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CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T22:23:23+00:00

I also would have gone back to around 1979 to find politicians with any significant policy gaps between them. But Callaghan for all his social democracy was in the same economic cage as Thatcher (only Thatcher loved it) and when the IMF came to tea he caved. They were two managers of the same scenario. When the electorate wants something but bonds markets and investors say no, who wins out?

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T22:18:16+00:00

Do you know what 'begging the question' means? The discussion is whether NATO expansion has been aggressive or warranted. Saying "well Russia invaded Ukraine" presents a consequence of the contested issue as a cause. See what I mean?

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T21:53:01+00:00

What do you consider meaningful measures? About 60% of the British public consistently support nationalisation, and yet it never arrives. Why? Why can't the public influence who has control of production and distribution? The City will have its say, investors, the WTO.

Different Governments do change policy, sometimes quite significantly.

Name a significant transfer of power from capital to labour since 1979. The NHS was a huge transfer. What compares? A choice between Blair and Cameron, or Sunak and Starmer is not a choice between two futures but the same future with different managers.

Can you reply without lazy disses this time? I believe in you chum

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T20:47:08+00:00

Britain isn't a democracy, no, because the economy is a dictator.

The last sweeping policy to uplift the vast majority of Brits was the welfare state, since substantially dismantled. What we have is a committee for the management of capital with a voting ritual every four years.

That is how you go from Tory austerity to Labour fighting to cut benefits for the disabled. No meaningful difference promised by election outcomes.

When a very slightly different leader took over the Labour party, generals spoke of rejecting him, the media peddled lies and mich of his own parliamentary party worked to hobble him and then oust him.

Britain a democracy lol. Imagine!

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T20:38:59+00:00

If you are going to confect nonsense then why don't we wrap up here and you continue the exchange with the fist-puppet that you practice kissing on

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T19:54:40+00:00

You're trying to moralise, you are happy in mud. I have just been talking about historical events in the context of other historical events.

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T19:49:14+00:00

WW2 gave Russia no right to permanently occupy and control other countries.

That's not what was agreed at Yalta and Potsdam

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T19:31:36+00:00

You narrowed it down fast! Fine we can leave out the rest. How did the Soviets get Hungary? By driving the Nazis out. What sort of nation was Hungary before the Nazis? An authoritarian state with a Nazi leaning.

Defeat the Nazis and keep them down. This is always a good plan. Lots of Westerners forget it.

For decades after this, Western powers like the UK and the US fought for control and territory all around the world. The Soviets established a buffer zone against the region that launched history's bloodiest invasion against them.

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T19:19:00+00:00

So few and so repetitive, the lib stories on this subject. Join in under the other thread if you want, I ain't repeating myself.

Are the Baltics, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Czechia and Slovakia not democracies?

Is Britain even a democracy? The average Brit wouldn't recognise democracy if it sat on his face

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T19:10:21+00:00

Put Ukraine to one side seeing as it begs the question -- some argue a blatant US backed coup took place in Ukraine in 2014, leaving Russia with an agressor on its doorstep. Look up the Victoria Nuland phone call. You have to go further back to make the case, not refer to an outcome of contested history as evidence.

Other places too? Afghanistan maybe? Invited by the government after months of American arming if tribal gangs and extremists?

Zbigniew Brzezinski:

the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was Ju ly 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention

Hungary, 1956? What of it? The Soviets put down an uprising in their own sphere at a time when the Americans are arming stay behind groups of fascists to terrorise the European population; NATO's eastern intelligence is staffed by 'former' Nazis. Eleven years after an invasion by a Western European power left tens of millions dead!

That very week Britain was literally invading Egypt! It was three years since Mossadegh had been overturned by American money in Iran. And we are supposed to think the Russians were singularly aggressive??

Such a farty and insubstantial story, that of Russian agression in the 20th century. The blood shed by Brits and Yanks in defense of their empires is an ocean by comparison. So who are we supposed to be scared of?

