You’re lumping me in with a group I don’t identity with

You might not voluntarily identify with the other people who are just supporting yet another group that conveniently serves NATO’s interests, but so far there isn’t a good case for your favourite groups attempting to improve the living conditions in the Global South.

Hell, you actually admit that Mossad using such groups to (re-)subjugate countries in the Global South (and, thus, worsen the living conditions there) isn’t enough for you to drop support for them.

I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t support the war and that I oppose imperialism and yet you keep arguing as if I am in support of it.

You can’t claim that you do not support the war, and that you oppose imperialism (and, I assume, you also want to claim to oppose colonialism) while also supporting pro-colonial efforts that would only advance the imperialist and colonialist goals of NATO and opposing Global South states defending themselves against your empire.

You speak about Iranians as if they are hapless pawns unable to think for themselves

Where did I say that?
In fact, the people of Iran have been struggling against you with a significant degree of success.
If you meant that I do not support wannabe-compradors, then that’s not an issue of thinking that people can’t “think for themselves”. The issue is that I do not support those wannabe-compradors.

insisting that the only reason they would protest against their government is if foreign intelligence agencies directed them to

Nowhere did I say that. I even pointed out that even in the cases where such groups do genuinely want to achieve better living conditions for the Global South, their efforts will be utilised by NATO to actually worsen those living conditions.

The people I support are the Iranian people themselves

You (plural) say this, but every time it is some CIA/NED-backed group. And inevitably it turns out that the only reasons you (plural) do so, is because your empire told you that those are the “good ones”.

Even if the goal of Mossad’s support for the protests was to destabilize Iran in preparation for the US invasion, that does not make the protesters “pro-NATO forces,”

Yes, it does. They are literally used by NATO to maintain or strengthen colonial subjugation of the Global South.

nor does it mean women’s rights are nothing but a pretense.

For these groups, it is. Their actual goals are not to improve living conditions, but bring their countries under the heel of Washington.

While that’s certainly the case for Mossad, the protests were undeniably carried out by the Iranian people themselves to advance the cause of women’s liberation.

As in, the low-level members of the group thought that those were the group’s goals?

when the shitty government started the brutal invasion to Ukraine

What should a state do when the most prolific invader in the world starts amassing troops and weapons on its border, especially after conducting a coup against a neighbouring state?

Well, NATO self-admittedly pushed for the war, so that’s whom you should be directing your ire against.

I never said I supported the invasion

You do support pro-NATO forces subjugating Iran for the benefit of invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan simply because of the pretense of “women’s rights”. The people that you support in this case do not care about women’s rights.

I said women’s liberation is a good reason for people to rise up against their government, which is what an insurrection is.

These people claiming that they just want women’s rights doesn’t mean that that is what they actually struggle for.

You are buying another round of Nayirah testimony/Iraq WMD and other such cases of propaganda.

What is needed first and foremost right now is liberation from NATO, as it is the most major barrier for improving, as whichever group will try to sabotage the Iranian government - even if it will genuinely want things like women’s rights - they will be used by NATO to just further (re-)subjugate Iran and wooden their living conditions.

Apparently this thread is being brigaded by the Russian/Chinese/Iranian bots

“Love” the racist dehumanisation from people who support invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan, the genocidaires of Palestine.

NATO: does the most NATO thing ever
NATO liberals: “what are we? A bunch of <insert current designated enemy ethnicity>?”

What evil shit did he do for the world (specifically US allies)

So, you think that the world begins and ends with the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan?

They weren’t a reason. They were an excuse.

What you are actually supporting is invading and subjugating Iran.

Also, it is amusing how you (plural) keep speaking about women’s rights when as supposedly a valid reason to invade other countries (a la the white supremacist fairy tale of “civilising savages”) while your empire actually died stuff like the overthrow of the socialist government of Afghanistan that did improve women’s rights.

The chances are that you represent the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan, i.e. NATO.

So we agree that this is a matter of degree rather than kind.

This whole time you have been arguing, at best, that the degree doesn’t matter (though, you did say once that consuming meat is worse than production, despite the fact that it’s the production that is the problem), and that being a nurse in the private healthcare system in the US is exactly as bad as sniping children in Iraq.

I fail to see much of one between the non-combatant service member and, say, the average US citizen who pays no mind to how their lifestyle and choices impact the world.

One directly contributes to the goals of the most vile military in the world and can’t be substituted by civilians, the other is usually as far removed from contributing to those goals as possible (with the consideration that people in NATO are generally forced to take part in NATO’s economy, but are not forced to be in the military taken into account).

The difference is that I don’t attribute moral condemnation on every person who just so happens to be in the military.

Sure. Some actually do sabotage of the military, like Chelsea Manning.
The vast majority don’t.

The cook serving on a military base is about as responsible for an atrocity that occurs in the middle east as you are responsible for whatever negative outcomes are associated with the way you earn and spend your money.

Lol no. A military cook directly makes sure that the murderers and torturers do not go hungry and are in a perfect condition to murder and torture.

Are you trying to ask what would be the good outcome of a massive labor strike in the US healthcare industry?

No. I asked what would be the good outcome of there being no healthcare workers in the US. The soldiers striking was never in the picture.
The benefits of there being no military in the US are clear and lack cons. The benefits of there being no healthcare workers in the US are dubious.

I get the impression you’re once again trying to excuse yourself of moral blame by saying the producers of animal products are significantly worse than the consumers.

The actual harm in this situation is done to the animals from whom the meat is made. This is done by the producers, rather than by the consumers. Not sure why you think that it’s the other way around.

