Look at the rates of electrification in the global south, and the sluggish economies in the US and Europe. The AI bubble is just that, a bubble.
Cowbee
joined 2 years ago
Saying that socialism is a more effective system than capitalism and that socialist countries provide better for the working classes than capitalist ones is the statement I made, and is true. Comparing "the best" (whatever that means) capitalist and socialist countries doesn't actually answer that. It doesn't take into account length of time, history, level of development, trajectory, and more, and it especially doesn't take imperialism into account.
No? Jimmy Lai was just one example that was convicted in the last few days after evidence was collected. You're deeply unserious.
As I explained, I'm not at all on the same page with Carlson and Bannon. Their desire to dump Ukraine onto the EU to insteas focus on Latin America and then Asia isn't the same as opposing western imperialism. I can articulate why they hold their views and why I hold mine.
Here's a full report by a western org that talks about "surprising progress with daunting obstacles. The younger generation is pro-LGBTQIA+, the older is anti. Over time this is resulting in gradual change for the better with each passing generation.
I actually haven't looked into LGBTQIA+ rights in the DPRK. They're notoriously terrible in the ROK, as are women's rights, so I'd expect the DPRK to fare a bit better but I haven't actually looked into that much.
Tibet is an autonomous zone that is within the broder PRC. It isn't distinct from China, nor is it wholly the same. Tibet within the PRC has seen rapid development and dramatic progress once moving beyond feudalism into socialism. The fact that Tibet is developing and extreme poverty is eradicated there isn't a point against China, but for it. You have a Fox News style understanding of China while you live in an actually imperialist country like Italy.
The 2019 protests were western backed. Jimmy Lai was just proven to have colluded with western governments. No, I never claimed there were no workers among those that rioted, my claim was that the working class in general was not behind the protests, and that instead it was a western-backed capitalist-led protest, which is true.
I don't follow how this relates to the meme
Carlson and Bannon wanting to leave Ukraine a rump state for Europe to pick up the bill for, and communists wanting Kiev to stop ethnically cleansing the Donbass region and stop NATO aggression are entirely different things to begin with, and entirely different reasons. Not only am I not aligned with Carlson and Bannon on Ukraine, you yourself are absolutely aligned with them when it comes to supporting western imperialism, homophobia, racism, and anti-communism.
LGBTQ rights aren't improving in Russia. Russia is run by nationalists, as I said, not socialists. The nationalists in Russia are better than literal Nazis, but are by no means socialists. As for listing "Chinese LGBTQ members," you realise that that isn't a thing, right? People are naturally gay, we don't choose to be gay at higher ratios in more welcoming environments. Either way, Jin Xing, one of China's top celebreties, is an open transwoman.
As for Tibet, no, China liberating Tibet is not imperialism. Imperialism is a form of international plunder, anexxing territory can be imperialist but in this case it clearly isn't. The Dalai Lama was on the CIA payroll, and the CIA used Tibet as a proxy to fight China.
All of these are answered, and my beliefs stem from a thorough understanding of Marxism-Leninism and studying real life and the news from a global context, not just regurgitating western media.
It's lashing out more violently, sure, but the global south is actually developing thanks to increased south-south trade and an erosion of western tech monopoly. The rise of China is contributing greatly to this.
Russia selling oil to capitalist countries is an entirely normal thing for countries to do. Not only can socialist countries trade with capitalist ones, Russia isn't socialist to begin with, so I'm not sure what this point is.
China and the Phillipines have different claims to land and sea, and that does cause conflict, sure. China isn't trying to dominate the Phillipines or extract them for wealth.
People in Hong Kong that prefered to remain a British colony were largely the wealthy capitalists that benefited most from the system. Overall, most people are happier being reunited.
China's stance is that it's fine to wait for the people of Taiwan to choose reunification on their own. NATO countries are heavilu arming Taiwan to provoke a messy and violent reunification.
I don't think the speech of fascists needs to be protected, nor the speech of capotalists. Free expression is only genuinely possible in classless society to begin with.
Why would that make any sense for a kind of comparison between capitalism and socialism? Why not compare peers? And additionally, China does have good quality of life, and again is rapidly improving.
Carlson and Bannon are homophobic, racist, pro-imperialism, and anti-communist, just like you. They agree with you.
Neither Tibet nor Hong Kong had popular resistance to China, both "resistances" were directly aided by the west to provoke more bloodshed. Tibet in particular was a feudal slave society. Two excerpts from Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth:
Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” [12]
Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. [13] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” [14] In fact it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.
Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeatedremoved, beginning at age nine. [15] The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.
In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [16] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care. They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land — or the monastery’s land — without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. [17] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [18]
As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.
One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” [19] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed. [20]
The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery. [21]
The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
Selection two, shorter: (CW sexual violence and mutilation)
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation — including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation — were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. [22]
Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.” [23] Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. [24]
In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who wasremovedd and then had her nose sliced away. [25]
Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W. F. T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. […] The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.” [26] As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri-La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.
-Dr. Michael Parenti
Taiwan is under the rule of the Kuomintang, who lost the war and fled to Taiwan, slaughtering resistance. The people of Taiwan are increasingly in favor of reunification with the mainland. LGBTQIA+ rights in China are improving over time. They have a long way to go, but nevertheless they are steadily improving.
You're confusing capitalists, ie capital owners, with liberals, those who are pro-capitalism. As for Lemmy, its growth is tied to recognition and Reddit's decay, the established community on Reddit is itself the draw.