The PC and Perpetually Offended Brigade

[91/30]

He's just clinging to the nonsense idea that his beloved socialism has worked somewhere and doesn't result in abject poverty and misery everywhere. Let him be. Next week we'll see how he gets on with the idea of there being no Santa Claus.

Haha FFS it's like you don't know that Capitalism took a few hundred years to assume it's current beautiful Democratic form of how it currently 'works'. Must be the wisdom of white Anglo prods compared to stupid Slavs?

Ye love how it works in the US or in liberal Europe but seem unaware that it only works because of its direct economic exploitation of other countries.  I've worked in plenty of shitty capitalist third world countries for global MNCs that sent the wealth back to their own motherland. Working and living in Cuba or working and living for Rio Tinto in a shitty African country

[Carnage]

Oh my god, they killed 91/30!

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Cuban communism ain't, as I already said, my preferred brand of socialism, and I know full well the state the country is in, especially the last couple of years. But I also have a pretty firm conviction that their abject poverty and misery still has much more to do with a certain little matter of a decades-long internationally imposed US embargo than it does with anything inherent to the concept of socialism. If you were coherent in your worldviews, which are generally anti-globalist, then you should be far more aghast at the very machinations that enable US "democracy" to impose such an embargo than you are currently aghast at "socialism."

So, any thoughts on that embargo? On its legitimacy? On its humanity?

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Oh my god, they killed 91/30!

  

[91/30]

Oh my god, they killed 91/30!

  

[91/30]

Cuban communism ain't, as I already said, my preferred brand of socialism, and I know full well the state the country is in, especially the last couple of years. But I also have a pretty firm conviction that their abject poverty and misery still has much more to do with a certain little matter of a decades-long internationally imposed US embargo than it does with anything inherent to the concept of socialism. If you were coherent in your worldviews, which are generally anti-globalist, then you should be far more aghast at the very machinations that enable US "democracy" to impose such an embargo than you are currently aghast at "socialism."

So, any thoughts on that embargo? On its legitimacy? On its humanity?

They'll come back and say "if it's so great why does it need American goods or trade"

They always have an answer.

[Caomhaoin]

I agrée fully about the American embargo, its undeniable. It's an element in the equation only though. Living there, regardless of the minutae of this discussion, rather than the US would be hard headed at best. Surely you can see this.

American carry-on is hateful, cuntish and ignoble. The meddling, the rewriting or unwriting of history, the ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing. As Rome put it in his song, 'the stumbling child-king'. I asked a lad once if he believed the USA behaved the way it did because it was the strongest or because it had some kind of moral obligation and he immediately and delightedly told me it was the latter. Unbelievable.

Their system of consumer capitalism has created a society, however, that socialism could never hope to come close to matching, unless it was both administered and populated by morally pure cyborgs, maybe. If you have a read of Zinn's 'A people's history of the US' (he's a highly intelligent, almost seductive socialist), you'd almost be convinced that the US is destined to be, has its provenance in and WANTS to be socialist. Maybe, but the other cunts slightly less cunty cuntery is the best bet for now, unless you want to live in a country that will, eventually, become paradise for those who are happy to be lazy and poor.

As an aside, if undeniable evidence that an international cabal of Jewish bankers were revealed to be behind the entire hated system, would that make anti-semitism valid from your point of view? I'm not saying that's the case, just a 'random thought'.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

185 countries voted to end it at the 30th UN vote on the matter just a few months back. US and Israel voted against. Again. Clearly they think it's worth upholding, meaning also that they (well, the US... Israel knows the hand that feeds it just as well as Cuba knows the one that beats it) understand it better than anyone who may wish to reply "if it's so great why does it need American goods or trade?" Plus, it goes far beyond just that.

Memos still exist from the 60s stating that the aim was to "to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government." Or, as hellfire called it, "abject poverty and misery." No, but that must be the fault of "socialism", even if its exactly what the US was aiming for by implementing the embargo they still refuse to lift.

"an element in the equation only", fine, but the determining element.

[astfgyl]

The extremes of the argument ie USA v Cuba will only tell us so much. I still think socialism would work. For example, high corporate taxes but lower personal taxes would still allow for a degree of capitalism but skewed towards the worker doing well out of it. Things like taxes being spent on as was mentioned, public transport, healthcare, subsidised housing etc instead of taxes avoided by massive corporations because they're too big to pay. Welfare by all means but if one is capable one will work for the welfare to encourage people to eat the carrot of better employment instead of making a career out of the dole.

There are fair solutions to most things on that level but it's not going to be unfettered capitalism or hard communism that'll fix any of that because at the end of the day both end with far too large of a gap between rich and poor and both are rotten.

The mad part is that the solutions are not even very difficult. Like the immigration thing that causes so much argument lately; set out conditions where people of all nations can legally enter and stay and close the loopholes and fucking stick to it. See, easy! And doesn't end with crazy immigration numbers and doesn't fuel mistrust and doesn't even raise the racism shit and at the same time doesn't go against nationalism or globalism either but no, we have to be the way we are so the rich can get richer and more powerful and the rest can stay the fuck down at the bottom where they belong.

