had no problem with ethnically cleansing whole populations. Today, it is only Russian's who continue to deny the war guilt of the Stalinist regime.
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@lecorsaire2283 It was part of the Arab spring, that started in Tunisia, spread to Egypt and Libya, and carried on to Syria.
Tunisia was spared destruction because Ben Ali was forced out. Same in Egypt, altho not so much of a success. Difference in Libya and Syria is that the dictators decided to go to war against their own people to stay in power.
If Assad had stepped down, Syria would not have gone through years of war. But the Assad regime, thats been in power for around about 40 years, clearly considered its own survival to be of more importance than the survival of the country itself. Much like Gaddafi in Libya and Maduro in Venezuela.
And as I said, North Korea is under no threat from invasion from either the South or the US. All the provocation has come from North Korea, and all the aid from the South and the US.
You need to check your history books. The Kim regime was put in place by Stalin after the defeat of Japan, on advice from his secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria. With the support of Stalin, North Korea invaded the south, starting the Korean war, which, luckily for the people in the South, they lost and the UN won.
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Obviously we accept that, as a fan of the lunatic Icke, you naturally believe you have special knowledge that the vast majority of humanity hasn't yet woken up to. You can connect the dots where everyone else is blind. You were brave enough to take the 'red pill'. While most prefer to just sit and watch x factor.
All this gives you a sense of (unearned) superiority. Of being 'special'. It gives you a sense of self worth. Something you would no doubt otherwise lack. Like Icke, evidence or actual knowledge of any particular subject isn't necessary. You can just make shit up to suit whatever particular prejudice you have. In fact, as you practically said yourself, knowledge itself is to be considered suspect. And those that are prepared to work for it, really only have nothing at all.
But that special consciousness comes at a price for you. Everywhere you see death, conspiracy and corruption, and the wilful stupidity of those around you. That special knowledge is a burden that you carry for the good of others. Although the fact that your martyrdom goes unrecognised makes you angry, bitter, and cynical.
The upside of this is that you get to blame 'them' for all your failures. If you are not a success, it is because of a vast worldwide conspiracy that keeps people such as yourself at the bottom of the pile. One that goes back hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. And involves all-powerful forces. Against that, you have no chance. Which is very convenient for you. As it allows you to see yourself not as you are, but as a rebel. Like Neo in the Matrix. With his red pill.
I applaud your bravery. The future of humanity rests upon your shoulders. And despite the mockery and ridicule you receive, you're figuratively up there on that cross suffering for all of us. Bravo!
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The trick of socialism is to simply rename 'the state' as 'the people'. Job done, supposedly. But the abolition of the right of the individual to profit from his or her own labour is in itself an act of authoritarianism. Once you abolish that freedom, all other freedoms and rights are called into question. Capitalism is as old as humanity itself. It's human nature. So in order to implement Marxist socialism, you have to have an authoritarian state.
And of course, under Marxism the workers really don't own anything at all. That's the big lie on which all other lies are founded upon. In order to claim that the worker owns the means of production, Marxism must first redefine the very word 'ownership' to suit its ideology. Which it does in the same way as it redefines 'the state' as 'the people'. With those two falsehoods at the very heart of Marxist Ideology, it is easy to see why Marxism goes the way it goes. Every time. As reality is defined in a way that serves the ideology.
Marxism's fatal flaw is that it presupposes ill intent on it's ideological opposition (capitalism), whilst assuming only the best of intensions of those who propagate it's own ideology. But if capitalism is to be defined as the exploitation of the many by the few (the boss class), then Marxism is to be defined as the exploitation of the many by the even fewer.
In others words, if you don't fully trust your present government (in a western democratic system with all the checks and balances that system provides), then why the hell would you want a government that not only makes the laws you live by, creates the policies that effect your life, and enforces those policies via a system of rules and regulations, but to also employ you, and be the only employer available to you?
Too much power in the hands of a very small political elite. Who, as even your example of a nation that 'comes close' to real Marxism proves (Cuba), end up enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.
The success of capitalism is down to choice. Choice brings competition. And competition brings innovation. Even Marxists know this. Which is why Marxist regimes expend so much effort on cutting themselves off from the capitalist world. Because along with economic freedom comes the demand for political freedom. As people who naturally see themselves as consumers, expect choice in government too.
Competition in politics is vital for a free society. Because if you have an opposition, it means that its always in someone else's interest to hold you to account. So when Marxists say 'one day, when society has progressed enough, only then will it be possible to have a truly Marxist state', what they are in effect saying is 'one day, when everyone agrees with me, then will it be possible to have a truly Marxist state'. But that will never happen. Because people are individuals, with different priorities, goals, and ideas. And if did, we only have to look back on every other Marxist regime in history to know how that would end.
Obviously, that's all just focusing on the social aspect of Marxism. The economic aspect doesn't even bare thinking about. And for your information, the USSR was a totalitarian state long before 1951. It began with the collapse of the tsarist regime, and the pretty much immediate seizer of power by the Bolsheviks. Who, in the name of socialism, enacted a counter revolution and shut down Russia's first ever truly representative parliament after its one and only meeting.
And that happened under Lenin. And Lenin was a Marxist.
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If the basis of capitalism is the individual profiting from his or her own labour, then that is as old as the hills. And that definition is the definition given to capitalism by Marxists themselves. Otherwise, why limit the ownership of production?
I can point to the successes of capitalism. Westerners live longer, healthier lives with more rights, freedoms, and privileges than at any time in human history. But can you point to a single Marxist system that has even got off the ground?
The very fact that you are reduced to complaining about income equality, rather than poverty proves the worth of the capitalist system. So what if there are millionaires? How does their success become your loss? Unless, of course, you are infected with the bullshit Marxist ideology of the exploitation of the masses?
