Tesseraction posted:

Yes but acting like this makes them rear end-backwards is such a lovely thing to do. Hey guys, the Victorians didn't even know about wave-particle duality! What a bunch of morons amirite?

Spangly A posted:

rakosi where do you think buddhism comes from

Tesseraction posted:

Yes but acting like this makes them rear end-backwards is such a lovely thing to do. Hey guys, the Victorians didn't even know about wave-particle duality! What a bunch of morons amirite?

Guavanaut posted:

I read it more as "even people who thought the Earth was the center of everything figured out that suffering exists past the individual.

Ignoring of course that once they figured this out they tried to do something about minimizing it rather than shrugging.

Rakosi posted:

Counterpoint, go gently caress yourself. Who said I was talking about India? Projecting a little here?

Tesseraction posted:

Buddhist Shrugged

Tesseraction posted:

Yes but acting like this makes them rear end-backwards is such a lovely thing to do. Hey guys, the Victorians didn't even know about wave-particle duality! What a bunch of morons amirite?

quote:

just to make sure, are you aware that Britain continues to economically subsidise Northern Ireland as a direct reconciliation made to the institutional discrimination against Catholics, funding of Loyalist terror groups, and responsibility for the troubles?

And that this economic subsidy, when attacked by the tories, caused such just outrage that it nearly brought down Stormont and would have re-established direct Westminster rule over Northern Ireland? I'm talking the last two years here.

Tesseraction posted:

Hahahaha, oh man do you also believe in White Jesus?

Spangly A posted:

rakosi where do you think buddhism comes from

Rakosi posted:

This is a fantastic point and more relevant and more worthy of notice than historical wrongs because those historical wrongs cannot be set right moralistically (and this one can, economically inclusive) because everyone involved is already dead. If you just want money, at least come out and say that. What you said was to try elicit from me a personal guilt for thousands of dead Filipinos because I have a smartphone, and you are bullshitting if you deny you said said this now.

Spangly A posted:

Assuming you typed this on a phone, you are responsible for the deaths of thousands of children in phillipino alluminium mines.

Guavanaut posted:

I read it more as "even people who thought the Earth was the center of everything figured out that suffering exists past the individual.

Ignoring of course that once they figured this out they tried to do something about minimizing it rather than shrugging.

Rakosi posted:

What normally happens in this thread when I post is that people will harangue and harass until the whole line of conversation, and original point of disagreement, is lost in a field of shitposting. Reminder that the vast majority of this argument sprung from this;

Spangly A posted:
Assuming you typed this on a phone, you are responsible for the deaths of thousands of children in phillipino alluminium mines.

And I'm going to keep bringing it up until it is addressed/defended by people in this thread who are insisting I am wrong and/or evil.

Puntification posted:

I read (in the book Treasure Islands I think) that the banks that operate in the developing world to allow their political elite to rob the countries of it's wealth, an estimate of somewhere between $9-20 (ironically I can't remember) of wealth is extracted and funnelled offshore for every $1 in aid places in Africa receive for example, can be mapped by country of origin almost perfectly along old colonial lines. I forget most of the other specifics now but it was a fairly persuasive argument for empire being privatised rather than ended.

Rakosi posted:

It's still stupid, because the line at which you draw the difference between historical responsibility and "okay, now you're just being silly" is completely arbitrary, and dictated by the person who is trying to make a point. For example, the British Empire is, I think now, far enough behind us in history that no one can expect current Britain to be releasing monies or much more than very general apologies for the fact. Unless, of course, your country was once a colonial victim, and then the holy grail of perpetual victimhood is a useful political tool to harass or partition blame to living people who never harmed you (or the original victims, your ancestors, in the first instance).

It is a patently political standpoint before it is a moralistic one.

Rakosi posted:

What normally happens in this thread when I post is that people will harangue and harass

Rakosi posted:

And I'm going to keep bringing it up until it is addressed/defended by people in this thread who are insisting I am wrong and/or evil. Because otherwise it gets lost in the chaff, as usual.

