Category: Chinese

“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.

Alt Left: Repost: Mao Messed Up

I think an assessment of Mao ought to be made on a scientific basis, beyond politics. Anti-Communists and rightwingers have an extremely poor record as far documenting this sort of thing, so I almost want to dismiss everything they say.

Probably the best sources would be leftwingers or even Communists who also happen to be some sort of China scholars. To the detriment of Mao, a number of Leftists, socialists and Communists who are also China scholars are starting to contribute some very negative things about Mao.

The good side is quite clear. Life expectancy doubled under Mao, from 35 to 70, from 1949 to 1976, in only 27 years. Supporters of fascism and Hitler are challenged to provide evidence that Hitler’s rule benefited anyone. Nazism was at core a death cult. Life expectancy collapsed in Germany under Hitler and in all of the regions that were occupied by Nazis. Nazism wasn’t about improving life for the common man at all; it was about war and endless war and endless extermination of the less fit.

Communism, with the exception of Pol Pot’s rule, where life expectancy collapsed in Cambodia and 1.7 million died, has been quite a bit different. Most Communist regimes have killed people, but at the same time seem to have saved many lives, often millions of lives. So it gets hard to tally things up.

I suppose pro-Communists would say that the many deaths were necessary in order to save so many lives. That’s an interesting argument and ought to be taken up. Was there a way to save so many lives without killing millions of people? I hope there would be, but I’m not sure.

Pre-China Mao was vastly deadlier than China under Mao. The life expectancy figures make this clear. Czarist Russia was 3 times deadlier than the USSR under Lenin and Stalin. This is where this “greatest killers of all time” crap runs into the mud. If the death rate was 3 times higher per year under the Czar than under Stalin, just how was Stalin the worst killer of all time?

Same with Mao. I don’t have good figures, but once again, it looks like Nationalist China in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s was 3 times deadlier per year, or maybe more, than Maoist China. If the death rate collapsed under Mao, how was he the worst killer ever? The truth is there are plenty of ways to kill a man. You can kill him with a bullet or by sending him to a camp, or you can kill him by disease and lack of food, the silent and uncounted method that the capitalists prefer.

Nevertheless, an accounting of deaths under Mao needs to be done. Just glancing at the data here, it’s already looking like Mao was way worse than Stalin. Way worse.

The initial consolidation of power in China was brutal. Whether the landlords were killed by the party or by the peasants is not that relevant. Mao said that 700,000 landlords were killed, and even he thought that was too many. China scholars think it is higher, from 1-4 million. I would dismiss the 4 million figure, but anywhere from 700,000-3 million is possible. Further research is needed here.

The Anti-Counterrevolutionary Drive of 1950 followed, an attempt to uncover supporters of the Nationalists and counterrevolutionaries. Tens of thousands were killed, or possibly up to a million, let’s call it 20,000-1 million. Further research is needed.

Anti-Christian Campaigns of the 1950’s. These were launched against mostly Christians, but also other religions. “Many thousands” are said to have died. Definitely some further work is necessary here.

Anti-Counterrevolutionary Campaign of 1953. Mao said, “95

The Great Leap Forward Famine happened between 1959-1961. Unlike the fake Holodomor of 1932-33, it’s looking more and more like most of the blame for this horrible catastrophe can be laid at the feet of Mao himself. The man was a fanatic. He was told that there was a famine, and in early 1959, he backtracked on some of his crazy ideas, while he blamed subordinates for the famine.

Then there was the Lushan Conference in May 1959. Mao accused Peng Dehuai, a critic of the Great Leap, of conspiring against him. Peng was purged, and the Great Leap went was ordered to go ahead full speed. If there had been no Lushan Conference, there would have been no famine. There followed two years of catastrophe, in which there was overprovisioning of grain from the peasants which was then stored in warehouses in cities, where it rotted or was exported for scarce foreign currency.

Much of the problem was that local officials were wildly exaggerating harvests, hence the overprovisioning at the state level. They thought that with bumper harvests, they could take grain from the countryside to the cities without problems. But there were no bumper harvests. Harvests had collapsed. Finally in 1961, the state figured out that it had screwed up royally and started mass importing grain. Caravans of grain trucks flowed to the countryside, and the famine was over. But many were too weak to even walk to the trucks to get the food.

Mao is blamed for an atmosphere of terror that led underlings to fake bumper crops where none had occurred. With no democracy in the party, no one wanted to contradict Mao. Mao himself had some utterly idiotic ideas, which he was allowed to implement due to lack of party democracy. After the Great Leap, the party realized it had screwed up bad. Even Mao knew that. The Cultural Revolution was in a lot of ways Mao’s attempt to regain face after getting egg on his face in the Great Leap.

As far as deaths during the Great Leap, this is still up in the air. Even Maoists admit that there were 15 million excess deaths in the period. Some of the higher figures use preposterous accounting techniques whereby people who had never even been born were counted as “deaths.” Tell me how that works. Nevertheless, the figure may be higher than 15 million. At any rate, it’s the worst famine in modern world history, and it’s a permanent blot on Mao’s record.

The Cultural Revolution was sheer insanity. Many received poor educations as schools were shut down. Many cultural relics and buildings were destroyed, and a good part of China’s cultural heritage was smashed up.

People were killed and hounded all over China for little or no reason. Red Guards rampaged all over China, torturing, humiliating, imprisoning and murdering all sorts of people, including local party officials, teachers and even university professors. When someone was hounded, the humiliation went on every day and there was no escape. No one would dare to come to your side, not even your spouse. Deng Xiaoping’s son was tossed out of a window and paralyzed from the waist down.

Red Guard factions battled each other in cities across China with weapons looted from local Army depots. Sometimes Army units joined in. Red Guards in one city would attack Red Guards in another city. Women and children were murdered and kids were even buried alive. Enemies were cannibalized in one area. Ridiculous, insane and anarchic, right? Sure.