And just how is capitalism responsible for the worlds poor? Is it responsible for the poverty in china? Or the poverty in Cuba? Or the poverty in North Korea? Or the poverty that still exists in eastern Europe today even decades after the fall of the soviet empire? Isn't that the responsibility of communism?
And actually, even when considering the vast corruption of the Putin regime, Russian living standards are higher now than during the height of the old soviet days.
And I have no idea where you get the idea that life improved under the communists in Russia.
To claim this you must be so ignorant of the facts, as to call into question the truth of everything else you say. And do you really know anything about the Paris commune? Or have you simply read ideology driven bullshit, rather than the facts? I didn't need to argue against these anarchist systems because I assumed people would know the reality of them.
As for Cuba, we don't know what the Cubans want. As they are stuck with a Marxist dictatorship that has been in power since 1959. Those that disagree with that regime are, as always, denounced as enemies of the people and forced into exile. And I'm sorry, but Cuba's health system is third world. You are simply buying into the propaganda of an authoritarian regime. One that controls every aspect of Cuban society. And you believe them?
And US foreign policy is US foreign policy. It doesn't define capitalism. But nice try.
The idea of 'false consciousness', or as you put it the 'illusion of choice', was a theory designed by Marxists to explain away the reasons why the proletariat in the capitalist west had not risen up to join their comrades under the soviet system. They argued that it wasn't that those in the west actually were free and far better off for it, but that they were too stupid to realise they were being duped.
This argument inevitably goes the way of all such flat-earth based conspiracies, and rapidly ends up with a secret NWO, often the Jews, pulling the strings behind the scenes. This is where the extreme left meet the extreme right. As this is the very argument the nazis used.
Even in a two party system, you still have competition. And therefore, it is still in the oppositions interest to call out those in power. If you then have a free and open media, owned by individuals rather than the state (impossible under the Marxist system), you have even greater accountability.
And lastly, capitalism didn't fail in Russia. The revolution was against the authoritarian tsarist system of government. Not capitalism. Not against the right of the individual to hold property. That only came with the Marxist counterrevolution. Where Lenin and Trotsky broke the backs of the kulaks (a broad term meaning any peasant successful enough to own property or employ others). And in order to wipe that class out, the two of them instigated the Red Terror and butchered hundreds of thousands.
So when you say ''...They [the non-Marxists] didn’t do the necessary reforms to satisfy the people and bring it [Russia] up from agrarianism'' what you really mean is that they (the non-Marxists) weren't ruthless enough. You are, in effect, echoing Eric Hobsbawm when he claims his communist utopia would have been worth the sacrifice of millions.
And that is the evil of Marxism. The individual (and that means everyone) is expendable for the 'good of the state'. Society must be purged of those who disagree. It stands to your reasoning that you don't question why millions had to die. They just have too. Because a socialist revolution isn't a socialist revolution without a purge.
But of course, they had their purge. Their genocide. And the results, as always, were abject failure and the loss of decades of progress. And as so often with Marxism, it was the peasant class or the proletariat who paid the biggest price.
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In a free society, people are at liberty to use the profits of their labour to invest in private business, just as others are at liberty to work for private business. That method of economics has been about for thousands of years. Marxist socialism believes in the exact opposite. The individual is prohibited from investing in private business. And employees are prohibited from working for it. If, as you claim, socialism truly believes that the product of the individual's labour is his own, then how do you square that circle?
Under the Marxist system, is the individual free to invest the profits of their own labour as they see fit, or aren't they? If your answer is anything other than 'yes' then your statement on this is clearly a lie.
I'll ignore the infantile 'imperialism' argument. Like US foreign policy, imperialism (whether western, oriental, ottoman, Roman, Aztec, or otherwise) is not intrinsic to capitalism. And of course, soviet imperialism has been far more destructive than western capitalism ever has been. In fact, Marxism has to be the most dangerous and destructive of all ideologies.
And again, inequality is not simply a capitalist failure. There was inequality under the soviet system. Only it was considerably worse. And poverty, real poverty, (the type that exists on soup made of tree bark), was endemic whenever Marxist economics were applied.
Political parties who work within the democratic system cannot afford to listen only to their donors. If they did, they will quickly lose votes (assuming, as you appear to believe, that big business is always out to enslave the masses and is therefor harmful to the rest of society).
The idea that western democracy is a sham is something authoritarian regimes the world over propagate. The thinking goes that if there is no such thing as democracy, then there ain't no point in anyone demanding it. This way of thinking plays well to a certain kind of privileged, but discontented first worlder desperate to feel oppressed by something. But again, the results speak for themselves. No student of Marxism would ever truly wish to live under the system it advocates. If they did, they haven't studied its effects well enough.
Marx simply pulled the old leftist trick of rebranding one thing to appear to be another. Marx was all for an authoritarian state. He had to be. Otherwise there would be no way to inforce his new world order. He simply declared his ideal state not to be a state. Nothing more than a cheap rebranding designed to appeal to those who don't look too hard at the small print.
The roots of communism have been no less conspiratorial as those of nazism. I quoted Gregor Strasser for a reason. Because like Marx, the Nazis believed it was their right to remake society to fit their vision of a utopia. I simply take Marxists at their word when they say they are Marxists. Stalin was a Marxist. Mao was a Marxist. Pol Pot was a Marxist. Castro was a Marxist. And the Kim's were and are Marxists. They enact Marxist economics with the inevitable failures all that brings about.
But the real joke is that there you are complaining about big brands being owned by the same people (how terribly oppressive, how do you manage to soldier on?), when the very basis of Marxism itself is built on that very principle. One brand. One system. One party.
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We are not talking about what you believe. We are talking about whether in a free society an individual has the right to work for who he wants. For example, I'm an atheist. But I recognise that in a free society people should have the right to believe in whatever deity they like.