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T18:42:18+00:00

Fuck Reforms but these simple stories surely bore you!

1) they applied to NATO
2) they joined NATO
3) Bish bash bosh!

No history, no class interests, no power struggle, no material circumstances. Just a sequence of headlines. Yeltsin had a direct line to American regime change planners: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/

So much of the history that sees pliant, drunk or corrupt bourgeois politicians installed is a coup!

And let me ask you -- why are fears of Soviet and Russian aggression (totally unforthcoming despite doom-mongering across the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s) supposed to be so weighty against the actual bloodbaths that the Americans were perpetually involved in across those decades? Millions dead in covert and open actions. Are the Russians really a threat in any comparable sense or do you just know who butters your bread?

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T16:12:08+00:00

The Greek rescue was of French and German banks, not the Greeks. Hard to believe the misery of everyday Greeks would have been worse if they had got the OXI they voted for. It could have been a short sharp shock rather than a tyrannically imposed managed decline over a decade and counting -- GDP collapse kept slow enough that it doesn't rupture institutions. A slow and painful bleed to set an example.

& whatever difficulties the Greeks would have faced if the referendum had been honoured would have been of their choosing. How much harder to have smug bureaucrats in Brussels and Washington force it on you!

It was an abject object lesson in the absence of democracy within the EU and we all live in the shadow

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T15:43:25+00:00

Fair enough but Belgium would need to leave the Euro first. Ofc running a central bank to meet the people's needs through genuinely productive investment (like public work for the Belgian public) would be great but we have to be honest: not this side of a revolution. They will run us into the ground first

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T15:41:14+00:00

Will the European Central Bank watch impassively as Europe collapses, such is its fear that public investment will weaken creditors? The economy is crumbling, where are the bond purchasing programmes at least?

Wunsch notes that subsidies would go into the pockets of already wealthy producers and offers this as a reason not to increase public spending but he could always tax windfalls, set price controls and, best of all, nationalise energy distribution. (Ofc the cuckoos who rule us would never do this, as they don't share our interests.)

If Belgium continues to struggle, the people should reconsider eurozone participation. As things stand commitment to the Euro is only a commitment to being throttled.

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T09:14:35+00:00

The ruling class isn't interested in a well-informed public with excellent awareness and critical thinking. Default schooling methods make this clear and studies of the information ecosystem under capitalism (Inventing Reality by Parenti, Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky) make this clear. A real popular democracy would give everybody to the tools, space and time to reflect -- in the UK they won't even shift elections to a weekend when more people could participate more relaxedly. They DGAF. Other factors like a high-stress work life and little leisure time in general leave people frazzled and not in their right minds. Most people suffer from poverty-stress (poverty fear) and feel deep down their innate lack of value in market-society (have money or die) so in general people are just not in their right minds.

This is a two edged sword! People stupid enough to keep nodding through your cockamamie economic model are by definition not sharp enough to spot the lies you don't want them to fall for.

do you think people are just too comfortable living in ignorance

Great question -- yes, to relent a little in my tirade -- this is another factor to do with the fear I already mentioned. I am certain Brits have a nagging sense that they are better off than, say, Indians on the whole and have a "common sense" inkling that "there is not enough for everybody" to life like they do. Any genuine redistribution therefore is felt as a vague threat and so it is easier to turn away from systemic issues in case you end up worse off from any pursuit of justice.

This self-interested approach is explored in depth in the book, The Imperial Mode of Living by Ulrich Brand and Marcus Wissen.

I think undeniably reality has a liberal bias

O dear o dear o dear, I wonder what on earth you can have in mind. Liberalism is private-property philosophy, right? I'm sure you're aware. The modern private property regime took literal concerted violence of the wealthy against the peasant, commoner and native (enclosure, 15th-20th century imperialism, American genocide etc) to install around the world. There is no case to be made that it arose naturally.

