In Finland we have a completely free education from grade school to university for everyone, completely free health care for eveyone, and the worlds most generous welfare if you feel lazy and dont feel like working.
In Finland we have a completely free education from grade school to university for everyone, completely free health care for eveyone, and the worlds most generous welfare if you feel lazy and dont feel like working.
Hrm... So, basically, you equate freedom with services being paid for on your behalf - IE, things given to you that someone else had to pay for? Making no comment about American notions of freedom, because I believe they're equally bankrupt, but I find it funny that someone would offer this sham up as a contrast...
Hrm... So, basically, you equate freedom with services being paid for on your behalf - IE, things given to you that someone else had to pay for? Making no comment about American notions of freedom, because I believe they're equally bankrupt, but I find it funny that someone would offer this sham up as a contrast...
Well, lets just say that Finland and other Nordic countries kicks US ass everytime countries are ranked in terms of quality of life. We have the best educational system and the lowest corruption rate in the world, we are the most egalitarian country in the world and our population have a higher IQ on average than people in US.
But hey, due to this current Muslim invasion we are about to become a total shithole aswell in no time, dont worry.
Well, lets just say that Finland and other Nordic countries kicks US ass everytime countries are ranked in terms of quality of life. We have the best educational system and the lowest corruption rate in the world, we are the most egalitarian country in the world and our population have a higher IQ on average than people in US.
But hey, due to this current Muslim invasion we are about to become a total shithole aswell in no time, dont worry.
Now you're equating "freedom" to "qualify of life." You're bringing up points like IQ, corruption, etc... Again, I'm not even bringing up the issue of the state of things in America, but, what makes you respond to a query about freedom with these things? Could you explain further? What does freedom mean to you? And again, does it largely consist of the state paying for services and providing them for you?
Have you ever read any Thomas Hobbes, by any chance? I'd assume so, given how awesome your education system is. What do you think of his thoughts on freedom in the state of nature?
In Finland we have a completely free education from grade school to university for everyone, completely free health care for eveyone, and the worlds most generous welfare if you feel lazy and dont feel like working.
So you think dependency on the state makes you more "free?"
Lol
Besides Finland is also dependent on other nations for its own security, Russia would have rolled you long ago if not for our protection.
Dependency =/= freedom
Sure you live nice but in the same way that a baby lives nice, being cared for by others. But be sure you'd be the first to get eaten if the wolves came.
Yours protection? Lel. Finland is not a NATO country. US/NATO should fuck off and just stay away from places it has no business to be in. We dont need you for anything.
Yours protection? Lel. Finland is not a NATO country. US/NATO should fuck off and just stay away from places it has no business to be in. We dont need you for anything.
The US is only free compared to 3rd world countries. The whole freedom thing comes from past when the US rebelled against England and became free of their oppression. It was a relatively free nation compared to the rest of the world back then but now most of Europe and the Americas share the same freedom. Only people who have never travelled and don't know other cultures will tell you otherwise. And only someone who has never accomplished anything of his own would be so proud of others accomplishments like the guys in this thread.
In Finland we have a completely free education from grade school to university for everyone, completely free health care for eveyone, and the worlds most generous welfare if you feel lazy and dont feel like working.
"completely free"????? your telling me that nobody has to pay the teachers or doctors or pay the people who build and maintain these buildings etc...etc...etc...
Whats the whole deal about freedom in US? I always hear from Americans how America is great because americans are a free people, American freedom fuck yeah, fighting for freedom, free this, free that. Ive never been in USA myself, but i consider myself pretty free here in Croatia since i can do pretty much anything i want as long as its not hurting other folks, so i was thinking there MUST be some kind of hidden free stuff you guys are getting that noone else knows about?
What makes americans more free than the rest of the world? Its not guns is it? Cause you can get guns legally here too, no problem at all, just got to pass a test, kinda like a drivers licence except a bit more detailed, and buy one? So what is it then?
This is american freedom deal has always been a serious enigma for me, please help me out here? What are you guys hiding?
Well, lets just say that Finland and other Nordic countries kicks US ass everytime countries are ranked in terms of quality of life. We have the best educational system and the lowest corruption rate in the world, we are the most egalitarian country in the world and our population have a higher IQ on average than people in US.