But your answer was as clear as I expected it to be. As we can see that, despite its claims, Marxism is not about respecting the rights and freedoms of the individual. It's about forcibly enlisting them into an ideology. Which is why all Marxist ideologies are fascistic in their core beliefs.
Your second paragraph is meaningless guff. An attempt at drawing an arbitrary line between hiring a person short term and hiring them long term. Only most people would prefer the stability of a long term contract.
And once again, we are not talking US foreign policy. So your third paragraph can be ignored.
In answer to your fifth paragraph, please define 'ownership'. This is important. Because Marxists, as I have already said, have a habit of redefining words to suit their ideology. So we have to make it clear what we are talking about when we say 'ownership'.
Lets take your truck driver as an example. Under the Marxist definition of ownership (whatever that is), could the truck driver in a Marxist economy take the truck home with him? Could he sell it and invest the money along with some of his wages into buying a better truck?
Once again anything other than a 'yes', would prove that my definition of the word ownership (along with the vast majority of everyone else's) is different to that of the Marxist definition of ownership. Why would that be do you think?
Words matter. As do the definition of words. We have already seen that the Marxist definition of freedom (the freedom to sell your own time/labour for example) is simply a lie. With that in mind, it is also important to get right how we are to define the word ownership under the Marxist ideology. Does it mean what it is supposed to mean? Or has the word be redefined for ideological reasons?
On the question of conspiracies, it is a fact that the soviet union worked to undermine governments around the world in an effort to spread the communist ideology. If your argument is that we shouldn't be wary of extremist ideologies, then let the nazis in Charlottesville march! After all, what's the worst that could happen?
And it took you long enough, but finally we got around to the ol' lie of soviet sacrifice against the nazi menace. You call out the US for not getting involved sooner. But then fail to mention the fact that the soviets didn't intervene against nazi Germany until the soviets union itself was attacked. You also fail to mention that up until that point, the soviet union was in effect allied to nazi Germany. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was an alliance between communism and nazism to carve up Europe between them. Like two thieves conspiring before one thief turns on the other.
This is important to remember. Because as it does to this day, the far left defines itself as being against a greater evil. That is deliberate. Because without the role of 'the vanguard against fascism', the far left would itself be recognised as no better than the far right. Authoritarian. Genocidal. And Fascist.
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The remain campaign failed because, like you, it ignored the arguments put forward by those who wanted to leave, and instead argued against a position they found more convenient to their own politics.
People didnt vote to leave the EU because of 'austerity'. Those who believe they did might find this a comforting delusion (because it conveniently allows them to blame everything on the tories), but it doesn't make sense. Because the tories were elected into power in 2010 on a promise to limit public spending due to the massive debt the country was in. So if people were angry at austerity the country wouldn't have continued to vote conservative since 2010.
How can you win an argument if you're not even willing to recognise the opposing view? Its like holding a debate in a different room to the person you're debating with.
The argument was never (and can never be) just economic. The issue of political union was a massive part of the debate, that the remain campaign never engaged with. Because they knew it was unpopular, and always has been unpopular (the side of the bus thing is an obsession of remainers, one they pretend not to understand, which only makes them look petty and disingenuous - while claiming Brexit was won by lies can only be done if you conveniently ignore the remain campaign's own lies, half truths, and deception).
Worse still, they decided to demonise half the country, claiming that not wanting to be part of a political union with much of the rest of Europe made you a racist and a xenophobe (or 'worse than nazis'). Which meant that the debate shifted away from the one area the remain campaign made headway with (economics) to a simplistic and infantile 'good vs evil' argument.
And who ended up effectively leading that argument for the remain side? - Jeremy Corbyn. The economically illiterate ex-rabidly anti-EU campaigner (considerably more anti-EU than Farage) with a long history of support for racist and sectarian terror groups.
And that guy and his supporters are gonna lecture the rest of us on good economic sense and morality?
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@afonsodeportugal While its true that most, if not all, religious people are hypocritical in their faith (as in, not believing everything 100%), its simply not the case than nobody believes in a literal interpretation of Adam & Eve.
It may be the case that those who do take such stories literally are in the minority today, but that hasn't always been the case. After all, what other explanations were there thousands of years ago for how we came to be?
And that is the point. These stories are old. They existed to explain man's origin at a time when there were no other explanations. And yes, people took them literally.
The foundation of religion (imo) is based upon the need to understand the natural world. Things like hurricanes, storms, earthquakes, etc. And it's true that religious people are more likely to attribute agency to natural forces (the storm happened because we did this, the earthquake happened because we didnt do that - assigning natural forces the same thoughts and feelings as we have ourselves - anger, resentment, generosity etc).
The ability to appease these things were life and death to people who didnt have the knowledge that we have today - You need a good harvest. You need that rain. You can't afford to have people get ill. Its a kind of OCD, which again, is all about trying to control things around you.
So it is important not to upset those forces (a god or gods). Because otherwise your little civilisation gets wiped out.
So no. These stories were and are seen as literal. The power of god/or the gods are seen as very real. Noah and the flood is not meant as a metaphor. The bible is not metaphorical.
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@jorgeborges7707 A Brexit with no deal is not ideal, but the idea that the UK cannot leave the EU without the EU offering a deal is ridiculous. There are many countries within the WTO that are not members of the EU, and I have heard no serious commentator claim that the WTO would sanction the UK in the event of a no deal Brexit.
In no way does the GFA prevent the UK from leaving the EU. It couldn't possibly, as the only areas where the GFA was put to a referendum were the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The rest of the UK had no say. Are you really claiming that a small part of the UK and a foreign country decided the UK's membership of a political union for evermore? Even against the wishes of the electorate?
