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- cross-posted to:
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Video footage broadcast Wednesday by Al Jazeera shows Israeli soldiers gunning down two Palestinians on the coast of northern Gaza, even as one of them waves what appears to be a piece of white fabric. The video then shows Israeli soldiers burying the bodies with a bulldozer.
Richard Falk, former United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, toldAl Jazeera that the footage provides “vivid confirmation of continuing Israeli atrocities” and spotlights the “unambiguous character of Israeli atrocities that are being carried out on a daily basis.”
“The eyes and ears of the world have been assaulted in real-time by this form of genocidal behavior,” said Falk. “It is a shocking reality that there has been no adverse reaction from the liberal democracies in the West. It is a shameful moment.”
With lawmaking. Our problem is that companies have acquired an outsized degree of power, including over the election system itself. The solution would be to break them, as we have done in the past. Certain behaviors need to be prohibited for the good of the country.
No system is immune to descent into tyranny of some form or another. Its enforcement mechanisms to prevent that need to be used appropriately though.
I’m happy that you see this, but I wish you could see how that accumulation happens. A system that doesn’t have a way of addressing or acknowledging power differentials begotten by the accumulation of capital is bound to lead to that inevitability. And that doesn’t even address the GEOPOLITICAL problems we started with. How the fuck does liberalism address the gigantic power differential of the United States against literally every other country on the planet?
Liberalism assumes that individuals entering into agreement are on equal footing. It ignores the coercive conditions of capital (between individuals and between nation states) and preaches ‘self-determination’.
Geopolitical power disparities will exist for as long as different value sets and systems exist. I don’t think it would be wise to even attempt to do away with them. Do remember, the sole purposes of the state from antiquity onward was to offer security against organized violence. Something must do so.
Regarding the fix for the domestic issues, again, that’s the breakup of concentrated capital. We had similar issues in the 19th century, and you can look at the reforms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to see how we addressed them. We can do so again, and probably should pretty soon here.
It’s not that I’m unaware of the challenges we face, or inherent weaknesses of our system. My position is that it is difficult to solve them without simply becoming vulnerable to a different form of tyranny. It takes many forms, yes? With the oldest simply being people coming to kill you and take your stuff, as the Gazans and Ukrainians, among others, are currently experiencing.
So you don’t see a problem or otherwise don’t see a solution for economic imperialism…? I’m confused by this statement. Liberalism offers only voluntary exchange as a guiding principle, am I right in assuming you’re OK with economic imperialism?
Ok… so do you have a problem with social democracies as opposed to liberal democracies? Anarcho syndicalism? What makes liberalism preferable to a democratic system that’s socially oriented instead of individually oriented?
To an extent, yes, I am okay with some economic imperialism. I would support laws that would restrict companies from working in overseas areas where slave wages are permitted, things like that. I do not see it as an all-or-nothing proposition though, it’s not yes/no, black/white.
I’m not advocating for liberalism, I haven’t been whatsoever. If you go back to my original comment, I was simply critiquing a statement of someone’s misunderstanding of it. I’m personally more left than that. I just support accuracy, not blind, wrong-headed criticism and hot takes. Just because someone may share my position does not give them license to spread misunderstanding. Misinformation is never okay, no matter the position, side or belief.
I do not support anarchism in any of its forms, however, I don’t think it can adequately maintain the military-industrial complex that modern warfare requires. Until warfare is a thing of the past, I don’t think it would be wise.
You misunderstand. Economic imperialism isn’t simply companies working overseas, it’s a nationstate wielding it’s economic advantage to establish market dominance over other countries. To my knowledge this is not a domestic policy issue but an international/Geopolitical issue. How would you go about breaking up a country that’s gotten too big? In this regard (and In regard to your first comment), liberalism is absolutely not “hands-off” or neutral, at best it’s ambivalent, but that sure as he’ll doesn’t mean it’s “hands-off”. You’re correcting an alleged misunderstanding with your own.
As for anarchism or social democracies or even communism, I’m not sure you really understand the terminologies. Anarchism doesn’t preclude a military, I’m not sure why you’d think that unless you took Anarchism to mean literally no governance at all. I don’t want to assume you haven’t, but I’d really recommend reading some lit on socialist economic structures, or even just some Locke and Rousseau to understand liberalism a bit better.
I was describing a single law I would support that would weaken economic imperialism. I was not saying that the law I proposed somehow solved it or anything, and that actually contradicts where I said I supported some. And please explain the difference between ambivalence/neutrality and hands-off.
A proper military-industrial complex requires a huge degree of coordination and stability across multiple independent sectors over many years. Only a large state is capable of managing the entire thing over the long periods of time necessary. An aircraft carrier battlefleet is a simply massive undertaking, requiring the efforts of millions of people over decades.
Sure. In this context, ‘ambivalence’ means having an internal inconsistency, whereas a true-neutral system would give no preference for a particular relationship. I mean it as liberalism claiming to support voluntary engagement and mutual consent in relations, but is ambivalent (i.e. internally inconsistent) about the relative power/influence between ‘consenting’ parties, to the extent that one party may not have any choice but to enter into a contract. Even though liberalism depends on the concept of mutual agreement, it has no answer to one party having outsized leverage against another, especially since its alleged benefit is mutual consent as a system of self-regulation.
It is the difference between ‘social contracts’ as a neutral observation of power dynamics generally, and ‘liberalism’ as an idealistic system of self governance.
Maybe if you take the US military as a standard, but even the founders envisioned a military comprised of independent militias. Besides, anarchosyndicalism traditionally acknowledges the need for a centralized government to ensure mutual security, even if they have strong feelings against a standing military the size of the current US one (with which I agree).
Anyway, I only posed that question to gauge your understanding of liberalism, since it seemed as if you understood it as something like “democracy”. I wanted to see what you thought the difference between liberal democracy and social democracy was. I haven’t been convinced you understand
Ah, that’s a fair distinction I suppose. That’s why I think we need more laws to limit how our companies are able to engage with less developed partners.
Even the British and French militaries have carriers, but all are large states. So long as the institution can coordinate the long-term strategic cooperation necessary to bring the pieces together, then I have nothing against it. It serves its primary purpose in this case.
I would describe a liberal democracy differing from a social democracy in the direction and degree of investment. Liberalism, as I said earlier, is philosophically hands-off. Ambivalent or neutral work fine as descriptors imo as well. You could say uncaring, if you liked. I do not really see the social contracts and mutual consent as envisioned by the people that wrote about it as being particularly real, in the minds of the people. And since they democratically control what happens, those don’t really end up existing.
Social democracy is focused more on equity for the populace. It does take those concepts more seriously.