In some parts of China, victims of the Red Guards are still angry. The Red Guards are still around, older now, but still living in the villages alongside their victims. Their former victims hate them. Lawsuits have been brought against former Red Guards, but the courts have thrown them out.

From a Communist POV, one of the most tragic things about all of these persecutions and killings, when one reads the details of the individual cases, is that many of the victims were not even counterrevolutionaries. Many were dedicated, hard-working Communists and revolutionaries, often devoted Maoists. Lord knows why they were purged and victimized.

The insanity and anarchy of the Cultural Revolution is one reason why the Party wants to keep a tight reign on power. China descends pretty quickly into wild and deadly anarchy.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of Chinese Communist Party publications and the theses and dissertations by students at Chinese universities, which tend to toe the party line. As a rule, the Cultural Revolution is regarded as a big mistake by ultra-Left forces, and the Party definitely wants to avoid such messes in the future. I’ve even some some Party critiques of the Great Leap, though not much is said about that. It’s clear that the high ranks of the Party regard the Great Leap as a disaster.

There continue to be some very serious human rights abuses in China, as this 89 page report from Human Rights Watch reports. Even from the POV of a Communist, some of the abuses of these petitioners seem just flat out wrong. There doesn’t seem to be any legitimate Communist reason to be attacking a lot of these poor petitioners.

Surely in a Communist system, petitioners should have the right to protest uranium pollution of rivers, corrupt officials abusing their posts and stealing land, etc. In what way are these folks counterrevolutionaries?

But it’s not true that everyone who protests in China goes to jail. There are around 100 public protests every single day in China, often involving large groups. Only a few of them get arrested, harassed, beaten, tortured or jailed. But I guess you never know when your card will come up.

The fact that some of the harshest critiques of Mao’s crimes, excesses and stupidities are coming out of the Chinese Communist Party itself shows that slamming Mao can be done within a socialist, Leftist or Communist framework.

Can it be done in a Maoist framework? This I’m not so sure of. The Party will not come out and make public its findings on Mao as the USSR did with Stalin because the party continues to wave the banner of Mao and practically rules under his name and visage. It’s possible that slamming Mao would so delegitimize the party that it might be fatal for the CCP. It’s a tough call. For the anti-Semites, I have a homework assignment for you. Since Mao was a Communist and Communism is Jewish, obviously Mao was a Jew. Please uncover the secret Jewish connections of Mao and his closest supporters in the CCP.

Alt Left: A Chinese View of Time

Rambo said: Deng Xiao Peng said he could see democracy happening in China in a relatively short period of time. He was asked, ” what do you think, another 25 or 50 years maybe?” To which he replied, ” I could see it happening in maybe a thousand years.” To the Chinese, 1,000 years is looked upon as a short time. You’re talking about a nearly 5,000 year old country that has never known freedom and democracy. That’s why when countries like the U.S. negotiate with them, that has to be kept in mind.

Nixon asked Chou En-Lai in 1971 what he thought about the French Revolution in 1790. His reply?

It’s too soon to tell.

Which is pretty similar to what Deng said. The Chinese always take the long view, unlike us dumb Americans. And that’s smart of them and dumb of us.

This is literally how the Chinese think. All stages of the past are completely blurred together, and all are together with the present. I’m not aware they talk much about the future. I know this because I did a lot of research on their forums. Absolutely fascinating people. People would be talking about their family lineage, as their ancestors are very important to them. In fact, their basic religion is probably some form of ancestor worship.

They would be talking about their family lineages and drift back and forth between the present day, the 20th Century and then back to the 16th-19th Centuries, making historical references all along the way. And of course there were all sorts of references to the old dynasties like the Shang Dynasty (probably the very first Chinese dynasty) and many others. And now we are going all the way back to Old Chinese thousands of years ago.

I don’t understand Chinese history so I can’t make sense of these dynasties, but the Chinese’ view of time was fascinating. The year 400 was yesterday, today is 1600, and tomorrow is the 19th Century. It’s as if the past, present, and future were all happening at the same time, which is actually an interesting philosophical way to look at time. This is in fact how I view Time.

 

Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Southern and Northern Chinese: How to Tell Them Apart

How the Hell would I know? They’re all just a bunch of gooks to me! J/k. Don’t report me to SJW  Central Control please!

SHI: One should just go with a Vietnamese or Northern Chinese girl if you’re craving a Korean. Can’t tell the difference anyway.

SHI is a connoisseur of women, and I am more like a common sewer when it comes to women, but I will respect his judgement nevertheless.

Northern Chinese look very much like Koreans, and I very much doubt if there is a good way to sort them out. Koreans do have very prominent high cheekbones. That’s their Mongolian heritage as they pretty much came from Mongolia long ago. They along with the Japanese settled on the northeast coast of China in the Shandong area 7-8,000 years ago (believe it or not) and stayed there for many years. See recent excellent work by Martine Robeets on this.

The Koreans may have moved in from there 3-5,000 YBP, and Japanese invaded Japan in a huge wave 2,300 YBP. These people were called the Yayoi. The Yayoi are actually thought to have moved first from Shandong to Korea and then south from Korea to Japan a couple thousand years ago. But Northern Chinese and Mongolians are more or less the same thing.

The Japanese came from this same Mongolian stock, but they bred in so deeply with the Ainu that they definitely look different from Koreans. But they both also look quite similar, and it’s not easy to tell them apart either. In addition, there are a lot of mixed Japanese-Koreans in Japan. They’re almost a cliche.

Viets definitely look different from either Japanese or Koreans. They are also full of Chinese, but they are full of Cantonese Southern Chinese (“the barbarians” as the Northern Chinese refer to them), and Southern Chinese look a lot different from Northern Chinese.