As to who would be responsible for breaking the GFA in a no deal Brexit, that really depends on the demands of either side, and whether or not they are acceptable to the other. If they are not, and one side isn't prepared to compromise on their demands (such as the EU demanding the effectual splitting up of the UK), then no agreement can be made (just as if the UK were to demand the EU split to serve its own interests). Neither is the GFA enforceable through international law. Agreements between sovereign states are made and unmade all the time. There is no international body that can force a country to remain within a treaty against its will. And I really can't see many countries that would be willing to irreparably damage their relations with the UK for no reason.
And I can't remember the remain campaign campaigning on the issue of leaving the EU being illegal under international law, can you?
As for illegal and corrupt practices during the referendum campaign, we only have to look at the half-truths and lies, not to mention the funding from corrupt insider traders and crooks the remain campaign indulged in, and continues to indulge in, to realise that such things were far from one sided. And you can trot out your tired old mantra about it being only an advisory referendum, but parliament voted to enact the result, the government has said it will do just that, and the vast majority of MPs pledged to honour the result and were elected on the promise to make it so.
Compared to that, what have you got?
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If they believed half of what they say about Obama, Clinton, Soros, Qanon, the deep state, satanic child abuse rituals, FEMA camps, etc, then this guy should be their hero. Instead, he's part of a 'false flag operation' too. Doesn't that make the opposition to the deep state, satanic child abusers really, really, lame? Like the one time someone tries to stop them, he's actually just part of the conspiracy too? My question is, if someone believed half of what they say about Soros, Clinton, Obama, etc, why wouldn't they be sending them bombs thro the post?
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''Because international observers and even America agreed that North Korea was keeping their end of the treaty they signed with America.''
Once again, the North Korean regime broke the non proliferation treaty way back in 1993 by its refusal to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify North Korean claims that it was sticking to the treaty. Who these 'international observers' you refer to are, I don't know. But are you saying that they claimed the IAEA was lying when it said North Korea was refusing entry into North Korean nuclear facilities?
The 1994 Agreed Framework between the US and North Korea was signed in, not surprisingly, 1994. The continued references you make in regard to a 1998 hearing are in relation to the 1994 Agreed Framework agreement, NOT North Korea's breaking of the nuclear non proliferation treaty in 1993.
''Sure in 1993 they broke a treaty but they DID stick to the treaties that followed.'' No they didn't. As I told you, the 1994 Agreed Framework eventually collapsed when it was discovered that North Korea had, in violation of the agreement, developed an undisclosed uranium-enrichment program with the aid of Pakistan.
North Korea break the treaties, because it is in their interests to do so. They can and have worked on nuclear development while blackmailing aid from other states.
Sure, the US has supported brutal regimes in the past. The Soviet Union was a good example. But it did so in order to defeat what was considered to be a worse threat: Nazi Germany. Likewise, the US and the west in general supported some very brutal regimes during the cold war, against what was considered then the greater threat: The Soviet Union.
If you think foreign policy will ever be anything other than hypocritical in a world filled with regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, China, Pakistan, etc, you are very naive. But to use that as an excuse to claim that somehow the North Korean regime is being unfairly treated by the US is not just naive, but nihilistic to the point of being suicidal.
If all you said was true, and the US was treating the Kim regime unfairly, I would still support the US. Because the North Korean regime is every bit as bad as they say. You might not like the idea of the Saddam regime, or the Gaddafi regime, or the Assad regime being toppled from power, but I do. And I hope one day the same will happen to the Kim regime.
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Nonofya Bidnez Unfortunately for your argument, it was you who claimed 'This could have all been avoided by actually KEEPING YOUR PROMISES.'
So now that we have seen that it was North Korea and not the US that failed to keep their promises, that is suddenly not the case?
No doubt if Japan was regularly threatening nuclear obliteration against the US and its allies, as North Korea does, the US would still see Japan as an enemy. South Korea is a successful democratic state that really doesn't deserve the continued threats of the Kim regime against it. Not after that same Kim regime unleashed the horrors of the Korean war against it.
The one article you are obsessing over is simply an opinion piece. It focuses on a 1998 hearing into the 1994 Agreed Framework between the US and North Korea. But the agreement didn't fall apart until 2002. Tell me, do you expect a 1998 hearing to hear evidence from four years into the future?
In fact, that piece completely fails to mention that North Korea was, in its illicit uranium-enrichment program, breaking the terms of the agreement. Which is why the agreement collapsed. The hearing was in 1998. North Korea's uranium-enrichment program wasn't known about until sometime in 2007.
As for the Clinton administration 'unhelpfully persisting' in labelling North Korea a rogue state (as the piece complains), that is exactly what North Korea was and is. They refuse to recognise South Korea's right to exist, or its right to self defence. Which is why, obviously, they kick up such a stink over South Korean military exercises, but see their own military exercises as a sovereign right not up for negotiation.
As for your claim that ''if they [the US] had spent a few million dollars per year(20-30 I read) they could have most likely prevented North Korea from developing nuclear capabilities'', you might like to know that between 1995 and 2008 (which neatly covers the time period in question), the United States provided North Korea with over $1.3 billion in assistance: slightly more than 50% for food aid and about 40% for energy assistance.
fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40095.pdf
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''...In the 1998 hearing they talked about how the oil shipments were constantly late and how this was an issue. They talked about how they weren't doing anything about the 2 light water reactors that should be completed by 2003. So it was VERY clear that the US had no intent on keeping up their end''
The 1994 Agreed Framework included the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors and the provision of 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil annually while the reactors were being built. The shipments of fuel oil were to happen on an action for action basis, as North Korea made progress on denuclearization.
