Alt Left: New False Flag May Be Coming In Ukraine

New false flag coming up. These things tend to happen a few days after the Russians warn about them, so be prepared.

“In Sumy, nationalists have mined the ammonia and chlorine storage facilities of the Sumy Jim Prom chemical plant with the aim of mass poisoning the residents of the Sumy region in case the Russian Armed Forces enter the city,” the military official reported.

In addition, the nationalists are preparing provocations with toxic chemicals in the village of Kotliarovo, Nikolayev region, southern Ukraine. “For this purpose, tanks with toxic chemicals have already been placed in the building of the local elementary school, which are planned to be detonated when Russian troops approach,” Mizintsev specified.

Sure, same old, same old. How many times did we see these theatrics in Syria. Not even one of those many damned “chemical weapons attacks” in Syria even happened. It’s just the US and (((certain people))) made this crap up as a casus belli for attacking Syria. That’s because if you can prove that a country used banned weapons, you can intervene in their war by international law.

According to Maizintsev, the preparation of such provocations is carried out with the direct assistance of the USA and a number of European Union countries that consider Ukraine as their “anti-Russian policy tool”.

Well of course the CIA, MI6, and NATO are all in on these false flags. They’ve probably been in on all the others too.

The US and NATO wanted to intervene in Syria, but they had no legal basis to do so, so they had to construct one. We have a copy of an email from a DIA agent in Syria asking when the chemical weapons attack was going to happen. Further, we have a recording with John Kerry badgering the Turks to get the chemical weapons attack done.

The actual attack was done by a combination of the Turks and Al Qaeda. The victims were all Christians and Alawi taken prisoner in Northern Syria a year or two before. They were killed in a room with poison gas, probably carbon monoxide. We have a photo of this room with green canisters in it and gas hissing out of them. These enemy civilians were then passed off as “chemical weapons victims.”

Except…

Except no Sarin was found in any of the victims’ bodies.

Except no one saw or heard a mortar attack to deliver the sarin.

Except that the symptoms did not look like sarin poisoning. If anything, they looked like carbon monoxide poisoning.

Except they did somehow poison a few of their own people with their sarin, but the levels were so low as to be harmless.

Except that many of the “sarin victims” had slit throats. I never knew sarin poisoning slit your throat.

Except that the smoking gun captured by the Jews was no smoking gun. The Jews intercepted a message from the Syrian military asking, “Hey, did we just conduct a chemical weapons attack?” They were asking this because they had never heard of it because it never happened.

Except that the UN itself stated that the Syrian government had not conducted that sarin attack.

Except that the MI6, in a rare moment of honesty, found that the sarin used was not Assad’s sarin, which was all made with a certain recipe.

Except that the sarin looked like “bathtub sarin” made by amateurs.

Except that the bathtub sarin looked exactly like some bathtub sarin that Al Qaeda members were caught with in Turkey. Like I said, the Turks were in on this.

Except that MI6 told the CIA that the sarin wasn’t Assad’s, and they passed this on to the CIA.

Except that the CIA told Obama that Assad did do a sarin attack, so Obama called off his “red line” used as a pretext to invade Syria.

Except the attack was done precisely on the one-year anniversary of Obama’s line in the sand speech where he said that Syria using chemical weapons would result in an invasion. Would you believe that Syria was so stupid and insane as to conduct a chemical weapons attack on the anniversary of that deadly speech?

Nevertheless, even though the US, UK, and the Jews all knew that the attack was completely fake, they all used it as a pretext to force Assad to get rid of his chemical weapons. He was keeping them as a deterrent to nuclear armed Israel. So the UN came in and oversaw the destruction of all of Assad’s chemical weapons and then affirmed that they had all been destroyed.

Nevertheless, even when Assad was certain to have destroyed all his chemical weapons, mysterious attacks with nonexistent chemical weapons kept happening. Remember the chemical weapons bullshit about Iraq when they never had any? Well, American retards fell for the chemical weapons when they never had any either all over again with Syria. They fell for it with Iraq, released they’d been played like morons, and then ten years later, the fools fell for it one more time. It it looks like they are going to fall for another chemical attack false flag now in Ukraine.

Suckers!

It’s now accepted across the political spectrum from left to center to right in the US that Assad used chemical weapons many times in Syria, even when he didn’t even have any! I almost want to say “fake left,” “fake center,” and “fake right” because the US political spectrum is all fake. It’s monolithic.When the “left”, “center”, and “right” all believe on an array of issues, like support for all US foreign policy, you don’t have a political spectrum anymore.

You just have a bunch of clowns who all agree on many things, some of these agreeable jokers calling themselves “left”, others calling themselves “center” and others calling themselves “right.” When your whole political spectrum agrees, you don’t have a spectrum anymore. You have a monolith. And when 10

I have a ton of news channels on my cable. Not one will give me a pro-Russian point of view. There are many US newspapers and newsmagazines. Not one will give you a pro-Russian point of view. Sure, if you want to go out of your way to try to find certain websites, you can find this point of view. However, the private sector, acting in the role of a state, is now banning most pro-Russian content.

Sure we have freedom of press. Free for everyone who owns a printing press. Which is about no one. Free for everyone who can afford an incredibly expensive TV or radio license. Which is about no one. Yes you can be a dissident but there’s no way to get your views across to anyone via any media outlet. That’s a completely controlled totalitarian media, sorry. You clowns are free at all. You just think you are. Suckers.

You all buy every single lie that State Department, the CIA and the luggenpress (lying media) dole out.

Alt Left: A Ukrainian Nationalist Fascist Visits the Site

A Ukrainian nationalist comes to the site:

Jumangi McCaulkin: Slava Ukraine forever and always. fuck putin fuck russian genocide

#freeprussia #freemoldolva #freeGeorgia #LiberateTransisteria #unifymoldolva The LPR & DPR ain’t even real LOL Fuck the internet research agency especially allah akbar

A Ukrainian nationalist. As you can see, he’s a fascist like all of them. There’s not one Ukrainian nationalist who’s not a fascist. No such thing.

Slava Ukraine forever and always.

“Glory to Ukraine” or “Slava Ukraina” is a slogan of Stepan Bandera’s ONU Ukrainian nationalist army. All Ukrainian nationalists say this chant, and Nancy Pelosi herself belted out this fascist/Nazi chant in the middle of the US Congress!

fuck putin fuck russian genocide

Goes without saying. There is no Russian genocide. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an army so careful to limit civilian casualties in a war as Putin is in this war. It’s pretty amazing. The Israelis do a pretty good of it too. I hate them, but I admit that they are good on this, and hat’s off to them for that! The only reason Israel does that is because it not a Judaic society but instead is a Judeo-Christian society.

#freeprussia

This is about Kaliningrad being “Russian occupied territory. It was German land and the USSR annexed it at the end of WW2. The Germans don’t seem to want it back. It’s only an issue with Russophobic fanatics like Balts, Poles, and Ukrainians.

#freemoldolva, #LiberateTransisteria, #unifymoldolva

All three are a reference to the Transdniestria region of Moldova, supposedly Russian-occupied territory. This is an industrial, mostly Russian-speaking region in the far east of Moldova. They actually declared their independence as soon as the Moldovan SSR declared its independence. The Transdniestrians refused to go along and declared their secession from Moldova. But this actually happened before the USSR even broke up, so “Russia” had nothing to do with it.

The Transdniestrians were afraid that Moldova was going to annex itself to Romania as it keeps threatening to do. For what ever reason, these Russian-speakers didn’t go along with that. There was a short war and then Russian peacekeepers moved in and its been a frozen conflict ever since. Transdniestria has declared its independence and sees itself as an independent state. This guy wants Moldova to forcibly annex Transdniestria to Moldova.

That’s going to start a war and Russia might just get involved. I don’t think Russia wants to annex Transdniestria, but they’d probably like to see it as an independent country. This is a “screw Russia” hashtag. Transdniestria is extremely pro-Russia and ~8

#freeGeorgia

This is similar. When Georgia declared its independence from the USSR, South Ossetia and Abkhazia refused to go along because Georgian nation-building said that everyone in Georgia and had to speak the Georgian language. It didn’t give legal status to any other language and to this day, it still does not.

The Mingrelians, the Abaz, the Bats, the Svans, and the Laz people all suffer from this, but I think the Abaz have negotiated some sort of autonomy.

The Abaz speak a NW Caucasian language like Abkhaz.

The Bats speak a NE Caucasian language like Chechen.

The Svans, Mingrelians, and Laz all speak Kartvelian languages like Georgian.

All of these language except Abaz are in pretty bad shape.

The Abkhaz and South Ossetians declared independence from the new Georgia. Georgia attacked. Brief wars followed in which the South Ossetians and Abkhaz both won. Russia moved in and put peacekeepers there and these have been frozen conflicts ever since. The Abkhaz for a long time wanted to be part of Russia but now they want to be independent. The South Ossetians have always wanted to join North Ossetia and be part of Russia, but Russia doesn’t want them. Russia would be ok with their going independent. Both have declared themselves independent countries. This is also a “screw Russia” hashtag.

The LPR & DPR ain’t even real

All Ukrainians say this. They say there’s no such thing as the LPR and the DPR. However, they have both declared their independence and a few states have recognized their independence. They want either independence or to be annexed to Russia, except Russia doesn’t want them. Russia doesn’t want one more inch of land. After how the Ukrainians have behaved towards them for eight years, easily 9

Fuck the internet research agency especially

This is the company that supposedly interfered in our elections in 2016, except they never did. Explain to me how running ads for everything from Far Left to Far Right and everything in between is “interfering in our elections.” They ran as many leftwing ads as rightwing ads. “They’re trying to divide us” the Demotards say.

LOL bring it on. What’s wrong with a divided country? We’re not divided enough. Too many people support US foreign policy, way too many tards are woketards, and way to many people vote Republican. More division, please! Bring it on! And anyway, how does “dividing the country” elect Trump? Why doesn’t it just as easily elect Clinton? The whole “election interference” thing makes no sense. Steele is a glownigger* and a professional liar, like all glowies*.

allah akbar

Marriage of convenience. A lot of radical Islamists are now anti-Russian. Many of the hardline Islamist Chechens who fled Putin’s second war fled to Ukraine where they were welcomed with open arms by their fellow Russia-haters. In addition, many Al Qaeda types in Syria are now anti-Russian because Russia has been killing them for years. A Chechen Ukrainian reporter recently went on the nation’s largest TV station and made a commentary where he said that we need to not just kill all the Russians but kill all the Russian children. It’s the “nits become lice” theory. A lot of genocidaires use this theory to justify crimes against children.

*Glownigger, glowie: An Alt Right term. Not a racist term as it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Black people in any way. This is just another example of how the meaning of nigger is branching out into all sorts of weird meanings that have nothing to do with Blacks. Whites call each other niggers all the time as a joke. It means something like “bro” but with a macho tilt. How on Earth is that anti-Black.

Basically a fed, especially one sent to infiltrate groups, especially Far Right groups. Now has an expanded meaning of any spy for the West, as for the CIA, MI6, etc. They’re all glowies now. A lot of US propagandist reporters, especially from AP, are now considered glowies. There are two AP reporters that were right on the scenes with every White Helmets poison gas hoax in Syria.

They have now moved over to Ukraine where they are covering Nazi “White Helmets” style hoaxes in Ukraine, especially the fake maternity hospital and theater bombings, both of which were done as false flags to blame Russia by the Nazis.

Operation Mockingbird revealed that almost all of the top US news reporters were actually working for the CIA. The CIA infiltrated every paper in the country. The CIA promised to shut it down, but my info is that they have continued Operation Mockingbird, but it’s off the books as a “black ops” budget item. The US spends $30 billion/year on CIA/DIA black budget operations that are completely without oversight.

Other races that imitate ghetto Blacks are called niggers – wiggers, chiggers, miggers, spiggers, etc. This includes rappers, etc. It’s often an insult but I suppose a lot of people into this lifestyle think it’s a compliment. It doesn’t have much to do with Black people. When used in the sense of dark-skinned non-Blacks it’s a bit more insulting – sand niggers for Arabs, snow niggers for Russians, prairie niggers for Canadian Indians, seaniggers for Polynesians, curryniggers for Indians.

Alt Left: This War, Like Most Wars, Is All About Economics (All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars)

You would think of idiot humans realized this, they would not support war so much, but this is the dirty little secret that the masters of the world never let you in on: wars are not usually about any threat to the nation. They’re often simply about economics.

Capitalism Says It’s OK To Kill People for Money

Capitalism is a system where people literally kill people for money. Furthermore, capitalism says that killing people for money is an absolute necessity. Capitalist fanboys keep saying there can be a capitalism that is not about killing people for money, but it never shows up. The profit motive uber alles and the neoliberal state are all about killing people for money. If a corporation has to kill people to make money, it does it. If the state tries to stop a corporation from killing people for money, the corporation fights with all of its might.

You guys wonder why I’m a socialist. Well, for one thing, I don’t agree with killing people for money. That is, I don’t agree that money is more important than people’s health and lives. So that sets me against the entire capitalist system right there.

You Never Have Freedom of the Press Under Capitalism

Furthermore, under capitalism, a large section of the population is brainwashed into corporate  thinking and either believes the constant lies of the corporations or thinks that killing people for money is a-ok. And the media under capitalism is always controlled by the largest corporations who are always pretty reactionary so you never really have freedom of press under capitalism.

In capitalism, freedom of the press belongs to anyone who owns a printing press. Which is just about no one. The necessity of advertising means that any media outlet that goes against the corporate state will die on the vine. Generally left media outlets have to be propped up somehow either by the state or by wealthy interests. Marshall Field was a progressive multimillionaire in Chicago who used his money to finance relatively liberal newspapers.

With the advent of the Internet, everyone now owns his own printing press, including yours truly! This means that for the first time in forever, the rich and the corporations have lost their monopoly over the media. The reaction has been extreme. Although the state itself doesn’t censure much, it has simply outsourced the censorship to the private sector to get around the 1st Amendment restrictions on censorship.

For some odd reasons, all of the large Internet and social media corporations have decided to become mouthpieces for the CIA, the State Department and the National Security State. How does this work? Does the state blackmail these guys? Does it point a gun to its head? Or do the interests of US corporations always naturally line up perfectly with the interests of the CIA, the State Department and the National Security State?

As those the purpose of those three is to advance the power and violence of the state in the interests of corporations, it would seem that the alliance of corporations and state is not accidental. Corporations rely on the corporate state to retain their money, power, and stuff. The state works for the corporations by providing the power of economic and military violence to advance corporate interests. And a completely controlled media acts as stenographer for the corporate state and the corporations themselves.

Those Hundreds of US Military Bases All Over the World Are Meant to Prop up the Dollar

I don’t think all this wild thrashing about of the declining US empire going to work. I think the West is writing its death warrant. The whole base of US hegemony is the US dollar as fiat currency for the whole world. All of those US military bases are meant to prop up US hegemony and the dollar as fiat currency. And the dollar’s mastery is enforced by all of those military bases.

In recent years, every single country that went off the dollar got attacked by the US either with sanctions, coups or coup attempts, assassinations, contras, economic wars, or even military attacks. Those bases are a gun pointed at the head of every country telling them that if they go off the dollar, they will get attacked.

The power of the US military is what props up the dollar, not the other way around. If you want to know the reason for those insanely expensive defense budgets we pass every year, this is it right there.

The 800 billion defense budget, which every Democrat votes for, even the most progressive like Sanders and AOC, is what props up the dollar and allows US hegemony over the world.

The US rules the world right now and has since the fall of the USSR. Of course we let it go to our head in terms of hubris in the manner of a Greek tragedy. Pride goeth before the fall. Total power leads to extreme arrogance and the thought that one can get away with anything. It also leads to extremely desperate measures if one’s position on top is threatened by anyone. The US will fight tooth and nail to prevent a multipolar world. It’s our worst enemy.

Nazi Safaris in Ukraine: Separatist Militiaman in the Donbass Fighting Ukrainian Forces Speaks Out – “Some Are Willing to Pay to Hunt Insurgents”

Repost, but it seems to be quite topical. This is why Putin went in. Originally he just wanted to free the Donbass, but then he realized that after he did that, NATO would just build up the Ukies even stronger on the border of the new states and the menace would go on. So he realized that he would have to go all the way to Kiev to kill the head of the snake.

Great piece from Global Research.

As a basic principle we refrain from showing videos in which prisoners of war are questioned. However with this article we make an exception, because the video confirms what the interviewed insurgent states as well in the following text: that the Ukrainian army commits war crimes and buries their own dead in mass graves. So it is worthwhile to read both the text and to watch the video – two completely independent sources.

An interview with an insurgent from the Eastern Ukraine. He lives and fights in an area where the Ukrainian army was shattered three weeks ago, close to the Russian border in the Donetsk region. He stayed quiet about his name to me, but he was a wealthy businessman before the war. The interview was recorded mid-August and translated into German directly and from German. Some accuracy might have been lost when the German was translated to English.

Recorded by: Ilja Degtjarov

Why have you become an insurgent?

Because I do not agree with this Government and the things that are happening. I do not agree with this attitude towards the people. I could not bear anymore to watch the people being tormented. Therefore, I have become an insurgent even though I’m already 53 years old. I do not agree that they came into my region. I will protect my trees, stones, houses, children, women, and everything else.

Where do you draw your optimism? You fight against the Ukrainian army and thousands of foreign mercenaries. The whole West backs the Ukraine. Why do you remain optimistic that you gain the upper hand?

We have a heroic people who have never knelt down. The victory will be ours, and if we still die, then it’s better standing than on our knees. We have our vision, we have something that we want to fight for. Our grandchildren will grow up here. And if we die ourselves, our grandchildren will live as one must live, that is in a free country.

In much of the Western mass media it is reported that in reality the insurgents are composed of Russian special units or parts of the regular Russian army. What do you think?

We are not fighting for Russia, we are fighting for our people. Russia is a free country, a country where one can freely live without submissive bows to the United States and the EU. We know how you can live in Russia, and we want to live like that as well. We do not want to bow before anyone, or worship anybody. We are a free people.

What do you think is wrong with the new Ukrainian Government? What caused this movement in the Donbass region?

These people have come to power through blood. Now they want to drown the whole Ukraine in the blood. Although they talk about the “free Ukraine” this country was never free, it always had to be subordinate to someone. Now the Ukraine is knuckling under to the United States of America, a country that suppresses all countries and is inciting wars everywhere. Actually, this country [USA] should be eliminated completely from the Atlas. Well, for the time being we will reach Poland, there we will wash our boots and then we will go on.

Back to the previous question: are the insurgents primarily local citizens or are they mostly Russian volunteers or even the nasty Russian army, dressed up with foreign uniforms, as some claim?

Insurgents are people who just yesterday were working with a hoe and a spade, who cared for their gardens. Then they laid down their tools and now they protect their gardens with machine guns. We are freedom-loving people. Even women, children, and seniors go fight with us.

How would you describe the ideology of the people who have come to power in Kiev? In the West they say, of course, that they are flawless Democrats who simply want to be different than Russians. Would you call them Democrats or perhaps something else?

I understand democracy in the way that one can express his will; and not that someone else speaks on your behalf. I still remember how you voted about the separation [of the USSR]: at that time also, nobody cared to listen to us. Even now they are pursuing a unilateral policy. They want to see only what happens on the other side [in the Western Ukraine].

They are unaware of the suffering of our mothers and fathers. This is not a democracy but fascism in its worst form. Not even fascists have killed children in this way, destroyed houses, poisoning the land with ecologically dangerous bombs. They bombard us with white phosphorous bombs and cluster munitions.

They bombard us with cluster bombs, so that millions of small metal particles fly in all directions and on whole streets, everyone is killed, including women and children. After such bombings nothing is left, not even animals, but only burnt earth. Is this democracy? Do they fight this way for democracy? No, that is fascism.

Who fights on the side of the Ukrainian army? What is meant by foreigners?