Viets are a mixture of a more Austroloid type exemplified by the Montagnard tribesmen (look at a photo of them sometime). Actually the Montagnards are more like Australoids transitioning to Mongoloids or early SE Asians. Completed modern SE Asians are Mongoloids with some lingering traces of their Australoid heritage.

2,300 years ago, a huge wave of Southern Chinese conquerors spread through Vietnam and thoroughly bred in with the population. Nevertheless there was a Chinese minority in Vietnam in recent who tended to run the businesses (as usual). They were quite persecuted after the Communists took over, and most of them fled as boat people.

Alt Left: “Some in Hong Kong Feel Frustrated as Their City Loses to Mainland China,” by Andre Vltchek

I am sure most of you have heard of the riots convulsing Hong Kong. The Western media is only providing one point of view about these riots – heroic rioters fighting evil Communist dictatorship for freedom and democracy and sugar and spice and everything nice.

I urge you to think again. I don’t support these rioters. There’s really nothing to support. Further, as I hope to show in future pieces, the rioters absolutely do not have majority support. If you go against them, they beat you with clubs, fists and boots. They are destroying public property all over Hong Kong for no particularly good reason.

These are the children of the rich and the upper middle classes. The working class of Hong Kong, the poor, and older people are nowhere to be seen. Go talk to some of them and they will all tell you that they oppose these destructive riots.

If there was a referendum tomorrow on what the rioters want, it would lose. The rioters represent a significant group, but they are not a majority. They only have 35-40

Your average working class, poor, or older Hong Konger is a fairly conservative person. These silly riots go against traditional Chinese values. Sure, China is revolutionary, and that involves chaos and destruction, but since when are contras revolutionaries? Contras are never revolutionaries.

The young rioters think they are citizens of something called Hong Kong that is not a part of China. The silent majority with their more conservative values are proud to be what they have always considered themselves to be: citizens of China and heirs to its great civilization.

The rioters don’t get it. Hong Kong is not some separate thing. Hong Kong is part of China. It always was part of China. Sure, the British stole it for a while (during the Opium Wars to boot), but it was still part of China even then.

Hong Kong is now back to China where it has always been. The rioters are citizens of China, not some fake thing called Hong Kong. They obviously lack majority support in China proper, where recent polls show ~86

The CP runs China. Almost everyone in China supports the CP. I hate to tell people to love it or leave it, but if these kids don’t want to be part of China, perhaps they might wish to leave. Macao is right next door. And then there’s Taiwan. Or just calm down and quit being tools of the West.

I would like to add that a century of extreme anti-Communist propaganda is also driving these riots. Most Hong Kongers are extremely anti-Communist. Except now they live in a Communist country. Maybe it’s time they made some adjustments. You can only push a rock uphill for so long. At some point, even Sisyphus wears out and becomes just one more victim of the Law of Gravity. Maybe some causes are doomed from the start.

Some in Hong Kong Feel Frustrated, as Their City Is Losing to Mainland China

By Andre Vltchek
Global Research, October 11, 2019

Hong Kong is losing to Mainland China. Its poverty rates are high; it suffers from corruption and savage capitalism. It is now the most expensive city on earth. People are frustrated, but paradoxically, they are blaming socialist Beijing for their problems instead of the legacy of British colonialism. ‘Across the line’, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Xiang and other cities are leaving Hong Kong behind in almost all fields.

When my dear friend and great concert pianist from Beijing, Yuan Sheng, used to live in New York, recording, giving concerts, and teaching at prestigious Manhattan School of Music, he told me that he used to cry at night:

“In the United States, they smear China. I felt hurt, defenseless.”

He returned to Beijing, gave back his Green Card and began teaching at Beijing Conservatory. He never regretted his decision. “Beijing is much more exciting than New York these days”, he told me.

It is obvious that Beijing is booming: intellectually, artistically; in fact, in all fields of life.

Yuan’s friend, who returned from London and became a curator at the iconic “Big Egg” (the biggest opera house on earth), shared her thoughts with me:

“I used to sit in London, frustrated, dreaming about all those great musicians all over the world. Now they come to me. All of them want to perform in Beijing. This city can make you or break you. Without being hyperbolic, this is now one of the most important places on earth.

Just under one roof, in one single night, we can have a Russian opera company performing in our big halls, in another there is a Chinese opera, and there is a Bolivian folklore ensemble in the recital hall. And ours is only one of Beijing’s theatres.”

When Chinese artists and thinkers are fighting for the prime venues with their Western counterparts, it is usually Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen ‘against’ London, Paris, and New York. Hong Kong is ‘somewhere there’, behind, suddenly a backwater.

While Hong Kong University and the City University of Hong Kong used to be the best in China, many mainland institutions of higher learning, including Peking University and Tsinghua, are now producing many more cutting-edge creative thinkers.

I spoke at all of these schools and can confirm that the young people in Beijing and Shanghai are extremely hardworking and endlessly curious, while in Hong Kong, there is always that mildly arrogant air of exceptionalism and a lack of discipline.

It used to be that the so-called “Sea Turtles” (students who went abroad or to Hong Kong and then returned to Mainland China), were treated like celebrities, but now, it is much easier to get a job with Mainland China’s diplomas.

Recently, while filming the riots in Hong Kong, I was told by a receptionist at one of the major shopping plazas:

“We do not treat visitors from Mainland China well. And they lost interest in Hong Kong. Before, they used to come here to admire out wealth. Now, most of them are avoiding this place. What we have, they have too, and often better. If they travel, they’d rather go to Bangkok or Paris.”

These days, the contrast between Xiang, Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong is shocking. Mainland infrastructure is incomparably better. Public areas are vast, and cultural life much more advanced than in the former British colony.