The fuel shipments were delivered in a start-and-stop manner, slowed primarily by disagreements between Pyongyang and Washington over how and whether to verify North Korea’s nuclear disablement, and over whether the United States would remove North Korea from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
In October 2002, KEDO board members decided to halt fuel oil shipments following a dispute over North Korea’s secret uranium enrichment program. In December, North Korea expelled inspectors from its Yongbyon nuclear site, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), and resumed operations at Yongbyon. Clearly then, the agreement did indeed collapse because of North Korea's secret uranium enrichment program.
But between 1995 and 2003, the United States had delivered over $400 million in heavy fuel oil. Hardly evidence that the US had no intention of honouring its commitments.
''...Conveniently forgetting that America has war time control over the South Korean army. What about countries that don't recognize Israel or Palestine or any other country for that matter? Are they also all rogue states?''
Why is it relevant that the US would have wartime control over the South Korean army? Are you claiming that is a legitimate reason for North Korea's continued aggression towards South Korea? Should North Korea have a say in South Korea's defence policy in the event of North Korea invading South Korea again?
And surely, if North Korea wants normalised relations with South Korea and a peace treaty, wouldn't recognising South Korea's right to exist be vital in order for that to happen? After all, you can't have normal relations with a country you don't acknowledge exists, can you?
"The Agreed Framework requires North Korea to accept full IAEA safeguards when “a significant portion of the LWR project is completed”—a milestone that is approximately three years away. Under those safeguards, Pyongyang must declare the existence of any nuclear facilities and allow the IAEA to inspect them."
This is the reason why the 1994 Agreed Framework collapsed. Because North Korea had failed to declare the existence of its secret uranium enrichment program. As your own link details ''...North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Suk Ju admitted that Pyongyang has a uranium-enrichment program during October 3-5 meetings with a U.S. delegation''
"A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said October 25 that past U.S. actions had already invalidated the Agreed Framework, citing reactor construction delays, U.S. economic sanctions, and U.S. threats of pre-emptive attack against North Korea, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)."
In other words, North Korea had been found out and in a piss poor attempt at damage control, they claimed the US had already invalidated the agreement. Only apparently North Korea hadn't told anyone that, and were of course still signed up to the agreement. And still accepting US aid in accordance with the agreement they said was invalid.
''So under the agreed upon framework NK actually only had to let IAEA inspect stuff when the light water reactors were well on their way.''
No. The agreement was that North Korea had to dismantle its nuclear facilities once the two light-water nuclear reactors were completed. Until then, North Korea had to abide by the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Which meant full discloser of all nuclear programs and access for IAEA inspection teams.
But they broke the agreement they signed up to. If only they had KEPT THEIR PROMISES!
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You have to be careful when talking about gender dysphoria and the 'great distress and risk of suicide' that comes with it. Its very likely this isn't a symptom of gender dysphoria itself, but a result of the reality of having to deal with the world around them.
For example, personal relationships will be extremely difficult. I think you can imagine your own reaction if, after beginning a relationship with someone for a short while, you find out they are in fact physically the same sex as you. Rightly or wrongly, that would most likely be the reaction of the vast majority of people. You can't help how you feel about such things. But that is the reality of their personal life.
I don't know much about gender dysphoria or transsexuals. But apparently there have been studies done where kids who grow up with gender dysphoria and who are supported and excepted by their family and those around them are happier than those who, let's say, don't have such an understanding environment. To put it bluntly, apart from the inevitable relationship problems, its having to face a world that finds them odd, weird, and more than likely wants nothing to do with them, that gets them down and drives them to suicide.
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Kikasitsu Not sure how a 24 minute youtube video by someone who calls themselves 'Libertarian Socialist Rants' is supposed to disprove historical fact in regard to the disastrous failures of communism.
I might also point out that if you were South Korean, you would most certainly think the Korean war was a 'Good War'. As it saved you from the horrors of the North Korean economic model. And that economic model (Juche) is pretty close to, if not exactly alike, the communist model. Hence regular famine and the most authoritarian of authoritarian regimes. But as you're not Korean, I'm guessing empathising with Koreans is beyond you.
But then your little list of wars says nothing about capitalism. It wasn't designed to. Rather than keeping on topic (which would be hard for you to do, knowing the history of Marxism), you instead focus on the foreign policy of one country, the US.
Simply repeating the meaningless Marxist mantra of ''the WORKER’s Ownership over the means of Production'' won't magic away the vast imperfections of Marx's ideology. It's lies anyhow. Under communism, the worker doesn't 'own the means of production'. He doesn't own anything. All Marx does is redefine the word 'ownership'. How can you not have noticed?
Presently, if you wish to 'make preserves' as a day job, you're quite free to do so. You'll have to find customers. Make good preserves people want to buy. And not expect society to pay you simply because you like making substandard preserves.
In other words, if you think that Marxism is an economic system that would allow you to piss about 'expressing' yourself all day at the expense of others, you're a fuckin idiot. Yes, you are a cog in a machine. And that machine runs the things you take for granted. The basic things you don't even think about, like the sewage system you use, or the power grid. It keeps the streets clean and empties your garbage. Good luck finding someone who see's that as a hobby.
There is no economic model that would allow you to only do things you want to do. Not capitalism. And not Marxism. Doing things you don't want to do is all part of the human condition. But as my link showed, innovation can make those things easier and quicker. And if you want innovation, then you need the capitalist system.
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I refer to you as being a cog in the machine in the fact that you will be REPLACED by someone that is even more desperate than you.
You are simply assuming the worst of capitalism, and the best of Marxist theory (but not practice). Despite the fact that reality has proved otherwise.
History tells you that Marx didn’t work (of course it didn’t...) BECAUSE OF OUTSIDE FORCES AROUND IT
This is the massive flaw in Marxism. In order for it to supposedly work, everyone must sign up to it. But this is simply a lie to blame others for the failure of Marxism. One that often leads to show trials of those accused of being 'enemies of the people', saboteurs, enemy agents, etc. Stalin had his show trials, and the Chavez regime in Venezuela does pretty much the same.