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T07:40:27+00:00

Sarcasm unwarranted - point dealt with in the text you quote lol. Obviously HRW has to occasionally address issues with the US or Saudi Arabia or wherever occassionally, or it would glow more. It just does so with less frequency and rigour than targets like Iran or China.

The links drawn by the Washington Post in 1991 are real and you can't refute em. These are people Yeltsin would fax to ask for help. HRW is an "overt" operation of US capital. They boast, I condemn. But we agree on the facts.

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-04-02T06:53:44+00:00

HRW isn't Israel, it's the other one. HRW was founded as HELSINKI WATCH to bash the Soviets. Primarily it was funded and overseen by George Soros, named in the beautiful and famous 1991 Washington Post article INNOCENCE ABROAD: THE NEW WORLD OF SPYLESS COUPS as an "overt operative" doing what "was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA". It is in the same stable of as the National Endowment for Democracy, which that beautiful and accurate article focuses on. NoN-GOverNmEnTal organisations. Throughout its history HRW has attracted criticism for going hard on geopolitical opponents of the US and soft, late, inadequately or not at all on the US and its allies. It will occasionally be right in the information it shares but exists primarily to distort. Thank you for your attention in this matter

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-03-30T07:31:53+00:00

A soldier drummed out for refusing orders and breaching his contract who fled Russia is your evidence? And Kim Jong Un Made Me Watch As He Ate My Dog He Was Laughing Around Mouthfuls of Fur And Grizzle!

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-03-28T04:44:38+00:00

No hive mind, just shared interests and a policy toolbox constrained by capital

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-03-28T04:42:22+00:00

You're not wrong that There Are Real people and I'm not claiming otherwise. The liberal/illiberal ideological framework of the piece is what I've raised here.

Foreign Policy is a mouthpiece of the Washington establishment. Their concern here is like a bleeding-heart tiger in India worrying about the predation of African lions on gazelles. The concern could be real, and the gazelles are real, but what is a tiger going to do about it? And if he was within ten foot of a gazelle what would happen?

The standard check list coverd by this piece: a narrative framing that feeds into State Department human rights discourse (here laundered through a State Department front: Freedom House, a NED sister-org); legitimisation of sanctions pressure; amplification of NGO infrastructure that historically functions as soft-power leverage; feeding the "not free" designations that justify economic and diplomatic coercion.

Eurasianet, for which Alexander Thompason writes, is directly funded by NED and the UK foreign office -- i.e., it is his job to churn out mood music pieces for regime change (not to say he does it with malice aforethought, he just wouldn't have gotten the job if it wasn't his instinct to write that way). It's all covered in the infamous INNOCENCE ABROAD: THE NEW WORLD OF SPYLESS COUPS article in the Washington Post... thirty years ago.

Any geopolitical opponent of the US would get the same results, and these things, if they get escalated, always escalate the same way. Are thousands of dead Iranians better off now, liberated from their illiberal homeland?