We had prisoners of war from Poland. There are very many foreign instructors, grenade launchers. Our [Ukrainian] soldiers do not want to fight, according to the prisoners of war, thus they are threatening them and their families with death. In the Ukrainian army they are even killing the wounded.

So people in the vicinity of Kramatorsk were massacred, their organs have been retrieved; then their bodies were buried with tractors and compacted on top with armored cars. So they are hiding the evidence of their crimes. This also applies to Krasnodon: they destroyed their own people.

The insurgents, the so-called “terrorists”, have left no one wounded in the lurch. They also help the civilians, the sick, all those in need.

So there are actually facts that they retrieved organs, apparently to sell them?

Yes. There is someone they can ask about this, can’t they? [ask to another insurgent]. We have people from Kramatorsk who observed that.

Have you seen it with your own eyes?

Yes, with my own eyes.

(Another insurgent in the background): We cannot reveal our sources.

You do not need to do. Such information before was at the level of “someone has heard that someone has heard.” Why, yes! That has been seen even by our reconnaissance. Even prisoners of war confirm this. Bodies were buried with excavators.

Apart from the Polish, who else is fighting [against you]? If we link up into their radio conversations, we hear foreign languages. But I don’t know which ones. And the Poles are found everywhere.

Why did they come? Are they mercenaries or regular units, sent here by force?

These are people, among others, who are even willing to pay to be allowed to hunt people. They pay that they may fire on living people with sniper rifles. If there are no insurgents, they shoot civilians. For example, there was a man driving to work with his bicycle, and they shot off his head just for fun.

Do you mean a specific case?

Yes, a week ago. The man was completely harmless. A sniper shot him for fun.

(Another insurgent in the background): We’ve seen it, it was a hundred meters away from us. He was just going to work.

I have read about such cases, but I have not heard directly of that.

That was in Krasnopartisansk.

Why do the new leaders consider themselves entitled to kill such vast amounts of people? There used to whining all over the world that allegedly some students on the Maidan were beaten. Now thousands are dying and nobody cares. Why? Why the double moral standards – what ideology is it?

[About] these double standards, I understand the following: Ukraine executes commands from the West; it has no will of its own. Ukraine is eliminating people who are in the way for the coal and gas production of the Americans. They do not need our people here and therefore destroy them area-wide. It is not a question of eliminating some of us, it is about annihilating us comprehensively, using Grad [rocket] launchers, mines, and surface-to-surface systems [ballistic missiles].

There are bombs which leave a crater three meters deep and eight meters wide. Within a radius of 300 meters nothing is left alive. Thus they destroy cities. Women and children are hiding in cellars, and they burn them there with flame-throwers and explosives. They do not “only” kill families, but inhabitants of entire apartment buildings. The killing of insurgents’ wives is particularly enjoyed. Is it even possible not to fight against those guys? We are simply obliged to neutralize this contagious infection that is spreading in our country.

If we consider the situation realistically: at the end of 2013, the Ukrainian army had about 4,000 armored cars according to official data. The insurgents have only a few of them, so you cannot compare the forces. This huge mass [the Ukrainian army] is overwhelming, and additionally there are these, for example, Polish armored cars. How can you beat this endless mass?

They fight for the money or out of fear that their families may be hurt if they fight badly or something similar. We fight for the lives of our children, for our country. That is a big difference. They fight without a vision and we have one. This will always win. We do not feed ourselves as well, but our spirit is stronger than theirs. No doubt we will win because we are fighting for our people, while they came to our region to take it away from us.

Were there cases that the Ukrainian army shelled buses or cars in which were clearly refugees?

Several times, even if it was written in large letters [on cars] that there were children. They shot at big crowds before customs houses. They fired at a seven-kilometer queue with grenade launchers and howitzers. People were running in all directions and left their stuff. As a slightly different example, next to the border an alarm system responded very loud at something; the children from the Donetsk region, from Kramatorsk, thought that they would soon be bombarded. Which psyche can such children have?

What else is the Ukrainian army doing that you definitely do not know in the West?

Even people from the Stone Age have not done anything like these people in the 21st century. They torture, kill people, break arms, cut off fingers, chop off heads, and see how long you can still walk without a head. Everything you can imagine as horrible at all, they already do. We speak the same language, we had the same ABC-books at the school, so it is incomprehensible to me through what influence they became the way they are.

Can you give specific examples? Without a name.

They shot at refugees, i.e. people who are already scared, with grenade launchers, with machine guns, as in a shooting gallery if people were clearly visible on a street. They did not shot to warn, but to kill.

By the side of the road cars are lying around, and they [Ukrainian army] do not allow the bodies to be picked up. Accordingly it smelled terrible due to decomposition of the bodies. Only after the liberation of the area could the corpses be removed. This is how they are fighting against children, against women; and yet, once they see armed men, they lay down their arms and surrender with a white flag.

Regarding Boeing [MH17]: In the West it was proclaimed immediately without ifs and buts that the insurgents shot down the aircraft. [They said] Putin had given both the money and the BUK [missile] system, so Putin is to blame personally. Anything you can say?

I know nothing about that, but it is clear that the insurgents would never shoot down an airliner. Insurgents are fighting for people’s lives, and it is unimaginable to save people with one hand and execute people with the other.

Were there cases where the Ukrainian army shelled towns and villages when there was no insurgency at all?

This is their action model: first they use mines and missiles and then they penetrate the cities. First they destroy and then they begin to “protect” the destroyed. They destroy absolutely everything. They destroy the people as one chops down a forest. They do not care whether it’s women or children, disabled people in wheelchairs, or whether there are insurgents in the city or not.

What use is it to shoot peaceful cities and civilians? What do they want to achieve with this?

We have city here called Molodogwardejsk. Although there are no rebels at all, this town has been destroyed from a safe distance with howitzers. For them it is simply to destroy cities and leave a desert. Why they do it, you have to ask them yourself.

In the meantime we can not even trust their white flag now. Under the white flag, they perform regrouping of their forces and then begin to shoot again. You can no longer trust them – neither the army nor the Government. They are the scum of humanity. When you look at their resumes, it becomes clear that they belong in a zoo. They will act this way until they sit in cages. It is only then that children won’t have to be afraid of them any more. That would be my only wish.

How can you explain that even in some areas of the Southeast [of Ukraine], the junta has currently de facto won, for example, in Dnepropetrovsk? Why have large parts of the population changed sides ideologically? Why isn’t there any significant resistance?

Our country is poor. At first poor people earned money from participating at the Maidan. You just went there [to Kiev] to earn money. There they brought people in in order to create large crowds, I would say herds of people. They were given drugs there, e.g. in tea. By the way, after their return home, we detected withdrawal symptoms in them.

In addition, these people received brainwashing at Maidan. Only the people from Donbass were not going there; they had to work in this industrial area to earn money for the whole country, feeding the country. Ever since then, they still cannot subdue us. We have endured it as long as we could. But at some point we could not any longer, which led to the uprising. It was always like this in Russia: they harness slowly, but they ride fast.

What will happen with these cities [outside of the Donbass] now? Certainly one can assume that the vast majority of them are also against the Kiev Government, but this majority is suppressed and stays silent. But in my opinion, they should also liberated, otherwise they will be taken sooner or later, so that they support the junta. Then they are lost forever.

We will liberate these towns as well. We will not punish anyone; everybody can have their own opinion. We will present our point of view, but will not impose our opinion. If someone wants to follow us, go ahead, but if not, then don’t. They can simply go to lead their lives, to work.

It is summer. It is still warm and the streets are well passable. But in winter it is cold, un-asphalted roads will become impassable dirt, so that you can hardly deliver humanitarian aid from Russia. In many cities there is now no electricity, no water, no heating. How will you survive?

We are a strong people. We are used to difficulties. We will overcome these obstructions as well, whether in rain or snow. We are serious about what we have started, and we will not stop now. We will fight to the end; there is no way back.

Is there evidence that Americans sit in the military administration and give orders?

I can say nothing about that. Everyone does his particular job here, and since I’m not a scout, I am not able to answer the question.

To what extent does the local population support the insurgents: Is it 9

You can judge for yourself: people harvest potatoes and give us some of it. People harvest three tomatoes in the garden and give us two of them.

If we look back to the times when there were no armed insurgents but the junta had already proceeded disproportionately, how did people fight against them back then?

They fought with sticks against machine guns. They quit their jobs, left their families, and came to us from everywhere. The regime’s crimes also affected those who were neutral. Everyone adopted a new mindset and protected their country. Many changed their bad habits, such as abstaining from alcohol. Among the insurgents, generally, iron discipline reigns, and it is strictly forbidden to drink alcohol. The insurgents are not paid. They fight for an idea. They eat what they are given from the civilians. All are highly motivated, but the sooner this mess comes to an end, the better.

What has changed in the towns and villages under control of the insurgents? For example, I read that they close casinos and pursue drug traffickers…

The Ukrainian police fought for 23 years against such phenomena as corruption and drugs but without success. We fixed it immediately. Drugs have become an absolute rarity. Something is changing in people’s minds, and even alcoholics and drug addicts are changing their habits. In our shops you can buy vodka easily, but nobody does. Addicts tell themselves – maybe as a joke – that they will take no more drugs until victory. Anyway, there are no more drugs.

Within the liberated towns, factories and coal mines are destroyed; there is no work. How can you live there?

We will rebuild it as we did after the Great Patriotic War. Our enthusiasm will be enough for that. Even if our generation lives in poverty, the next generation will live better. We are not afraid.

From the Russian side you receive humanitarian aid, which is generally known. But who delivers this assistance: the state, any parties, the church, private individuals?

You have access to these packages. Take pictures, the packages are labeled.

In the store for humanitarian aid I’ve seen many packages by the Communist Party, from churches…

Also from veterans of the Afghan war, Chernobyl veterans,  people who know what war is like.

Do Western organizations also provide humanitarian assistance in Southeast?

And how! They deliver mines and projectiles for the Ukrainian army. In this way they help the Ukraine, and this assistance helps them to destroy normal people.

So there is no real humanitarian aid [from the West]?

It does not exist; I’ve never seen any. The same applies for medical help.

Alt Left: Why Should I Believe Things That Aren’t True?

Polar Bear: Yesterday at work, a Black woman defended a worthless Black and a woman with mental illness defended a guy with at least three mental illnesses. We all have biases, to see beyond them is rare. Men are more into truth and logic, parting the sea of emotion. Women are mostly swept away like ragdolls by the current in a flood of tears.

That’s tribal thinking. I don’t want to fall into that. I’ve often said about White nationalists that I can’t understand why the death of a White by a Black is more important to them than the death of a decent Black person by a Black. Why? Because they’re a member of my tribe? Did I know them? Did they do anything for me? They’d probably dislike me if I met them? Do I get a check from White Central Control every month so I should support all Whites? Why should I feel more for this guy just because he’s White. But he’s just like me! He’s White and I’m White! Goes the argument. And…?

This is supposed to be important or something? We’re not the same. He’s dead and I’m not. Why does his death diminish me more than the death of some good Black person? I just can’t fathom this type of thinking. Of course, being on the Left, I spent a lot of my time working my way out of tribal thinking. And I’ve always been a dissident and an iconoclast who was on the outs with mainstream opinion on most things. So I don’t care about peer pressure because I’m used to believing stuff that 8

Why Should I Believe Things That Aren’t Even True?

I dunno. Why should I believe something that’s not even true? I keep asking myself this over and over when I try to find out what actually happened, for good or for ill, for my side of the bad guys. I can’t think of any possible reason why I should believe lies about…much of anything! Everyone seems to be happy to, but it’s not for me.

Setting aside the metaphysical and religious where we all have our egoistic reasons to believe in what may well be falsehoods, and setting aside what one believes about oneself and society at large, I want to believe what’s true and disbelieve what’s not true. It’s ok to tell yourself as many lies as you have to about yourself and others to get along.

You may need to tell yourself enough lies to make it through the day without killing yourself, have a peaceful sleep, and look at yourself in the mirror in the morning without wanting to smash it. You may have to lie about others, saying they are wonderful when they are not, playing down their bad qualities, etc. You may have to lie about society by saying it’s the best of possible worlds when in fact your own life may be a shit sandwich to be swallowed whole, dammit! These are the prosaic, quotidian, metaphysical, social, personal, and religious aspects of life.

What I want to know the truth about is what I see on TV. The news, the facts, the everyday local, national, and political issues (in a word, Politics) that make our world go round. And in science too, I wish to know what is true and what is not true. Why should I believe a bunch of crap just because it makes me feel good or because I want my guys to be pure and the other guys to be evil? Forget it.

I’m not that weak! I can handle it if what I want to be true is not and vice versa. It’s ok. I can deal. I can handle it if my guys act bad and the other side acts good, although not too much please. But I support Assad in Syria and I’m the first to admit that he acts pretty damn bad. But this is what I wanted to know about him – precisely how bad he was and in which ways and what aspects of his purported evil were not true.

Believe it or not, the CIA does not want to believe any lies or so I have been told. There is what the CIA puts out for the masses, which is often a pile of the biggest steaming pile of crap you’ve ever seen. This is often put out via the media and the CIA itself even calls this material disinformation. The CIA people in charge of it know it’s all lies but they don’t care.

Then there is what the CIA puts out for itself. The CIA does not want to believe any crap or falsehoods about the world and the things it is analyzing. They have to know the truth, dammit! If you begin your analysis from a point of falsehood, your analysis is already flawed. And the CIA is all about proper analysis.

I’m on the Left, but I’m willing to acknowledge that leftwing regimes have done some pretty bad things. I support the Democrats, but I’m more than willing to acknowledge how awful they are. I’m a man, but I’m willing to acknowledge how generally awful we are as humans and how terribly we behave towards other humans (on the other hand, I still love being a man).

I’m White, but I’m willing to acknowledge that we Whites have treated non-Whites pretty terribly. I’m straight, but I acknowledge how homophobia has seriously harmed gays in the past. None of this is threatening to me. Why should it be. You have to know the dark side if you wish to walk in the light. By learning of the bad tendencies of Whites, men, straights, etc., I can see what I am vulnerable to and generally try to act in the opposite way. You can’t understand good until you understand evil and that they are two sides of the same coin.

Further, I don’t wish to be a hypocrite. Face it, humans are hypocrites. It’s just what we are, flat out, full stop, period. Perhaps we have to be this way. But hypocrisy seems to be one of the worst aspects of being human. There’s almost no way to justify it morally.

What will happen if my guys (the good guys) are losing and their guys (the bad guys) are winning? Nothing. The world will simply be a pile of shit, but I’m perfectly ok with that because that seems to be the dispensation for most of my life. I can be perfectly happy believing that the world is a pile of shit and that most people are complete idiots. Doesn’t mess up my day at all. I don’t need to believe that the world is some wonderful place for me to eke out some meager happiness in it.

Also, I’m used to depressing and disappointing things in my life. You might say it’s my life story. So when something lousy happens, it’s not a shock to me. It’s just the same old same old. That life often seems rather lousy is not that upsetting to me. I’ve felt this way forever. I simply try to escape from it by doing fun things all day so I can forget about all the lousiness. I focus on other things.

Just to show you how unbiased I am, on the Russian sites I am on, I am regarded as a pest and a troll because I often post things that go against the current narrative. The news de jour on those sites typically portrays Russian advances as much more advanced than I think they are. I chime in that no, we have not advanced that far at all. I share maps from viciously anti-Russian sites not because I like them but because I think they are accurate.

My brother often says, “Aha!” and thinks he wins arguments against me because I admitted that my side did something bad – lied, killed people, tortured people, acted horribly. According to my brother and most NPC’s, if you admit that your side did something bad, you automatically lost the argument because he will never admit that about his side.

Because my brother is a typical NPC. His side is pure good and the other side is pure evil. Anything that goes against that world view is “enemy propaganda.” He dismisses anything from the Left, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Belarus, Lebanon, Iraq, or China as automatically false if it doesn’t back up his views.

These are enemy nations and he rejects everything they say unless they make themselves look bad and his side look good, in which case they are somehow correct. Just about everyone is exactly like he is. Keep in mind that he has a 140+ IQ and a Master’s Degree. He’s also just about the most closed-minded person I’ve ever met, with the possible exception of my father, a Cold War liberal who also had a Master’s Degree.

Most Americans probably can’t even find Ukraine on a map. How do you expect them to be able to think critically about it?

Alt Left: All Dissident or Opposition Media in the US Is Effectively Banned

transformer: “Protecting our freedom” is the standard justification for anything our troops do, regardless of what it is. It doesn’t fool anyone but the naïve, but it sounds better than “protecting our prestige” or “protecting our financial interests,” which would be closer to the truth a lot of the time.

I used to be a blind patriot that believed that the troops were fighting for freedom but around 2001, I started to question that belief. Since then, I have researched alternative news articles and opinions on the internet about the true nature of American foreign policy, the military, the CIA and the government. I don’t believe that anymore.

https://warontherocks.com/2020/05/this-memorial-day-lets-finally-start-having-an-honest-national-conversation-about-military-service/

Exactly. And they’re able to fool everyone or at least the majority. Unfortunately, it reliably fools anywhere from 55-7

Now with the Internet we finally have media that is anti-US foreign policy for the first time ever because the entire media has been on board with all US foreign policy from Day One. Foreign policy is run by the Deep State and the Deep State is simply “the foreign policy establishment of the United States.” The US media is actually a part of the Deep State – the propaganda arm.

Notice how they are frantically trying to throw all of the dissident media off the Net and banning them from all of the social media platforms? We don’t have a free press in this country. If all the dissident media gets banned from the Net and thrown off of all of the social media platforms, how is that a free press? It’s not! The main way they are doing this is that everyone who tells the truth about US foreign policy is said to be a Russians/Iranian/Venezuelan/Nicaraguan agent. All the dissident media telling the truth about our policy in these places is accused of being “state-run disinformation programs.” That or they are just banned outright.

By the way, as soon as all those big social media sites including Google went up, they all went full-blown Deep State? Why? Do they hold a gun to these guys’ heads? Are they being blackmailed? Threatened? Or is it shared ideology? All I know is it sure is strange and how new major media that shows up very quickly becomes a Deep State outlet.

The Deep State runs this damned country. The attitude of the Deep State is that “Presidents come and go, but we will always be running things behind the scenes.”

Alt Left: On Capital Flight

James Schipper: It is certainly possible to transfer savings abroad, and that is not beneficial for ordinary citizens, but a lot of what rich people do is not beneficial to ordinary people. More important than what rich people do abroad is the income distribution.

Suppose that Ruritania is a closed economy. In a closed economy there can’t be capital flight of course. Let’s further suppose that the richest 1

Capitalists can certainly carry out an investors’ strike. If they really dislike or distrust a leftwing government, they can refuse to invest, but that is possible also in a closed economy. We shouldn’t become obsessed with balance-of-payment problems.

Concerns about balance-of payment are mainly justified when a country has limited export capacity but has to import a lot of essentials. In such a case, it may not only be necessary to have rigid controls on capital outflows but also to restrict the import of luxuries. If a family has limited income, then it should not allow dad to buy expensive cigars or mom to buy designer cloths.

Let’s take 4 rich Peruvians, Pedro, Pablo, Diego and Carlos. Each year, Pedro transfers 25,000 USD to a foreign bank. Pablo imports luxuries worth 25,000 USD each year. Diego employs 5 Peruvian servants with that amount. Carlos adds 25,000 to his Peruvian savings account each year.

There is no difference between Pedro and Pablo. Diego employs Peruvians, but the services produced by those employees are for him. Those 5 servants could be providing services for ordinary Peruvians. It is never enough to look at job creation. We should also look at what those jobs produce and for whom. Carlos is the only one who is doing what rich people should be doing: saving money in order to reduce conspicuous consumption and free up resources for investment.

If capital flight is no big deal, why do nations get so upset about it. Venezuela was losing $50 billion a year to capital flight, money that could have been invested in the economy. It was all going straight to Miami and Houston. Venezuela was so upset about this that they put in capital controls to keep people from moving money out of the country. But every time you do that, you seem to end up with an underground money economy and a dual exchange rate.