But hey, due to this current Muslim invasion we are about to become a total shithole aswell in no time, dont worry.
Your opinion on my post. They have a whole section on international response to South African apartheid. I read it and the related sources. Your post doesn't match either Wikipedia's entry (which matches my limited understanding) or their source material. I can accept that maybe Wikipedia is pulling from biased sources just as easily as I can believe that you'd prefer the narrative where it was a purely internal decision, sans international pressure.
But I have read the online sources for Wiki's material, I haven't read the sources for your narrative. So, if you have some then I'd like to read them for a fuller version of the history. Short of that, I'll stick with the documentation that I can read over the interpretation of someone close to the subject but not necessarily a scholar on it (unless you are a scholar on it).
Little of my reading on the history of my country has been done online. As such, I tend not to have links immediately to hand. Also, the Internet still tends to be an American state.
It's entirely my bad that i leap to a combative stance without having that to back me up. So I apologise for that.
I'm not scholar, but these are discussions i usually have with scholars, so i'm used to certain info being taken for granted.
That said, I managed to scrounge up a bit:
On the impact of MacMillan's speech in changing South Africa:
The speech did lay down a relatively clear understanding of Britain’s intended exit as a colonial power in Africa, so in the larger scheme it achieved its purpose. However, when considering there is indication that Macmillan’s intent was to sway white South African’s to abandon Verwoerd's apartheid dogma, that part of the speech was a failure.
A writer on the subject of this speech named Saul Dubow stated that "The unintended effect of the speech was to help empower Verwoerd by reinforcing his dominance over domestic politics and by assisting him make two hitherto separate strands of his political career seem mutually reinforcing: republican nationalism on the one hand and apartheid ideology on the other.
Strijdom was a passionate and outspoken Afrikaner and Republican, and he wholeheartedly supported apartheid. He was completely intolerant towards non-Afrikaners and liberal ideas, utterly determined to maintain white supremacy, with zero compromise. Known as the "Lion of the North", Strijdom made few changes to his cabinet and pursued with vigour the policy of apartheid. By 1956, he successfully placed the Coloureds on a separate voters' roll, thus further weakening ties with the Commonwealth and gaining support for the NP.
You have to remember that the politically dominant demographic in Apartheid South Africa was, obviously, whites, and that the majority of whites were Afrikaners. Afrikaners have spent most of their history striving for independence and isolation from the British - and fought two wars against the British in the attempt to gain it. I can't find a source for it right now, but Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was given a hero's welcome when he returned to South Africa from the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference at which South Africa's withdrawal from the Commonwealth was decided.
You can see this historical need playing out today in Orania, a town consisting almost entirely of Boers (95% or so), and dedicated to the preservation of Afrikaans Christian cultural identity.
A lot of Boers were even opposed to South African entry into both world wars, due to their dislike and distrust of the British and their interests (that, and there was a definite amount of Boer sympathy for the Nazi philosophy, and a lot of German ancestry among the Boers).
Jan Smuts lost his leadership of South Africa largelydue to his loyalty to the crown.
South Africa enjoyed an economic boom in the 1960s. Foreign investors had withdrawn their funds and white immigration had come to a halt in the immediate aftermath of Sharpeville, but Vorster's harsh measures rebuilt confidence in the security of investments and the stability of the state, and money and people returned. Foreign investment in South Africa, attracted by rates of return on capital often running as high as 15 to 20 percent, more than doubled between 1963 and 1972, while high immigration levels helped the white population to increase by 50 percent during the same period. Investment and immigration fueled an impressive economic boom.
The nuclear weapons programme reached its peak during the embargo; According to David Albright, components for the programme were imported without the knowledge of the international community, or put to ingenious uses that had not been envisaged by the enforcers of the ban.
As far as the last run of sanctions from '85 onward, they had real-world the effect of crippling the emerging black middle class that had been allowed to grow during the 70s when PW Botha (a hardline apartheid supporter who, nonetheless, had begun to recognise the internal contradictions of the apartheid system) legalised black trade unions.
Disinvestment in the country led to a loss of black jobs, and, simultaneously, an increase in Capitalist white wealth...This destroyed the previous decade's progress in reducing the enormous income disparity across racial lines - blacks became poorer, whites became richer, and a stronger but less stable economy was waiting when Democracy arrived.