Rakosi posted:

These people with very little practical knowledge of the world seem to have a more complete moralistic understanding of human responsibility of suffering than the millennial tumblr outrage that Spangly A is exhibiting.

Spangly A posted:

collective responsibility is still here, I have no need to retract the point.

Spangly A posted:

Assuming you typed this on a phone, you are responsible for the deaths of thousands of children in phillipino alluminium mines.

Rakosi posted:

So, once more for everyone else in the thread:


Am I responsible for the deaths of thousands of of Filipino children?

Thank you and gently caress off.

Spangly A posted:

No they murdered the people who worked out suffering was a constant and then stole the idea into their religion

Karma isn't something the buddhists invented, it's a Jainist idea, and they were a bunch of peace loving hippies who got merk'd

Rakosi posted:

Am I responsible for the deaths of thousands of Filipino children?

Thank you and gently caress off.

Rakosi posted:

For example, the British Empire is, I think now, far enough behind us in history that no one can expect current Britain to be releasing monies or much more than very general apologies for the fact.

JFairfax posted:

The Philippines was to do with the American Empire though?

JFairfax posted:

The Philippines was to do with the American Empire though?

Rakosi posted:

You still have a need to retract your point because you specifically partitioned blame to me for being responsible for the deaths of thousands of Filipino children. If you feel embarrassed and are now skirting the issue, that's okay, you should be. You hosed up logically, morally and rhetorically. I am smug as gently caress about it because I get a lot of heat in this thread for views which aren't that contentious when you examine them, but incessantly get dragged off topic, where I am bad at arguing in..

Rakosi posted:

I am smug as gently caress

Spangly A posted:

You don't get a choice in being morally culpable. Personal responsibility isn't real. Collective responsibility is.

Spangly A posted:

Assuming you typed this on a phone, you are responsible for the deaths of thousands of children in phillipino alluminium mines.

Tesseraction posted:

There's a solution to this.

Rakosi posted:

Dabir posted:

Aren't you that poo poo history teacher who voted Tory?

Rakosi posted:

Am I responsible for the deaths of thousands of Filipino children?

quote:

Yet again the males on the left have let women down, while kidding themselves that they are being progressive. Jeremy Corbyn has said, during a talk at Goldsmiths University, that he is in favour of decriminalising the sex trade. “Let’s do things a bit differently and in a more civilised way,” he said.

But there is nothing civilised about legitimising one of the most exploitative industries on the planet.

It is apt that Corbyn made his admission at Goldsmiths. Any feminist in support of criminalising sex-buyers is instantly accused by Goldsmiths’ feminist society of hating prostituted women, or “whorephobia”, as it is known. This twist of logic is quite something considering the law that criminalises demand also decriminalises those selling sex.

I cannot believe that Corbyn is so misinformed as to see the blanket decriminalisation of the sex trade as necessary to uphold the human rights and safety of those selling sex. In Sweden, the first country to introduce the sex-buyer law in 1999, not one prostituted woman has been murdered by a pimp or sex-buyer since then. In New Zealand, where the sex trade was decriminalised in 2003, there have been five murders.

What decriminalisation actually means is that control is taken away from the criminal justice agencies and given to local authorities. Under this model, pimps become managers, and brothel owners are business entrepreneurs.

The only difference between decriminalisation and legalisation is that under legalisation the state becomes the official pimp by making certain aspects of the trade legal This way it can collect taxes and impose compulsory health checks on prostituted women – something the great feminist abolitionist Josephine Butler campaigned against in the 19th century.

Many on the left believe any criminalisation of the industry stigmatises those who sell sex, and that the selling of sex should be regarded as a job like any other. But there is a growing body of research showing that in Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Nevada and the Netherlands, where prostitution has been legalised or decriminalised, there is an increase in demand, which in turn has led to an increase in people coerced into prostitution. Such regimes lead to an increase in the legal as well as the illegal sex trade.