Capital flight -> capital controls -> dual exchange rates with black market exchange rate diabolically manipulated by the opposition in Houston precisely to ruin the economy -> fixed exchange rate instead of floating the exchange rate -> wild inflation.

And the capitalists went on strike anyway an refused to put any money into the economy. They ran their factories and firms at 5

The capitalists wave the threat of capital flight over the head of any leftwing government like a Sword of Damocles. They just did it was Castillo in Peru, and it forced him to reign in many of his more leftwing proposals. The main thing they need to do in Peru is nationalize the mining business. Mining is extremely profitable in Peru but all of the money goes to foreign corporate carpetbaggers and parasites and the Peruvians themselves hardly get a nickel.

Castillo merely threatened to renegotiate the contracts with the foreign companies so Peru got more of the money, and the oligarchy went nuts. That is because while the foreign-owned mining industry is disastrous for your average Peruvian, the Peruvian oligarchy, like most in the region, is a comprador oligarchy. They make a lot of money off of those mining contracts somehow or other, don’t ask me how. No matter how much the country itself is getting screwed by foreign corporations raping the country, somehow the oligarchy always positions itself between the corporations and the nation and makes money off of the pillage.

They Peruvian oligarchy said if you try to do the tiniest leftwing thing, we will take all our money out of the country. They also said that that would tank the stock market. That is another sword they wave over our heads. “We will tank the stock market!” They’re basically terrorists. “If you don’t give us what we want, we will use these economic bombs to blow up the economy!

Alt Left: The FBI Is Full of Shit

This is the sort of thing I read for sheer kicks. That is a 152-page document called Child Molesters – A Behavioral Analysis For Law Enforcement Officers Investigating the Sexual Exploitation of Children by Acquaintance Molesters, written by the FBI’s top expert on child molestation, Kenneth Lanning. I read about this stuff because I am very interested in sex offenders and paraphilias. I’m a teleiophile, and I’ve never molested a kid, thank God. And I never got molested myself. Similarly, I know few people who got molested. It’s just something that interests me.

I will say though that that document is hard to get through. I’ve had it up there forever and I still haven’t gotten through it. Trying reading about  child molesters for 152 pages some time. It’s pretty hard to do and it gets to you after a bit.

About this paper, I don’t think too much of Lanning or his document.

The “Pedophile As a Word with No Meaning” Bullshit

First, he doesn’t seem to know what a pedophile is. He keeps lumping in pedophiles with a preference for small children who molest kids with men who engage in statutory rape with adolescents. The two crimes could hardly be more different, and people who commit them are often extremely different. Few pedophiles even have an interest in a 13 year old! There is no mention of hebephiles. There is no mention that it is quite normal for adult men to have sex with adolescent girls, as we’ve been doing it for 9

Second, he’s a pig. A real pig. A fed pig, by far the worst pigs of them all. I actually don’t mind a lot of local cops. But I truly despise feds.

He has an extreme attitude towards child pornography and claims that if a  pedophile is using a photo of a child to masturbate, it’s child porn! So a pedophile has an innocent photo of a kid in a bathtub taken by some doting parent. He’s using it to masturbate. According to Lanning, it automatically becomes child porn. Typical fed pig.

Further, he twists himself in endless circles trying to justify bans on child porn.

First of all, the real deal is a record of a crime. This is a fact.

It’s also a record of horrible abuse. This part is much less certain.

He says the child is victimized by having their photos passed around the world among pedophiles. I agree to a point. However, suppose the child has died? Sure, it’s a record of a crime, but so what? The victim is dead. As the victim is dead, they’re hardly being harmed by their photos being passed around. So there are issues with even the standard justification for making this stuff illegal.

The “Child Porn Is Whatever the Cops Think It Is” Bullshit

In the past 30 years, due to mass hysteria about the subject, courts have bent over backwards to endlessly redefine child pornography. It’s now like the feminist definition of rape – as big as the Atlantic Ocean, expanding all the time, and constantly changing so no one can even define it anymore. Child porn means whatever the pigs think it means. Rape means whatever some feminist thinks it means.

It turns out that if a pedophile has perfectly legal photos of nude kids, but writes lewd things on them or has balloons showing the child making lewd statements and he’s using this stuff to masturbate, it’s child porn! Oh, for God’s sake! Don’t these poor sods have a right to jerk off in peace? Life must be difficult enough for someone with an orientation like this. As you can see, the “photo of a crime” and “kid in the photo is being victimized as the material is used by pedophiles” arguments wash out completely in these cases.

Turns out we need to make up some new arguments to cover this stuff! When you have to keep making up all sorts of different arguments to keep something illegal as circumstances change, chances are the illegality of the behavior is on pretty shaky grounds.

He also agrees the pedophilic cartoons should be illegal, though once again, the child in the cartoon doesn’t even exist and is a fictional character.

By the same token, he wants 2-D CGI child porn to be illegal.

He also wants child sex dolls to be illegal.

And apparently though the FBI has said that child porn must depict nudity, Lanning argues that there are cases where a clothed child is somehow child porn.

Child porn fiction has always been legal until earlier this year, when suddenly it wasn’t. The fact that no one even knows the definition of child porn and that things are perfectly legal until one day the pigs decide without telling anyone that they’re not is very disturbing. Vague laws are unconstitutional. Laws that constantly change their definitions without being so changed by a Legislature or court are unconstitutional. In order to not break the law, you have to know what the law is. If there’s no way to even figure out what’s legal and what’s illegal and where the line between the two is, it’s unconstitutional.

I figure that anything that doesn’t show an actual kid being molested should be legal, sorry. If there’s no kid being molested, there’s no record of a crime. The kid in the pic is not being harmed either, as nothing is happening in the photo.

Anyway, Lanning ends up having to make up more and more new arguments to keep more stuff illegal. Turns out that photos of kids in bathtubs, child porn stories and cartoons, legitimate photos with lewd writing on them, and kid sex dolls all need to be declared child porn and be made illegal because…get this…pedophiles use them to masturbate! Apparently everything a pedophile uses to masturbate is illegal! That’s just crazy.

The “It Makes You Dangerous So It’s Illegal” Bullshit

He also says that all of these things that the pedophile uses to masturbate increase the likelihood that he will offend and molest a kid, which is justification for wanting to send them packing for everything they use to jerk off.

The problem is there’s no evidence of that.

In fact, what little evidence exists from countries in which child porn was legal for a while before being made illegal shows that molestation rates were quite a bit lower when the material was legal and went up significantly when it became illegal. I know the Netherlands is one such case. Apparently as rapists watch porn instead of raping, and porn makes rape rates go down, pedophiles look at child porn instead of molesting, and molestation rates go down.

The “It’s Illegal to Be Dangerous” Bullshit

So these guys are being arrested for the crime of “dangerousness.” I wasn’t aware it was against the law to be dangerous. Generally speaking, any law allowing cops to arrest people for “dangerousness” is unconstitutional. Of course there are some exceptions, mostly in terms of red flag laws.

In most other cases, you can’t be arrested because people think you’re dangerous. You can be as dangerous and scary as you want, and it’s perfectly legal.

However, if you are crazy and dangerous, we can hospitalize you.

The MDSO Ultra-Bullshit

This was the basis for the ridiculous and unconstitutional Mentally Disordered Sex Offender laws, where, incredibly enough, people who have served their full terms and paid their debts to society are re-sentenced just before they get out on the grounds that they are “dangerous.” Hell, 9

And because it’s perfectly legal to be a menace, the courts have twisted themselves into Octopus-like positions to claim that these men are both mentally ill and dangerous because if they are nuts and dangerous, we get to hospitalize you. These laws also operate on the bizarre and insane notions that locking these guys up for the rest of their lives after their terms are up on “dangerousness” chargers is…get this…not a form of punishment! Because if it was a form of punishment, it would be illegal!

I guess it’s actually a huge gift and a favor to these shmucks to lock them up for the rest of their lives on bullshit “dangerousness” charges.

Turns out that you don’t even have to be seriously mentally ill to get locked up this way. Most of these folks aren’t the tiniest bit crazy. All you have to have is a mental disorder that makes you dangerous! In practice, these are paraphilias, typically pedophilia. However, non-pedophiles keep getting socked away under these laws, particularly hebephiles.

The “Let’s Make Up Some Mental Disorders” Bullshit

Turns out that when you can’t figure out what paraphilia the person has, you get to make one up! So the hebephiles go down on Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified or Paraphilia NOS. Turns out that hebephilia is not even a documented paraphilia in the DSM. Turns out it’s not even mentally disordered behavior. Turns out it’s not even abnormal! Nevertheless, it can get you socked away forever on some bullshit law after you get out of prison.

One more thing. Locking people up as they are walking out the door for made-up crimes, or really for the crime they went down on, is obviously convicting someone twice for the same offense. They get around this by saying they’re not punishing these folks. Instead they’re doing them a favor!

This is just abuse. They’ve also invented brand new paraphilias where none exist. They’ve invented some Paraphilic Rape Disorder where the rapist is specifically and preferentially aroused by the thought of raping. Turns out this sort of thing is quite rare, and rapists, like most men, get turned on by a million things. Furthermore, the American Psychiatric Association says there’s no such thing as Paraphilic Rape Disorder. No problem! Just make up a diagnosis! They simply say the man has Paraphilia NOS, and he goes down on that. Who knows what Paraphilia NOS even means. As with child porn above, apparently it means whatever some prosecutor thinks it means!

Alt Left: Socialism for the Win!

Socialism beating all capitalist countries!

You guys wonder why some of us are socialists. Well, here ya go.

As you can see, Cuban socialism beats all of its capitalist competitors in administering COVID-19 vaccines to the largest number of people in the shortest period of time. And keep in mind that the US has, I believe, a GNP 15 times bigger than Cuba’s and it still totally failed in this competition. In addition, many of those countries have social democracies with attendant socialized medicine, but even that didn’t seem to do very well against socialist planning in the health sector. Cuba beat the UK, Europe and North America as a whole, and the combined groups of high and upper middle low income countries.

I don’t have anything against socialized medicine in social democracies, but it does seem to fair worse against a pure Communist system. And in the UK and parts of Europe, public health is under relentless attack by the capitalists under the rubric of austerity and budget cuts.

The UK in particular has been devastated by these cuts which the Tories have been doing for decades now. Nevertheless, the idiot Brits appear to be ready to march off to vote Tory once again in the next election. The entire media combined to promote the Tories and destroy Labor’s left candidate. The current candidate is a centrist named Starmer and he’s so bad, he loses to pathetic Tories like the clown Boris Johnson. But hey, at least Starmer cleaned out the antisemites in the party! That’s all that matters, right Jews. You all would rather have a damned Tory government than a left Labor government unfriendly to your precious little hate state over there.

I’m not sure about the rest of Europe, but I know that public health has been devastated in Greece. The Left Syriza ran on an anti-austerity program but changed and went Centrist as soon as they got in, supposedly due to “forces beyond their control.”

This shows how hard it is to change the system absent an actual revolution as happened in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Without a truly revolutionary party as we had and have in those countries, the forces of capitalism will simply assert themselves and any Left candidate will be boxed in. This is already happening to Castillo in Peru, who finds his options limited more and more every week by the forces of the military, the big capitalists, the media, and the population in media, which is really all the same thing and could be called the Peruvian oligarchy or in US terms, the Peruvian Deep State.

And we can see how this is happening in the US as Biden progressively scales down his promises. At first he rejected Sanders’ Medicare for All, though it has majority support. Then he rejected Sanders’ free college education, a staple in many countries, including places like Mexico! In its stead he offered free community college. Well, he just got rid of that, too. What’s next, Joe? Free ice cream on Sunday?

Really, I don’t blame him. America is still a terrifyingly reactionary country, and in fact it is nearly a fascist country as about half the population is perfectly willing to vote for fascism and the Republican party is now an undemocratic authoritarian fascist party along the lines of the Latin American Right. It follows because the Latin American Right is run by the oligarchies that run those countries, and increasingly, the US is also an oligarchy and is no longer a democracy at all.

Nor are our elections free and fair. They’ve been hopelessly corrupted since the advent of computerized voting and gerrymandering and serious obstacles placed in the way of voting means that we are absolutely not a democratic country anymore.

Democratic countries do not allow partisan gerrymandering, attempts to steal elections, obstacles placed to discourage voting, and open theft of elections via computerized voting machines. I wonder if we ever had a democracy in this blighted country. Perhaps from 1965-2000, we had a pretty democratic system, but under Reagan, the Justice Department under Sessions interfered to keep voting restrictions against Blacks in while putting Blacks who worked for voting rights in jail. The FBI did this, if you can believe that. And you wonder why I despise feds so much.

Alt Left: Nothing Worse Than a Fed

Tamerlane: FBI is even worse when compared to the police.

They definitely have more psychopaths than sociopaths in their ranks, possibly due to being 1 SD more intelligent than cops in terms of IQ, on average.

They enjoy using the powers the state gives them in creating plots and targeting vulnerable members of society. Sometimes the sick fucks run COINTELPRO just for the fun of it.

They also seem to employ a different kind of psychopath, the more sneaky and cowardly variety.

I’m not ecstatic about cops in general. I guess I feel about them the way I do about Jews and Blacks. I don’t really like them as a group, but I like a lot of individuals from the group. I just don’t like the group as a whole, as a collective. But all of those groups have perfectly fine people in them. And my longest relationship of 5 1/2 years was with a Jewish woman. And she agreed with most everything I said about Jews too. There are cops and there are pigs. There are Blacks and there are niggers. There are Jews and there are kikes. Two different things.

I really hate feds. There are some who only go after serial killers and child killers and murderers in general and whatnot, and I’m just fine with those.

Not real keen on the rest of them.

Not only that, but the FBI works with the CIA on their shenanigans. The FBI framed Libya for the Lockerbie bombing. Libya absolutely did not do that Lockerbie bombing. That’s settled by now. But the FBI deliberately framed Libya because the FBI is like the CIA in that they are crooked spooks who work for US foreign policy.

In Brazil, the FBI assisted in the “lawfare” that took down Brazil’s Lula. They made up false charges about him out of whole cloth and put him in prison for made-up charges. The FBI worked directly with Brazil’s fascist government (fascists love fascists) to frame Lula.

The Feds and the FBI worked with the Venezuelan fascist opposition to cook up the fake drug trafficking charges against the Maduro administration in Venezuela.

They were the ones who arrested the Chinese head of Huawei, Ms. Meng, on completely fabricated charges that wouldn’t matter even if they were true because she’s accused of violating US sanctions against Iran whereby US law somehow extends all over the globe! The US is trying to extradite a top ranking member of the Maduro administration for violating US sanctions against Venezuela. Since when does US law extend to Venezuela? Or Iran? All of those “violating US sanctions charges against foreigners are insane and in my opinion against international law.

I believe that a lot of these Muslim “terror plots” were frame-ups where the federal informants cooked up plots in order to entrap people. I wonder how many of those plots were even real as in not cooked up the fed pig informant.

The FBI was deeply involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King. That’s just a fact. J. Edgar Hoover was a crook. If he wanted you dead, you were dead.

Federal laws are ridiculous and stupid, way worse even then chickenshit state laws. The sentencing guidelines are insane. The recommended terms are far in excess of anything sensible.

Besides, if those fed pigs want to get you, they will get you. You do not want to have the FBI or any fed pigs for that matter coming after you in life. Local cops are bad enough, but you can often live with them, or at least I can. They’re negotiable. You can’t negotiate with feds. If they want you gone, you’re gone. I’ve never had any dealings with the FBI or other fed pigs in my life and I never want to. The farther away you stay from those guys, the better. I hate federal prosecutors too. I can’t believe that chickenshit charges they cook up against people all the time. Ridiculous.

They will come into your home, turn it upside down, and then sift through your whole life going back forever. I figure most people are breaking some sort of chickenshit law most of the time. And if you do a data dump on a lot of people’s lives, you can probably cook up some chickenshit charge against them. And if it’s a federal crime, I guarantee that the sentence for that crime is absurdly excessive.

I really despise all feds (except the homicide detective feds discussed above). Those are the worst pigs of all by far. Can’t stand them!

Alt Left: The Syriza Party in Greece: Anatomy of a Sellout

Interesting abstract from Academia. All papers on Academia can be downloaded and reprinted for free. Syriza was the radial left hope for Europe in the wake of the 2008 Depression in which Greece was hit perhaps worst of all. The Right says it was because of Greece’s tax and spend policies, but Greece’s taxes are not high, nor is it’s social democracy particularly robust. The true problem is massive corruption of the political classes at all ends of the spectrum combined with an absolute failure of the wealthy classes to pay as much as one nickel in taxes. In other words, The Latin American Disease (in part) because Latin America suffers from exactly these problems more than anything else.

Syriza had a very powerful voice in opposition to the Austerity Regime demanded by the EU out of Germany (Germany basically runs the EU and lays down the law). There were two ways out of the debt crisis. Either go into crisis austerity and sell off a good portion of their public lands and enterprises, or simply default on their debt and start all over again. Perhaps both would have been equally painful, but I think default would have been best.

As is, a good portion of Greece’s public lands and public enterprises (the health care system, national parks, electric grid, hydropower, a number of actual islands of the country itself) were sold off the lowest of capitalist parasites. Anyone think the national parks, electric grid, health care system, hydropower, and even the very islands of the nation itself will be any better off now that they are in the hands of a lot of greedheads? They’re not. Nothing good ever happens with any of these sell-offs of private enterprises.

Worse, the selling off of the very partrimony of Greece itself was combined with the worst austerity, elimination of health care and all social programs for the masses combined with massive job losses so the masses of unemployed could not count on any state help now that they could not pay their bills. In other words, the Greeks got the worst of both worlds. Austerity and selloff and they gained nothing at all other than emptied pockets and rifled and ransacked goods.

No one could pay for medical care or hospital beds either. Many people were thrown out of their homes because they could not pay the rent and shantytowns of former workers and even middle class people sprung up all over Greece. Some political parties, even the far Right Golden Dawn to their credit, stepped in to try to provide the social help that the state would not.

This was followed by the election of Syriza, which campaigned on not paying the debt and opposing austerity. As soon as they got in power, they quickly changed their tune. I don’t think they sold out so much as they did not have the guts to go through with the program. No doubt there were massive pressures on them to go through the standard austerity model. At any rate, Syriza did not default on its debt like Argentina and Iceland did (to little effect on their economies), and they implemented austerity with full force. They sold out the masses completely.

As they stayed in power, they moved more and more to the right. Now that they are out of power, they have moved even further to the right. There is a new rightwing government called New Democracy in charge about which I know little, except I assume they’re not real great. Syriza is now utterly unable to offer an alternative to ND, while ND has apparently completely failed in the COVID epidemic as most rightwing governments everywhere did, no doubt leaving many corpses in its wake.

We have the standard Latin American model here where the Right (call it the Conservatives in Colombia or ARENA in El Salvador) “the right wing of the oligarchy” is absolutely toxic, but the Left (call it the Liberals in Colombia, the AD and APRA “social democratic” traitors in Venezuela and Peru), etc. are simply the “liberal wing of the oligarchy,” which in practice means virtually no change at all.

AD in Venezuela has combined with the fascist Right to overthrow the Chavistas, backing every coup attempt of various flavors against the government. For all intents and purposes, they’re not much different from Guaido. AD was always just a party to split up the loot from the oil rents from the state oil company amongst the oligarchs and the upper middle class management of the company.

This is very discouraging and it sounds like Thatcher’s TINA (There is No Alternative) response to neoliberalism. Perhaps there is no alternative to neoliberalism and austerity in the EU model, which has always been based on neoliberal orthodoxy. Note that debt cannot exceed

If the situation in the EU is TINA, then Brexit is the way to go. Greece and a few others have been threatening to do that, but the NATO fascist military alliance (NATO has always been run by the US) is the imperialist glue that holds the EU economic community together. A neoliberal economic community held together by a fascist imperialist army. What else is new? Straight out of Milton Friedman (“Neoliberalism cannot be imposed democratically; it must be imposed by dictatorship”) himself. It is very hard to leave NATO. Notice even the Brits didn’t do that. NATO may be an abusive spouse for many of the nations inside the alliance, but if so, most NATO countries are Stockholmed wives.