And no, I don’t believe you have a moral right to be a terrorist.

So, you agree, then, that becoming a USian terrorist for money is inexcusable, and that the rest of the world is in the right to defend itself from them however it sees fit?

I do think the perception matters in these instances.

Haha. No, the severity of the tortures, the killings and the like do not depend on if the shutzstaffel thugs think those are good things.

It’s a testament to the success of the propaganda surrounding public schools that you have conflated the institution of public education with education simpliciter.

As somebody who studies by themselves every day, I didn’t. That’s just how effective education is done at scale.

As for the difference between whims and instructions, they’re effectively the same.

They aren’t. The range of things that a teacher can demand can and is bounded.

We have children requesting to use the restroom, even being denied such a “privilege.”

This is an understandable complaint.

Who are you allowed to talk to and when? The teacher decides. Who can you sit next to? The teacher decides. … Hungry? You can eat at the appointed time and no other.

These complaints are silly. Do you think these are ‘whims’?

Want to associate with someone in a different grade? Not permitted.

In every place where I studied, there were no such limitations, with some even studying together with children from other grades in the same classrooms.

We somehow have accepted that school children ought to be treated like prisoners rather than free members of our society.

Seems like a very personally-charged tangent, but ok.

I envy you if you have seriously never seen liberals say that both NATO and welfare are good.

Unable to dedicate enough time to dissect particular examples, but, for example, places like lemmy.world are full of liberals who will tell you that NATO should keep going and maintain colonial subjugation of the Global South, but to provide its own people with better welfare.

I will be able to provide more examples later if that’s not enough.

It decreases overall

Yeah, so it is not true at least in the case of the USian shutzstaffel, contrary to the original claim.

If “respond to the draft or get arrested” is your interpretation of choice

The US isn’t doing a forced draft. These monsters sign up voluntarily.

So insulting the military can come off as insulting the person rather than the role/entity.

I am perfectly fine with insulting individual unrepentant USian shutzstaffel troops.

Especially for Americans, who do not have much outside of propaganda being fed from every angle and barely an education, many barely read anymore. If they can barely critically think, do you think they’re at fault or are they raised/trained to just believe it? This is the general population, not elite class who have better education purposely.

Propaganda isn’t done sci-fi mind control. These people are adults that supposedly still have brains that can self-reflect and analyse their beliefs. Stop pretending as if they are helpless and not self-serving and monstrous.

The main statistic that I want to point at is a majority joined for money and education.

Which shows that they can’t be defended.

It is so incredibly silly how this ‘they just want to go to university’ (by committing atrocities) retort is being thrown around as if they don’t have the option of simply not attending a university.

You’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it. So why bring up Epstein?

Because somebody thinks that we should treat criminals the same as the military (despite criminals being a lot less harmful than the USian military). Considering that we are for some reason expected to just excuse the soldiers engaging in enslavement of foreigners, that means that so should the criminals.

but that doesn’t relate to poverty stricken individuals who I referenced

Only a small part of the USian shutzstaffel can be described so.

Again, it’s reactionary - you’re using pedophilia crime from the elite to compare to poverty related crime which is galaxies away on a morality spectrum. Killing someone from being on the brink of death for a way to survive is different than owning an island and sex trafficking humans.

You are saying that it’s perfectly fine to sign up to participate in kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and more assorted colonial subjugation of the Global South if one is poor, but that holding such people in contempt is reactionary.

Stop pretending as if they did so to survive. University is not needed to survive, and if you can sign up for the USian ss, you can find a different job.

why mention a upper class criminal again?

Because you just broadly said that criminals should be treated the same as the military when criminals do range from Epsteins who do what the military does to people who are, in fact, innocent.

And yes, you are currently saying that being essentially an Epsteinian lackey and helping to do human trafficking is fine if you are poor, so I am not sure why bringing up him rattles you so much.

Again, I understand your sediment. I’d just rather work towards deprogramming others who may be leaving the military or whatever relation to it with some grace in conversation (mostly in real life as this is what online banter is nowadays and probably always has and will) rather than attacking and letting the right (that can be reasoned with, I know some can’t be reason with) grow larger due to more alienation.

Don’t have a problem with that. And, if they do come to the understanding that what they did was bad, they will also understand the ire they were getting.

Put it this way: military recruitment is almost always inversely proportional to the economic wellbeing.

At least In the US, that is very much not true. The poor are actually underrepresented in the USian military. It is the well-of quantiles in the middle that are overrepresented.

Also, no, you are not forced to join the USian military.

You hear a lot of NATO liberals saying that the plunder from Africa, Asia, and elsewhere should go to welfare. This even happens on these sites.

You have to be living under a rock to not hear liberals day exactly that.

Completely disagree. There’s an important caveat: Necessary consumption of products is the furthest one can be from participation.

We already know that you pretend that buying a product made by NATO is just as bad as being a torturer in Abu Ghraib.

Simply consuming things is, indeed, either the furthest one can be from relevant participation, or not far off. The fact that you keep equivocating that with going overseas to murder children simply betrays that you do not see people outside of NATO as people.

Also, you even think that consumers of meat are more at fault for producing meat than the people involved in producing meat, which is extremely silly.

That’s okay. I don’t necessarily expect someone to condemn themselves.

Cute, especially considering that I do not live in “the western world” (i.e. the Imperial Core), and neither does most of the world whom you claim it’s okay to invade. “It’s just as bad to buy meat as it is to orchestrate Highways of Death”, lol.

What would make you hate a force for decolonization and workers’ rights?