Liberal or progressive?

[Scootaloo]

24. I don't think you have a firm grasp of the concepts you're talking about.

So i stand behind capitalism, lord knows at the very least in numbers we have never slaughtered people in the numbers of the other beliefs.

No, in fact capitalism has vastly more dead people. The difference is that there is no "Army of the Invisible Hand" running around butchering people for the word of Adam Smith. Nothing so flashy or loud. Oh, there were cases where that was effectively the case, in the US's proxy wars during the cold war, and the US / West Europe's support for anti-left genocides in the southern nations during that whole period... But most of the carnage is simply a result of things that capitalists don't regard as anything the least bit unusual. For-profit medical systems and pharmaceuticals, patent protecting on agriculture, rampant pollution, austerity measures, "Structural Adjustment programs," Wage / benefit / labor cuts, embargos and military / covert actions against states that are non-compliant with the wishes of Wall Street.

Hell, all this piles together in Africa; we supported the armed juntas of anti-soviet regimes and turned a blind eye to their bloodshed so long as they agreed to not talk to Russia. We sold them military machinery and resources that they mostly used against their own people, and sometimes their neighboring juntas (also armed by us.) Actually it's more like we gave these weapons to them, as it was all done on credit.

When they dropped from power we decided the people they abused and robbed still had to pay the debts. Debt relief came from the IMF and World Bank, and was paired with structural readjustments; the privatization of state companies, upper limits to employment, the cessation of domestic manufacture, union-busting, an end to public education and health programmes, and "opening the markets" to established international corporations, who faced no domestic competition in these emergent markets and so pillaged and polluted to their heart's content. Even the debt relief was treated as loans however and had interest payments; when an African nation falls short, well, it's back to the negotiations with the IMF, to figure out what other structural adjustments could be made.

The slashes to employment, education, and health care leads to spiraling poverty, drug use, and prostitution, which all in turn turns into the world's worst HIV epidemic; an epidemic so bad that the leaders of African nations are speaking in terms of apocalypse for their people's suffering. But because of patent protection for Pfizer and other companies, retrovirals and treatments that could save the lives of millions and prevent infection of millions more, remain hopelessly out of reach for the majority of Africa. That's just HIV. Want to talk polio? Malaria? Tuberculosis? Plain ol' staph infections?

Africa's a fucking rich place, and the nations there could, almost one and all be self-sufficient, if they had the infrastructure and fund to tap those resources. But instead we've shackled them down to the debts of their oppressors, and force economic experiments on them seemingly designed ot keep them in this subjected state in perpetuity. meanwhile our fat asses just love all those diamonds and rare earth menerals and lumber and aluminum and gold and other raw resources being sucked out of the continent, with the money we pay for those resources going right back to our own corporations rather than the people digging the shit out of the middle of a war zone.

That's Africa under capitalism, and that's without even touching on the slave trade, another awesome capitalist venture in "The Dark continent." Would you like to talk about Latin America or Southeast Asia, the Middle East, perhaps? Are you familiar with the Pahlavi Shah? or Suharto?

Don't give me this "capitalism has less blood on its hands" garbage. The US, richest nation on earth, has a infant mortality rate on par with fucking Bosnia because of a capitalist, for-profit medical system that, by design, is less functional for the proles than the elites. Same for our HIV cases; again, if you're Magic Johnson, you're well-treated, but if you're just Tom Johnson, well, hope you already have the hole dug, Tom.

As for your question? I call myself a leftist. Leaves the Birchers gaping like landed carp and I so enjoy their sputterings.