I don’t know what to say except that this is yet another sellout of the Left.

For all of their faults, the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Argentina have refused to go this route. At the moment, Peru is also challenging this model. The penalty has been repeated coup attempts in most these countries, economic wars, and sanctions, but at least they didn’t sell out. I still think this sort of resistance is the way to go, painful or not.

Our existences have dignity or they are worthless. The EU model is the death of dignity. At least with the Pink Tide, those nations can hold their heads up amidst the ruins and say

At least we are free. We may be poor but at least we are free.

You know that’s got to be worth something.

Outside of the homeland, there is nothing.

– A famous Baath Party intellectual from Iraq

Whatever beefs I had with Saddam, and I had plenty; Hell, at least he was a nationalist in a time when such patriots are scarce and viewed as traitors to the International Globalist Elite based on multinational corporate rule over the rule of actual states. Governments are increasingly irrelevant now that billionaires and corporations have more money and power than many actual countries.

SISP Conference 2021, Online, 9-11 September 2021

SYRIZA back in opposition (2019-2021): Towards a new political direction?

Grigoris Markou

Postdoctoral researcher, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Abstract

SYRIZA’s spectacular rise to power through a radical political proposal and a strong populist discourse has been the field of study of a large number of political scientists in recent years. Alexis Tsipras (Syriza’s leader) in opposition and in power expressed a strong inclusionary populist discourse, placing popular classes at a central position and opposing the political and economic establishment of the country and Europe.

SYRIZA, during its second term began to change its physiognomy, abandoning gradually its radicalism and embracing a typed of “political realism” and consensus, while it began to soften its populist intensity and passion. After the end of its rule (2019), it became clear that SYRIZA’s populism had nothing to do with the populist intensity and passion of the previous years.

SYRIZA (2019-present) continued to maintain some populist slogans and a kind of anti-elitism (e.g. “the many” against “the establishment”), but to a lesser extent.

Furthermore, a huge gap has been created between the party and the popular classes. SYRIZA can’t persuade, mobilize and lead the people against the right-wing government of New Democracy in a period of intense social discontent with the management of the pandemic and the economy by the Greek government and at a time when popular demands for democracy, justice, and labor protection are emerging.

In this presentation, I will present the main characteristics of SYRIZA’s political discourse after its defeat in the 2019 national election, attempting to find if the party continues to express a populist discourse or not through discourse analysis while underlining its new political direction. Furthermore, I will examine the reasons the rapid transformation of the party in a more mainstream and “realistic” direction.

Alt Left: Repost: Interview With a Bhutanese Maoist Leader

This is a repost from some time ago. The old posts are nor formatted properly, so they are very difficult to read. A lot of them are pretty cool for reposts though. This is an interview with a leader of the Bhutanese Maoists who are beginning an armed insurgency against the Bhutanese state.

A little background: Actually, in some ways, this is a racial conflict. About 100 years ago, many Nepalese moved into Southern Bhutan as immigrants. Apparently this immigration was completely legal, as in they were not illegal immigrants. The majority of the people in Bhutan were more Mongoloid Asian types, Buddhists who phenotypically resemble Tibetans and speak a Tibeto-Burman language. The Nepalese were Hindus speaking Nepali, an Indo-European language.

Phenotypically, Nepalese are very unusual. They are on the border between Caucasians and Asians. Some more resemble Caucasians and some more resemble Asians. Most of the ones who moved into Southern Bhutan were more Caucasian types. Anyway, at some point, they become 6

A few decades ago, for some unknown reason, the monarchy simply ethnically cleansed most of the Nepalese out of the country and so ended up with a more mono-ethnic and monocultural state. Furthermore, the Nepalese were forbidden from returning. They have been festering in refugee camps ever since, and have been growing more and more radical.

Soon a Maoist party was born and it developed a huge following in the camps. Very huge! In the past few years, they have began an armed struggle inside Bhutan, but there have only been a few incidents. Apparently they are laying the groundwork for people’s war, which they claim they have not yet began.

Sushil claims that the Bhutanese state is feudal or semi-feudal, and I think he is probably correct. The entire region remains feudal to semi-feudal – India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and even Afghanistan. The feudalism tends to cut across ethnic and religious boundaries and seems to be a regionalism. Recall that Tibetan was actually feudal until the Maoists took over in 1949 and overthrew the feudal monarchy.

In this region, the feudal monarchs usually use religion, as such folks always do and have always done, to enforce feudalism. The Hindu monarchs in Nepal claimed tied closely into their Hindu Gods. More or less the same with the Dalai Lamas in Tibet, similar to the divinely appointed religous-political monarchs that ruled in Europe for so long.

I figure if you throw a bunch of humans on an island, after a while, the strongest will kill and or subject the weaker ones. Some total prick will rise up, call himself ruler – king – whatever, somehow gather up 9

This group has connections to Maoists in Nepal who now form a huge portion of the government (4

An Interview with Comrade Sushil of the Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist-Leninist- Maoist), the party which is waging armed struggle against the Monarchy in Bhutan. Talks about tactics, strategy and aims of the party.

———— ——— ——— ——— –

Saturday, May 23, 2009

The following Interview was conducted at some point in the previous few weeks. It occurred somewhere in the area of the Indian-Bhutan border.

Lal Salam Blog: Thank you very much for meeting with me. So are you from Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Yes, from Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: From the Bhutanese refugee camps?

Comrade Sushil: Uhh, actually people think that all our party are from the refugees, but i am from Bhutan. I have spent allot of time in India, working, but then also in Bhutan and then in Nepal working for the party as well.

Lal Salam Blog: So you are a cadre of the Communist Party Bhutan (Marxist Leninist Maoists)?

Comrade Sushil: Yes i am a member of the Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist Leninist Maoist). I have been a member since 2003 and i have worked actively as a whole timer since the same year. I joined the party from within Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: What is the history of the Party?

Comrade Sushil: The CPB (MLM) was established on the 7th of November 2001, and the announcement of the Party was on the 22nd of April 2003. From this time the party has been working with the exploited people in Bhutan. The people are all exploited by the regime, so our party has been working with all the people, mainly in rural areas, but in urban areas also. Mostly we work with the people in the villages.

Lal Salam Blog: So what are the problems in Bhutan? What sort of oppressions are forced on the people of Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: The biggest problem is the feudal monarchy. Because of this monarchy the problems are created. Peoples standard of living has been kept backwards because of the Monarchy. In a third world country like Bhutan, this is because of feudalism. This feudalism is the main problem of Bhutan. This is why the Communist Party, our glorious party, is working to overthrow the regime, and to overthrow feudalism.

Lal Salam Blog: So the goal of the Party for now is to throw out feudalism from Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Definitely. The main aim of our party is to overthrow feudalism and to establish the peoples rule in Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: So you would like to establish a People’s State in Bhutan? Is that what you would have replace the King?

Comrade Sushil: We should not understand like this. We should replace the king with a Proletarian Dictatorship. Our aim, our hope, no our dream is to establish a New Democratic Socialism. Only after that can we achieve our ultimate goal, which is to achieve communism. It is not only our goal to throw out the king and overthrow feudalism in Bhutan, but to establish a peaceful society that can achieve socialism and communism.

Lal Salam Blog: Last year your party started a Peoples War in Bhutan…

Comrade Sushil: No. We have not initiated a protracted peoples war in Bhutan. Since our parties establishment we have however had many rural peoples class struggles and these struggles have used different means. In different ways we have launched many struggles and programs, and we have the aim of reaching a level where we can launch a Protracted Peoples War.

Last year we did initiate some armed struggles, which is only a factor of the rural class struggle. Much of the media proclaimed this as the beginning of the Peoples War, but we are not at that phase. We are trying to reach the level of Peoples War, but we have not yet reached it, and are preparing for it. We do not know how long this will take, it will depend on many factors.

Lal Salam Blog: So there will be more attacks, more bombs and more armed actions in the future?

Comrade Sushil: Certainly. We are preparing for this. There will be more armed struggle. Without the armed struggle, we cannot change the situation in our country. We cannot change the state power. We will one day take the state power, but for now we are in preparation, making networks with the peasants and in the cities, training, preparing for the struggle.

Lal Salam Blog: Do you think Peoples War can be successful? Bhutan is already a very brutal state. As many as a sixth of the population lives in exile and the state has beaten, attacked, arrested and even raped and murdered those it perceives to be political activists?

Comrade Sushil: Our parties thought is that only by waging the armed struggle and the Peoples War can we win the liberation of our exploited people. I believe so. Thousands of people have been evicted from Bhutan, we are very aware of this. Why were they evicted? They were evicted after political activism and movements. They were evicted because the people in the southern belt had a high political consciousness. This is totally not a refugee problem, this is a political problem. It is a problem of a brutal monarchy and a restrictive feudal system. Without destroying these institutions we cannot solve these problems.

Our party is launching this armed struggle to liberate the exploited people and we know that one day we will be successful. This is a long term plan, it will take many preparations, and without this and without correct politics we cannot be successful. We have this ideology, the Marxist-Leninist- Maoist and this is a political weapon. With this weapon we believe that one day we will be successful.

Lal Salam Blog: So have you learnt much from the experiences of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and their experiences in Nepal? Are there close or special links between your parties?

Comrade Sushil: We do not have special or direct links with this party. But, and also like communists all around the world, in Peru, India or the Philippines we have ideological links. These places all have communist parties leading revolution through the armed struggle, and with all of them we have ideological links and an ideological relationship.

That means we support them ideologically and they support us ideologically. We have a relationship with the CP Nepal (Maoist) , but also with the CP India (Maoist) who are also waging an armed struggle. We don’t receive any physical support, or anything like that, but we should understand that we are all communists, and we are all internationalists, and we receive and give moral support.

Lal Salam Blog: What does your party think about Prachanda Path and the Nepali Maoists synthesis? It has been controversial to some international communists.

Comrade Sushil: About this Prachanda Path. It is something we should study. And also it is not only a thing to be studied, it has shown it has the ability to guide workers actions. I don’t want to comment more because the ideological things i have had not sufficiently studied, and till now our party has not discussed at length Prachanda Path.

Lal Salam Blog: The Maoists in Nepal have given up their Peoples War and taken a new tactic in pursuing the Constituent Assembly elections. Is this a correct tactic in your parties opinion?

Comrade Sushil: In regards to the UCPN (M) we do not think that they have given up their goals. We think they are pursuing another way, another tactic to establish a peoples state. We don’t think they have established the proletarian dictatorship. So we, our party, does not think that they have achieve state power. We too will go for a Constituent Assembly at first, and only after that can we step or jump or leap forward to a New Democratic revolution.

In the context of the Maoists we don’t think they have state power, and are still struggling for it. It is a fact that the future shows you which path you must take, you can only pick your path depending on the concrete situation you face. We will also move for a constituent assembly elections and a new state, but without establishing the proletarian people at the center of this new state then it cannot reach higher and improve the lives of the people. We think that the Maoists of Nepal face similar situations to us, and have similar actions, so we will continue to watch closely.

Lal Salam Blog: So a Constituent Assembly is a tactic that you are interested in for change in Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Actually it is the tactics and strategy of communist parties in the third world. Third world countries are semi-colonial and semi-feudal. So without a New Democratic Socialism stage we cannot reach socialism. So we are in this revolution, it is a peasant revolution we can say. So to reach our aims, to some extent we should aim for a Constituent Assembly, and this is our main slogan and the main aim of the present situation in our revolution.

That is not our only slogan, and out only goal, and it isn’t the only thing that we campaign around with the peasants and people of Bhutan. And we don’t want or aspire to another bourgeois constitution, but we need a constitution that is in favor of the oppressed and poor people of Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: Last year the government of Bhutan held elections, in a very restricted and controlled way, but the western media still presented this as a opening up and of “democracy”. If there was to be a more open electoral system, would the CPB (MLM) pursue peaceful politics through elections?

Comrade Sushil: WE think there is only one path to real democracy in Bhutan. We don’t believe in the current “democracy” this is well known. And we don’t think that this system can lead to real democracy. The international community has its formula and they see votes and call it democracy- but there is no such thing in Bhutan and it is not possible to impose a real democracy from the outside into Bhutan.

Any “democracy” that the regime brings into practice itself will be done in such a way so that real power continues to be restricted and kept in the hands of the old order, and not in the hands of the mass of exploited people, so that this “democracy” could not be used against the regime. Even if the regime cast out the king, it would not fundamentally change it. Our party will not make compromises with that order. We wont co-operate with their agenda, we have another agenda that is contradiction to theirs.

We are going to establish the rule of all the people while they just want to exploit them. There is this contradiction between the people and the regime. Our party struggles because of that. If they were to try and set up a “democracy” for then when we should not be a part of it. When i say this it does not mean that we are militarists. The people want peace, and don’t want to live in terror but this regime suppresses and exploits the people, they already live in terror. It is not a hobby to carry out armed struggle, it is our only option the liberation of our people.

Lal Salam Blog: Bhutan is such a tiny country, and it has very close relations, with India in particular. If you care to reach peoples war, do you think India would interfere to defend its interests?

Comrade Sushil: On this the whole party is very much conscious. But in the present situation India is not so dangerous to Bhutan. China is quite dangerous. 11,500 square kilometers of Bhutan’s lands have been occupied and taken by China. So we are surrounded by two very large and powerful countries, who are always looking to interfere into Bhutan. They have two ways of interfering. Political intervention and direct intervention. There are Indian Army camps established in Bhutan. There are several big barracks. We have known this but we don’t think they will intervene directly.

Maybe at some point in the future. There will be political intervention, and we can try to counter this with our allies by rousing grassroots support for our cause in India. We are already doing this. If they try to intervene militarily it will be a heavy cost for them, a bloody and long civil war. Also the regime and the fuedalists don’t want this. They want to defend their borders, protect his kingdom. We also want to establish the sovereignty of Bhutan, so we will always fight foreign influence, from India as well as China.

Lal Salam Blog: I understand that your party has allot of support amongst the refugees in Nepal.

Comrade Sushil: We are not just a party for the refugees. We have support where ever our people are.

Lal Salam Blog: So in India, Nepal and Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Yes.

Lal Salam Blog: And your party does work amongst all the communities of Bhutan and across the whole country, not just in the southern Belt that is largely Nepali speaking?

Comrade Sushil: The southern belt is not only Nepali speaking, but there are people from many communities there as well. Myself i haven’t been to the north as yet, our party does work there, but i have been working in the south and also in the east. In allot of people, and in the media there is allot of confusion. The CPB (MLM) is not just a party in the refugee camps, and not just Nepali speaking. We have cadres of many ethnic backgrounds, and our party works all over Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: For the refugees in Nepal is it true your party favors repatriation in Bhutan rather then resettlement in third countries?

Comrade Sushil: It is not that our party policy is just to return people to Bhutan. It is not a solution. Liberating the people of Bhutan is the only real and long term solution to this problem. We are not for resettlement, and we are not for repatriation in Bhutan without changing anything else. Moving people around like they are animals is not a solution. That is our position. There needs to be a political solution to this, and only then can the refugees get their rights.

Some people have said our party was created to agitate for the repatriation of refugees, this is not the case. Our party was established within Bhutan and amongst the people. We are in favour of all the oppressed people.Only understanding the problem of the refugees as a problem of the political structure of Bhutan that we can find a solution. Our party was not established for the refugees, but for all the Bhutanese.

Porn: What’s Legal? What Illegal?

Note: I don’t really hate cops, but I’m not wild about them either. Now if a cop is, say, a detective working robbery or homicide, why should I have a beef with him? He’s catching robbers and killers. Why would I have an issue with that?

I don’t even mind dope cops anymore (although I used to hate narcs) as long as they aren’t busting pot. I have no problems with cops busting people for selling meth, crack cocaine, fentanyl, or heroin. That’s stuff’s garbage.

Now we get down to your ordinary street cop. Let’s look at my city. About half of the cops in my city are huge assholes, the biggest dicks on Earth. It’s like they’re always trying to pick a fight. Don’t like them one bit. But the other half are often pretty nice, and sometimes, they’re extremely nice to me.

But fed cops busting guys for buying whores or fucking 17 year old girls or kids sexting each other or adults possessing written stories or pictures of clothed humans that the cops don’t like? Get out. They’re pigs, plain and simple. Pests.

And the worst cops of all are feds.  Now if feds are only going after murderers as some FBI do, I have no problem with them. Or financial criminals or fraudsters.

But you don’t even want to be a subject of one of their investigations. Federal sentencing guidelines are batshit insane, far in excess of a reasonable sentence. They’re ridiculous! And if the feds want to get you, they will get you. They will dump all of your possessions on the  floor and go over them with a fine toothcomb. They will examine your whole life with a magnifying glass. And they will probably find that you are breaking some law somewhere somehow.

I imagine most of us are violating some stupid-ass law on a fairly regular basis. I know I do. I don’t feel good about myself unless I’m breaking at least one law. I feel like a great big pussy. Call it Permanent Bad Boy Syndrome. God forbid I should arrive at a time in my life when I’m no longer at least one dumbass law. I would probably look around like crazy to try to find a new idiot law to break. Who wants to be a goody-good or an altar boy? Screw that.

So if you see the word pigs below, I’m referring to sex cops. Cops butt out of our sex lives!

Butthead, a commenter, linked to a Youtube video. I clicked on it but it was already taken down.

RL: What was on the video?

Butthead: Bare schoolgirl boobage. She was brushing her hair in the bathroom and her towel “accidentally” slipped for a second.

Well, that’s legal. It’s not CP. Tits are legal on anyone of any age.

Nudity Is Not Necessarily Child Porn

So is nudity, honestly, but that does get a bit trickier. There are sites all over the Net of teenage girls, probably underage but who knows, taking nude selfies of themselves in front of mirrors. A lot of them are in Russia. They’re actually a bit hard to find but if you know what you are looking for, you can find them. I’ve seen them before but I don’t have a teenage girl fetish, so it’s not big deal to me, and I haven’t been back. Been there, done that. As long as they are just standing in front of a mirror or on the beach with their clothes off, it’s not child porn, because child porn is a lot worse than nudity.

There was a site where a lot of teenagers were camming all the time, teenage girls and boys both. Fairly regularly, one of the girls would take off some or all of her clothes. You could see over to the side the people camming and how many were watching. One cammer would suddenly go from five to 50 to 100 viewers, and if you went to look at the cam, sure enough, there’s some teenage girl with her top off.

I did watch one video like that. Two teenage girls aged 17 with their tops off. Problem was every time they opened up their mouths, they sounded like 10 year olds. All this retarded high school gossip. Total turnoff. I went once and never went back. Like I said, it’s not my fetish.

I’ve seen enough naked teenage girls in the flesh back in the day for 10 or 20 lifetimes. There’s nothing special. It just looks like the body of a woman, same thing.

I will never understand why everyone is so freaked out about the Goddamned naked body of a human being, whether it’s a teenager or a child, no matter. A naked human being isn’t necessarily sexual. It’s simply the way we were all born. This idea that some photos of naked human beings are some sort of evil pornography is completely insane. And not to mention, it’s wildly puritanical and prudish. It’s downright sex-hating and anti-sexual.

“Lascivious Display of the Genitalia”

As long as there is no “lascivious display of the genitalia,” everything’s fine. Child porn must involve “lascivious display of the genitalia.” There’s a lot of uncertainty about what that means, but usually it means she has her legs spread or she’s masturbating. Or it could simply be a photo or a video where the focus on the photographic material via zoom lens or whatever is the genitalia. That would be considered lascivious display. For a girl, it would be a focus on the vaginal area. For a boy it would be a focus on his penis, particularly if it is erect. It all depends on the focus of the photographic material.

