The industry is highly monopolized. The cheap stuff is accordingly worse and the okay stuff can set high prices.

Are you sure he really donated it? Did it not go to one of the foundations he and Gates control to push their agendas like school privatization via “charter schools”?

It is not possible for Warren Buffet to be a nice guy because he is a dragon hoarding wealth while people die of deprivation and injustice.

The dying empire continues to lash out and pax americana is a myth.

Under capitalism, profit maximization is necessary for the company you own to survive. You cannot be a “nice capitalist”, at least not for long. A person that is nice will have to conform their behavior to maximize profits anyways.

This dynamic does not exist in other systems, where your class membership makes you a relentless recursive tool of the market.

That’s describing capitalism, where profit maximization is systemically required for one to fulfill their role at “the top” and monopoly is the best way to increase profits.

Historically, “greed” was not the main characteristic of the ruling class. They did not exist under capitalism. Money itself often meant little. Land, a military, prestige, yes. But money fir money’s sake was officially frowned upon and generally left to the clergy to handle the hypocrisy.

No, feudalism has different economic relations than capitalism. It is about farm product graft from land-bound peasants on penalty of death or injury. Capitalism is about wage working. Capitalism emerged in the context of feudalism, so there were periods where both existed side by side, but capitalism is clearly different.

Nazis executing civilians is bad. Partisans executing civilians is bad. A bad action is bad no matter the intention. Insert some quote about how the history is filled with good intentions.

Again, this is not a serious geopolitical thought.

Tell the ‘unlawful’ killed that it’s ok, it was a growing power who haven’t attacked someone for a long time and just tries to lift your country out of poverty that bombed you to bits not the cashking warmongerer, and see if they agree with your reasoning.

Respond to my reasoning in any way whatsoever.

Do you think the USSR and Eastern Europe were free from the tendencies of capitalism to create imperialist war? The only post-WWII wars in Eastern Europe were skirmishes by capitalist-funded nationalists (quasi-fascists) and the civil war in Yugoslavia exacerbated by NATO to balkanize the country. The wars that the USSR supported were all pre-existing national liberation movements against imperialist colonizers, and they nearly always entered after imperialists had thrown massive resources into oppression. For example, Vietnam.

I thought it would be implied that I’m speaking about modern times. The economic system is the msin driver in large societies, though. In Europe, prior to capitalism, the primary determinant was feudal interests.

Chimps don’t have war. They fight, but is every skirmish a war? Wars come from creating and wielding armies.

Capitalism is the primary driver of wars, it determines the basic structure of what is and is not permissible, generates nation-states (these did not always exist, actually), and then creates the conditions by which the national bourgeoisie nation-states push for war in order to become international bourgeoisie (imperialists).

For example, the US keeps the middle east in a regular state of war to prevent them from having independent policies regarding oil. It is concerned about oil because of the petrodollar. It is concerned about the petrodollar because it is th3 primary financial war instrument by which it jeeps other countries sending superprofits its way and otherwise screwing with countries using interest rates. And it does those things because the US is the global seat of capital, it is where the big finance companies are based.

How many wars have there been in the middle east since 2000? How has the US been involved? Do they just do it for the thrill of domination?

And in those times the causes were things like feudalism.

The US invaded Cuba to try and stop its revolution following brinksmanship with the USSR on nukes. If the US today understood Mexico to be a military proxy it would be talking about nuking CDMX. The country is run by incredibly cold and violent people. It would run 24/7 propaganda about the necessity of invading Mexico for our defense and to make preemptive strikes. It would create false flags to justify whatever action they wanted to take. These all have precedent for going and destroying countries thousands of miles away.

Re: what you think you would do, the US has been doing a genocide for over a year. What have you done to ensure it does not happen again? Did you vote for Harria of the Biden-Harris administration carrying it out? If so, that is the exact opposite if what you said you would do.

Remember, no one is immune to propaganda. Wr must always challenge ourselves and be reqdy to receive and process criticism.

Regarding Ukraine, there could be nothing further than truth https://youtu.be/7gxssycoxz0

Yeah I’m not watching a 35 minute video with no context or explanation. I also didn’t say anything about NATO expansion, the apparent topic of the video.

Perhaps you could describe what you think it wrong about what I have said.

As for Israel the problem is more that it isn’t a lapdog, it looks like US is Israel’s lapdog.

Israel knows its value to US interests and leverages this to its advantage, but never confuse this for Israel being the lapdog. They are dependent on US “aid”, weapons, investment, and diplomatic cover. Do you really think that tiny country is dominant over the global superpower?

Also, be careful when making this claim, as it is often made in antisemitic circles.

As it looks like Israel does whatever it wants even if it is against US interests, and US still supports it.

This is because it is otherwise fully aligned with the interests of the US ruling class. It serves a useful purpose. This is also because US propaganda would have you believe that it never tolerates, say, the killing of Americans. Of course it does, it just uses this as an excuse when it wants to do something terrible to another country.

I use Happy Cow. In addition to having a vegan filter it doesn’t seem very gsmed yet.

I also check new restaurant openings at a local aggregator.

Never underestimate the incoherency of an American hog.

If anything, him getting caught by being an idiot ay McDonalds makes the story more believable.

The US has used Ukraine as a proxy against thr RF since at least Euromaidan. Their policy with Ukraine was and is to apply maximum pressure to Russia to isolate them from the rest of Europe. The US funding and arming the war to the last Ukrainian is therefore a continuation of decades-long policy and not a “decision to help”.