None of it is difficult but I feel we will need a revolution to get anywhere near it all the same.

Look at the way it is now it's pure shit. Even when we were supposedly all in it together saving granny for the last few years it was a load of bollixing and massive wealth transfer rather than anything of real decency. Record profits for massive corporations as usual and none of the transferred wealth going to anything that benefits you or society in general.

The answers are so simple it's very frustrating.

[Caomhaoin]

The thing about revolutions is that people only have so much patience and resilience before they lose faith and start to pine for the old reliables. Lads will put up with war, hunger, even a suspension of habeas corpus, but only for a while.

Unless you Bolshevik them into oblivion of course. They did what even the horrible cunts who corrupted the French Revolution couldn't.

History is littered with examples.

[91/30]

The thing about revolutions is that people only have so much patience and resilience before they lose faith and start to pine for the old reliables. Lads will put up with war, hunger, even a suspension of habeas corpus, but only for a while.

Unless you Bolshevik them into oblivion of course. They did what even the horrible cunts who corrupted the French Revolution couldn't.

History is littered with examples.

Giving the Bolshies more credit than is their due there i think.  Difficult to achieve in the face of hundreds or thousands of years of religious cultural practice.
My favourite example is Albania that was hardcore Bolshevik, declaredthemselvesworlds first atheist state - until it wasn't....then they all fell victim to a massive pyramid scheme and their overseas shortwave broadcasting transmitters that had been their commie version of the BBC World Service got bought by some American bible shysters for preaching the good word.

[Caomhaoin]

Yugoslavia did alright with their 'third way'. And despite the foot stomping and 'Serbian machinery of terror' etc etc, the Americans were delighted with how that panned out. No way they could allow even a semi viable alternative to their system.

Amazing document called 'the plan for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia' is available online if you know where to look. That line was US policy, so who knows who's back was being tapped. They really are ruthless cunts. It's our version of Pax Romana or it's Britannic counterpart later.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Ye love how it works in the US or in liberal Europe but seem unaware that it only works because of its direct economic exploitation of other countries.  I've worked in plenty of shitty capitalist third world countries for global MNCs that sent the wealth back to their own motherland.

Yeah, I've been in a few such countries too, though more briefly than you by the sounds of it. It never ceases to amaze how, in this information age, people constantly hear about exploitation in developing nations by almost every massive corporation in almost every domain of enterprise, yet when it comes to accounting for the success of capitalism, all that knowledge gets silenced in their heads and it becomes "USA or North Korea, which is better?" Capitalism is not a net good for planet earth, not even remotely. And no, neither was soviet communism, for which no level-headed (democratic) socialist has any love whatsoever. The US hates socialism and wants to bring "democracy" to the world because socialist states are much more difficult to exploit. The US' claim that the embargo against Cuba is intended to push them to improve their human rights record, holy fucking shit is that the ultimate in hypocrisy; if the US cared about human rights, they would start by placing embargoes on the US-based corporations abusing human rights left, right, and centre around the globe literally as a business model.

[91/30]

Ye love how it works in the US or in liberal Europe but seem unaware that it only works because of its direct economic exploitation of other countries.  I've worked in plenty of shitty capitalist third world countries for global MNCs that sent the wealth back to their own motherland.

Yeah, I've been in a few such countries too, though more briefly than you by the sounds of it. It never ceases to amaze how, in this information age, people constantly hear about exploitation in developing nations by almost every massive corporation in almost every domain of enterprise, yet when it comes to accounting for the success of capitalism, all that knowledge gets silenced in their heads and it becomes "USA or North Korea, which is better?" Capitalism is not a net good for planet earth, not even remotely. And no, neither was soviet communism, for which no level-headed (democratic) socialist has any love whatsoever. The US hates socialism and wants to bring "democracy" to the world because socialist states are much more difficult to exploit. The US' claim that the embargo against Cuba is intended to push them to improve their human rights record, holy fucking shit is that the ultimate in hypocrisy; if the US cared about human rights, they would start by placing embargoes on the US-based corporations abusing human rights left, right, and centre around the globe literally as a business model.

Only 5 such countries for stints of a month at a time but enough to get the gist of how they are getting properly f##ked over.

"Level headed Democratic socialists" that university campus carry on is no threat to the state of things, won't even get you lifted under the Offences Against the State Act 1939.  Harmless entirely.

I'm not a Socialist by any means but I see no point in swallowing US propaganda and historical revisionism

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Haha, aye that's true: I put (democratic) like that because I didn't want it to refer only to Sanders, etc., but more generally to socialists who also believe in true democracy, in the old John Dewey, pragmatism, and so on vein, also being those who the communist party started labeling fascists as soon as they dared criticize Stalinism back in the day. Almost like... soviet communism and socialism aren't identical! A truly mind-blowing consideration.