“If She Has Clothes on, It’s Legal,” until It’s Not!

If she has clothes on, it was traditionally legal. The FBI was quoted as saying, “If she clothes on, it’s not child porn.” This seems reasonable to me. How on Earth could a photo of any human with their Goddamned clothes on be considered the most evil type of pornography? That’s wildly priggish and Victorian right there?

You see, any possible photographic material is legal (not child porn) until one day the fed pigs decide the change the rules and say it’s illegal! And they’re always changing the rules. It’s madness and you would think it’s out and out unconstitutional because you never know when you are breaking the law. A photo that is legal one day when the fed pigs are in a good mood all of a sudden becomes illegal the next day when the pigs automagically declare it to be illegal!

Erotic Stories

For instance, pedophilic stories have always been legal. They’re all over the Internet. I’ve read them for a few weeks decades ago before I decided this was one perversion I’d rather not explore, and I haven’t read one since. On the other hand, I don’t really read written erotica on the Net anymore.That was more of a phase I went through in my 40’s.

There was a large site called Mr. D.’s which dealt in pornographic stories. I’ve been on the site and there was a Hell of a lot of pedophilic material on there.

What was odd was that many of the authors were women! Grown women, often in their 30’s or 40’s, with a husband and kids! A lot of them had photographs and biographies on their author profile. I have no idea why those women were writing that stuff except that perhaps more people are interested in that kink than we think. Indeed, 1

Anyway, Mr. D.’s  had been sitting up there forever with all that pedophilic erotica and nobody did a thing about it. In fact, the top OCD experts on  the world out of Phillipson’s office back east were assigning those stories as homework for people who had OCD with the pedophile theme, which is an extremely common theme by the way. I know because I spoke to one of their clients.

Well, the other day, the fed pigs decided to change the law again! All of a sudden, written pedophilic erotica was illegal! Mr. D. was arrested in Florida, and his site was shut down. They were looking at throwing the book at him too.

So the fed pigs decided to change the law on the fly.

The Sad Saga of the Black Cat Scans

For instance, as I noted above, the rule always was, “If they have clothes on, it’s legal.” The men who ran Black Cat Scans and their photographer read the law and felt that they were within the law with their hebephilic photos of fully clothed young girls posing in some very erotic photos. All of a sudden out of the blue, the fed pigs decided that if they have clothes on, it could be illegal sometimes!

They arrested the two guys who ran the site, both Jews by the way, and they also arrested the photographer, who seemed like a really good man. They threw the book at all of them. None of these men were pedophilic or hebephilic. The Jews were just out to make a buck like they always are, and the photographer just liked to take pictures.

The arrest and sentencing of the photographer was particularly controversial. Most of the girl models were out of Russia, and they had all been brought in by their mothers. They were all adults by the time of the arrests, and they were all unrepentant about their modeling. There were 20-30 Youtube videos of former models and their mothers protesting  the  arrest of the photographer, saying that the girls were not harmed, that they did not regret what they did, and that the photographer was completely professional. It is important to note that none of the girls were molested in any way, shape or form. I believe the mothers were even present during the shooting.

Just to show you how absurd the law is, Black Cat scans had been visited by 25 million (!) men, and I assume a lot of them downloaded the pics. In order to enforce the law, the fed pigs would need to arrest and throw the book at 25 million guys! Good luck with that.

There are still some Black Cat scans floating around. What anyone sees in those photos is beyond me. I’ve seen them but I don’t like them because they seem creeptastic.

Art Photography

There are art photographers like David Hamilton who took many art photos of young teenage girls. You can find those all over the Net. They’re perfectly legal.

Nudist Photos

There are nudist photos all over the Net with humans of all ages, including plenty of teenagers and kids, strolling or sitting around naked in woods, beaches, and whatnot. It’s all perfectly legal. They don’t seem to be very popular so I imagine there isn’t much of a market for nudist pics.

Nude Beaches

It’s also perfectly legal for minors, including kids, to be stark naked at nude beaches, at least in the UK. Teenagers and kids get to walk around naked and look at naked adults and the adults are allowed to look at the kids. Anyone can look at anyone all they want.

I knew a 29 year old woman recently who often took her two daughters, ages 9 and 13, to nude beaches. She was always bugging me to go with them, but I never did. She also often made perverted comments about her girls, which seemed weird to me. She actually asked me to move in with her the second or third time I talked to her, but she was pretty far away, plus she was kind of fat. But she was cute.

Medical Text Photos

Medical texts often have nudity, including closeups of genitalia. All legal.

The Problem of Having an Internet Flooded with Photos of Nude Minors

Be that as it may, a lot of hosts want nothing to do with any photos of naked underage teen girls or kids, so sites with this material, even nudist sites, are few and far between.

I’d like to keep it like this.

Could you see if people started posting this stuff all over the Net and all these porn sites sprang up with nude underage teenagers and worse, kids?

That might flood the whole Internet porn industry pretty quickly. I don’t know what do do about that, as it would make me uncomfortable to see all this sites out there with naked underage teenagers and kids. Also, it would cause a tsunami of outrage, and there would be all these calls to ban the stuff.

Sexting

By the way, a lot of that sexting those teenagers are outrageously getting arrested for is probably legal. It the girls and boys are simply sending each other nudes with no lascivious display of the genitalia, it should be perfectly legal. So it’s not illegal for teenagers to send nudes to each other or at least it shouldn’t be, but who knows how the pigs enforce the crazy laws in their area.

The problem here is that most of them are probably not sending legal photos. Have you ever gotten nudes from a woman on the Net? Hell, they send them out before the first date these days! More women than I can count have sent me nudes over the Net. They were mostly 18-23. I have a whole huge folder of them. Unfortunately, you almost never get to meet them. They just send nudes and maybe talk dirty and then take off.

Well, if you have ever gotten nudes from a woman, first of all, there is typically a focus on the breasts and there is absolutely a focus on the genitalia. Often it is simply a photo of her breasts alone or her genitals alone, usually a huge closeup of the latter. Yep, women focus that camera right on those parts of their body. Women are such perverts!

And men, well, what are the complaints that women make about men when men send nudes? Men don’t send nudes. They send dick pics! So many selfies that men send women tend to focus on the male genitalia or it’s simply a photo of their penis.

So probably most of teen sexting involves sending each other pics with lascivious display of the genitalia, and yes, that would be CP.

But we have to think about this in some other way. It’s insane to bust teenagers for sending nudes to each other. It’s madness. But what can we do about it? I say we let them do send the real thing to each other – lascivious display of genitalia, photos of them having sex, whatever, but they can’t put it up on the Internet.

The Ever-Mutating Rationale for Making the “Child Porn Du Jour” Illegal

The rationale for making child porn illegal – that the child is harmed merely by having their photos floating around for everyone to see – doesn’t seem to apply here. These teens sexting each other – are they being harmed by sending those dirty pics to each other. Generally speaking, no! Ok, so what’s the new rationale for making this stuff illegal. The pigs have to go back to the drawing board and say the old rationale for illegal CP doesn’t apply here and somehow some new rationale applies. But what exactly would the new rationale be?

You see what they are doing?

First they make a reasonable case for making child pornography illegal. It is a document of a very serious crime of child molesting in most cases. But that alone does not seem a good argument because there are videos out there of criminals murdering their victims live on video. Perfectly legal. So photographic depictions of crimes is apparently completely legal.

The other better argument is that the kid did not consent to being molested, and the kid is being harmed merely by having pornographic photos of them floating around. I actually agree with this, though the rationale du jour “the child is harmed every time someone downloads one of their photos” seems ridiculous in a philosophical sense. How exactly does that work. So a girl’s photo gets downloaded 1,000 times. Does she  suffer 1,000X harm? What if it was downloaded once? Does she suffer 1X harm? How in God’s name does the victim know how many times their photo gets downloaded? Does the crime go out in some metaphysical space and zap over to the kid’s head and ring up another download in their brain, harming them ever so slightly more with each download? Of course not. But that is what this asinine article implies.

In the case above, did the girl whose photo was downloaded 1,000 times really suffer 1,000 times the harm of the girl whose photo was downloaded once? That seems bizarre. What if the girl doesn’t even know her stuff is out there on the Net. Theoretically, she suffers absolutely zero harm unless and until she discovers that her photo is out there. What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, right?

Riffing off the argument above that the child is harmed every time their photo is downloaded, is the girl really harmed ever so slightly more with each subsequent download? Why would she? She has no idea how often the pic’s being saved.

This argument sounds convincing at first until you realize it’s garbage. But for kids who know their photos are out there or for adults who know pics of themselves are out there, I agree that they are being harmed, assuming they don’t want them to be there. But what if they are perfectly happy to have their child porn on the Net? Are they still being harmed with each and every new download? Of course not.

This argument is full of holes, but it does work in a number of cases.

I would make another much better argument that society is harmed by this stuff too. Even if it’s on the Dark Net where hardly anyone but the worst pedophiles is looking at it, I still think society is being harmed. Even if someone has the photos taken by themselves on their computer and has never shown them to anyone else? Yes, I would argue that society is still being harmed. We simply cannot allow photographic documentation of children being molested, willingly or not, floating around in society. I do not wish to live in a society where this garbage is legal. It’s disgusting and outrageous that it even exists at all. Kids shouldn’t be molested and we should not take photos of kids getting molested. Because we don’t wish to live in a society where we allow this sort of perverse and revolting garbage occur or exist.

The Anti-CP Argument Mutates Again

But notice how that definition alone isn’t good enough? What about in the case of the Black Cat Scans? The girls were not harmed and in fact they are quite happy to have these erotic pics of themselves floating around. So the argument that the girls are harmed is garbage. Are the Black Cat scans photos of a crime? I certainly hope not. I certainly hope it’s not illegal to take photographs of clothed pubescents in dirty poses.

So on what grounds is it illegal? Who knows? Notice how they have to keep going back to the drawing board and inventing new and weirder and weirder reasons for extending the crime beyond what was intended? Perhaps it is harmful to society to let this stuff float around willy-nilly. That’s a tough argument because even I find that stuff repulsive, but I don’t think stuff really harms society. But I don’t want the Net flooded with it either. If it only exists in a very secretive niche websites, I don’t have a problem with it.

And the Argument Mutates Again!

Pigs wouldn’t be pigs if they only had one mutating argument for making something questionable illegal. The reason they’re pigs is because the arguments for the illegality of this or that keep changing, seemingly with the wind. With each new unannounced expansion of the law, new justifications for the material’s illegal must be invented. The fact that people have to wrack their minds to come up with some argument, any argument, for making something illegal implies to me that it probably shouldn’t be illegal. Crimes ought to be justifiable on their face. It’s illegal to take another’s life without cause. It’s illegal to break into other’s homes. It’s illegal to see dangerous drugs that cause death and destruction. It’s illegal to drive drunk and possibly lethally endanger other people’s lives and limbs. It’s illegal to steal other people’s stuff.

With each of those crimes, did we have to wrack our brains forever to come up with some BS reason for the law to exist? Of course not. In general, all of those things are illegal because the person or possessions of another is harmed to taken from them. In other cases, innocent people are being subjected to unreasonable harm to life and limb due to the irresponsibility of others. Sensible laws are about hurting, harming, or killing other persons, relieving them of their possessions, or unreasonably threatening their lives and bodily health.

So we see that the child porn argument mutates yet again!

What about in the case of Mr. D.’s erotica? This is even crazier. The Black Cat scans at least dealt with real humans. With written erotica we are not even dealing with that. We are dealing with people who literally don’t even exist. The fictional characters apparently being harmed in these stories aren’t real! So how could they be harmed? There’s just a bunch of words. No humans, no photos, just words. Any girls get harmed? Nope, there were no girls to harm! A written depiction of a crime with fake fictional characters? I assume you can write stories about committing disgusting crimes all you want to. It’s a pretty weird thing to do, and I worry about people who do that, but it would seem to legal under freedom of speech.

Is society harmed by allowing pedophilic written erotica to exist? I doubt it. Who even knows that those stories even exist on the Net?

Alt Left: The Entire US Moved 10 Points to the Left between 2016-2020

Found on the Internet:

Not too long now. Arizona, Texas and Florida are going to be firmly Blue in the not too distant future.

Guess what, the fantasy of the Demorats will be in their grasp, total control.

I guess the poster doesn’t like Democrats, but other than that, I’m afraid the poster is correct. If we do get total control as he puts it, I hope we don’t abuse it. We don’t like the Republicans when they act anti-democratic, so we shouldn’t do it either. Two wrongs and all that.

Arizona’s barely blue as it is and heading blue fast. In 10 years, Arizona will be as blue as Virginia.

Texas is barely red (2-3+ red) and teetering on the edge. It is slowly getting more and more blue with time. The thing is, the Republicans lose Texas and it’s all over. They will never win the Presidency again. If all of those electoral votes go blue, there’s no way they can cobble together 270 electors under the present political calculus. It’ll be code blue for the Republican Party. This is why the Republicans in Texas are so frantically trying to seal in a minority rule dictatorship for as long as they can.

And on a national level, that’s what’s with all of the vote suppression, the slowing down of the mail, and ultimately the attempted coup de etat in the capital on January 6. Not to mention that Trump tried everything he could to overturn the results of a democratic election and install himself instead in an electoral coup. That’s why Republicans packed the stolen Supreme Court with ultra-rightwing freaks, so the court could rule in hack rulings to allow a Republican minority rule dictatorship. That’s why they are packing the lower courts with the same.

That’s why the Florida Legislature overturned the amendment passed by the people enfranchising 775,000 felons and enabling them to vote.

 

That’s why Georgia just passed a law allowing the Republican legislature to throw out any county vote commissions that they want. These are the people who count and certify the votes. If they don’t like the outcome of the democratic vote in some county, they can simply fire the commission and put in their own Republican hacks and overthrow the Democratic win by declaring the Republican the winner even when he lost. That’s why the Republicans are working overtime to gerrymander as many legislative and House of Representatives seats as they can based on the latest census which was fraudulently counted by the Trump Administration.

All of this boils down to righting authoritarian rule or a rightwing dictatorship, basically along the Latin American model. Generally speaking, nowadays rightwing authoritarian regimes or dictatorships are referred to as fascist. Fascism means a rightwing dictatorship in current parlance.

So we see now that the Republican Party is now an openly fascist political party, modeling itself on the rightwing fascist minority rule parties in Latin America.

Back to Arizona and Texas. Both states are being swarmed with Californians. This is what is tipping both states blue. Almost no new conservatives are moving into either state.

Let’s look at Florida again. Florida is the ultimate purple state. Looking at polls, Florida strikes me as a very rightwing state. It doesn’t seem to be getting bluer or redder but if all those felons voted, Florida would be bluer.

An infusion of retiring mostly liberal northerners is balanced out by continuous infusions of rightwing Latin Americans, especially Cubans, Venezuelans, and to a lesser extent Nicaraguans. The continuous Latin Right infusions keep it purple, otherwise it would have gone blue some time ago. Also, the Cubans are moving to the Right, mostly the younger ones. They moved 16 points to the Right under Trump. In addition, the retirees, though they come from the liberal Northeast, may not be as liberal as you think because the type of retiree who moves to Florida is often attracted to the low state taxes, so Northeastern retirees may be more Republican than the ordinary Northeasterner.

Screw the votes. They’re all being stolen now anyway with voting machines since 2003 when voting went digital with Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff’s Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Since 2003, we have seen one bizarre poll failure after another and all of the failures are in one direction – Republican. Both pre-election and the even more accurate exit polls have been going off.

Prior to 2003, pre-election and exit polls had been so accurate that some people were suggesting that we do away with elections and just decide electoral contests on polling numbers. Then suddenly all of the polls started failing all over the country, and they’ve kept failing for 17 years. There’s no way that this is happening by chance, especially with all of the failures only going towards the Republicans. The only conclusion is that Republicans have been engaging in massive electoral fraud since 2003 by stealing elections with voting machines.

I calculated national polls for all 50 states and then plotted them against the 2016 results. The results were stunning. The entire country went 10 points blue from 2016-2020. Even the reddest states like Wyoming and West Virginia went ~10 points blue and of course, so did the bluest states. Some states like Ohio and Florida are reliably purple for decades for whatever reason.

But not even one single state got redder from 2016-2020.

The Republicans will either have to become a rightwing dictatorship and engage in minority rule (apparently that is the goal with all as outlined above) or they will have to move to the left with the rest of the country if they want to be relevant at all. Since 2000, the US electorate has moved on average 5-10 to the left. The only reason this has not shown up in voting is due to election fraud. The Republican Party either have to move left or die.

The problem is that that the Republican Party cannot move to the left. That’s because if Republicans move to the left, they won’t really be Republicans anymore. The Republican Party is one of the most rightwing major parties on Earth. It’s an outlier on a world scale. Most of the world is basically socialist in some way or another or at least social democratic.

Oligarchic political parties that represent the aristocracy instead of the people like the Republican Party are anti-democratic by their very nature because few majorities (other than Americans, oddly enough) anywhere wish to vote for a party that represents the aristocrats instead of the people. Which begs the question of why Americans routinely vote for aristocratic rule and reject democratic rule. Do tens of millions of Americans literally think they are aristocrats? Is that it?

Alt Left: Why Conservatives Oppose the COVID Vaccine

Anti-vaxxers 10 years ago were leftwing hippies. Now most of those are apparently getting this COVID vaccine, or they’re quiet about it. But in fact, on the Hard Left, there is a lot of opposition to this COVID vaccine. I’m not sure if it’s as bad as on the Right, but it’s bad.

Normally, conservatives don’t get

However, this COVID vaccine, like most things in this idiot polarized to death country, has been politicized in a completely asinine way that makes no sense.

The Roots of Conservative Opposition to the COVID Vaccine

Apparently this all has roots in the fact that conservatives don’t care about anything except for money and the economy. The economy = money. The definition of a conservative is someone who values money more than human life. And conservatives always, always kill people for money. Disgusting people!

So conservatives went against this disease itself due to the threat to the economy. They boxed themselves into a corner like morons, but they always do that. Because after the restrictions were all lifted, the only objection came down to vaccines. Conservatives had decided to lie about their motives and frame their pro-economy project as a phony “freedom and individual rights” issue. This is the fake basis on which they opposed all of those mask mandates and lockdowns.

So now all there is left is the vaccine. Normally conservatives would care nothing about any vaccine, but like I said, they backed themselves into a corner. They said there was no such thing as the disease, so they had to say the vaccine would be useless or even harmful. They were already way down the road to saying this whole disease was nonsense, and they could not change horses in the middle of the stream.

And this time they fell back once again on the lie that this all about individual freedoms, which conservatives never care about anyway. Look who packs and jails and prisons with chickenshit crimes? Conservatives!

Conservatives Are Authoritarians, Not Individualists

Conservatives are authoritarians. They actually not individualists! They are the opposite of individualists because individualists would score low on authoritarianism. But they hate government due to their love of money over all else because the state gets in the way of making money. So they are authoritarians who hate democracy and believe in minority rule like their brethren in Latin America while framing their hatred of the state as “individualism.”

Conservatives obey their leaders much more than liberals do. Conservatives are like dogs. Liberals are like cats. Liberals don’t obey. Conservatives do. And whatever nutball idea that comes down the pike and gets labeled conservative dogma, conservative puppies blindly follow it like kids after the Pied Piper. They are incapable of opposing a conservative agenda. If their leaders told them all to walk off a cliff, they would literally do just that. They can’t think for themselves. All they can do is follow the leader.

Alt Left: Francis Miville on the Need for a Do-over of the American System

He is commenting on my post here. Full Democracy in the US Will Be a Boon for Democrats and a Catastrophe for Republicans.

What I meant is an Alt Left notion of “The system is too far gone for reform. Let’s tear it all down and start over again from scratch,” which is exactly how I feel about my country.

However, I meant just the basic political system and culture. However, that would indeed take a “Cultural Revolution” if you will. And many countries had them. We had a huge cultural revolution in the 1960’s. It’s not all about Red Guards.