The horrors of the Soviet Union were inbuilt defects of the system they used. As was the horror of Mao's China. Making excuses for those regimes is basically the same as denying the horrors of nazi Germany. And if selling your ideology means having to deny the unnecessary deaths of millions of people, your ideology is worthless.
And again, Churchill's policy towards India is nothing to do with capitalism. And no, I don't find it odd that we moved from fighting the evils of nazism to fighting the evils of communism.
Kim Il-song was promoted to leader of North Korea by the Soviet Union. Who, of course, supported and encouraged his invasion of the south.
When I saw that Top 10 list, I looked DEEPER into this list, and quickly realized that the Rabbit Hole was far deeper than I expected it’d be
This sentence alerts me to the fact that you are very likely a conspiracist. This would explain your erratic arguments, failure to keep on topic, and denial of historical fact. In which case, you should perhaps check out this link...
https://youtu.be/pk3StrCq9XI
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Indeed. The napalm issue is one of the reasons why people should support the prohibition on chemical warfare. It is in everyone's interests.
Although fractured and unstable, Libya is still in a far better position that Syria. And unless you claim the war in Libya would have ended on the very same day it did without western intervention, then it's obvious western intervention put an end to a Syrian-type war lasting years.
The Red Cross predicted millions of Afghanis would flee Afghanistan in the event of western invasion. In the event, hundreds of thousands of Afghanis returned home to Afghanistan once the Taliban were removed from power.
There are more than simply two sides fighting in Syria. It is not just ISIS vs Assad. If you don't believe me, then ask yourself who the Russians, Iranians, and Turkish think they are talking to when they say they want peace negations? ISIS? It could only be ISIS, if the war in Syria was just ISIS vs Assad, yes?
Russia has vetoed yet another UN investigation into a suspected Assad chemical weapons attack in Syria. What is the point of the OPCW, if those who are signatories to it continually veto its investigations? We have already seen Russia is prepared to carry out weapons-grade chemical attacks in the UK (unless you believe it's all a big conspiracy against poor innocent Russia, in which case you should be more worried about the shape of the earth). So you can't use the excuse 'what has this got to do with us?'
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1) So, if Putin just slaps a few weak sanctions onto Turkey after they just downed a plane that, remember, according to Putin, wasn't even flying in Turkish airspace, what makes you think he will start world war 3 over Trump striking at Assad's chemical weapons airbases again? He didn't last time.
2) Libya is fractured and chaotic. But compared to the disaster that is Syria, it is in a far better position. As we know, there has been over six years of all out war in Syria, with large areas under the control of ISIS. Think that is better?
3) Why would Russia investigate an attempted assassination in the UK? It has no legal authority to do so. Just as the UK has no legal authority to investigate similar murders in Russia (and there have been many).
We know that Assad has launched numerous chemical attacks against enemy held areas. We know that Russia has backed and supported him in this. We know Russia covers it up in the UN. And we know that each time the excuse has been the same: 'Why would Assad do this if he is winning?' That same excuse has been repeated for years. And as we know, Russia is not only prepared to support Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria, but it's also prepared to use them in the west. As the Skripal case shows.
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Pretty sure there's a lot more to come. This, remember, is the same guy who, out of principle, won't share a platform with his moderate opposition at home, but has no problem mixing with jihadists, IRA terrorists, anti-Semites, Stalinists, Assad apologists, and Iranian regime supporters. But then the extreme left have always preached pacifism in defence of democratic values they care nothing for, while supporting violence when they think it benefits their ideology.
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@Altolin
''Respecting the GFA without separating Northern Ireland from the UK is now contingent on either our remaining a full member of the EU or on us remaining a part of the EU's major institutions outside of full membership of the EU''
No, it really isn't. The GFA does not bind the UK to EU membership. It commits all sides to come to agreement to prevent a hard border. And there are a number of ways that might be achieved other than UK membership of the EU.
For example, in the event of a no deal Brexit, the Irish government is already considering ways to prevent a hard border. These include conducting checks away from the border. This has already been discussed with Germany.
And of course, the another way would be for Ireland to separate from the EU. Only that would be unreasonable, right? - But certainly no more unreasonable than demanding the UK split.
And does it even occur to you to ask that, if the GFA bound the UK to EU membership forevermore, then by what mandate? The 1998 GFA referendum was held only in Northern Ireland. And the Republic of Ireland. The rest of the UK never got to vote.
How is it then that the UK's future could have been decided by referendum in only a small part of UK and a foreign country? Hardly democratic, yes?
Your problem is that you refuse to recognise that the UK has the right to leave the EU. And because it will, you believe it should be justly punished (by someone) as a result. And you see the separation of the UK as part of that punishment.
This infantile thinking is much like a child breaking something because, if he can't have it, then no one can. Only the UK won't come to an end simply because you didn't get your way. You might not like it, but life goes on, mate.
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Percentage wise, Russia has a much larger Muslim population than the EU and the US. If you're worried about muslims that much (because you watch kremlin funded fake news like RT, Sputnik, Southern Front, etc) what is KGB colonel Putin doing about that?
And if your answer to 'liberalism' in the west is to side with an enemy dictator that during his invasion of a neighbouring country (Ukraine) put his nuclear arsenal on standby (aimed at guess who!), who funds both the far right and the far left in Europe, funds and supports separatism in not only the UK (they were all over the Scottish ref) but in Spain, the US, and other western countries, and regularly sends his nuclear bombers to buzz our airspace (as well as launching cyber attacks against us), then that makes you a traitor. And not a patriot.
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I would disagree. The North Korean regime invests a lot of effort into appearing to be irrational and therefore unpredictable. Because no one wants to have to deal with such a country. But they are anything but. They have whole departments working long term on foreign policy, in ways that no western democracy ever could.