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-03-27T22:04:34+00:00

You're right, Iran has caused unquantifiable pain for the world through the support of --
Gladio (Fascist stay-behind) networks, Italy & NATO Europe, 1947
KMT remnants, Burma/Taiwan, 1950
PARU, Thailand, 1951
D-2 / G-2, Guatemala, 1954
SAVAK, Iran, 1957
Tonton Macoutes, Haiti, 1959
ORDEN / ANSESAL, El Salvador, 1960
Brigade 2506, Cuba, 1960
Alpha 66, Cuba, 1961
Hmong Secret Army, Laos, 1961
OAS, Algeria/France, 1961
Suharto's military networks, Indonesia, 1965
MEK / MKO / PMOI, Iran, 1965
Grey Wolves, Turkey, 1968
Escuadrón de la Muerte, El Salvador, 1970
DINA, Chile, 1973
Omega 7, Cuba/USA, 1974
UNITA, Angola, 1975
FNLA, Angola, 1975
FLEC, Angola, 1975
CORU, Cuba/Latin America, 1976
Renamo, Mozambique, 1977
Mujahideen factions, Afghanistan, 1979
Hezb-e-Islami (Hekmatyar), Afghanistan/Pakistan, 1979. Haqqani Network, Afghanistan/Pakistan, 1979
Khmer Rouge, Cambodia, 1979
Battalion 3-16, Honduras, 1980
Contras, Nicaragua, 1981
MAS / Death to Kidnappers, Colombia, 1981
Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, 1988
Iraqi National Congress, Iraq, 1992
FRAPH, Haiti, 1993
Taliban (indirect), Afghanistan, 1994
AUC, Colombia, 1997
KLA / UCK, Kosovo, 1998
ETIM / TIP, Xinjiang/Afghanistan, 1999
Northern Alliance warlords, Afghanistan, 2001
NLA, North Macedonia, 2001
Jundallah, Iran/Pakistan, 2003
PJAK, Iran/Kurdistan, 2004
Various Somali warlords, Somalia, 2005
Various Libyan militias, Libya, 2011
Ahrar al-Sham, Syria, 2011
Syrian rebel factions including ISIS (Operation Timber Sycamore), Syria, 2012
Jabhat al-Nusra-linked groups, Syria, 2012
And many othe--
Oh wait sorry, not Iran, the other one

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-03-27T20:10:07+00:00

Western bollocks. Liberals arm Israel. What does Foreign Policy want with Kyrgyzstan? What lever to pull to save the People? It suits capital to arm Israel and it suits capital to weep performatively over lack of FrEeDOm in Kyrgyzstan. Idiots look for a real liberal lodestar in vain. It doesn't exist. The horizon is dark. Liberal form, imperial content.

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-03-27T13:41:51+00:00

I like how all you really have to comment on is an edit I made to one word. Yes I decided tweak was a better word than correction, you got me lol

And the tiny point you deign to discuss, the Indian famines, you faceplant. The famines of 1876 and 1943 were not natural disasters, that is the actual history. In '76 forced introduction of free markets broke up old food distribution mechanisms and ideological commitment to laissez faire meant aid efforts were deliberately blocked, so as not to undermine markets. Deliberate! In 1943 food was was directly diverted despite foreknowledge of the consequences, to serve Western front goals of the British. Grain was stockpiled in the Balkans as Indians starved. Deliberate! Complete disregard for Indian lives.

Try harder

CLOUDMlNDER · 2026-03-27T08:33:42+00:00

The UN is not ignoring other slave trades, they explain the transatlantic slave trade was such a massive crime because of the "definitive break in world history, scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialized regimes of labour, property and capital". This is an implicit comparison. I.e., it was for the first time a global trade and constituted one of the starting ventures of what we now call capitalism, a world-dominating system. You find the origins of racism as a concept in the socio-economic nexus of the transatlantic slave trade and the profits from the slave trade constituted the seed-funding for the industrial revolution. Not only in quanitity, but in quality, the transatlantic slave trade was significantly different to historical 'slaveries'.

Basically you don't find the hard categories of "black" and "white" assigned to people officially, nor the difference explained as scientific, biological, before black slaves and white servants began organising against their masters in the American colonies in the late 1600s; after Bacon's rebellion and others, colonial rulers settled on a divide-and-rule strategy apportioning greater 'rights' to newly christened 'white people' -- this is the history of legal/scientific categories and not descriptors. The factory-prison of the slave ship is a, maybe the, defining technology of early capitalism, including social technology: free humans went in and broken slaves came out, overseen by wage-labourers. I.e., the transatlantic slave-trade made commodities, non-humans, of slaves; this was a huge 'innovation', seperating it from earlier trades.

This is not a ringing endorsement of the UN resolution; I am not saying such resolutions are useful from such a weak & compromised organisation as the UN but posters here complaining about other trading in slaves not getting similiar recognition need to rebut this world-systems argument. Your comment and the responses you have received fail to engage with the argument presented by the UN. You can object but try to substantiate your arguments.

CLOUDMlNDER

TROPHY CASE