The sickness is baked far too deeply into the system. The State Department, the Executive and Legislature Branches themselves, the legalization of mass bribery and corruption via money-based elections, the Pentagon, the CIA, and even the FBI – they all need a wipe it out and start over again cleansing.

Look at how hard it will be to dismantle even US imperialism. Imperialism is baked into US society from top to bottom. 500 military bases overseas? Sanctions? Embargoes? Economic warfare? US control of the world monetary system via the dollar as fiat currency? The sickness of the weapons for oil deal with the Gulf Arabs, the alliance with fascist Turkey, NATO its very self (which is controlled by the US), on and on.

For instance, few know this, but the CIA is baked into all of US society at the levels of the elite class and the corporations. The elite class (the rich), the corporations, the powerful lobbies, ethnic and commodity-based, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department, the Commerce Department are all baked in with the national security state and its vast intelligence arm consisting of 17 different out of control agencies with a $30 billion budgets for scullduggery, lying, cheating, thieving, murder, and overthrowing other countries via coups of all sorts, including the fake color revolutions.

These are the people who killed Kennedy.

These are the people who run this country. The oil barons in Texas, the Silicon Valley uber-rich, the capitalist bastards on Wall Street and at the Wall Street Journal, the sick and twisted FIRE sector, the last of which basically a parasitic and non-prodcutive form of wealth creation via speculation or as I call it “a giant casino in the sky.”

That’s the US economy now – a giant casino in the sky for rich people. All the rest of us? We can go pound sand. That or get rich, which is usually accomplished by mass lying, cheating, and thieving on an individual level. We are now virtually governed by corporations and billionaires. We have billionaires taking over NASA for their own sleazy ends. We’ve outsourced everything to the billionaires and the corporations.

When you study the Kennedy Assassination, you realize that there was a vast group of people either in on it or supportive of it, and many of them have talked. A friend had lunch with LBJ’s attorney, who said Kennedy was killed by “the foreign policy establishment of the United States.” And that right there is the Deep State, and not only that, but the Deep State also encompasses all of the above via the support of the rich and the corporations for US foreign policy.

The Pentagon and the CIA work for Exxon and Elon Musk, not you and me. We overthrow foreign governments for the Richard Bransons and the Chevrons, not for you and me. How does it feel to join the US Army and become the personal army of and risk your life for Monsanto and Rex Tillerson? You died in a US war? Sucker! You died for Jeff Bezos and the Blackrock Group! You proud of yourself now, wherever you are, chump?

Because the rot and evil is so “baked in” to the system, it is going to be very hard to change. Look what happens in Latin America where they try to do similar cleansings of the oligarchies and diseased societies they created. You get coups, economic warfare, sanctions, embargoes, propaganda wars, assassination attempts, lockout strikes, color revolutions, stolen elections, lawfare, guarimbas, contra armies engaging on counterrevolution, on and on.

I am absolutely certain that at least some of those will happen if we try to do a do-over on America. The big guns are just not going to like it, and they will do everything in their power to stop it.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I am especially irked when I hear so many ne’erdowells whining about their beloved Trump having been defrauded of his sure win election by the evil globalists and America’s now being in great danger to suffer a Mao-style Cultural Revolution at the hands of the “ultra-Left”.

Such a degree of abuse of words might terminate faster than we think, as English as an international communication tool fit for intelligent exchange of ideas. First of all, how come the Republican Party is “red” and any state refusing it “blue”: that seems to go together well with the US being the only country refusing to go metric.

Had America been endowed even with a tolerably good semblance of democratic system as used to be usual in Europe and still is here and there, Trump would have had no chance to be anything more than a backwater talk show animator and maybe the governor of Missouri or Louisiana turning that state into a laughingstock for the nation and triggering that state to go full radical Socialist Left the election after. Trump was imposed onto America thanks to its stochastic electoral system.

The system looks like that of the old Republic of Venice (which was more or less a kind of rigged from behind roulette-like game of chance, with the difference they claimed of chance and not of the people’s will) against a definite majority’s will by both the financial forces revolving around the Goldman Sachs bank and Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is Trump’s alter ego in the Old World (Russia playing a subsidiary role in that enterprise). He was actually a kind of Israeli governor directly imposed at international level against America’s own Zionist, but still to intelligent oligarchy just as a reminder to the nation that they are no longer sovereign and are to be treated like any African dependency where no intelligent people need apply from now on.

Alt-Right fell for that trap, bar very few thinking people. In a certain sense, Trump has been America’s first real “black” president.

They fear for a Mao-style Cultural Revolution to happen by the American ultra-Leftist forces. For the time being I see nobody on the American horizon still trying and succeeding in part to impose the cult of his personality as a kind of savior or Emperor Cyrus rather than Orange-Hue-Tan.

He is in the real position (though not in mental capacity, and probably not in mental disposition neither, as he doesn’t give a damn for his adoring crowd) to head a Cultural Counterrevolution to be followed by a Great Leap Backwards leading to the transformation of the US into the Neo-Medieval Republic of Gilead as described by Margaret Atwood in Handmaid’s Tale.

Actually I have also come on my own to your own conclusion: The US is indeed in great need of some Mao-like Old Far Left Cultural Revolution that should do away with all “olderies” and force all conservatives to acknowledge at last, through violent behavioral psychiatric techniques if need be, that there is absolutely nothing worth conserving in the US and that all has to be rebuilt from zero, and preferably from Ground Zero.

There is no single historical non-fake monument worth preserving except North Harlem’s Cloisters: the few other ones of decent colonial style have been all demolished to make room for cheaper and cheaper built and dearer and dearer sold condos, except a few that were built by slavers still having descendants caring for their property, but that kind of historical monument is rather to be classified with Holocaust Museums in my opinion.

The general infrastructure is in such a state of disrepair that bombing it all first would probably come out cheaper than getting back a working one. Most cities of the Rust Belt are already kind of bombed, so why not finish the job? There is nothing worth fireworks in the background; instead, there is everything worth fireworks in the structure.

As it is a Cultural Revolution we are talking about here, my opinion is that at the present moment no university is worth preserving. That is an euphemism: There is rather an emergency case for burning them all down, while what needs to be taught could be taught for free on the internet, preferably from as far overseas as possible. The diplomas emitted by them should be all declared void as has been done with Trump University sheepskins. Showing one in order to get any job should be an offense.

Among the olderies to be done away with first are the American religions: they are 10

By what kind of economic miracle has America, which used to be the chief manufactured goods exporter of the world and won two world wars as such, turned into a chief exporter of only religion and mega-churches only (if we except the military sector from our equation, which is concentrated in the former Slaving South)? Has America so many saints, sages, and masterworks of timeless wisdom to be exported to the planet?

There should be only one single tax: Henry George ** 2. His equation was by the square of the value of real estate owned per owner or co-owner, which would make collectivization the only survivable solution while preserving personal liberty.

Activities not resulting in the production of physical goods, including religion, law, education, and medicine, should be declared out of reach of any lucrative enterprise and the attempt to make them lucrative classified together with prostitution. That is, either they are practiced for free as leisure, or they are charities (for real needy ones), or they are public services.

Alt Left: Chaos in Lebanon

Alt Left: The US Doesn’t Care about Democracy and Probably Never Has

Alt Left: Full Democracy in the US Will Be a Boon for the Democrats and a Catastrophe for the Republicans

I do believe there are parties, groups, and individuals, in fact 10’s of millions of them, right here in the US who very much support democracy in the US itself. Those would be people associated with the Democratic Party and the Left in the US.

Few if any persons on the Right in the US support democracy, although there are a few. The reasoning is simple.

Full democracy implemented in the US, something we have never had and never even tried to have, would help the Democratic Party and the Left in the US quite a bit. So of course they support it. But they supported it even when majorities were voting Right to be fair.

Full democracy in the US, which as I noted we have never had one day of in this silly blighted land, would be a disaster for the Republican Party.

The country is far to the left of the Republican Party. Since 2005, Democrats have held a +1

But that probably cannot be done because it goes against the basic foundations of the Republican Party itself. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but they would have to turn their back on over 100 years of Republican Party policy and go all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt.

Hell, at this point, a return to Richard Nixon or Eisenhower would be wonderful, but the party is too far gone to even do that. Instead of moving left with the electorate as they should if they wish to survive, every year they get increasingly rightwing to the point where the Republican is an actual anti-democratic rightwing authoritarian party. They now don’t support democracy at all. They support some form of Latin American style rightwing hard or soft dictatorship. It’s transformed itself into an actual Latin American-style fascist political political party.

Survival against All Odds Via Computerized Election Theft

The only reason the Republicans have been winning all of that time is because they’ve been stealing elections. No way on Earth could fifteen years of +1

The only possible explanation for the massive and unprecedented failure in in pre-election and election precinct level polling is that the Republicans have been engaged in massive election theft via computer voting machines for the last 20 years. In fact, Karl Rove is on record admitting that the Republicans have been stealing elections via computer voting machines. He said he it’s within a few points, they can try to steal it because no one notices but if it’s more than that, they don’t even try.

2020 was the most brazen election theft in US history. Republicans tried to steal elections in Wisconsin and Michigan where they were down by 8-10 points and they almost won in both cases. So this shows that the Republicans are getting very desperate. Even if Democrats are ahead by 8-10 percentage points, Republicans will still try to steal it and no one in the Democratic Party or the media will ban at eye.

They will just blab on endlessly about poll failure. In this sense, the US Democratic Party fully deserves every terrible thing that has happened to it and in a larger sense, US Democrats deserve every shitty rightwing thing that has happened and will happen to this country for being so stupid and obtuse to refuse to recognize this obvious election theft being conducted right under their noses. I have no sympathy for the US Democratic Party. They can burn it to the ground for all I care, and while they are at it, burn every one of those corporate media companies to the ground too.

The system is too far gone for reform. I’m at the “burn it to the ground and start all over again from scratch” point now. Otherwise known as creative destruction. That’s an almost Maoist point of view. Sometimes things are just too far gone for petty reformism. You need to raze it all to the ground and start all over again with a complete political and cultural revolution.

Alt Left: Why The Republican Party is Now Literally a Latin American-Style Rightwing Authoritarian or Fascist Political Party

Fascism: A Popular Palingetic Dictatorship against the Left

This is if we define fascism as any rightwing dictatorship or rightwing authoritarian system. I think it’s a good argument that any rightwing dictatorship is basically a fascist political system if we define fascism according to its excellent new definition of “a popular dictatorship against the Left.”

It also tends to have nationalist or ultranationalist palingetic properties in many cases, palingetic referring to a project along the lines of the mythic bird rising from the ashes that seeks to restore the blood and soil glory of the ancient nation before it was destroyed by insurgent anti-nationalists, typical liberals or minorities.

Trumpism, Erdoganism, and Hindutvadism: Three Fascist Ideologies

Viewed through this mirror, you can see how Trumpism, Erodgan’s Ottoman Islamism, and the BJP Hindutva regime in India are all classic fascist political parties. Note the strong support by the middle classes of all three projects, in particular the Hindutvadi one. Religion is wedded to religious bigotry in all three nations – Christianity (albeit in a mild form deeply associated with regressive Judaism) in Trump’s case, a religio-nationalist Islam in the case of Turkey and a religio-nationalist Hindusim in the case of India.

In the latter two cases, religious minorities are associated with treasonous insurgents who needed to be eliminated from the body politic, which they are seen as literally poisoning. In Trump’s case, the prejudice is not so much religious as it as against liberals and liberalism and apparently even democracy, the twin enemies of fascists everywhere dating all the way back to 1930’s Germany. Liberalism and democracy makes the nation soft and allows the national enemies, who happen to be minorities and liberals, to worm their way into the body politic and eat away at the nation itself like termites.

Alt Left: Argument: There Is No Peaceful Road to Socialism

Transformer: I saw this on Facebook with a discussion about Communism and this is a statement from a Libertarian:

The Marxist delusion of no government always leads to absolute tyranny. The anarcho-communists sweep away tolerably governments and pave the way for the Stalins, Maos, Pol Pots, Castros, Mugabes, Chavezes, etc. It’s not that they justify Stalinism, but that they justify measures that always result in Stalinism, and they still don’t have a clue as to why that keeps happening.

I disagree with his statement that the governments before these revolutions were tolerable.

The CIA supported Pol Pot.

Yes, the US supported Pol Pot the whole time they were in and for many years afterwards as guerrillas.

You are certainly free as a liberal to Leftist to oppose Marxism. A lot of people on the Left, especially liberals, are against Marxist dictatorships. There’s a good argument against them. They’re not exactly democratic.

Chavez was not a dictator at all. Venezuela under Chavez was one of the most democratic countries on Earth. Mugabe wasn’t really a dictator. The opposition always ran in every election, and Mugabe always got the most votes not counting fraud. Same thing in Russia. Putin always gets the most votes whether he steals a few or not. Same thing in Belarus. The opposition runs every time and Lukashenko always gets 75-8

There’s never been any serious electoral fraud in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Haiti, Iran, Syria, or Peru or most places the US has alleged that massive electoral fraud allowed the Left to win. I can’t recall the last time the Left anywhere on Earth had to steal an election to win. It’s usually the Right who does that.

Anarcoms have never completed a successful revolution. The no government thing is supposed to be way off in the future and it’s never happened anywhere. The “Stalinism” is just the dictatorship of the proletariat. It’s part of Marxist theory. It’s not an aberration or anything. Look at Honduras, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Bolivia, Guyana, Peru, Mexico, Italy, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Iran, etc.

There’s no peaceful way to put the Left in power. Anytime a Left government comes in, there’s this nonstop war to overthrow it, usually culminating in a rightwing fascist coup. They always ruin the economy, first and foremost. This is why orthodox Marxists regard the peaceful road to socialism as either a sick joke or a great idea that is not possible in the real world. Lenin called advocates of the peaceful road to socialism “parliamentary cretins.”

Alt Left: “The Macroeconomics of Economic Populism in Latin America,” by Rudiger Dornbush and Sebastian Edwards

I didn’t actually read the book, but James Schipper did. Below I will quote from an article from NACLA that critiques the book well.

James Schipper: Perón came back from exile, and then won the election with a landslide. Unless the Argentines are complete political idiots, this demonstrates that he tried to accomplish something for the masses. Ordinary voters may not understand much about economics, but they usually sense who is on their side and who is not.

The US, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia are three Anglosphere countries that keep voting for rightwing economics despite themselves. The masses have been harmed by neoliberalism in all of these countries, but every four years, they march off and vote for it again. I think part of the problem is that ordinary people are voting against mass immigration and other leftwing stupidities in all of these countries. They don’t realize that neoliberalism comes as an add-on to anti-immigrant policies in the Anglosphere. Voters in the Anglosphere are political idiots.

You can see why people keep voting for the Chavistas in Venezuela. Sure, the economy is a mess, but no one blames the government. 7

James Schipper: Many years ago, I read a book called The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America, in which it is explained how leftist populists in LA, despite their unquestioned commitment to improving the economic lot of the poorest segment of the population, often fail because they overreach.

Wikipedia has an article called Macroeconomic Populism, which explains briefly how overambitious economic populism can backfire.

I would agree that acting too fast too soon isn’t a great idea and a slower approach might work better. But we don’t see a lot of cases of economic stupidity like this nowadays in Latin America.

Yes, I think that book is not good. One man worked for the World Bank. Their basic attitude is “Don’t rely on government to try to fix economic problems and help the poor. It fails every time.” In other words, it’s hopeless. Massive inequality a problem? Sure. What to do? Nothing! Because everything you do is going to fail. I dunno.

Here is a critique of the book:

https://nacla.org/news/2012/4/20/latin-america-unravels-populist-putdown

The book is referred to in this book review of another book as “an outdated, far-right, academically dishonest book.”

From the article.

Rudiger Dornbush, and Sebastian Edwards, two University of Chicago-trained economists.

See? They were both trained at the University of Chicago. That’s the home of Milton Friedman, neoliberalism, the Chicago Boyz, the neoliberal whiz kids who caused so much destruction all over the world, especially in Latin America. UoC/Friedmanite economics doesn’t work. Period. It causes massive inequality, significant gains for the top 2

They complain about D and E’s portrayal of Chile:

The most astonishing example of the book’s studied ignorance happens to be one of the most indisputable and well-documented examples of U.S. intervention: Chile.

According to Chapter 7 of Dornbush and Edwards’ book, written by Felipe Larraín (currently Chile’s Finance Minister) and Patricio Meller, the “decline and full collapse of the [Allende coalition government] experiment during the years 1972-73 is a clear consequence of the ‘successful’ overexpansive policies implemented in 1971.”

Never mind that Nixon reacted to the 1970 elections determined to “smash Allende,” telling then-CIA director Richard Helms to “make the economy scream.” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh details the earliest destabilization campaigns, carried out even before Allende took office:

Approval was granted for a last-minute increase of the propaganda activities designed to convince the Chilean Congress that an Allende election would mean financial chaos. Within two weeks, twenty-three journalists from at least ten countries were brought into Chile by the CIA, and they combined with CIA propaganda “assets” already in place to produce more than 700 articles and broadcasts both in and out of Chile before the congressional election – a staggering total whose ultimate influence cannot be measured.

By late September, a full-fledged bank panic had broken out in Santiago, and vast amounts of funds were being transferred abroad. Sales of durable goods, such as automobiles and household goods, fell precipitously; industrial production also dropped. Black-market activities soared as citizens sought to sell their valuables at discounted prices.

Ok that’s a case of capital flight. Venezuela had the same problem. All I can say is that it upholds Lenin’s idea that the peaceful road to socialism, while a great idea in theory, simply never works in real life because the capitalists simply sabotage the economy.

Larraín and Meller mention Nixon, Kissinger, Richard Helms, I.T.T., and/or Pepsi precisely zero times in their scholarly analysis. Whereas U.S. Ambassador to Chile Edward Korry threatened that “not a nut or bolt will be allowed to reach Chile under Allende,” doing “all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.”

Like I said, they failed badly to include the US massive economic war it waged against Chile. The same exact program was used against Venezuela, with the same results. The sanctions on Zimbabwe and Nicaragua also caused hyperinflation.

The only hyperinflation I’ve seen lately was caused by capitalists waging economic war against the state or by US sanctions. Usually both are going on at the same time. In Venezuela, the capitalists won’t stop raising prices. They love the hyperinflation because they’ve used it to play the currency black market to make a bundle. And they deliberately created it by shutting down production and hoarding goods.

At one point, Maduro put the army in charge of enforcing price controls, and the inflation stabilized for a while, but then they were withdrawn and they went back up again. However, after floating the currency along with a drop in the value of real wages and a reduction of most people’s savings, inflation was subdued. I’d hate to see these guys’ analysis of Venezuela. In fact, Krugman is already saying that Venezuela and Argentina are modern cases of this macroeconomic populism.

The authors argue instead that all state efforts to create a decent economy will fail and the only thing that will work is neoliberalism.

The authors explain that “the message emerging from the papers in this book is clear: the use of macroeconomic policy to achieve distributive goals has historically led to failure, sorrow, and frustration.” That’s why they helpfully disabuse Latin America of its “naive confidence in the ability of governments to cure all social and economic ills.”

However, neoliberalism doesn’t work either:

Second, it is worth noting that Cambridge development economist Ha-Joon Chang has analyzed the effects of these supposedly self-defeating macro policies. He finds on the contrary that “developing countries did not do badly at all during the ‘bad old days’ of protectionism and state intervention in the 1960s and 70s. In fact, their economic growth performance during the period was far superior [3.

…And even that rate was partly due to the rapid growth of countries in the region that had explicitly rejected neoliberal policies sometime earlier in the 2000s  – Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela.” In fact, when Dornbush and Edwards published their book in 1991 denouncing “overly expansive” macro policies, Latin America and the Caribbean – largely compliant to IMF diktats at that point – had already averaged an entire decade of negative 0.