The regime's stated aim is to bring about a united Korea under North Korean leadership. Whether the majority of the elite believe this is actually possible is unlikely. But the first step towards that goal is to drive the US out of South Korea. And to undermine South Korean sovereignty in regards to its defence. Which is why they complain so bitterly whenever the South carry out military manoeuvres (it stands to reason that North Korea sees its own war games as not up for discussion).
What North Korea wants is the US out. And a compliant and defenceless South too cowed into submission even to dare mobilise its forces on its own territory. The continued threats and attacks against the south (North Korea has shelled the South and sunk its warships in the past) are all part of the effort to wear down its opponents.
But if you look at what they are doing, they have gone no further than every other time they have threatened nuclear obliteration. And they have done many times before. The fact that so many people seem able to forget what happened only a few years back is pretty incredible. Do they all have goldfish memories?
If the North Korean regime fails in these aims, then at least they can expect to blackmail concessions in the form of more aid from China, the US, and the South. But they have no interest in a war they know they have no hope of winning. The North Korean elite are not insane. Their only problem is how to make their latest threat of nuclear obliteration sound more plausible than every other such threat that preceded it.
The answer to the problem, in my opinion, is China. China sees North Korea as a vital buffer state between it and the western friendly democratic South. But if North Korea were to become a nuclear state, then how long before the South follows? And what about Japan? A nuclear armed South Korea and Japan would be a catastrophe for China. As, just as the US (a superpower) fears a nuclear armed North Korea, China (also a superpower) fears the same about Japan and the South.
So how far are the Chinese willing to go to keep their buffer state? And does it matter to China who leads it? I would say the Kim regime is only useful to them up until he becomes a liability. And I think Kim is aware of this. Not so long ago he executed his uncle and mentor for perhaps being too close to the Chinese? So it's very likely he fears regime change coming from China, far more than he does from the US.
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Absolutely China would have no problems with devastating North Korea if it achieved their aims. After all, they support the Kim regime, and short of full scale war and the devastation that would follow, you can't get much worse than that in relation to North Korea.
However, if there were conflict in Korea, the North would lose. Unless, of course, China stepped in again, as they did during the Korean war. Which would be counterproductive to playing North Korea off against the US. If that is China's aim. In other words, they would lose their buffer state. And have the US right on their borders. And the only way for them to stop that from happening would be for China to go to war.
As for China's economy surpassing the US, that is wildly overhyped. China has huge problems ahead of it. Their economic reforms have lifted many of their people out of poverty, but they have a rapidly aging population and they are heading for a massive pension crises.
That's not to say China isn't a threat. But there has been a cost to China in building artificial islands. And that is in its relations with its near neighbours. With even the Vietnamese moving closer to the US as a result. And like I said, if North Korea armed itself with the bomb, then could China be sure the South and Japan wouldn't soon follow? What good would their artificial Islands be then?
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You had two genocidal ideologies hell bent on European domination. Stalin knew what Hitler wanted. And Hitler knew what Stalin wanted. Both regimes had been at each others throats before they allied against Poland. Both knew it was an alliance of momentary convenience. Hitler would have been very much aware of the danger of a war on two fronts. German military planners had warned of that before world war one. In my opinion, both sides knew that war between the two was inevitable at some point.
They say history is written by the victor. And nowhere was that more true than in Soviet Russia. Had Germany won the war, it's more than likely Stalin would have been viewed the unredeemable character, and Hitler 'Old Uncle Adolf', who, although he murdered millions, did what needed to be done to save Europe from communism.
It's undoubtedly true Hitler feared soviet Russia. You can look at the evidence presented today on troop numbers and soviet preparedness, but Hitler would have gone by gut instinct, even had his intelligence told him otherwise. And Stalin was hoping that Germany and the western powers would bleed themselves dry. Suvorov points out the soviet belief (and the Marxist belief) that communism is spread by war.
Was Hitler working to a limited timetable? He seemed to believe so. Germany was ill prepared for a winter war. And he put his hopes in defeating Russia in such a short space of time? Why? And when dealing with characters like Hitler and Stalin, does it really matter who did what first? Whether today's evidence backs up Hitler's fears or not, what matters was what he believed. And for that there is plenty of reason to suspect war between the two at some point.
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Yes, strong historical links. One being that we share a common language. Sure, you can say we all settled from Europe anyhow, depending on how far back you want to go. But then its very likely we all originated in Africa. Only I don't hear you making the case for political union with Botswana.
As for whether our other non-European NATO allies have the best interests of the UK in mind, I'm guessing the answer is no less than mainland Europe does. And in many cases considerably more.
And are you claiming that in order to trade with, say, Canada, the UK would have to come under the jurisdiction of Canadian law? That's an extraordinary thing to say. And in light of the recent Canadian/EU trade deal, I can only assume you think the EU, and by extension the UK, now operates under Canadian law.
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damian kilbane I've just told you that the west have been targeting ISIS in Syria for years. In fact, it was the anti-Assad forces that did most of the fighting against ISIS for much of the time. While Assad concentrated on anti-Assad forces. The idea was to knock them out of the war, then claim to be the only ones fighting ISIS.
The whole war could have been avoided had Russia not supported its puppet, Assad. As he would have had to have stepped down. Instead, while the west takes out dictators like Saddam, Gaddafi, and the Taliban, Russia, as usual, supports the dictators. Don't forget, Russia did the same with Nazi Germany. Allying with Hitler. Now its bogged down in Syria while its pensioners go hungry.
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English Heart If you want to blame anyone for the state of Libya today, blame Gaddafi. After 40 years Libyans finally got off their knees and kicked him out. He had a choice then, either to go and save Libya, or stay and fight his own people. He chose to go to war. Western intervention shortened that war. Unless you care to make the claim that the conflict would have ended on the exact day it did, without western intervention?