These pieces touch on this, but it's difficult to find comprehensive sources online:
Eventually, the Reagan administration levied economic sanctions against South Africa in September 1985 (with Congress following suit a year later). The result was nothing--at best. In the wake of sanctions, the South African stock market soared as local investors picked up "fire sale" bargains. The pro-apartheid National Party gained political momentum it had lost years before, largely due to the intense "rally 'round the flag" boost that all sanctioned pariah governments--from South Africa to Iraq--tend to enjoy.
Reform in South Africa had to wait out a sanctions-era political retrenchment, including the imposition of martial law in 1985 and a 1987 increase in electoral power for the National Party. Liberalization was ultimately ushered in not by sanctions but by the collapse of communism, which eliminated the possibility of a radical left in South Africa.
as the white skilled-labor shortage worsened, the government became ever more impatient with white trade unions which were hampering the training of blacks and thus blocking black advances into skilled jobs. In 1973 it was announced that blacks, including Africans, could do skilled work in the white areas. The government did not rigorously adhere to its promise that it would consult with white trade unions before making this decision. In 1975 the defence force announced that black soldiers would enjoy the same status as whites of equal rank, and that whites would have to take orders from black officers. This broke the rule that the hierarchical structure (or ratchet) must be kept intact, with blacks always working under whites. (Giliomee and Schlemmer 1989, p. 124)
The vicissitudes of apartheid can be measured by the ratio of black income to white. From 1946 to 1960, despite a decrease in the white proportion of the population, a constant 70 percent of South Africa’s national income went to whites. But between 1970 and 1980, this fell to 60 percent. Apartheid’s decline can also be seen in increasing expenditures on black education: the twenty-to-one ratio in white-to-black per pupil educational spending in 1952 had shrunk to about five to one in 1987.
Whatever the economic impact, the immediate political effect of sanctions was to encourage retrenchment by the Botha regime then in power. Right-wing (pro-apartheid) support rose sharply in the May 1987 parliamentary elections, and the National Party government responded by shelving all reforms and brutally suppressing antiapartheid dissent, initiating a state of emergency accompanied by sweeping press censorship. Only with a fading of sanctions pressures, a rebounding economy, and key changes in the international geopolitical environment (notably, the collapse of the Eastern bloc) did the course of reform reassert itself.
One measure of sanctions’ effectiveness could be the extent of economic damage they inflict on the target country. Although the trade sanction cost of 0.5 percent of GNP is not trivial, neither is it very large. Kaempfer and Lowenberg (1988) argue that targeted sanctions can impose minimal economic hardship and still effect policy change. However, the South African sanctions were not tightly targeted; whites often benefited from the firesale disinvestment and blacks were often hurt by the loss of jobs.
The negative effect of almost non-existent sanctions on South Africa prior to the mid-80s was, likewise, almost non-existent.
The black middle class (which even Apartheid leaders realised was what the future of the country rested upon) was emerging, and the effect of the 80s large-scale sanctions by the US and Britain was largely nil, other than to crush that middle class and cause the slowly retreating Apartheid government to dig in its heels, become more belligerent and crack down even more oppressively on dissent.
Apartheid wasn't reforming on moral grounds, but the necessity of reform was clear in the 70s. Impatient western (particularly American) liberalism fucked the process up by trying to use sanctions to force the issue. As a result, everyone in South Africa suffered.
Reagan may have been wrong on a lot of things, but his hands-off approach to South Africa was not.
Now you're equating "freedom" to "qualify of life." You're bringing up points like IQ, corruption, etc... Again, I'm not even bringing up the issue of the state of things in America, but, what makes you respond to a query about freedom with these things? Could you explain further? What does freedom mean to you? And again, does it largely consist of the state paying for services and providing them for you?
Have you ever read any Thomas Hobbes, by any chance? I'd assume so, given how awesome your education system is. What do you think of his thoughts on freedom in the state of nature?
Violence/Genocide: Do not condone violence or genocide on a person or group of people. You are free to attack a person or groups ideas but you are crossing the line when calling for violence. This will be heavily enforced in threads with breaking news involving victims.
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