If you are going to read books about economics, I recommend Ha-Joon Chang. As you can see, neoliberalism in Latin America failed completely. Even its proponents admitted that it failed, but their attitude was the usual, “We didn’t give it time enough. Give it some more time and it will start working.” Yeah, right.

Larraín and Meller focus their attention exclusively on the macroeconomic policy errors of Allende’s Unidad Popular (UP) government. Its efforts to “increase real wages and to improve Chilean income distribution failed completely,” they contend, dryly adding that it “took eight years, up to 1981 (during the ‘peak of the boom’), for real wages to recover the level they had held in 1970 before the UP government.”

Larraín and Meller omit from this account Pinochet’s post-1973 reign of terror in which tens of thousands were imprisoned and killed and an economic policy during the dictatorship that led to virtually no growth in per capita income by 1986, 13 years after the coup.

See? Neoliberalism didn’t work either. It took until 11 years after Allende for real wages to reach the level they were under Allende. Then there was an economic crash. I believe it took until 1989 for wages to reach the level they were under Allende again. That’s just a complete failure of neoliberalism over 20 years.

Perhaps the paper’s most artful flourish is the cynical use of the impersonal, passive voice. Nixon directed a comprehensive program of economic sabotage literally bearing Secretary of State Kissinger’s signature. The U.S. funded all major anti-government strikes, the CIA penetrated all of Chile’s political parties, and it courted the military to foment a putsch.

From D and E:

Real wages dropped spectacularly, by -11.

It was all Allende’s fault. All of the economic sabotage and the economic war the US waged to make the economy scream? That did nothing at all! Seems like a very bad analysis.

Guys like D and E are still writing today:

Today, U.S. scholars carry on the dubious tradition of lambasting Latin American populism, whatever its prevailing definition. Due to South America’s general drift to the left in recent years, academics make increasingly strained attempts to “recognize” and discredit it. In an October 2011 paper entitled Decreasing Inequality Under Latin America’s ‘Social Democratic’ and ‘Populist’ Governments: Is the Difference Real?,”Juan Montecino of the Center for Economic and Policy Research highlights the “arbitrary and ill-defined nature” of this endeavor.

Montecino politely dismantles the findings of economists Darryl McLeod and Nora Lustig, who purport to show that “social democratic” regimes did better than “left-populist” ones in reducing inequality in recent years. He shows that their empirical results are reversed when one runs the same regressions using data from the Economic Commission for Latin America. The paper raises questions as to whether their categories capture “anything more than a general antipathy toward one group of governments.”

In other words, they faked the data.

Unsurprisingly, this antipathy is directed toward three of the four countries Ha-Joon Chang highlights for experiencing growth after rejecting neoliberal policies: Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

Their enemies now are those three countries. Simon Johnson attacks Latin American populism in the case of Argentina:

Johnson has referred to Argentina as “a country that struggles over many decades (and whose leaders frequently rail against the world) and for which episodes of reasonable prosperity and new economic models are punctuated by gut-wrenching crises.”

In the case of Argentina’s last gut-wrenching crisis in 2001, however, the “IMF’s fingerprints” were all over it, wrote macroeconomist Mark Weisbrot, CEPR’s co-director and Argentina expert, in late 2001. “It arranged massive amounts of loans – including $40 billion [in 2000] – to support the [overvalued] Argentine peso,” writes Weisbrot. Then it “made its loans conditional on a ‘zero-deficit’ policy for Argentine government.”

By doing so, the IMF was able to “convince most of the press that Argentina’s ‘profligate’ spending habits [were] the source of its troubles.” Finally, the IMF – an organization Tim Geithner recently considered essential for promoting U.S. foreign policy – implausibly claimed it had always been against the overvalued peso and that the loans were made in order to placate the Argentine government.

The IMF caused the problem with orthodox neoliberalism and then blamed the government for “profligate spending” because they ordered it to read zero-deficit, a goal which itself caused the crisis.

See? They’re making it up.

Second, Johnson seems to portray the country as wracked by serious, ongoing difficulties. But Weisbrot et al. demonstrate that since defaulting and devaluing, Argentina – widely considered ‘populist’ – expanded 9

Their paper also demolishes the myth repeated by many economists – including McLeod and Lustig – that Argentina’s success was largely the effect of a serendipitous commodities boom.

See? Populism worked great in Argentina. It also worked great in Venezuela (before the economic war combined with the collapse in oil prices killed the economy), Ecuador, and Bolivia.

The devastating policies of the past in Latin America, as well as the more successful policies of vastly more independent governments over the past decade, are intimately tied up with Washington’s control over the hemisphere and the recent collapse of its influence – especially in South America. Roger Morris, a staffer at the National Security Council until mid-1970, clarified such considerations for Seymour Hersh:

“I don’t think anybody ever fully grasped that Henry [Kissinger] saw Allende as being a far more serious threat than Castro. If Latin America ever became unraveled, it never would happen with a Castro. Allende was a living example of democratic social reform in Latin America…Chile scared him.”

The devastating economics of the past in Latin America were caused by the US waging economic war on countries that practiced populist economics. This same populism has worked much better now because the influence of the US has greatly fallen in the continent.

The U.S. government has long imposed double standards on the permissibility of social reforms. While instrumental to Allende’s overthrow abroad, the Nixon administration could boast progressive domestic achievements, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, widely considered one of the most important anti-poverty programs in U.S. history.

Similarly, Lyndon Johnson enacted Great Society programs at home but sent thousands of troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965 to quell an uprising demanding the restitution of the deposed social democratic president, Juan Bosch. A liberal wishing to implement land reforms, Bosch was the subject of an FBI espionage and interception operation authorized by J. Edgar Hoover in the months preceding the rebellion, as Bosch sat exiled in Puerto Rico.

See? Liberalism at home. Fascism abroad. That’s the policy prescription of the US under Democrats and liberal Republicans. Also note the FBI overthrew him. The FBI was deeply involved in the lawfare against Brazil that resulted in the false charges being filed against Lula that put him in prison. See? The FBI literally overthrew Lula in Brazil. The FBI are not just pigs; they’re the worst pigs of them all – feds. And it is a deeply political and always reactionary organization. Fuck the FBI.

Perhaps unknowingly, Johnson is simply keeping within the permissible framework of an intellectual culture that has always accommodated and justified Washington’s hypocrisy. To my knowledge, Johnson has yet to apply his support for “standing up to the banks…proposing a more responsible course of action than that preferred by the banking elite,” and “greater transparency in financial transactions” to the IMF, which has conducted most of its deliberations, meetings, and consultations in secret.

Simon Johnson is pro-IMF, like the authors of that book.

On the The New York Times website, he offhandedly dismisses Latin American populism with a reference to an outdated, far-right, academically dishonest book – all in an article that challenges the U.S. elite by praising populism. This is a compelling example of the imperial double standard that keeps “pro-populist” commentators from seeing what is going on in developing countries.

The book you are praising is referred to an “outdated, far-right, academically dishonest book.” I believe that is correct.

But even if the Times’ readers never learn of Latin America’s protracted struggle for self-determination against U.S. power, the region is now a breeding ground for the most constructive values associated with populism. More than a decade of successful revolts has allowed for the elections of independent left governments in most of South America and has brought enormous gains to the poor majority through greater economic sovereignty and democratic social reform. Or as Kissinger might put it, Latin America has unraveled.

See? For the last 20 years, excellent populist economic policies in Latin America have brought enormous gains for the poor majority. According to E and D, it should have been catastrophic.

Alt Left: Capitalism Is Unsustainable: Capitalism Has An Inevitable Tendency to Move Towards Fascism

Rightwing dictatorships and fascists are good for US corporations and the US rich. So the capitalists of the world will always support fascism when it comes down to it. Every corporation in the US will support fascism if push comes to shove. For this reason, capitalism seems unsustainable because capitalists feel that the Left has no right to rule, and when it comes down to it, they will always support fascism, rightwing dictatorships, and fascist putschist oppositions to any existing leftwing governments.

It is for this reason that I feel that capitalism, which I do not necessarily oppose on moral grounds, is unsustainable and dangerous if not an out and out menace because of the tendency of all capitalist states when posed with a threat from the Left to install a fascist state. In other words, at some time or another in most capitalist countries, a threat will always cause a rightwing or fascist dictatorship to be installed.

Because of capitalism’s inevitable tendency towards rightwing dictatorship and fascism and its basic contempt for democracy, I feel that capitalism itself is a problem, and capitalism itself is a danger if not a menace to democratic society and people who wish to live free of dictatorships of the rich and fascism. In other words, yeah, capitalism in the long run is unsustainable.

Alt Left: The Left Won in Mexico

AMLO’s leftwing party won a majority of the legislature just the other day. He hasn’t been a very Lefty president. He ran as one but I don’t think he has been governing as one. But just to show you that Mexico is a part of Latin America, the rich and middle class raised a huge uproar over this man’s victory. And so has the US and especially the US media.

And an overtly fascist and putschist reactionary elite of the Mexican ultra-rich, associated with the most conservative strands of the Catholic Church and social conservatism, appeared on the scene calling for a fascist coup to overthrow the “dictator” AMLO. US papers have been full of articles about how AMLO is a “dictator” and has authoritarian tendencies. Apparently it’s complete nonsense. Even the more honest members of the opposition say there’s obviously nothing undemocratic about him. He’s as democratic as any Mexican President and perhaps more so.

Also, there’s been wild cartel-related mass violence and homicide raging across Mexico for 20 years now. These break into all out warfare between gangs and the police and army, who are often on the take and working for the gangs. The gangs also kill journalists or local politicians who get in their way. The same insanity has continued under AMLO, possibly even at a lower level, and while it was barely mentioned before, not AMLO is letting the cartels spin out of control and is allowing violence and homicide to rage across the land. For this reason he needs to be ousted.

But they get people all riled up about this more or less lies. Anyway, crime is rarely a state’s fault and once crime goes completely out of control, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it short of imposing an extreme totalitarian and authoritarian dictatorship. In El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil the mass crime and high homicide rates have nothing to do with the governments. They occur under both left and rightwing governments.

Leftwing governments leave and rightwingers come in and the crime stays the same. The opposite happens and crime stays the same. But heavy crime is only weaponized against leftwing governments. Crime in Venezuela is just as bad as in rightwing El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but only in Venezuela has it been the fault of the governments. All of those governments have tried everything they could, but when crime goes completely out of control, there’s not much the state can do short of outright dictatorship.

I was shocked but then not so much. Of course the Mexican Right is fascist. It’s just that they haven’t had a real Left government in since Cardenas in 1936. The ghosts of the Revolution are dead and the party of the Revolution, the PRI, turned corrupt and rather un-revolutionary, though the basic changes of the revolution were allowed to remain unchanged.

When the PRI couldn’t win an election, they simply stole them. The Leftist PRD, running Cardenas descendant, won the election in 1986, but the PRI declared the election flawed and said it had to be counted over. The government retreated for two weeks and said nothing. When it was over, a PRD victory had suddenly turned into a PRI win. In other words, they stole it. The “liberal” New York Times cheered it on and said there had been massive fraud in favor of Cardenas while it cheered for the “democracy” of the PRI stealing an election.

Alt Left: The Playbook of US Imperialism: Everything They Say Is the Opposite of What Really Happened

This analysis is based on the theory that US imperialism and Western imperialism for that matter is basically fascist. Not that our societies are fascist themselves because we have managed to insulate ourselves from this. But European jerkoffs spend most of their time running around the globe trying to deny the Third World even the barest social democracy that has made Europe so livable.

Modern Western Liberalism: Liberalism at Home, Fascism Abroad

How else you can you explain how Europe attacked social democracy in Latin America in Mexico, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, and Colombia? Social democracy at home, fascism abroad. This is the project of the Europeans nowadays, and NATO spearheads this project. In the US it is similar, social liberalism at home, fascism abroad, at least for the Democratic Party. Canada has something between social liberalism and social democracy, and their politics is for this project at home and fascism abroad.

When reporting about hot button issues abroad in the West, keep in mind that everything you read about countries the West is hostile to is really the opposite of what really is or what really happened.

Everything Is the Opposite of What It Really Is

With fascists and fascist supporters like the US, everything is the opposite of what it really is.

Elections That Never Make Sense

Rightwing governments that use fraud to steal elections are restoring democracy.

Leftwing governments that win elections always win due to fraud because of course they cannot win any other way. As soon as they get in power, no matter how much freedom they allow, they are always authoritarian dictatorships. The elections that government has, even if they are models of fair elections, are always marred by massive fraud.

Rightwing governments that overturn these legitimate elections and steal them for the Right are always uncovering the massive fraud. The resulting election theft is called by the New York Times and US government “restoring democracy.”

When the Venezuelan fascist coup overthrew the democratic government of Hugo Chavez in 2002, the US government and the New York Times lauded the “restoration of democracy and end of dictatorship” that the fascist coup (the fascist coup was a restoration of democracy) against a democratic government (the democratic government was a dictatorship) represented.

The US/NATO Fascist Playbook: Mysterious Snipers Shooting at Both Sides

Fascist gangs usually supported by the US and/or NATO, a fascist military organization in Europe, open fire on both security forces and and either left or rightwing rioters. Fascist forces often fire on their own people and blame it on the government as a pretext for a coup to overthrow the government. This is what happened in the US-supported fascist Maidan Coup in Ukraine. When the fascist gangs open fire, the US turns it into leftwing security forces opening fire on leftwing mobs and security forces.

See the 2002 coup in Venezuela, where fascist gangs operating from overpasses shot and killed 32 people, all Chavista protestors or Chavista Venezuelan security forces, then feverishly blamed the government forces for shooting at their own supporters and comrades in arms. The US media tripped over itself reporting how the Left had opened fire on itself, massacring 32 of their own people. It took some time to straighten it all out.

Sanctions

The local fascists and the US also destroy the economy with economic war or sanctions, and then the US and the fascists scream that the Left government has destroyed the economy with its “socialist policies.” Of course it was really the economic war and the sanctions, but no matter. Even notice how all US articles on the Iranian and Venezuelan economies blame the government for the economic and social crisis that was deliberately caused by US sanctions?

Syria

In Syria, gangs of Al Qaeda-linked Islamists (Salafist Islamist like Al Qaeda and ISIS linked forces resemble fascists in many ways) raided villages full of government supporters and murdered everyone inside. Then these same forces screamed that the Syrian government had raided an opposition village and killed all the opposition people inside. The US and Western media then flooded the news with reports that the war criminal Assad has committed another massacre.

There have been 10-20 huge massacres of whole villages in the Syrian Civil War. The US, the West and the Islamists all claim that they were all done by Assad. If you go to Wikipedia and look up all of these massacres, it will tell you that they were all done by Assad.

I researched every one of those massacres in depth.

They were all done by the Free Syrian Army, who are Al Qaeda linked Islamists who burned down churches in every city and town they conquered. The villages massacred were inhabited by Sunni government supporters, Alawites, and Christians. All three groups were feverish supporters of the government. The US continues to state that all of these cases were massacres of opposition supporters by Assad’s forces.

That’s like I set your house on fire and then stand outside screaming about what an arsonist you are as you try to put out the fire. I call the fire department and they arrest you for arson while you’re hosing the building and thanking me, still holding kerosene and matches, for being such a good citizen as they walk by back to their trucks.

The Ties Between Fascism and US Imperialism Are Deep

This is basically how the US and all other forces linked to Western imperialism run their foreign policy. And every government in Europe that is a member of NATO, I’m talking to you. NATO is basically a fascist army. As you can see, the ties between fascism and imperialism are deep. In modern imperialism, the West goes around the world installing fascist and rightwing dictatorships and supporting fascist forces that are trying to overthrow leftwing governments. Not all of the governments it supports are fascists, but all are rightwing, at least in Latin America.

Alt Left: Yes, There is Little Classism in Muslim Countries (Because It’s Against Islam)

James Schipper: Was it really very different (highly classist) in Islam?

Yes, Islamic countries are just not like that.

I can’t think of any Arab country that is like that.

No North African country is like that.

Neither Malaysia nor Afghanistan nor the Caucasus nor Xinjiang nor the Stans is not like that. However, Afghanistan was feudal or semi-feudal until recently. That’s why Communism was fairly popular there. An outsider went there in the 1950’s, and he saw groups of young men chanting with their fists in the air, “Kill the rich!” I suppose the Communist revolution did a land reform and got rid of this feudal land tenure system.

Communism was an easy sell in Bosnia and Albania, but Islam is weak there.

Corruption is a bad problem in the Arab World and a rich elite bled Lebanon dry for decades, but they are widely hated, and there is little to no class hatred in Lebanon.

I can’t see any class hatred in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Somalia, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or even in UAE.

I’ve never heard of any real classism in the Sahel, but no one there has any money anyway.

The only African countries with a history of classism were the apartheid states of Rhodesia and South Africa, but there it was racialized, and the classism was imported from Christian Europe. Classism among the Whites of these states themselves was not a problem.

Angola has become very unequal due to oil wealth, but the system is not popular, and most people are ending up poor. They had a successful Communist revolution that remained in power for a long time. The anti-Communist rebels didn’t even have much ideology. Jonas Savimbi of UNITA started out as a Maoist and switched to rightwing capitalist to get money from the West for his revolution.

Africa just doesn’t have a history of European classism. It was always a relatively egalitarian village society. Sure, the chiefs were rich, but they were supposed to provide for everyone.

All of the Gulf Arab states have such extensive social democracies that in a lot of cases, you hardly even have to work. Education and health care is free and housing may be subsidized. UAE is a very rich country and capitalism roars right along, but I don’t see a lot of class hatred. For one thing, everyone in the Gulf is well-off.

As I said, it was different before. Read Ghassan Khanafani (one of the founders of the PFLP) on the lives of fellahin or peasants in debt bondage in semi-feudal Palestine in the 1930’s. Nasser did a land reform in Egypt in the 50’s and he was a hero all over the Arab World. People said they went to Yemen in the 1960’s, and there were Nasser portraits everywhere in the homes of working class people. Nasser’s land reform set off a wave of land reforms in the Arab World. In Syria and Iraq, they were done by the socialist Baath Party. There was never much resistance to the Baath’s socialism. There were large state sectors and good social democracies. Even Saddam was basically a socialist.

Bangladesh is a problem. Pakistan has been discussed but it is Indianized and Hinduized. The same problem may be going on in Bangladesh. The class hatred is vicious in India, but it’s coded as caste hatred instead. So Pakistan and Bangladesh have a sort of Hinduized Islam. But the poverty and class hatred is not nearly as bad in those two states as it is in India and Nepal.

Bahrain and Indonesia are problems for whatever reasons but in Indonesia they had to kill 1 million Communists to get their crappy rightwing capitalist dictatorship. And in the last several years they have been led by a social democrat.

Turkey does have problems with its capitalist class in terms of exploitation of workers. After World War 2, there was a Communist revolution and the Commies almost won. However, there is a huge underground Leftist and Communist movement that regularly sets the factories and yachts of the rich on fire! They’re quite popular. The Kurdish PKK was also Left. Islam is rather weak in Turkey though, and Turkey is Europeanized. Erdogan is actually quite socialist. He’s more socialist than Biden. His brand is Islamism is heavy on the social justice end.

 

Alt Left: Christianity Is Anti-Capitalist?

Christianity Is Anti-Capitalist?

James Schipper: Still, theologically, Christianity is not a capitalism-friendly religion. There is nothing in the NT which encourages wealth accumulation or expresses admiration for the rich. In earlier times, there were very rich monasteries but also monastic orders which are committed to poverty, such as the Franciscans. These monasteries were rich for the same reason that Harvard and Yale are very rich. They became rich through donations and bequests.

Sure, theologically it may be so, but in practice, capitalism, extreme inequality, and class hatred have been accommodated in Christian countries quite easily.

You can say that Christianity is against capitalism all you want, but it hasn’t worked out that way in the West.

Social democracy was an easy sell in Europe, but the US is worse classwise than any European country. In the US we almost have a celebration of inequality and that’s somehow been accommodated with the Christianity, which seems weird. The Gospel of Wealth the Evangelicals practice here strikes me as downright heretical though. If Jesus was around, he’d reject it.