While the Mainland Chinese cities have almost no extreme poverty (and by the end of 2020 will have zero), in Hong Kong, at least 20

Hong Kong is the most expensive place on earth. Just to park a car in the city could easily cost over US $700 per month, and that’s just for working hours. Tiny apartments cost over a $1 million. Yet Salaries in Hong Kong are not higher than those in London, Paris, or Tokyo.

The city is run by an extreme capitalist system ‘planned’ by corrupt tycoons/developers. The obsolete British legal system here is clearly geared to protect the rich, not the majority. That was essentially why the “Extradition Bill” was proposed: to protect Hong Kong inhabitants from the unbridled, untouchable, as well as unelected de facto rulers. But after months of riots sponsored by the West, the Hong Kong administration scrambled the bill.

But there is also this ‘deal’ negotiated before Hong Kong was returned where it belongs – to China: “One Country, Two Systems”. It is an excellent contract for the turbo-capitalist magnates and for the pro-Western “activists”. And it is an extremely bad one for the average people of Hong Kong.

Young hooligans know very little about their city. I talked to them extensively during their first anti-Beijing riots in 2014, the so-called “Umbrella Revolution”.

Correctly, then and now, they have been frustrated about the declining standard of living and the difficulties of getting well-paid jobs and finding affordable housing. They told me there was no future for them and that their lives were going nowhere.

But quickly, their logic would collapse. While realizing what tremendous progress, optimism, and zeal could be observed in the People’s Republic of China under the leadership of the Communist Party, they still demanded more capitalism, the very thing which was actually ruining their territory. In 2014 and now, they are readily smeared the Communist Party.

Being raised on the shallow values of selfishness and egotism, they have now betrayed their own country, and have begun treasonous campaigns, urging foreign powers, including US and UK, to “liberate them”. All for a fleeting moment of fame, for a “selfie uprising”.

To liberate them from whom? China does not (unfortunately for Hong Kong) interfere in Hong Kong’s economic and social affairs. If anything, it builds new infrastructure, like the enormous bridge now connecting Hong Kong with Macau (a former Portuguese colony) and a high-speed train system linking Hong Kong with several cities in Mainland China.

Huanzhou high-speed train station, one of the biggest in the world

The more restraint Beijing shows, the more it gets condemned by the rioters and Western media for ‘brutality’. As more subway stations and public property get destroyed by rioters, more sympathy flows for them from the German, US, and British right-wing politicians.

For decades, the British colonialists humiliated  the people of Hong Kong while simultaneously turning their city into a brutal and by the Asian standards ruthless and fully business-oriented megalopolis. Now people are confused and frustrated. Many are asking, “Who am I?”

For Hong Kong, this is a difficult moment of soul-searching.

Even those who want to “go back to the UK” can hardly speak English. When asked why they were rioting, they mumble something about the democracy and freedom of the West, plus the evilness of Beijing. Brochures from obscure, extremist Japanese religious cults are distributed amongst the rioters.

It’s pure intellectual chaos. Rioters know nothing about Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and other countries which are being ruined by the West.

Leaders like Joshua Wong proudly collude with the Western embassies. To praise Chinese socialism publicly is now dangerous – people get beaten by the “pro-democracy” rioters, for such “crimes”.

Highly educated and overly-polite Singapore is literally sucking out hundreds of foreign companies from Hong Kong. Its people speak both English and Mandarin. In Hong Kong, the great majority speaks only Cantonese.

Many foreigners in Hong Kong are also relocating to Shanghai. Not only big businessmen: Shanghai is now full of European waiters.

Even tourism is down in Hong Kong, by 40

Absurdly, the rioters want precisely what the Communist Party of China is providing: a real struggle against corruption, a determined attempt to solve housing crises, the creation of new jobs, and the provision of more public services. They want better education and generally a better life. They want “Shanghai or Beijing”, but they also say that they want to be a colony of the UK or a dependency of the USA.

They loosely define communist goals, and then they shout that they are against Communism. In short, politically speaking, they are very confused.

HNKChina is now ready to celebrate its 70th Anniversary of the Founding of The People’s Republic of China.

Clearly, the West is using Hong Kong to spoil this great moment.

After leaving Hong Kong, in Shanghai, I visited a brilliant socialist realism exhibition at the iconic, monumental China Art Museum. The country under the leadership of President Xi is once again confident, revolutionary, and increasingly socialist, to horror of declining West.

It is a proud nation with great, elegant cities constructed by the people, for the people, and with a progressively ecological countryside. Its scientific, intellectual ,and social achievements speak louder than words.

China Art Museum, Shanghai.

The contrast between Hong Kong and Shanghai is tremendous and growing.

But do not get me wrong: I like Hong Kong. I have  more than 20 years of history with that old, neurotic, and spoiled lady. I can feel her pulse. I love old trams and ferries and out-of-the-way islands.

But Hong Kong’s charm lies in its decay.

Mainland China’s beauty is fresh. China is one of the oldest cultures on earth and one of the deepest. But it feels crisp, full of hope, and positive energy. Together with its closest ally, Russia, it is now working and fighting for the entire world; it is not selfish.

Hong Kong is fighting only for its vaguely defined uniqueness. Actually, it is not Hong Kong that is fighting, as most of people there want to be where they truly belong – in their beloved nation – China. It is a gang of kids with their face masks that is fighting. In brief: a relatively big group of pro-Western extremists whose leaders are putting their fame above the interests of the people.

Hong Kong has no “Big Egg”: no famous theatre where the greatest musicians are stunning the world. Its only art museum has been closed for reconstruction for years and will re-open only at the end of 2019. Its cultural life is shallow, even laughable, especially pathetic for the place that is branding itself “Asia’s World City”. There are no great discoveries made here. It is all business. Big, big business. And creeping decay.

