this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Can someone show me on a map where "the west" starts?
Right in the middle of Berlin.
(This information may be 30 years out of date)
It's less a geographical or hemispheric distinction, and more a political one.
This page on imperial core is good.
Should Greece really be on that list? The only criterion where it's not grayed out is "Awarded Parts of China to Japan", which actually means "signed the Treaty of Versailles after WWI". And unlike many of the other countries that signed it, Greece did not get anything to itself from it.
Agree, especially considering how much the EU has screwed over Greece in recent years. Not really an exploiter of global south labor via finance capital, which the US, GB, France, Germany, and the Nordic countries, definitely are.
Technically, Australian's aren't colonisers; they're victims of British colonisation.
Aboriginals are the victims
That's what I said ;)
I presume whenever u say american u always mean amerindians and never anglo-americans.
You're not making the point you think you are.
I understand the implications of both.
I don't truly call Australian Aboriginals "Australians", I was being facetious.
Also, I call them "Native Americans".
A western colony primarily made of western settlers and completely aligned with imperial core countries is western.
It's a political term rather than geographic. Same reason why Australia isn't part of the Global South despite being in the south, because it's controlled by colonizers.
Is it Israel that is completely aligned with these "core" countries because I see them as a terrorist state and I sit firmly in the west.
The most significant western governments still finance Israel's existence, that doesn't mean every single western person or even country gets along with Israel
Israel, along with most western countries, have been bombing (or building bombs) the Middle east and North Africa for decades now.
Ireland is in the west and has recognised Palestine and condemned Israeli actions.
Ireland has some good foreign policy positions due to being a victim of british colonialism for hundreds of years, and feeling affinity with other victims of settler-colonialism, but after the civil war, they fully adopted the model of governance of their oppressors.
Ireland is now just like other western states, ruled by finance capital, and suffers all the same problems (a housing and rent crisis, production exported to low-wage countries, etc). A lot of US tech companies even use Ireland as an off-shore tax-haven.
BAE and Boeing (who manufacture weaponry used against Arab countries and in Palestine) have plants in Ireland. They also let the US use their bases in its war on Iraq, and had active troops in the war to break up Yugoslavia, and also had troops to fight against Syria.
Ireland is kind of a case-study in what not to do after an anti-colonialist revolution.
Is it fuck a case study of what not to do, in 100 years we went from not recognised as a state to the highest labour productivity in the world.
We absolutely did not allownfornour bases to be used by foreign military. We did however allow for refuelling by an ally. We also had caveats about what type of aircraft and cargo could land and refuel.
Oh yes we have heard the tax haven criticism before, butthurt people complaining about how we incentivise foreign investment. As a result ofnpolicies like these we created duty free and duty free industrial zones, which was the initial reason for the headquarters in Ireland given their logistical benefits from setting up here.
We also did not wholly adopt anything, we have a different type of government, we dont have a monarchy and our elections are not first past the post.
I would like to see some stats on the manufacturing being exported because we actually have a lot of foreign companies set up manufacturing here and have done for a long time.
Seems like you dont want us to be on the right side of this issue, for some unknown reason, so you threw out some nonsense.
Labor productivity is a neoliberal metric that uses GDP per capita, that in actuality measures value captured, not value added.. For example, the most "labor productive" countries in the world, are those tax havens in the caribbean. Considering the Irish economy's dominance by finance capital, that's completely unsurprising that it would rank so high:
Ireland is a bourgeois democracy / capitalist dictatorship just like GB, and it doesn't matter what form your elections take. The important point is that capital (specifically finance-capital) stands above your political system. Australia also doesn't use FPTP, yet its able to use that voting system to continue its colonization and theft of aboriginal land. These alternative voting systems have proven to be no obstacles in the slightest for capitalists.
The US racial state, which built its wealth on the graves of its indigenous inhabitants, and enslaved millions of captured Africans, is not a good military ally to have. If Ireland were actually anti-imperialist, there would not even be a debate on allowing the US military to use its bases, especially given the context of its wars on Iraq.
Here's another good article on Ireland's role in imperialism and its internal crises.
Do you just hear what you want? We are not a dictatorship. We didnt let anyone use our bases for the war in Iraq. We didnt invade anyone or steal any land. In less than 100 years we revolutionised our economy and lifted the people out of poverty. We are not a utopia, you will claim not everyone is out of poverty but for the most part everyone is, and while more work is needed, there are continued efforts to improve and continue lifting people up.
From the source above:
As is standard for uneducated neoliberals, you're equating dictatorship with autocracy, and not with what group of people dictates how your country functions.
and who's the one plugging their ears and ignoring the housing crisis and other systemic problems that comes when you let finance capital run the country?
It's the big blob of central capitalism from when colonialism started to now. It's where the genocidal whites live, hence why Israel plays in the European soccer league.
I'm not feeling too genocidal at the moment and I'm not too sure what a big blob of capitalism looks like but it sounds like you are impugning me (int al) in some way.
If you are going to deliver a stinging attack on something you dislike, why not deploy an impassioned and pithy argument rather than ... that. You do at least manage to spell it's correctly, which is nice.
Next time you aren't sure whether someone is being hostile or mean to you, just hold back on what your hypothetical response would be until you're sure what the intent was.
In my case I was earnestly answering the question. "The West" describes that continuation of institutional power which I described as a blob.