In researching my forthcoming book on the international sex trade, I have spoken to a number of women currently and formerly involved in the sex trade in New Zealand, the country hailed as nirvana since the disaster of legalisation in Holland became public.

One interviewee began working in a New Zealand brothel just after she turned 18, prior to decriminalisation. I asked her what decriminalisation had changed. “I don’t think it made any difference,” she said, “because the boss still does everything really dodgy, and I think that’s how he did it when it was illegal.”

The idea that pimps and other exploiters would suddenly turn into considerate employers who pay taxes and abide by the law simply because they are no longer technically criminals is ridiculous.

The sex workers’ rights lobby that has targeted Labour with its propaganda on the benefits of decriminalisation minimises and denies harm. The only harm it is prepared to acknowledge is caused, according to this logic, by feminists and police officers.

One sex workers’ rights activist recently claimed in her blog: “No sex worker I know reports clients as being the biggest problem … It’s always the rescuers, the police and the state that do them the most harm.”

What utter rubbish. While police brutality is prevalent towards women in prostitution in a number of countries, the rapes, homicides and violence from pimps and punters is well documented. In the UK alone, there have been 153 murders of prostituted women since 1990 – none committed by feminist abolitionists or police.

Why the left supports the rights of pimps and brothel owners is a mystery. It is akin to supporting tobacco industry profiteers in order to destigmatise smokers.

Corbyn and his colleagues would do well to listen to survivors of the sex trade before taking such an uninformed line on the best way to regulate prostitution.

As Rachel Moran, sex trade survivor and author of Paid For, remarked: “Males of the left defy every principle they purport to stand for when they contort their own political values to view women’s bodies as commercial products subject to purchase in free market economics. No other social group is treated this way by the men of the left.

“It is only women who are deemed so worthless as to be denigrated with this indignity, and it is only women whose equal human status is so unthinkable as to motivate them to turn their backs on their own politics.”

quote:

The idea that pimps and other exploiters would suddenly turn into considerate employers who pay taxes and abide by the law simply because they are no longer technically criminals is ridiculous.

baka kaba posted:

Yeah he makes the argument that the British Empire went from controlling territory and resources, to controlling financial territory and capital. We control half the world's tax havens and so much of the wealth of other countries goes offshore and into our tax empire


You personally aren't responsible for Britain's actions in the past, no. But you're also not really responsible for Britain's actions in the present either, because we have limited power and influence on the state.

quote:

That sure doesn't mean there is no responsibility though - it lies with the nation itself, as a political entity, and the people who wield its power when some injustice is being done

So you can look at two aspects of it. One is the material stuff like reparations. The whole argument there is that Britain took something from another nation, materially setting them back (which is a polite way of covering some of the stuff that was done) and often materially benefitting Britain in the process. The entity that did this, Britain, still exists, even if the people who carried it out do not. Its economy still exists, the results of absorbing the wealth that was taken are an integral part of it. Britain is the result of what was done, in one way or another. A rich and powerful couple of islands that once had an empire.

quote:

And the nation that suffered those actions was materially set back by them, even if the people who suffered the direct results aren't alive anymore. Countries have had their populations decimated. Their natural resources exploited and the wealth taken out of the country. Advancement held back or even rolled back by foreign powers who want the country reconfigured to suit their own agendas, or just straight-up bombed back into the stone age. Do you really think someone born in one of those countries has no right or even reason for being angry at Britain as an entity, or for wanting steps to be taken to help make things right and undo some of the lasting damage?

Rakosi posted:

You (Spangly A, and co.) do not get to use words like "culpability" and "responsibility" without contention.

JFairfax posted:

LOL every one of you fuckers is guilty as hell of exploiting people, loving Spangly A your drugs support all manner of awful people so don't be lecturing that dirty pimp about child slaves.