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[-] iie@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago

The dismissal of tankies really bothers me.

Remember Iraq's WMDs? Remember how the intelligence reports were actually based on a Nicholas Cage movie called The Rock? Remember how this goofy story was nevertheless widely reported and believed, and America still invaded Iraq, and 2.4 million Iraqis still died? Remember how 4 in 10 Americans still think America found WMDs in Iraq to this day?

the Iraq WMDs story inundated western media. It was everywhere. And everyone believed it. And millions died as a result. Tankies and other leftists disagree mainly on what is western distortion and what is true. That is an important question to think about, not one to be dismissed out of hand. America does lie about its enemies, and it does have enormous resources for selling those lies to the public. And people die when those lies are believed.

[-] BlackCoffee@lemmy.world 63 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"The dismissal of tankies really bothers me"

I am gonna make it easy.

If you are a holocaust denier, Stalin/Mao/Hitler/lenin fetishist or "defend" how they ruled their people then you are purposely keeping your eyes shut.

There is so so much literature to read and material to watch about these people that you actually have to actively dodge it to not know what they have done and some of the regimes that came from them are still doing.

Just because you are right about 1 thing doesn't mean that it validates every single believe that you have.

There are also enough people who are not the above who were against the invasion of Iraq and already foresaw why the US went there.

But this is the thing; It is your choice to believe the above. It literally is a choice, the truth is different. It is literally a choice to close your eyes towards history and the crimes authoritarian rulers and regimes are still commiting towards their citizens.

The western world is not perfect but there is a reason people are fleeing towards western nations and not the other way around.

[-] iie@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

The reason people are fleeing towards western nations is that the west extracts 25% of its GDP from the impoverished colony states these people are fleeing from.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X

Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.

As for the rest of what you said, see my other comment

[-] BlackCoffee@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago

I love the fact that you all have a notepad somewhere with written statements for these subject. Don't make it to obvious.

What is the point you are trying to make with that article? That western nations are not perfect? That because western nations are taking advantage of others that it is okay for countries to commit mass murder? That authoritarian regimes are born from western actions? That inequality all around the world is born from the actions of western nations?Tell me what is your angle and what do you want me to do with the info you provide which is information that I already knew.

In regards to your other posts;

Criticizing journalism is okay. Not taking everything at face value is a good practice to have.

But willfully ignoring history and everything that has been said and written about it is just still and again people purposely closing their eyes.

I still do not understand why someone would not take the time to actually read the literature and watch the footage of how hurtful these regimes have been through the years.

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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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