Deeply curious as to what makes Mongolia "free". Why does the US like them so much?

Ask why Australians can't say the phrase "from the river to the sea" in Queensland without going to jail? How free are you when you're under a dictatorship of capital? Why is homelessness growing in Australia? Why are the working-class increasingly turning to charities for food? What freedom is there in the systematically enforced poverty of capitalism. Australia signed an agreement with the UN and other nations: housing is a human right. Why is our homeless population increasing year after year? Why are workers spending the majority of their wages on rent?

Capitalists will press the point of freedom of speech under capitalism precisely because capitalism is a complete, systemic dictatorship of labour by capital. You can say what you like, but you still have to purchase food and housing with capital. Words won't feed you. Words won't house you. Words won't warm you. Words are worthless because they're free and the capitalist will give you all the words you want. For the most part. In Queensland, Australia some words will provide you with state-housing and -food.

The state of Israel is committing genocide and Australia is a country that provides material support. The governing bodies are complicit.

Huh, I wonder why it's just a map of all US allied countries or countries the US has couped and replaced with fascist governments.

Also, they forgot to include Ukraine as a free country.

They had to mark it as "partly free" to avoid lying too obviously.

Ahh, the cracker index

Japan is completely subservient to the US, it's the country with the most US overseas military bases.

And that's before we start talking about nationalism and racism

Excerpt from the statement on why the US votes no:

While we share concerns over the troubling rise in antisemitic and other vile expression around the globe in recent years, this resolution inappropriately focuses on criminalizing speech. This resolution’s recommendations to limit freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the right to peaceful assembly contravene the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and must be opposed. Rather than bans, censorship, or criminal punishments, the United States has established robust legal mechanisms that protect individual liberties and defend against discrimination and violence.

Lol @ the last bit especially, but reading the text it is quite authoritarian; and how often do we see henious legislation titled something like the "officially declaring bad things are bad and puppies are good" bill as a tool to lambast those that vote against it. But all that said, there's not much question about the reason ultimately being "because it's a russian initiative" -- especially for the 2018 mid-trump-term vote.

there's not much question about the reason ultimately being "because it's a russian initiative"

Oh... That explains the red Ukraine vote too. No doubt the resolution was going to be weaponized on that front

translation: should glorification be covered by freedom of speech

Woof

Lordamercy! 🤦‍♀️

I like how America always includes Australia in the same goodness category as themselves, but if Australia made the same map we would put America towards the bottom with Russia and China.

i feel like they said mongolia was free to avoid racism allegations with writing off essentially an entire continent

now overlay the map with countries supporting the genocide of palestine.

yeah whatever "freedom" the US is promising probably fuckin sucks

„The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”

Simon Bolivar, 1829

This is a map of the freedom of capital to dominate societies and crush human beings en masse

Some of the least encouraging words you can hear are "The US is here to liberate you."

Whelp at least they are honest about Venezuela. Certainly not free at the moment.

also love that bolsonaro was thrown off a cliff here

he was a great daddy

Tf does "partially free" even mean?

Oh you can do these things but not...

Idk about y'all but to me that just sounds like not free with extra steps.

You have a choice between Dictator X or their Brother.

more like

But democrats are also openly Zionists too!

Zion was pretty cool in the matrix

theyre-the-same-picture.jpg

Lenin correctly called The Economist “a journal that speaks for the British millionaires.”

There's nothing accurate about this map either because democracy has a class character. All the blue countries are dictatorships of capital. And there's no decline of democracy happening in the US, it's always been an oligarchy. Empirical research of decades of US policy shows this clearly:

What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

What's declining the period of liberal pretenses as the US transitions into open fascism.

It's not flawed, it's working exactly as designed. A meaningful democracy can only exist for the class that holds power, and under capitalism it's the capital owning class. That's what the study I linked clearly shows.

Chinese oligarchy, lmfao?

The country is ruled by a powerful inner clique with roughly 95 million co-conspirators

Sounds like a totalitarian dictatorship.

-Libs

Nothing more accurate....? Just because it is not prefect does not make it as shitty.

I'm explaining that it's qualitatively a democracy for the capital owning class. It's not a one dimensional gradient from shitty to great. We live in a class society where different classes have different interests. People who own substantial amounts of capital make money from their wealth. These are the people who own factories, shops, media, and so on. These people want to drive down the cost of labor to increase their profits. Meanwhile, the workers own their labor, and they make a living by selling it to the owners. Their class interest is directly opposed to those people who own capital. They want higher wages, shorter working hours, and higher benefit all of which run contrary to business owners desire for profit. Hence, it's a categorical error to talk about democracy without first identifying which class holds power in society.

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