Beijing could ‘liberate’ Hong Kong easily to give it purpose, pride, and future.

But young hooligans want to be liberated by Washington instead. They want to be recolonized by London. And they have not consulted their fellow citizens. That clearly reflects their idea about ‘democracy’. Not the “rule of the people” but the “rule of the West”.

Not only do they feel spite for their country, but they also scorn and intimidate their fellow citizens who only want to live meaningful lives based on Chinese values.

Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including China and Ecological Civilization. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. 

The original source of this article is Global Research.
Copyright © Andre Vltchek, Global Research, 2019

“Bid Calling,” by Alpha Unit

You name it and it’s been sold at auction.

As long as humans have traded with one another, they have staged auctions. About 500 B.C. in Babylon, women were being auctioned off as wives. Ancient Greece and ancient Rome held auctions not just to sell people but to sell all kinds of assets, including war plunder and family estates. In seventh-century China, the personal items of deceased Buddhist monks were being sold at auction.

Auctions in the United States date all the way back to colonial times. Crops, livestock, tools, slaves, and sometimes entire farms were sold at auction. The National Auctioneers Association informs us that during the American Civil War only colonels could auction war plunder, which is why in honor of this history many auctioneers in America today carry the title “Colonel.”

In the early 1900s the first auctioneering schools opened in the United States. The Great Depression created great opportunity for auctioneers, whose services were needed to liquidate assets. Collectibles, antiques, used cars, heavy equipment, livestock, real estate, and all kinds of commodities are sold at auction in the US either by private parties or by government agencies.

No one knows exactly when rapid-paced “bid calling” became a feature of auctions in the US, but it is now the norm. Many of you are familiar with American-style auction calls, where an auctioneer delivers a rapid, almost hypnotic repetition of numbers and words to present items up for bid. Newcomers to auctions might find it indecipherable, but nothing could be farther from the truth!

An auctioneer’s entire job is to communicate clearly and effectively, and if you can’t understand him (or her), then he isn’t doing his job.

An auctioneer uses his chant to hold the audience’s attention and keep the auction moving along at a steady clip while he’s soliciting bids. He’s going fast because he’s responsible for selling all of the items within a relatively short time, and he’s got to create a sense of urgency among bidders. He must at the same time be very clear and specific with his language.

What the auctioneer is really doing is reciting numbers.

An auction chant consists basically of two numbers – the have (the current bid price) and the want (the higher bid being requested by the auctioneer). Between these two numbers are a variety of sounds and filler words to add rhythm to the chant and make the bidding more entertaining. To make it seem that he’s talking faster than he really is, the auctioneer will slur his words to shorten them.

An auctioneering student starts out learning a very basic auction chant, something like this:

One dollar bid, now 2, now 2, will ya give me 2?

2 dollar bid, now 3, now 3, will ya give me 3?

3 dollar bid, now 4, now 4, will ya give me 4?

This hypothetical bidding would proceed in this fashion until the crowd stops bidding and the item is sold to the high bidder.

Filler words are rhythmic but they serve an important purpose: they provide a natural pause between the have and the want, giving the bidders a fraction of a second to make a decision.

Once the auctioneer’s want becomes the have, a new want is created. This number is called the next. A bid caller always has three numbers in mind – the have, the want, and the next.

Suppose you’re at an auction where a vehicle is up for bid. The auction chant might be something like this:

All right, folks, I have up for auction a 1994 Ford Mustang, cherry, lots of new parts, who’ll give me four large?

Four thousand, four, now who gimme four fiddy? Got four fiddy, got four fiddy from the man in the back, now who gonna go five?

Fi fiddy, fi fiddy bid, man in the back, now who gimme six? Fi fiddy bid, who gimme six?

Six thousand! Now who gimme seven? Seven on the board now, who gimme seven fiddy?

And on it goes.

Each auctioneer has his own style – his own favorite filler words, his own preferred speed, and his own cadence. Some auction chants are positively musical. The filler words are just carriers for the most important part of the chant: the numbers.

Keep in mind, though, that the auctioneer can only chant as fast as the bidders bid. So he designs his chant to create excitement and keep the auction moving along at a good pace. It truly is an art form.

There’s no telling where you might hear an auction call. Listen to Congressman Billy Long (R-MO) breaking into an auction chant to foil a protester during a hearing in Congress.

Alt Left: It Was 70 Years Ago, or It Was Yesterday

Too bad there’s no translation.

People who are unapologetically completely critical of this Revolution have a lot to answer for. Why was it so popular? What did they propose instead? Do they realize that China had a life expectancy of 32 years in 1949? Do they realize that famines had rampaged through the countryside for decades if not centuries at this time? Do they realize that almost all of China was still in a semi-feudal if not fully feudal society in 1949?

Do they realize that India and China had the exact same level of development in 1949? Do they realize that the Nationalists had never done one damned decent thing for the vast majority of the Chinese people? Do they realize that the leaders of the past century had done nothing but sell out China to exploiting foreigners, resulting in the century of humiliation?

Do they realize that most Chinese people were peasants, not knowing where their next meal was coming from, having no shoes on their feet, working for a feudal landlord who stole from them, raped their wives, beat them up anytime he wanted with no recourse under law and held the power of life and death over them at all times?

Do they realize that after the Chinese Revolution, China grew faster than at any time in its history? Do they realize that China now has less poverty than it has ever had? Do they realize that Chinese people now have medical care and education for the first time ever? Do they realize that all Chinese have a home or a farm or a job for the first time in history?

A colleague of mine is a Sinologist. Since I am so controversial, I cannot tell you his name. He has an article about he and his wife climbing a famous mountain in Southern China. His wife can’t understand most of the dialects they hear and she comes from that region. Turns out that these are dialects from right around the mountain, of which she knows nothing. And they say there is but one Chinese language!

