davel

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in U.S. military has shot down Iranian drones

Iran is the one that broke international law and BOMBED an embassy, killing noncombatants.

I’m sure you meant Israel.

davel , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

porky-happy

The capitalist class, Walter Lippmann, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crisis_of_Democracy would be proud (emphasis mine):

Al Smith once remarked that “the only cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.” Our analysis suggests that applying that cure at the present time could well be adding fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy […] Needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy.

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

The people of China and Vietnam have vibrant discussions of ideas, and they democratically steer their governments. Their voices have more effect on their states than ours here at home. There isn’t a ban on Winnie-the-Pooh in China, and the people are generally vastly better informed on the 1989 Tian’anmen Square riots than we are.

• The Tian’anmen Square ‘Massacre’: The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.
• 1989 Tian’anmen Square riots
• A Note on the Tiananmen Protests
• Images from Tiananmen 1989 the West never shows (NSFW / CW: violence and death)
• https://twitter.com/carlzha/status/1134582926325104641?lang=de

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You seem to have uncritically accepted every single thing you’ve been told, which, to be fair, I largely had as well, until I witnessed in real time how obviously fabricated the justification for the Iraq War was, and how seemingly credulously the media propagated it. It took me the last 20 years of investigation to dig myself out from under a lifetime of imperial core propaganda.

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

The current government structures of Cuba, China, Laos, and Vietnam aren’t a secret, nor is the Soviet Union’s. From a declassified CIA document (PDF):

Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

Thank you for your support and patronage, user 28521.

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

Of course we’re told that: it’s a given that the US will call a country it wants to browbeat or regime change “authoritarian,” and corporate media will repeat it.

The Western concept of “totalitarianism” was constructed by Hannah Arendt, who came from a wealthy family and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. It’s a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.

Monthly Review, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited

U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

How am I the one burying my head in the sand if I’m exposed to the same propaganda and media that you are?

What “reliable” sources do you want? Western governments, Western corporate media, Western think tanks, who have a Cold War II agenda for regime change in China, and want to bury the threat of a good example?

Joseph Kahn, the managing editor of the New York Times, is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, as are the CEOs of NPR & PBS. And those are the ones I know off the top of my head: en.wikipedia.org/…/Members_of_the_Council_on_Fore…

The Council of Foreign Relations is a place where the government and the capitalist class hash out the media’s agenda. On its founding, Walter Lippman was its head of research. The title of Noam Chomsky & Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent came from a quote in Lippmann’s book, . Are you familiar with Edward Bernays, who literally wrote the book, Propaganda? Are you familiar with the Powell memorandum or the Trilateral Commission’s report, The Crisis of Democracy?

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

When a bourgeois democratic state goes badly, it tears off its liberal mask and reveals the fascism beneath. The capitalist class dispenses with democratic theater and rules by naked dictatorship. Western liberals shouldn’t wonder why fascism is on the rise in the West: it’s because Western monopoly capitalism is increasingly going mask-off. Monthly Review, 2014: The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

For real though, please dial it back. You didn’t have to turn Churchill into an attack on someone who may not even be aware of Churchill’s crimes, and then continue to ratchet up the personal insults. It’s bad even by Reddit debate bro standards, and it doesn’t invite anyone to explore alternatives to bourgeois democracy.

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

It seems this person is just going to keep repeating that it isn’t a form of government no matter what.

At this point the onus is on @pulaskiwasright to specify what criteria need be met for something to be considered “a form of government.”

davel , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

China is in the process of ethically cleansing their own population

This is not true at all, despite what our governments and corporate media keep feeding us. As part of China’s affirmative action policies, the Uyghurs and other ethic minorities were excepted from the One-Child policy, and in Xinjiang they have grown in numbers relative to Hans as a result, and this happened similarly with other ethnic minorities. The “Uyghur genocide” (“cultural” or otherwise) psyop is BS.

• The Xinjiang Genocide Allegations Are Unjustified
• The Uyghur Human Rights Project is a product of the National Endowment for Democracy, which is the American government’s main regime change NGO.
• Uyghur genocide allegations
• US-Funded Uyghur Activists Train as Soldiers of Empire
• A Reddit AMA Claiming To Be A Uyghur Quickly Exposes A CIA Asset Slandering China
• The blueprint of regime change operations

We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the ‘Uyghur genocide’ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the ‘genocide’, all day, every day. People whom we’d never heard of before were brought in as experts — Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.

Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany […]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs — presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.

The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.

Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed ‘up to 1.3 million’ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didn’t say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.

Sanctions were enacted against China — Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).

Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies — aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

I was talking about bourgeois democracies, which have only ever represented the capitalist class. A concrete alternative has already been suggested, socialist democratic centralism, a form of proletarian democracy, but you dismissed it as not even being a political system, despite it having been practiced in various countries throughout the last century. Capitalist states and corporate media label socialist states as “authoritarian,” because the capitalist class doesn’t want us to consider any alternatives that would usurp them.

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

Everyone can see that the US government is ossified, incapable of changing course (or of representing the people). And it’s no accident: it was designed to be so. The Separation of Powers is BROKEN, Here’s Why

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in Fewer people now say representative democracy is a very good way to govern in many countries surveyed.

A lot of people are saying that bourgeois democracy is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

BBC, 2014: Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.

This is not news, you say.

Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here’s how they explain it:

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.

davel , 3 months ago to worldnews in China Supports the Addition of the Palestinian State to the UN

I don’t think many Tibetans would welcome a CIA-backed Dalai “suck my tongue” Lama coup government.