Feudalism lasted a long time in Europe, and early capitalism in England was horrible from the 1300’s-1800’s. England is terribly classist even today, but there’s a huge backlash. Thatcher was burned in effigy all over the UK when she died. Can you imagine that happening with Reagan in the US? The class hatred in the UK is pretty raw.

Classism in France was awful, but they killed their rich, and now it’s socialist.

Germany never had a vicious capitalist class. The Kaiser put in the first social democracy in the late 1800’s. It went over easily.

Italy’s never been all that classist, nor has Greece. After World War 2 in Italy, Communists were set to win local elections all over Italy but the US CIA got involved and there was massive election fraud that cheated them out of a victory. But Eurocommunists have been running states in Italy for decades, especially in the North. They’ve had a heavy emphasis on small business at the expense of big business and it’s worked great. I had a commenter on here who owned a small factory in a northern state and he loved the local Communist government. And he was a capitalist! In Greece, the Communists almost won a revolution.

I don’t think Eastern Europe has been classist. Communism went over easily there.

Communism went over easily in Yugoslavia too, though it was a modified form. It was also very popular. I know people who lived there, and they loved it. They almost won in Turkey too.

The Baltics are not classist and neither is Scandinavia. That area is all based on egalitarianism.

Spain and Portugal were classist, but there was a civil war in Spain, and it’s a pretty socialist country right now.

There was a Leftist Carnation Revolution in 1974 that overthrew Salazar’s fascism and a Leftist regime was nearly installed. It was very popular.

Alt Left: Iran Has No Nuclear Weapons Program

Here.

Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Pretty much everyone agrees with this, including the UN. They did have a research program in which they were simply studying the feasibility of building one which also included a lot of basic researcher into how to build one but it was dismantled long ago. The best guess is that the nuclear weapons program occurred during the Iran-Iraq War. But it was dismantled after the war. They never built anything at all. They just did some basic research into how to build a bomb. If you know anything about building these things, there’s a lot more to it than that.

However, the (((biggest liars in the universe))) have decided to pitch a huge lie about “Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” which, as noted, simply does not exist. They have a nuclear energy program, but that’s not the same thing. They’ve never built a single object, mechanism, machine, or facility in any nuclear weapons program, and even basic research in this area ended 30 years ago. Ayatollah Khomeini said it was immoral for Muslims to have nuclear bombs, so he forbade the state from building one. The new leadership under Ayatollah Khameini has reaffirmed that stance.

Nevertheless, the Jews have decided to push a huge lie about Iran having a nuclear weapons program for decades now. It’s not known why they are doing this. Do they actually believe their own lies like most psychopaths and of course the Jews are psychopaths? Do they know that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program but have decided to lie and say they have one anyway?

The (((Americans))), of course, have gone along with this lie from Day One, as have the US (((media))) and the US (((government))). Americans, their media, and their state are all completely Zionized, so this is no surprise. There’s not that much difference between US Gentiles and US Jews when it comes to this sort of thing. Most US Gentiles are Jewy as Hell. They may as well be 500 years kosher.

And America is nothing if not a Jewish country. In fact, Americans themselves could be seen as a “Jewish” people. When you walk, talk, think, and act like a Jew, what difference does your denomination make? Jewishness is more of a spiritual matter than a racial or religious one, and Americans are Jewish in spirit. Hence, the near-complete Zionization and Judaization of our country, the complete linkage of the Pentagon and the IDF, our allowing Israeli intelligence to penetrate near every aspect of our government without lifting a finger to stop them, our outsourcing of most of our surveillance and counter-terrorism functions to Israeli “private” firms that are deeply linked to the state, on and on.

The truth is we got penetrated by Israeli intelligence in the early 1980’s, and the infection has only grown worse with time. At this point the host and the infectious virus are for all intents and purposes the same thing, completely merged, and as tangled as a lawn full of ivy.

So the US media and state has been blaring about this nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program for decades. Once again, do they really believe this? Psychopaths believe their own lies, and our leaders are all psychopaths. Do they know it’s not true? And if so, why are they lying and saying there’s a program when there’s not? One answer may be that saying there’s a nuclear program is a good excuse to put sanctions on the regime.

Another reason may be that it is true that a civilian peaceful nuclear energy program can be converted into a nuclear weapons program, although it might take quite a bit of time. But you have a head start with that peaceful program. Is this the reason? I’m really not sure.

But all Israeli pronouncements about the Iranians being “three months away from a bomb” are complete nonsense. I have no idea how far away they are from a bomb, since they don’t even have a program to make one. They are enriching uranium at 6

Why are the Iranians leery about inspections? Because the US has been known to pepper these inspection teams with spies. The WMD inspection teams that inspected Saddam’s nonexistent facilities were seasoned with US spies. Recently the Iranian government found plutonium in the toilet area of one of the plants in their nuclear program.

An American female member of the inspection team was the last person in that bathroom. They thought that she was going to release the plutonium in the facility but was thwarted and had to get rid of her stash. If she had scattered plutonium in the facility, the US would have sent another team in right away. The new team would have found the plutonium, and then the US could yell, “Iran has plutonium, so they are making nuclear weapons!” So the Iranians don’t trust these “UN inspectors” very much.

As you can see, the fake charge about the nuclear program resulted in an agreement that all of the EU signed onto, so it looks like the entire West has bought into this Jewish lie about the fake nuke program. Who knows what they know? Do they know it’s all fake? Do they think the program is real? Who knows? But look how the fake charge about the nuclear weapons program has enabled the West to put massive sanctions on Iran. So it’s been quite useful. But why are the Israelis so eager to bomb a peaceful nuclear energy program?

Are they so stupid that they really think it’s a weapons program? That’s what they tell everyone. Are Jews really  that stupid or are they just playing dumb like they always do? With people like that who lie as often as they breathe, it’s almost impossible to figure out what they really believe about much of anything. It’s like analyzing a psychopath. Pretty soon you’re lost in a house of mirrors.

Alt Left: Lousy People Make Lousy Countries

If you want to know just how shitty a group of people are, just give them their own country and see what they do when they get a hold of it. Israel is the nation of the Jews. It’s one of the worst countries on Earth. What does that tell you? Turkey is the nation of the Turks, the Gulf Arab countries are the countries of the Gulf Arabs, and India is the country of the Indians. Three of the worst countries on Earth by far, in the running with (((that shitty little country))).

Israel sucks because it’s full of Jews, and this is how Jews act if you give them a country.

Turkey sucks because it’s full of Turks, and this is how Turks act if you give them a country.

Gulf Arab countries suck because they’re full of Gulf Arabs, and this is how Gulf Arabs act if you give them countries.

India sucks because it’s full of Indians, and this is how Indians act if you give them a country.

Why does Mexico blow? Because it’s full of Mexicans, that’s why.

What other reason could there be? Every nation is created by the people who make it up. If the people suck, you get a crappy country. If the people are decent, you tend to get a pretty good country. The only times this might not be true is when the majority oppose the state, but that’s not the case in any of the above nations except Bahrain, where the majority Shia oppose the awful government.

Colombia sucks because it’s full of Colombians.

Guatemala sucks because it’s full of Guatemalans.

El Salvador blows because it’s full of Salvadorans.

Honduras sucks because it’s full of Hondurans (although to be fair, most of the people oppose the state).

Haiti sucks because it’s full of Haitians. Now, I happen to like Haitians in a political sense because 9

Brazil blows because it’s full of Brazilians, a half good and half bad people. Looks like the majority tips bad though because they just voted in a picture-perfect model of Mussolini.

And don’t give me this, “Oh, the people are wonderful! It’s just their terrible government!”

But people aren’t set in stone. Germans and Japanese used to be the worst people on Earth, and now they’re some of the best. But I’m not quite so hopeful about some others. Haitians, for instance, may be problematic for a long time. But electing a Lavalas leader would sure be a step forward.

“Oranges and Lemons,” by Alpha Unit

Humans are among the few mammal species unable to synthesize Vitamin C from glucose. All of our Vitamin C has to come from our diets. If you were somehow to end up with no Vitamin C in your diet whatsoever for a prolonged time – say, three or four months and counting, indefinitely – it is no exaggeration to say that the repercussions could be dire.

Without Vitamin C we can’t make collagen, and without collagen your body can’t repair your skin, bone, cartilage, ligaments and tendons, blood vessel walls, and teeth. You need fresh food in your diet, either from plant or animal sources, to get this done.

Wherever you find people going without fresh food for long periods, you’ll find Vitamin C deficiency, or scurvy.

Scurvy has been prevalent throughout much of human history. It likely began to occur in humans during the development of agriculture. According to biologist Thomas Jukes, once people in temperate zones adopted an agrarian lifestyle they were able to store grains for use during winter. They were also able to spread into other temperate regions previously uninhabitable due to the lack of food supply during winters.

But because stored grains are extremely low in Vitamin C, it is likely that these ancient peoples developed scurvy during the long winter months because grain dominated their diets.

During long journeys or overland campaigns, such as the Crusades, scurvy inevitably appeared.

The first written account of a disease likely to be scurvy comes from the Eber Papyrus of ancient Egypt, dated to 1550 BC. The Papyrus not only diagnosed scurvy but prescribed that its victims be given onions, which contain Vitamin C.

Throughout maritime history, people had to figure out not only how to transport themselves across seas and oceans but how to stay healthy along the way. They were clearly relatively successful at both. Millennia ago, Austronesians were the first humans to invent oceangoing vessels; they colonized a large part of the Indo-Pacific region. Early Polynesians were superb seafarers and traveled thousands of miles exploring and settling the region we know as the Polynesian Triangle (drawn by connecting the points of Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island).

Somali seafarers developed extensive trade networks, and Somali merchants at one time led commerce between Asia and Africa. Chinese merchants sailed the Indian Ocean and traded throughout Southeast Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and East Africa.

How did ancient seafaring peoples deal with scurvy?

Stefan Slater writes that Polynesian seafarers relied on freshly caught fish, crustaceans, and octopi, and would sometimes slaughter some of the animals they were transporting for breeding stock. Jin Ding, Chaojan Shi, and Adam Weintrit report that the diet on Chinese sailing ships included green tea, which contains more Vitamin C than black tea. They also say that Chinese ships began to carry gardens with them, growing soybean sprouts, which are high in Vitamin C.

So there is some evidence that ancient seafarers knew the importance of keeping fresh vegetables and meat in their diets on long voyages.

For Europeans, it wasn’t until the Age of Sail that the problem of scurvy truly came into focus. Wealth and national interest were at stake in ways they hadn’t been before.

Advances in naval technology and a rush for exploration and conquest brought Europeans the “plague of the sea.” Scurvy was the main occupational disease of what historians call the European Age of Exploration. More sailors died of scurvy than all other causes combined, including battles, storms, and other diseases.

Jason A. Mayberry makes the case that a unique confluence of conditions made scurvy and seafaring a deadly combination for Europeans. In his essay “Scurvy and Vitamin C,” he draws upon the work of Stephen Bown, author of Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail.

First, countries had difficulty maintaining sufficient crews for their naval vessels, so they relied on impressment: the taking of men into the military by compulsion, with or without notice. It had been legally sanctioned in Britain since the time of Edward I.

It was basically kidnapping. Gangs of men would go into port towns looking for “recruits.” They would club a man and drag him back to the ship. The man’s family might have no idea what happened to him, and many of the men never made it back home.

Some had experience at sea, some didn’t. Some were in poor health to begin with, being homeless, convicts, or elderly. On average a third of a ship’s crew was made up of impressed men.

Even the men who volunteered for naval service were often in poor health. Many would volunteer in order to secure a place to sleep and get regular meals. Sometimes boys who were orphans or runaways would join.

A second reason that Vitamin C deficiency was hastened during this period were the working conditions on ships. Discipline was harsh and included flogging, keelhauling, and starvation. The body needs more Vitamin C when it is under stress, and sailors had heightened stress in the form of physical exertion, exposure to the elements, fear of battle, and sleep deprivation.

The third and main factor in the development of scurvy was clearly the diet onboard ships. What mattered most for food supplies was that the food be storable for long periods without spoiling. The nutritional content of the food was of little concern for those in charge. What was most important to them was to maintain a suitable labor force at the least possible cost.

A typical weekly ration for a sailor, according to Bown:

  • 1 lb. hardtack (biscuit) daily
  • 2 lbs. salted beef twice weekly
  • 1 lb. salted pork twice weekly
  • 2 oz. salted fish 3 times weekly
  • 2 oz. butter 3 times weekly
  • 4 oz. cheese 3 times weekly
  • 8 oz. dried peas 4 times weekly
  • 1 gal. beer daily

Sometimes the rations included dried fruit or barley meal. But the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables left the diet almost completely devoid of Vitamin C.

Compounding this problem was that even the food sailors had access to wasn’t always fit to eat. Spoilage was a huge problem on ships. Ships were a dark, damp, and sometimes waterlogged environment for sailors and their food, and this led to moldy, worm-eaten bread, or other dried foods. Meat would begin spoiling almost as soon as it left port, no matter how salt-laden it was.

European navies did provide surgeons and surgeon’s mates on ships, but most of a surgeon’s time was spent caring for battle wounds instead of focusing on the treatment and prevention of disease.

All of these factors made scurvy the leading cause of death during the Age of Sail.

The onset of scurvy is a slow progression, Bown and others inform us, usually appearing after 60 to 90 days of a Vitamin C-deficient diet. This is when the body’s lingering stores of Vitamin C are depleted. The initial symptoms are fatigue and muscle aches. Upon waking, a scurvy victim’s joints will ache.

During the second stage, his gums begin to swell and will bleed with slight pressure. The teeth become loose at the roots. He also feels pain throughout his joints and muscles.

During the third stage, the gums begin to rot. They also bleed profusely. The victim’s flesh becomes gangrenous and will spontaneously hemorrhage. His skin, especially on the legs and feet, develop ulcers that turn gangrenous. As connective tissue fails, long-healed broken bones begin to refracture, and long-healed wounds begin to reopen. The legs cramp so severely that the person cannot walk.

At this point the person is in excruciating pain.

In the final stage of scurvy, the person gets a high fever. His skin develops black spots and he begins having tremors. He will drift in and out of consciousness for a while, and then he dies.

An estimated two million sailors died of scurvy between the 15th and 18th centuries. The science at the time was of very little use in treating them – even though various people throughout European history had made the connection between citrus fruits and the prevention of scurvy.

On July 8, 1497, Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, in search of a passage to India. On January 11, 1498, the fleet anchored off Mozambique. After five weeks at sea, the crew began showing the symptoms of scurvy.

Fortunately, some weeks later, they arrived at Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, where they met local traders who traded them oranges. Within six days of eating them, the crew recovered. Da Gama left Africa and began his voyage across the Indian Ocean to Kozhikode (or Calicut to Westerners).

After staying in India for four months, da Gama left for a three-month journey at sea in which scurvy killed many of his sailors. On January 7, 1499, the ships anchored at Malindi, Kenya, where the sailors, remembering their previous cure in Mombasa, asked for oranges. Still, more sailors died of the disease “which started in the mouth.” Six months later the survivors made it back to Lisbon.

Did Vasco da Gama alert any ship owners or controlling authorities of what he had discovered about treating scurvy? No one knows.

Sir Richard Hawkins had discovered a cure for scurvy in 1593 when it appeared in his crew in southern Brazil. He reported that oranges and lemons had been a remedy for his men. To whom did he report this? What did they do with the information?

The Dutch had known about the value of citrus fruits since at least the late 16th century. According to J. Burnby and A. Bierman, who wrote “The Incidence of Scurvy at Sea and Its Treatment,” the Dutch East India Company bartered for lemons in Africa and also established vegetable gardens and orchards in their colonies to provide fresh citrus to their ships. How did the Dutch manage to keep this knowledge to themselves? Was that their intention?

Burnby and Bierman also write about an Elizabethan merchant, Sir Hugh Plat, who had an interest in botany and gave bottled lemon juice to the commander of the first fleet of the English East India Company. It was only the crew of the flagship, Red Dragon, which received a daily allowance of lemon juice. It was also the only crew that remained relatively free of scurvy. What did the English East India Company do with this information?

In the early 1600s John Woodall, a surgeon for the same East India Company, described the symptoms of scurvy and recommended that ships’ surgeons inform Governors of “all places they touch in the Indies” that the juices of oranges, lemons, limes, and tamarinds be used as medicine for scurvy.

The East India Company actually supplied “lemon water,” as it was called, for its ships until 1625, when the Company chose not to provide it because “the woman supplying it wanted 12d. a gallon above the usual price.” The return voyage of 1626 was badly afflicted with scurvy because they had bought tamarinds in the East Indies which they presumed to be as effective as lemons. All sour fruits and even acids such as vinegar were erroneously thought to be cures for scurvy.

J. F. Bachstrom, a Lutheran theologian and physician, wrote in 1734 that there was only one cause of scurvy – the absence of fresh fruits and vegetables for a long period. No drugs would help, nor would mineral acids. Were any companies or government entities aware of his findings? If so, did they take them seriously?

Europe was slowly making headway against this problem nevertheless. In 1739 James Lind, a former physician’s apprentice, volunteered for the Royal Navy and was designated a surgeon’s mate. After seven years in that position, he was promoted to surgeon on HMS Salisbury. It was on this ship that he performed his famous scurvy experiment.

Lind showed an insight ahead of his time by understanding that, to develop a cure, treatments must be compared simultaneously in similar patients. He had envisioned the concept of clinical trials, as rudimentary as his idea might have been.

After eight weeks at sea, and when scurvy was beginning to take its toll on the crew, Lind decided to test his idea that the putrefaction of the body caused by the disease could be prevented with acids. He divided 12 sick patients into six pairs, and provided each pair with a different supplement to their diet: cider, vitriolic acid (diluted sulfuric acid), vinegar, sea water, two oranges and one lemon, or a purgative mixture.

Only the pair who took the oranges and lemons improved.

You would think that Lind had established a clear connection between citrus and scurvy and that the Navy would have taken immediate action. But neither happened.

Lind continued to believe that there were multiple causes of scurvy. He also advocated a method of preserving the virtues of oranges and lemons that involved boiling the juices. Unbeknownst to Lind, boiling destroyed the active ingredient in citrus juices – Vitamin C. When the boiled juice was tried on ships as a preventative measure and found lacking, people began to dismiss the whole idea that citrus fruits were effective against scurvy!

In 1753 Lind published his Treatise on the Scurvy, considered a classic of medical science. But it took the Royal Navy over 40 years to adopt Lind’s recommendations. This happened under the direction of Sir Gilbert Blane, who had been appointed Physician to the Fleet.

Blane was familiar with Lind’s work and had the power and initiative to bring about change, Mayberry states. He organized an experiment on HMS Suffolk on a 23-week trip to India. The sailors were given a mixture of rum, water, sugar, and lemon juice. A few sailors developed a slight case of scurvy. They were given additional rations of lemon juice and the scurvy was quickly cured.

With the results from the HMS Suffolk and the power of his position, Blane was able to ensure that fresh citrus juice became a staple in the British Navy. For the British, scurvy had finally been conquered.

The question remains: why did it take so long, when so many had found the cure time and time again?

Burnby and Bierman note that there was the view among ship owners and government authorities that seamen were expendable. They also suggest that seamen themselves might have been reluctant to take part in experiments that might have settled the issue. But they mention other considerations, mainly the problem of “sheer impracticability.”

How does one store many thousands of oranges and lemons on an overcrowded man-of-war laden with guns, gunpowder, and shot? Using the juice of citrus fruits was certainly a space saver but it readily became moldy, especially under poor storage conditions, which were usually the case.

Speaking of practical considerations, how long can it be practical to treat your work force as if they are expendable? There were no sailors’ advocates at the time to make it impractical for businessmen and governments to do so. Nothing stopped or even slowed Europe’s exploration and colonization, so losing sailors to scurvy was just one of the costs of doing business.

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)