On the way down, they see an old man trudging up the mountainside with another man on his shoulders. My friend writes, “The Old China seems to be coming back…”

You see, this was the old China, the China of centuries of millennia. An old poor man being hired to carry a rich man on his shoulders up a mountain. This is the China of a century ago or of a millennia ago. The Revolution had overwhelming mass support. No one wanted the Nationalist warlords, the party of the Rich. Everyone wanted the Communists, the party of the Poor.

The haters of Communist China still need to respond: What would they have done differently? What did they propose in the alternative? As usual, their answer is nothing.

The CCP has mass popular support. 87

What Race Is This Person (Singapore)?

13043717_1174597142564927_1383531800797081546_n
An interesting phenotype from Singapore.
This is the aunt of a friend of mine. The family is from Singapore. They are part of an ethnic group called the Pernakans, a Southern Chinese group that moved to Malaysia ~600 years ago for some reason, possibly due to overcrowding in Fujian or worse, the terrible wars that periodically raged through the region. Chinese groups have been leaving from this part of Southern China for a very long time now, especially in the last 200 years. In the past couple of centuries, this part of China has become very crowded. Possibly as a result, wild and vicious wars periodically raged through the area, sometimes killing 100,000’s of people. If you study Chinese history, you will hear about these wars a lot. It is not uncommon to read that invaders conquered several large cities and exterminated the whole populations of perhaps 300,000 people, men, women and children. This is how the Chinese have often fought wars. Chinese wars are unbelievably vicious and savage. The Pernakans moved to Malaysia, and over time, bred in with Dutch and Portuguese and to a lesser extent British Europeans. All three were colonists in the region. I believe that they were Min speakers, but their Hokkien has gotten so changed, in particular from massive borrowings from Malay, that these languages in general are no longer intelligible with Amoy or Taiwanese Hokkien Proper. Most Pernakans now are somewhat Eurasian, Chinese crossed with Dutch, Portuguese and sometimes British. The Pernakans had their own patriarchal culture and were known as very hard workers, often at manual labor type jobs like farming, timber harvest are working on rubber plantations. They committed little crime and had very orderly societies. The European colonists marveled at their high level of civilization. They did keep slaves, but they probably treated their slaves better than any slaves have ever been treated, and in many cases, slaves were freed. Over time, most Pernakans also bred in with Malays. Pernakans are now a Chinese/Malay/European race, but the Asiatic tends to be prominent over the European in the stock. The mixing of cultures over 600 years in Malaysia resulted in some very interesting fine cuisine. Many of these Chinese migrated to Singapore, where they, along with Teochew speakers (another Min group) and a large group of Cantonese Chinese, form what is known as the Singaporean Chinese, one of the wealthiest and most economically advanced ethnic groups on Earth. There is still a division of labor in Singapore, with Chinese on top, Malays on the bottom, and Southern Indian Dravidian speakers in between. Nevertheless all three groups are substantially mixed by this point. Most Chinese have Malay blood, and a lot of Malays have some Chinese in them. Malays and Indians are now intermarrying quite a bit. There is some ethnic conflict but not a lot possibly due to the wealth and everyone being so mixed. Although this woman has a somewhat archaic phenotype (note prognathism), these archaic types are fairly common in Southern China. Many can be seen in the mountains of Yunnan Province. The archaism may be due to incomplete transition from Australoid -> Mongoloid, as the transition happened much later in Southern China than in Northern China, and prominent Australoid types were common in the far south of China only 3-4,000 YBP. I also believe that this woman may be admixed with Caucasian. And I think the Malay admixture is quite clear. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I think I see some Vedda influence here. That would not be unusual, as Malays were Veddoids only until quite recently, and the Senoi are Veddoids to this day. The Mani Negritos are also still extant. The transition in Malaysia went from Australoid Negritos (Mani) and Orang Asli -> Australoid Veddas (Senoi) -> Paleomongoloid Southeast Asians (modern Malays). The Malays appear to be aware of this transition, as they state that the Mani and Orang Asli are their ancestors. The bloodline of the Orang Asli goes back 72,000 YBP, so this group has been present in Malaysia since the very first Out of Africa groups, and their archaism is about on a par with the Andaman Islanders, another Australoid group which is also the remains of some of the earliest OOA groups.

China as a Planned Economy

I’ve been saying this for a long time now.

