[digi_owl]

All in all it seems like social-democracy was AOK as long as you were an established European nation.

But try that with a colony or some place with a large US corporate presence (banana republic, anyone?) and you were begging for trouble.

Frankly the cold war seems in hindsight to be just an extension of the so called great game.

[TheOtherHobbes]

It's only the appearance of social-democracy that matters in Europe. It doesn't matter which party is in power, as long as policy is broadly neo-liberal and not too aggressively anti-corporate.

When someone like Jeremy Corbyn appears and challenges or threatens that consensus, you immediately get a determined media campaign to smear and undermine him - while barking mad racist demagogues are treated as serious political representatives without being questioned or challenged in the same ways.

[tremon]

Please do not confuse England with mainland Europe. There is a reason why so many English politicians want to distance themselves from Europe...

[vidarh]

Yes...

United Fruit Company being a particularly nasty one to get on the wrong side of.

Its successor Chiquita as recently as 2007 pleaded guilty in US courts to aiding and abetting a Columbian terrorist organization, and got away with just paying $25m restitution, and the US government refused to allow extradition of any of the involved parties to stand trial in Columbia.