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"Money for salaries, not weapons." National strike in Italy against rightwing budget. "People can't make it to the end of the month. This budget doesn't raise wages or allow people to retire." (www.youtube.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [M] to c/unions@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 7 points 10 months ago

Meloni is definitely upside down in this picture.

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    [+] -13 points 10 months ago (11 children)

    Tbh as it stands right now, I'm absolutely hoping countries in Europe, mine included, will spend more on weapons, not salaries.

    Salary is useless once you get drafted because you r country got attacked. Weapons prevents you from being attacked in the first place.

    I hate that people not understanding the absolute basics of force projection, shitting out populistic headlines like this, will very probably cost me my life somewhere in a trench.

    Because of idiots like these, every country is afraid to be called "warmongering" because they invest into army, BUT YOU GET DRAGGED INTO WAR BY NOT HAVING AN ARMY, FFS. Which we currently don't have, since most of NATO infrastructure was ran by Putin's sattelite-US, if I'm not mistaken.

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

    Yes, my dream is getting drafted to protect the feud of my current exploiter without a salary increase or any kind of comfort. This is just monarchy with more steps you fucking bootlicker.

    edit: fyi Italy wanted to invest 30+ b€ to boost military spending. Giancarlo Ferrero alone is worth over 40b €. Let that sink in before you decide not to desert and take up arms.

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  • [–] -5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Well, then you better hope that your country does invest in defense and force projection, so other countries don't think it will be easy to attack it.

    No defense budget -> higher chance of being attacked -> you will get drafted and probably have to fight with pitchforks, because no army.

    Defense budget -> Force projection -> attacking your country is a higher risk -> you have an army that has the resources to defend the country, so no need to draft civilians if it happens (at least from the start, but the chance is drastically lower).

    It's not that difficult to understand, unless you're deep into Putin's ass spreading his bullshit propaganda about "defense bad".

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Countries don't exist in vacuums. A big part of geopolitics is figuring out how to manage not getting attacked while being able to build up things other than war machines. For instance, if you have allies you trust, your COMBINED force projection would need to be enough to prevent attacks, leaving each with more room to focus on their economies. If you want to be completely isolated, sure, you have to be able to individually defend yourself, but we live in a world where we really CAN'T be completely isolated, so it only makes sense to try to work together.

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  • [–] -2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    This is true and I agree, however the issue is that it's currently starting to be really difficult to rely on allies, given what's happening with US and some other NATO countries. Honestly, and of course this is just a personal preference, I'd rather we currently spend more on defense because of that. Of course, if the situation was different (i.e like two years ago), I'd probably not be that much OK with it.

    I'm also not saying that we shouldn't spend money on anything else, but budget creation is extremely difficult topic, and my main point is that I really don't like how "spending on weapons" is used as a scrapegoat from lack of proper social budget, because it is clickbaity. There's a lot of other, more serious, budget issues that could be focused on. This kind of "anti-war" rethoric plays right into the hands of Russian hybrid war, which is (unfortunately pretty succesfully, which is why I'm speaking against it so vehemently) framing any kind of increased budged spending as warmongering, and that is something that is more likely to get people like me into trenches.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    It's US' hybrid war. The Russians have been trying to destabilise the EU for 2 decades with no success. Banon makes a trip through Europe after establishing Cambridge analytica with success in the UK and all of a sudden, the far right polls at 30%. Putin is an idiot who can't even defeat a demilitarised UA. The real enemy comes from the west and has already infiltrated every facet of our daily lives through MS, Alphabet, Meta et all. That enemy can't be beat with bigger defense budget at the expense of the people, in fact it's the exact opposite, they hate us because we are the living proof they are nothing but a bastardised version of European primitive civilisations.

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    I agree we need investments in defence, but salaries are also important. Taxing the rich allows for both. Thinking we can either be safe or have decent wages is a trap.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Oh, that's true, and I've also forgotten to add that I agree that spendings are definnitely not managed properly, and there's a lot that cpuld, and should be done better as far as budgets are considered.

    But the point was that I don't really agree that we should single out military spending when talking about this, just because that makes the title the easiest clickbait.

    Especially because right now, it is important and there is already a huge push of anti-war populistic rethoric that's affecting elections and popular opinion, even though it doesn't make sense - not preparing for war will wastly increase your chances of being in one, in the current situation. It's also made worse because it's catch 22 - spending on army and not getting into war will get you blamed by populists that it was thrown away money, and of you get into one you'll get blamed that you invited it by arming up (which isn't true, bit that's not how dezinfo and populism works. It sounds true).

    So, I'm not saying we have to choose between defense and salaries, but that there's a lot of other places and problems in the budgets that can be focused on, without giving ammunition to the Russian hybrid war that's trying to make us not spend money or defense.

    Of course, it's possible (and I'd say probable) that that was the point of this video. But I'm assuming innocence.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    There's also a lot of people who of course think this is a very hawkish way to look at it and that it's basically stating that war is peace.

    From a Spanish perspective, I understand it. For people in countries bordering Russia, and especially former Soviet republics, things look a little different.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    For me, the more important caution is that military spending is a massive amount of private purchasing for something we ultimately don't want to happen. Private purchasing by the state begets private purchasing by the state, it creates an enemy of the people and worsens the system of governance. Those companies want not to provide means of defense but to make money. The only way to consistently make more money, or maybe the easiest, when your wares are only purchasable by the state is to encourage the state to buy more.

    This is a systemic method for warping any countries budget, like the USA, and encouraging war - not preventing it. The more you spend on defense the more your country will use it and the worse it'll be for the world when they decide to.

    It's simultaneously removing money from the places that benefit people the most, creating a systemic enemy of the people, and building a pathway to future wars. Prevention could just as easily be guaranteed with economic and cultural infrastructure/exchange/ties.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, there's good reason to study the US and to avoid doing whatever the hell they have been doing with their military industrial complex. I think the US has however been spectacularly stupid and corrupt - the shit they have gotten themselves into seems hugely avoidable.

    As for "economic and cultural infrastructure/exchange/ties", it's nice when it works, but building Nord Stream and sucking up to Putin for decades did not exactly get us very far in terms of peace in our time. History is full of culturally rich civilizations with deep economic and cultural ties being completely fucked over by stronger military powers.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    I mean, I agree but there's a difference between attempting to utilize demographic ties with democratic countries and authoritarian ones. Russia is a great reason for us to invest in a military, but we should be doing it entirely through the EU and with extremely thorough systems for deescalation.

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