Congrats to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia for making the cut
I like to call this “The Commonwealth and Friends”
What do you think “international” means?
whoosh…
no dictators, no worries.
“no dictators”
America is a dictatorship of money disguised as a democracy, and the others are vassal states in lockstep with American foreign policy. Most of them have colonized and exploited the rest of the world for centuries and they’re still doing it now, to the tune of over $10 trillion a year in net extraction from the global south.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.
yeah,
these are the democracies that invaded Iraq/Libya to install a democracy.
I keep having to remind myself how much good it did to the people of Iraq/Libya.
and we all remember what a paradise those countries were. man, that time gadaffis son killed a waiter because he spilled soup. you miss him?
About as much as I miss Bush lying to us about WMD.
Libya now has open-air slave markets and has been described as a humanitarian disaster.
remember the black dude who gets shot for talking back in America ? anecdotes don’t prove a general point.
btw Libya was doing better under Gaddafi
country did better before war than after.
amazing
was that the reason for those arab springs?
was at least the weapon to kill gadaffi american so you can blame the west?
fuck hamas.
Japan invaded Iraq and Libya?
Yes
so boring
Yeah, Iraqis miss saddam so much don’t they? Especially the Kurds.
I’m sure they don’t miss the Americans.
Bet they weren’t unhappy in 2014
I don’t miss Bush. A man I was too young to vote for, who lost the popular vote and was installed by his brother. A brother who got his position because his father was the head of intelligence service. Bush was a mediocre painter and a war criminal.
Iraq is absolutely a functioning democracy and not a dictatorship right now.
Libya would be if it actually got invaded, which 100% should have happened. UN forces not taking control of the situation is a huge stain on the UN.
Calling for the invasion of Libya is fucking monstrous.
Over a million Iraqis died due to the US invasion of Iraq.
They did mention the UN.
The UN working in Libya as peacekeeping forces would’ve prevented the monstrous situation we’re in now, at bare minimum. If you don’t believe that, you quite simply are not recognizing past UN peacekeeping successes.
I have never supported the Iraq War but to deny Iraq is currently a functional, if very deeply flawed, democracy is, in my view, to devalue the Iraqi citizens and the fledgling democracy they have.
The UN working in Libya as peacekeeping forces would’ve prevented the monstrous situation we’re in now
Because it’s that easy to counter Islamic extremism in a power vacuum. ISIS was active and gaining power in 2011, including in Libya.
to deny Iraq is currently a functional, if very deeply flawed, democracy is, in my view, to devalue the Iraqi citizens and the fledgling democracy they have.
The state of Iraq’s corrupt democracy as of 2023 is little better than under Saddam
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/4/16/the-long-shadow-of-saddams-dictatorship-in-iraq
And all it cost was over a million Iraqi civilian deaths, millions of refugees, and the birth of ISIS in 2007.
The 2015 British Parliament inquiry found that the Islamic extremists fighting Qaddafi would not have succeeded without western air power, weapons, intelligence, and personnel, meaning the best way to prevent the humanitarian crisis in Libya would have been to fucking leave Libya alone in the first place. The inquiry also found that the intervention was economically motivated rather than humanitarian.
Because it’s that easy to counter Islamic extremism in a power vacuum
Hey look I found the exact issue the UN peacekeepers address in these exact situations
The 2015 British Parliament inquiry found that the Islamic extremists fighting Qaddafi would not have succeeded without western air power, weapons, intelligence, and personnel, meaning the best way to prevent the humanitarian crisis in Libya would have been to fucking leave Libya alone in the first place.
Just let Gaddafi murder people who want democracy with superior air power guys. It’s simple.
hey look I found the exact issue the UN peacekeepers address in these exact situations
Yeah? And how the fuck did that strategy work out anywhere else in the middle east?
people who want democracy
The coalition air mission was to support Islamic extremists in battles against the Libyan government. Those rebels wanted an Islamic state in Libya, not a democracy. They were also committing racist pogroms and atrocities against black Libyans, and western operatives on the ground were aware of it the entire time.
Read the fucking article. Here it is again:
Read every word of it before you respond to me.
Not sure where you have been in the past years but ISIS and Islamists in Libya.
The Middle East is a curious place. Regime change doesn’t work if the population are too fractured for nation building, which Middle Eastern countries has plenty of. It is tragic to argue that living under authoritarians that provide stability is better than living free but without law and order.
I’m an advocate for democracy as much as the next person, but the secular dictators are what kept Islamic extremism in check. In this case, the dictators are the lesser evils. Which is why people accept that Bashar Al Assad won the Syrian civil war instead of placing faith on any of the opposition to rule, some of whom are Islamists.