Dissecting the Concept of Planning

After years of experimenting with different types of planning from 1949 to 1979, the Chinese Communists finally settled down for Market Socialism-based Planning. Yes sir, p-l-a-n-n-i-n-g. They reclassified their economy as being in the primary stage of Socialism, and then went on to chalk out a 50-year plan. Yes sir, p-l-a-n. Under this fifty-year plan, they have taken up the all round development of one region every ten years. Right now it is Tibet and the South-western provinces. The result is announced on 15-08-2014 : Chinese Railways has reached the border of Sikkim, will very soon reach the border of Arunachal Pradesh, and will also eventually connect with the Pakistani Railways through Aksai Chin and POK. That is “communism” for those who care. All about careful, methodical planning which implies two basic things: selection of goals and mobilization of resources for achieving those goals. Now let us see India. We had a sham Planning Commission at least after 1991, when Manmohan Singh as the then Finance Minister started talking of “Economic Reforms”. Vajpayee started talking of “Shining India” even as he too continued with a sham Planning Commission. Manmohan Singh, after becoming PM, actually appointed Montek Singh Ahluwalia (a self-confessed neoliberal, ergo: anti-planning) as the Chairman of the Planning Commission, and practically destroyed the idea of planning. And now comes along Narendra Modi, who declares from the ramparts of the Red Fort that planning commission is no longer necessary (because as per the neoliberal economic ideology, planning itself is not necessary). In order to mute his critics, he declares that he will set up a new institution for generating new ideas. His government’s recent budget for railways talks of “FDI in Railways” as the panacea for railways development. The Foreign Direct Investment in Railways is and will always be about high-speed trains between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, or about air-conditioned double-decker trains between Mumbai and Goa, or about Palaces on Wheels. Never about Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh or Ladakh. Today, when from Kashmir, Telangana, Chattisgarh, or any other part of India for that matter, when we hear complaints about Government of India, the main burden of the song is about lack of development, leading to frustration, despondency, and militancy. During his election campaign, Modi precisely cashed in on this lack of development. But the neoliberal that he is, he thinks that deliverance lies through the path of inviting FDI in every field : “Come, Make in India”. Simultaneously, he announces the jettisoning of the concept of Planning. Our corporate press hails it as a burial of Nehruvian Anachronisms. Our “secular-liberal” thinkers also start by sighing as to how Planning had practically ceased in India long ago, and as to how we have to start looking out for “new”, “latest” ideas in development economics. Those who blindly support Modi, do not wish to tolerate any critic of Modi’s ideas. The million-rupee fact is that by Planning, the Chinese Railways have reached Sikkim and will soon reach Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. The Indian Railways with 67 years of sham planning are nowhere near Sikkim, Arunachal and Ladakh. And with the jettisoning of the very concept of planning coupled with the wholehearted embrace of FDI, the Indian Railways will never reach there. And perchance, if some Foreign Direct Investor does construct railways in those places, then he would do it to build up his pockets – not to build up India. And more likely than not, the very presence of such FDI predators in those areas would only lead to further alienation, further disaffection, and further militancy. The concept of Planning was not invented by Nehru. It was invented by the Soviet Socialists. Hence rejection of the concept of planning is hardly an act of anti-Nehruvianism. It is an act of anti-Socialism. And, considering that Socialism is a Basic Feature of India’s Constitution, it is a serious violation of the Constitution and repudiation of the oath to defend the Constitution.

Chairman Mao Murdered 100 Million People?

Luther Seahand, a rightwinger, writes that Mao Zedong murdered 100 million people during his term in office (1949-1978). Of those, one half, or 50 million, were buried alive so as to save bullets.

RL: This is a socialist blog. We don’t believe in the “Mao murdered 100 million” stuff. LS: Of course you don’t, Mr. Lindsay.  I was just wondering how a socialist might react when faced with the facts.  Thank you for not ripping my head off.  Have a good one!

You didn’t present me with any facts. You presented me with lies. There were no “100 million murdered by Mao.” And there certainly were no “50 million buried alive so as to save bullets.” Are you talking about people executed under Mao’s rule? In the land reform campaign at the very start, it is very possible that up to 3 million landlords (most of them criminals) were executed. There were 29,000 executions during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Mao was in power for 29 years. That covers about 14 of those years, or nearly half his time in office. So covering 50 3 million is a lot, but it is not 100 million. Let us first get out figures straight The problem with crazy rightwing anti-Communists is not their view that Communism is bad, or even that it is evil. Perhaps it is either of those things. Their problem is that they habitually trot out lies when whipping out figures of those killed under Communism. Favorites include Joseph Stalin of the USSR and Mao Zedong of China. Hence we often get figures that Stalin killed 10-110 million people. Even many perfectly sane and often liberal people believe this hogwash. It’s not that Stalin or the Soviet Communists never killed any of the opposition or the dissidents. Stalin was a killer. He killed lots of people. But not 110 million. Final figures for Stalin’s regime are for 1926-1953 (27 years in office): Executions and political killings: 1.29 million Unnatural deaths in the gulags: 1.4 million. Total political killings by Stalin: 2.7 million There are some problems with that figure as it apparently does not include some of the deaths during WW2, such as deaths of German POW’s, enemy civilians and most importantly, deaths during the ethnic relocations during that war. I also do not include “Holodomor” deaths because there was no “terror famine.” Famine, yes. Terror famine, no. 3 million is a lot of human beings, but it’s not 110 million. If we want to talk about whether the deaths under Communism were justified or not, we first need to get the figures straight.

Chavez’s Right Turn: State Realism versus International Solidarity,” by James Petras

This is an excellent article by James Petras.

He shows how Hugo Chavez has turned so far to the right that he is now in some ways one of the most rightwing Presidents in Latin America. For instance, only Chavez has supported the US and Colombia in backing the Honduran coup regime. And he is becoming one of Colombia’s sole allies in the region.

Why has he done this? A few reasons. For one, he’s surrounded and threatened. Colombia keeps threatening the invade Venezuela to go after Colombian rebels that hide there, and the US under “liberal” Barack Obama has just stationed 7 new military bases in Colombia for the sole purpose of attacking the Colombian guerrillas and threatening Venezuela. Colombia built up forces on the border, repeatedly crossed the Venezuelan border, and moved Colombian death squads into Venezuela to attack the people.

The Colombian guerrillas are on the defensive and can no longer provide the buffer that they formerly provided along the border to a Colombian invasion of Venezuela.

The Obama-backed coup against Honduras, which has resulted in a wave of murders against the Honduran Left, changed things. Chavez now realized that the Obama regime was willing to use military force to get what it wanted in Latin America.

At home, the opposition has made its strongest showing in a decade, winning about 50

In other words, he’s boxed in with nowhere to turn. Under these circumstances, Chavez has decided that the Colombian guerrillas, who they used to support, are a liability. He has been cooperating with Colombia in handing over guerrillas who are in Venezuela. He signed a non-aggression agreement with Colombia in return for an agreement to help catch any Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela. However, he has gotten little in return for this other than that Colombia has stopped invading and threatening his territory.Colombia still maintains a deep alliance with Chavez enemy, the US. Colombian forces are still massed along Venezuela’s borders.