So compare Libya to Syria. The war is still going on in Syria. Casualties are anything from half a million to over a million. Millions more have fled the country. Six years after it began, its still going on. And at the end of it, its very likely the cause of the war, Assad, will remain in control of what's left of the country. Wouldn't it have been better if he had just gone?
Sure, I guess you could blame the Libyan people and the Syrian people for fighting to defend themselves against the dictators that rule over them. But then you'd be an idiot. Especially if, at the same time, you bitch and whine about how terrible life is in the UK, where you have all the rights, privileges, and freedoms that you do.
If you were Libyan, and you had posted '...Until we boot these lunatics out of power' as you did above, about the Gaddafi regime, you wouldn't just be another whiny first worlder desperate to play at being the victim. You would be taking your life in your hands, and putting your family and friends in danger. Especially if you lived in Benghazi. The same applies if you had been Syrian. Your posts would be monitored, not by an imaginary deep state, but by the security forces of an all too real regime that had kept itself in power for over 40 years, and is quite prepared to see the country burn to keep itself in power for another 40 years more.
In other words, if you can't see the reasons why Libyans and Syrians would rise up against the brutal dictatorships that rule over them, then shut the fk up about how terrible your sad little life is under the present UK government.
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@usxnews1834 A Cambridge University study of 2012 concluded that the best indicator to whether or not young people get involved in crime is personal morality and responsibility. Carried out by the Cambridge institute of criminology, the study focused on both social environments and personal characteristics of 700 youngsters. And found that '...The bulk of offences were committed by a small group - with around 4% responsible for almost half the crime and the overwhelming majority of the most serious property crimes - such as burglaries, robberies and car theft'
This, I believe, has been shown to be the case in many other such studies. It is a small percentage committing most of the crime. And very often if left unchecked that small percentage can literally bring a whole area down with it. Which shows the importance of policing. Of course.
The study also found that the idea that young people will inevitably commit crime in certain environments is not the case. Instead, this applied only to the ‘crime-prone’ (the 4%). Therefore the best way to prevent crime was to 'focus on developing policies that affect children and young people’s moral education and cognitive nurturing - which aids the development of greater self-control - and policies that help minimise the emergence of moral contexts conducive to crime' (so obvious).
In other words, it is individual morality that determines whether someone is prone to committing crime, rather than environmental. It is not understood how this is effected by social disadvantage (however that is defined). But I would suggest that a culture that promotes and glorifies violence and criminality is certainly not favourable to that.
So it is more complicated than simply stating that poverty is responsible for crime, as, of course, poverty is a relative term. And there is inequality in all aspects of life. Not just wealth. And that will always be the case.
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@usxnews1834 Professor Per-Olof H Wikström, FBA, the guy who led the research does indeed mention the dreaded term 'morality' in his summing up (or moral, to be exact).
He mentions this while outlining the importance of 'developing policies that affect children and young people’s moral education'.
Therefor, it is logical to conclude that undermining the development of children and young people's moral education is the opposite of that, am I right? Or is that a little too much speculation for you?
the current view is that moral characteristics or values aren't apriori [2] but learned instead from, you guessed it, our social environment...
I think I made this point several comments back when I said if the only role models a kid has as he's growing up are people who glorify violence and anti-social behaviour, and who gain status thro doing so, while continually teaching them that they act the way they do because of wider society, then its not hard to guess what the result of that will be.
To put it another way, a kid can't learn in a chaotic classroom. And it only takes one kid to disrupt a whole class (the 4%). So the idea that better policing is not the answer is, I would suggest, more down to Akala's opinion of law enforcement than the reality (he did, after all, carry a knife himself when he was younger).
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@pb1105 That is true, there is a great deal of difference between the conquest of India and being a member of the EU. Hyperbolic rhetoric is on both sides. And its unnecessary. But, the essential point is that if you can defend and respect the right of self governance in one case, you should recognise it for all.
Populism is often a word used to describe any popular movement that one does not agree with. But populism tends to play on the idea that there are simple answers to complicated issues (religion/socialism/fascism/racial bigotry). And that is not the case with Brexit.
Despite those like Owen Jones who explain away the reasons why people voted to leave the EU by claiming that they were voting against austerity/poverty/social injustice/inequality, or any number of other bandwagon issues Jones and his like regularly ride in order to promote their failed political ideology, it really is as simple as wanting to be able to hold those who govern you to account. To be able to know who is making your laws, and know how to remove them from power.
The fact that many choose to ignore this simple explanation in favour of co-opting the referendum result to fit their own narrative of the poor, downtrodden and ignorant masses hitting out at any target they can in a fit of despair, is the reason why they can't understand the argument in favour of Brexit.
After all, if you were to say one thing, and I decided to ignore you, and instead claim you were really saying something else, how could we have any kind of dialogue at all?
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@Pobotrol Since then we have had a parliament elected on the promise to respect the referendum result failing to do what they promised.
I can understand you might disagree with leaving the EU. I understand your arguments against doing so, although I dont agree with them (or rather, I find them outweighed by the opposing arguments). But I find it difficult to understand your inability to recognise why those who disagree with you on this issue should have a problem when, having won a referendum, the result is simply ignored.
The problem with many on the remain campaign is that rather than focus on the issues about why people voted to leave the EU, they decided instead to concentrate on why they thought people voted to leave the EU.
It couldn't possibly be because, like people all over the world, those who voted to leave the EU instinctively felt the need to be able to hold those who govern them to account, to know who they are and how to get rid of them, but rather it had to be because they were either sad, mad, or bad.
If, rather than listening to what people say, you instead assume their motives to be something other than what they are telling you, and argue against that, then its no wonder you can't understand their thinking.
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