I would, quite frankly, rather live in a world with more democracies and more extremists than a world with fewer of both.
Liberal Democracy is the only acceptable form of governance.
Liberal democracy only works if people are A) well educated and informed and B) have a strong identity as a group. Societies need to be well informed on issues and work towards finding solutions that benefit all. Unfortunately, many countries lack either or both.
You know what’s not better than a flawed democracy? A dictatorship.
Be careful with confusing flawed democracy as anarchy.
maybe you should read some articles from beyond the international community.
from beyond the international community.
I know it’s not your point but this implies asking aliens and I think that’s fun.
As to your article, I am not and have never defended the Iraq War. Iraq is still a democracy, and I hope it remains one forever. That would be the absolute least the people of Iraq deserve after that war.
Idk, I feel like Al Jazeera gets quite a bit of visibility and has a good amount of credibility, but Qatar isn’t on this map.
Credibility? It’s Qatari state media
It is, so you definitely want to keep that in mind when consuming their content. On the flipside, they have access to sources in the Middle East that your big mainstream western media organizations can only dream about, so you don’t want to ignore them entirely either. There are ways to be smart about it.
“US liberals would be far right anywhere else in the world!”
The world:
They absolutely would not be far right in Japan and a few more on this map, but they would be right to far right in a lot of countries not on the map too.
I’m mostly poking fun. Some people will say rest of the world and really just mean Western Europe. You’re mostly right though. I think economically, yes, definitely right or at least right of center. Socially though, very left. LGBT rights and civil equality and refugee acceptance are sadly not the norm. We’ve still got serious conservative parties pushing against them.
It’s honestly a hard thing to distill down to one metric. And if you want to consider the cultural context too, it gets even more difficult. People like using the whole world in comparisons, but it’s rather complex to accurately do that here.
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Their commonality is their money and conspiring to get more by any means.
I’m assuming you meant to put a /s yeah?
No it’s because the rest of the world is ruled by maniac dictators and poorly educated populations. Deny it fervently and all you proof is to be putinsbiatch
you dropped /s
Much is known of the causes of certain things happening around the world.
By looking at leaked documents and reporting from know journalists that live in many different countries.
I think your comment is /s, but not sure, hahaha
Hope we all keep learning and have a great day!
Why would I be sarcastic about it? It sure isn’t a joke.
Most all of countries in Africa and South America and a lot in Asia and all of ME is ruled by people that do not have the best intentions nor best interests for their people. De facto dictators.
The worse is they call themselves left wing OR right and they the same slave of some big insurance companies and the plaything of hedgefunds. Us & Europe aren’t different, just richer.
It seems like media is controlled by a small number of people, not sure if they have anything in common.
They do.
They’re capital owners.
Yes, I agree.
May be I should have added “…” or made it more clear, that yes they do share things in common.
My fault on that end, thanks for pointing it out!
Normally when people talk about a “small cabal of elites ruling the world” it’s a dogwhistle for “the jews”.
That is a thing to watch out for… Thanks for pointing it out!
I was talking about 99% vs. 1% protests that were huge a while ago.
Framing working class vs. wealthy class.
Just to reiterate - if thinly veiled antisemitism wasn’t your intent, you may want to phrase your subtle implications differently in the future.
Ah, another thing ro watch out for. Thanks for letting me know!
Remember 99% vs. 1% protests a while ago, they were pretty big.
Billionaires and wealthy class are the groups most people think about.
Working class vs. wealthy class
edit: wording and topic
I get it and apologize for my tone. I wasn’t yet convinced at that point that it wasn’t subtly veiled anti-semitism. Sorry that my internet cynicism sometimes runs high. 🙂
Thank you for the explaination!
Yes, we all can get too much into cynicism when talking in the interwebs!
Have a great day and thanks again!
You as well!
!mapsWithNZ
Almost like news written in english tends to focus on english-speaking countries and their allies
Yeah fuck my local news station for covering local news. It should only be coverage about places that I will never go to, issues I have no control over, and be an exercise in guilt and self-righteous masturbation for the people running it.
oh yeah that must be it.
The obvious context of this meme is articles that express the “consensus opinion of the international community” on some foreign issue. Like “international community condemns antisemetic criticism of Israel.” Or “international community condemns Niger coup, calls for original government to be reinstated so France can keep buying cheap Uranium from the second poorest country on the planet.”
Unless you’re talking about the UN, of course, in which case the map in the picture us essentially inverted.