Ah, so even though they're (trying to) occupy the exact same plot of land, Israel is "the west" (and therefore we're obligated to hate it) and Palestine is not (and therefore we're not). That makes sense now!
Explaining to my Cherokee friends that, really, you're no better than the European settlers who displaced you because you both wanted to live in Florida. Suddenly, they're not my friends anymore. Can't believe they were anti-white racists the whole time.
Where should Israel go back to then? What other land does it have claim to where it should stay?
Ah, right. Of course. You don't think Israel should exist at all. Judging by this comment I'm guessing you don't think the US should exist either, which means I don't have to listen to you
Israel doesn't have to go anywhere. No more than South Africa went somewhere after Apartheid ended in that state. Or Cuba vanished after the Batista government collapsed. Or Germany vanished after '45.
But the war criminals leading the current genocidal policy towards the people in their care. They need the same treatment as Milosoviec, Omar al-Bashir, and Saddam Hussein.
Drag Netanyahu to the Hague and prosecute him for crimes against humanity. Dismiss the current illegal and unconstitutional Kinesset and hold new free and fair elections in Israel. Provide reparations for the displaced Gaza and West Bank citizens, and launch a Truth and Reconciliation Committee to recover damages for the crimes committed against them.
That is the only moral path forward for Israel.
Not the person you're responding to
Obviously Israel shouldn't exist at all. It's not a diplomatically expedient thing to say, but it's the only real anti-colonialist answer because Israel is actively a colony. That doesn't mean expelling all the Jews from Palestine -- it might shock you to know there are non-Israeli Jews currently in Palestine -- but it does mean that the proper boarders for Palestine are restored and thus that there is no ethnostate (Jewish or otherwise). Recent additions to the Israeli colony (for they are always recruiting) can be sent back to their homelands. Many of them have been there long enough that they have no connection to those homelands anymore (including the more direct descendants of Holocaust survivors, etc.) and they can stay on the land that was Israel, but a lot of them are only there because they like the Jewish ethnostate thing and will therefore flee of their own will. That volume of people fleeing will probably incite still more to flee, but some will remain and they should be treated humanely and as equal citizens, prosecuting whatever crimes they committed but not being treated like subhumans the way that Israelis treated Palestinian prisoners.
The US is a much more difficult question because unlike Israelis being a minority compared to Palestinians, there are many more Euro-Americans, etc than there are Native Americans because the genocidal project of the US is much more complete. Inevitably some land, the land recently taken and some of the more useful land than what the Natives have been left with, should be returned to them, but obviously deporting all the Euros, etc. is neither viable nor productive, like how (to a much, much smaller extent) deporting all the Israelis is neither viable nor productive.
That said, separate from demographics and land rights, the US government absolutely shouldn't exist because it is terrorizing the world, including through proxies like Israel.
Israel isn't a person. It can simply dissolve into nothing.
The people who moved there to take part in the land stealing can simply go back where they came. Or they can stay and live alongside the people they tried to genocide as equal citizens.
I'm sure the US government will be delighted to harbor all their war criminals above a certain station.
None of that makes sense. You don't have the writing chops to pull off a sentence with three clauses and three additional parenthetical clauses.
We're obligated to hate Israel and not Palestine because Israel is the settler colonial project currently engaged in genocide. It's very simple and no one has been opaque about it.
the west is not really a geographic term, and its not really well defined either it has 3 main uses:
most commonly: the west: as in western europe and their settlers colonial offshoots (excluding Spanish and Portuguese ones but including the Spanish and Portuguese themselves)
most uselessly and confusing: the west: as in the global north (also not geographic) in its entirety
and less commonly: the west: as in all european cultures or cultures derived from europe, so most of europe and all settler colonies
Ok so which of these definitions describes Israel?
All three lol
What ?
excluding Spanish and Portuguese colonies but including the Spanish and Portuguese people themselves i guess i should have said Spain and Portugal instead of referring to their people.
But why exclide them ? Is this an american thing ?
The idea is that Spain and Portugal are part of the "West", but not Spanish or Portuguese colonial offshoots, which are mostly South American and haven't fared as well as the colonial offshoots from other nations of western Europe.
they are excluded because the term is descriptive, these countries are excluded by the west from many agreements and organizations, they are exploited by the west and its systems of imperialism. Culturally speaking they are similar but geopolitically speaking they have nothing in common.
Essentially every country settled primarily by Europeans or their descendants, except somehow Latin America, Russia and Belarus, and, debatable, a few other European countries :D And potentially including Israel
There was once a term used for this, first world (US and allies) second world (USSR and allies) and third world (neutral-ish nations)
The reason latin america is excluded from the west is because 1) they don't exploit other countries via finance capital, and 2) most of them preserve both their indigenous cultures and populations, in a way that would be intolerable to US or Israeli settlers.
Apparently the middle west
Anything NA and anything west of (including) Germany.
I dunno if I would consider CZ to the west.
Poland is definitely The West too, honestly more than Mexico. It's basically a code for white nations and the vassal states of white nations.
Feels more Slavic than anything Germany (except east germany), France, Austria etc.
But that could be just my personal observation.
In some cultural or ethnic sense, you're probably right (though there's the classic joke in Europe that the East starts one country to the east of theirs) but what I mean is that Poland operates as part of what you could call the North Atlanticist bloc.
Here: https://xkcd.com/503/