This also applies to Israel. Israel is a lapdog of US empire that lashes out at targets in the middle eaat in ways that serve US ruling class interests. The US’ support of Israel did not begin on October 7, it has been ongoing for decades. The US just provided even more money than usual and has withstood siding with genocide because it has a complacent, propagandized, and complicit population.

Hamas is certainly on the right side, which is to say, the liberation of Palestine from its racist settler colonists.

This is just a stream of rhetorical posturing to avoid ever directly addressing any of the criticisms presented.

I think you missed my point, entirely. I wasn’t saying that governments committing atrocities in other countries versus their own people were any different, morally speaking.

Then why say “their own people”? It doesn’t make sense. Parent didn’t use that qualifier. Maybe you used it because it is so often used in combination with the other terms? Either way, I am singling out this qualifier because it is a way that PR and propagandistic terms color our thinking. It does not mean I think you were being malicious.

I was simply pointing out that the quality of life for the working class, and low amount of wealth disparity, etc in this country is largely due to Socialist policies keeping Capitalism in check, and also pointing out that Capitalist policies cause atrocities, in general.

But these countries don’t have socialist policies! They are capitalist countries run by capitalists and capitalist parties. I already described the causes behind their social safety nets.

This was in response to the comment saying that countries were hiding atrocities behind the banner of Socialism.

I understand. I actually interpreted parent as being critical of the Eastern bloc, but I didn’t comment on this.

Atrocities of any kind are abhorrent and I agree that they need to be denounced.

I agree in the abstract sense but just like with “their own people”, what gets called an atrocity, how its veracity is established, and how often it enters discourse are all subject to the propaganda we are all immersed in. In addition, the context in whicj atrocities are “denounced” matters. Were the people tallying up lists of Saddam’s crimes in 2003 just denouncing atrocities like good, empathetic humans? Were they not helping to build consent for a much worse invasion? What about the US’ genocidal sanctions on the country for the prior decade plus? We, of course, do not live in a vacuum and what we are told to denounce is often aligned with ruling class agendas.

The overall topic of this thread is that baby leftists want to keep criticizing and denouncing the targets of US empire that they are told to hate. They have not engaged critically with the denunciations themselves and when others do so they begin insulting and deflecting. And they certainly don’t exist within any project to actually achieve anything against atrocities, because if they did they would be laser-focused on their own country where they can do actual organizing work, which will largely be in the US and Europe.

As an example of liberals’ having their attention to atrocities dictated by think tanks and imperialist media, we can look to Yemen. I could not get liberals to care about the US-backed bombing campaigns and US blockade of Yemen. Schoolbuses bombed, weddings bombed, basic civilian infrastructure bombed out to attack food, water, and electricity. Aid rotting on ships because the US prevented them from docking and unloading for 8+ months. Nobody even talked about Yemen in the US or Europe. Not regularly. You don’t see lemmy.worlders bringing it up all the time as atrocities you should denounce every time the topic of the US itself comes up. Every time target countries of US empire are mentioned, hiwever, it is time for kneejerk denunciation ans bad faith insults at anyone with a modicum of understanding of geopolitics.

I also agree with pretty much everything else that you said. Socialism is near dead and dying in Europe.

It’s gone. It fell with the USSR and then NATO-led balkanization of Yugoslavia. Europe is capitalist.

I just think that the sprinkle of Social policies that is left in the EU still holds back Capitalism from being quite as horrible as it could be.

I might agree but I frame it differently. The social policies remain because they are too popular to remove, but capitalism is eating away at them from multiple directions. Privatization is everywhere, as are benefit cuts to siphon into militarization. The latter is only possible due to fearmongering over Russia. But more dangerously, European countries oppress the left, such as banning communist parties or even expressions of solidarity with Palestine. That results in “the discourse” being dominated by liberald and protofascists. But the liberals are presiding over declines in conditions due to capitalism, so when they lose popularity, protofascists gain it. This will produce repeated one-two punches of austerity, dismantling social programs, and scapegoating marginalized people. And all while the US drains Europe’s industrial base. Europe’s utility as a forward base against the USSR is gone and they are now a bloodbag for US’ vampires.

“Neighbor” was never an important detail, and only someone struggling to string together some type of deflection from the point would focus so deeply on it.

Neighbor is the only qualifier that makes your claim arguably true for, say, 30-40 years. You included it yourself, I didn’t make you so it. If you get rid of the term “neigbor”, you are simply wrong.

Instead of running away from it and trying to blame me for noticing, you could just acceot where I am correct and try to synthesize.

You will get into conflicts and be consistently wrong if this is how you respond to correction.

The point, as is abundantly clear to anyone with a couple of braincells to rub together, is that these countries are doing that now, as in at this moment, and are targeting civilians, which the person in responding to gladly ignored with their “but no, everyone says Russia is bad” bullshit.

That applies to several countries, including US-backed Israel and the US-backed reactionaries in Syria, which is why the term “neighbor” does so much work. And in providing that obfuscatory defense, you are doing the thing you claim others are doing, which is excusing and minimizing war and death on civilians.

And you have the gall to accuse me of making a bad faith argument. Once again, pathetic.

It requires very little gall. You are putting on quite the display at the moment with the flurry of insults and deflections.