South Korea tends to make the cut also
The person who made this super accurate informative map must hate kimichi
Damn those Samsungs man, I need to get me some of those along with those cars…
New Zealand is happy to be included
You never hear about China or Russia?
I don’t know about US but EU has a bunch of news agencies that are fairly credible. Some local smaller ones don’t have a reason not to be.
The international community in the picture is all that matters. Change the size of the countries in the map by the size of their economies and that’s all that matters. Change it by the factor of their diplomatic influence and the change would be even greater.
The majority of the world doesn’t matter bc no money :(
What a tone deaf world view.
If you ever talk about an international community, these are the only countries that actually COMMUNE. Almost all the rest are too involved with themselves to have a diplomatic strategy beyond their narrow short-term self interest. That’s also why that’s the only international community that matters. That’s not a tone deaf world view, that’s the reality.
No, these are the only countries that destabilised entire continents to get what they wanted in the last few centuries and now they wash their hands off of them. The countries that are left behind are still trying to clean the shit up the West has created.
So organizations like the Arab League don’t exist?
They exist, many organizations exist, but they are only a collection of countries each looking for its own short sighted benefits.
Oh yeah, the U.S., UK, etc. never do that.
Sure they do, but I’m not into nitpicking specific situations or argue about edge cases.
They don’t really like each other, mostly they see themselves as competitors and their treaties are situational, worth nothing except in the best of times when everything is going well for everyone.
Edge cases? Are you serious? Since when does the U.S. give a shit about anyone but the U.S.?
And saying that the U.S. respects its treaties shows a laughable ignorance of history.
Basically democracies. It is kind of difficult to consider non-democratic dictators like Putin or Kim Jong-un as representatives of some kind of “community”.
yeah,
these are the democracies that invaded Iraq/Libya to install a democracy.
I keep having to remind myself how much good it did to the people of Iraq/Libya.
Latin America and India doesn’t count because they are full of brown people, right?
And of course Africa does not even exist
Imma be real with you chief none of these are democracy
Just to be clear, you don’t understand what that means
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Ah yes Brazil, beacon of freedom, like the freedom to shoot some slum kid in the face for the crime of being a slum rat.
Brazil makes the USA seem like the fucking beacon of freedom and equality that the fucking G.I. Joe cartoons portray it as.
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dumb? have you ever fucking been to Brazil? well at least outside the posh tourist areas.
I already know the answer is no, because anyone who HAS knows that the shit I described is all too common, and it’s not like I haven’t lived in “economically challenged”(see Hood) parts of the US.
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ah, a privileged brat, at least you are not one of those not openly Nazi German holdouts in the south I guess
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You know the vast majority of south and central americas are democracies too, right?
South America just isn’t really too involved in international politics in general, the whole region is neutral in almost all conflicts since very few directly affect them
They are involved in their own politics, just like the first world only cares about what happens to the first world.
Israel confirmed first world…?
No, but they are directly tied to the US.
Yes, first world means “allied to the US” and has nothing to do with standard of living.
If you use the old Cold War definition, yes. Otherwise
However, as the Cold War ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the definition largely shifted to instead refer to any country that boasts a well-functioning democratic system with little prospects of political risk, in addition to a strong rule of law, a capitalist economy with economic stability, and a high standard of living.
I said this about Assad as well, but when someone is a forever ruler, it may not be as democratic as the name implies
Of course. I am not going to defend the particular choice of countries in that picture. Where is South Korea, for example? However. Democracy is greater than just democratic election. Fascists in Germany also come to power in a free democratic election, does not make Nazi Germany a democratic country.
The nazis in Germany came to power in the “Machtergreifung” (seizure of power).
In the last free democratic election, they got 33% of the vote.Yes, but it was by far the largest (the second party got just 20%) and in multiparty system that was enough to later enact laws that made it into dictatorship.
Also a not-insignificant amount of Asia, Africa, and Pacific islands.
Just so we’re clear, you can think of two missing countries?
What an odd coincidence that primarily white, English-speaking countries have democracy.
Nothing odd about it. There are historical reasons for that. But English speaking? You do know that there are many countries in EU?
I think you missed my sarcasm. Also, I said “primarily”.
I think you missed my sarcasm.
/s is your friend.
Even as primarily, this is false statement. And even there, there are historical reasons.
You are so stuck on details you entirely missed my point. Are you just going to ignore the fact that the “world” depicted here is literally just Europe and its most successful colonies?
Yeah colonialism is a “historical reason”, but wtf are you even saying there? Being killed is “a reason” to be lying on the stairs, but explaining that by saying “he has his reasons” is so out-of-touch as to be insane.