Chavez hope to keep Colombia from joining in the US in any joint US-Colombian military escapades inside Venezuela. He also hopes to keep Colombia from joining in any US propaganda-destabilization efforts in Venezuela.

However, the threats have escalated, and the US appears emboldened. Chavez’ moves to the Right have not earned him the tiniest bit of praise or space from the US – they hate him more than ever. US imperialism slapped an embargo on the Venezuelan oil company due to Venezuela trading with Iran. I am not sure what this embargo entails? Incredibly, the Venezuelan opposition supported this foreign embargo on Venezuela! What a bunch of traitors.

Following his new alliance with Colombia, Chavez became the only nation other than Colombia in Latin America which has recognized the coup regime in Honduras. He did this under pressure from Colombia.

Petras points out how Allende’s Chile, Mexico in the 1980’s, Cuba and Brazil have all harbored Latin American guerrillas (in Brazil’s case, an Italian guerrilla). They refused to extradite them. But Chavez is boxed in in a way that these regimes may not have been.

Petras shows how other Left regimes also cooperated with the Right at various times. Stalin cooperated with Hitler for a while in order to buy some time to move his industry east of the Urals and build up his military-industrial complex. He even sent some German Communists who were hiding in the USSR to Germany, where they were certainly tortured and killed. But Stalin was boxed in, and he needed to buy some time, so he made a deal with the devil.

In the early 1970’s, Mao entered into a new alliance with the US under Richard Nixon’s detente. Afterward, Mao supported Pinochet and the rightist rebels in Angola. They denounced any Left regime that head the slightest ties with the USSR and supported their enemies, no matter how rightwing they were. All for the benefits of a sunshine policy with the US.

In the event of a new confrontation with the US, can Chavez expect his new Colombian ally to be neutral? Dubious. Colombia will probably ally with its imperial master in the US. And can he expect any support for the radical Left in Latin America now that he has betrayed them? This also is dubious. He may well end up with no friends at all.

Chavez’s Right Turn: State Realism versus International Solidarity

Introduction

The radical “Bolivarian Socialist” government of Hugo Chavez has arrested a number of Colombian guerrilla leaders and a radical journalist with Swedish citizenship and handed them over to the right-wing regime of President Juan Manuel Santos, earning the Colombian government’s praise and gratitude.

The close on-going collaboration between a leftist President with a regime with a notorious history of human rights violations, torture and disappearance of political prisoners has led to widespread protests among civil liberty advocates, leftists and populists throughout Latin America and Europe, while pleasing the Euro-American imperial establishment.

On April 26, 2011, Venezuelan immigration officials, relying exclusively on information from the Colombian secret police (DAS), arrested a naturalized Swedish citizen and journalist (Joaquin Perez Becerra) of Colombian descent, who had just arrived in the country. Based on Colombian secret police allegations that the Swedish citizen was a ‘FARC leader’, Perez was extradited to Colombia within 48 hours.

Despite the fact that it was in violation of international diplomatic protocols and the Venezuelan constitution, this action had the personal backing of President Chavez. A month later, the Venezuelan armed forces joined their Colombian counterparts and captured a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Guillermo Torres (with the nom de Guerra Julian Conrado) who is awaiting extradition to Colombia in a Venezuelan prison without access to an attorney.

On March 17, Venezuelan Military Intelligence (DIM) detained two alleged guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (ELN), Carlos Tirado and Carlos Perez, and turned them over to the Colombian secret police. The new public face of Chavez as a partner of the repressive Colombian regime is not so new after all.

On December 13, 2004, Rodrigo Granda, an international spokesperson for the FARC and a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, whose family resided in Caracas, was snatched by plain-clothes Venezuelan intelligence agents in downtown Caracas where he had been participating in an international conference and secretly taken to Colombia with the ‘approval’ of the Venezuelan Ambassador in Bogota.

Following several weeks of international protest, including from many conference participants, President Chavez issued a statement describing the ‘kidnapping’ as a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and threatened to break relations with Colombia.

In more recent times, Venezuela has stepped up the extradition of revolutionary political opponents of Colombia’s narco-regime: In the first five months of 2009, Venezuela extradited 15 alleged members of the ELN and in November 2010, a FARC militant and two suspected members of the ELN were handed over to the Colombian police. In January 2011 Nilson Teran Ferreira, a suspected ELN leader, was delivered to the Colombian military.

The collaboration between Latin America’s most notorious authoritarian rightwing regime and the supposedly most radical ‘socialist’ government raises important issues about the meaning of political identities and how they relate to domestic and international politics and more specifically what principles and interests guide state policies.

Revolutionary Solidarity and State Interests

The recent ‘turn’ in Venezuela politics, from expressing sympathy and even support for revolutionary struggles and movements in Latin America to its present collaboration with pro-imperial rightwing regimes, has numerous historical precedents. It may help to examine the contexts and circumstances of these collaborations: The Bolshevik revolutionary government in Russia initially gave whole hearted support to revolutionary uprisings in Germany, Hungary, Finland and elsewhere.

With the defeats of these revolts and the consolidation of the capitalist regimes, Russian state and economic interests took prime of place among the Bolshevik leaders. Trade and investment agreements, peace treaties and diplomatic recognition between Communist Russia and the Western capitalist states defined the new politics of “co-existence”. With the rise of fascism, the Soviet Union under Stalin further subordinated communist policy in order to secure state-to-state alliances, first with the Western Allies and, failing that, with Nazi Germany.

The Hitler-Stalin pact was conceived by the Soviets as a way to prevent a German invasion and to secure its borders from a sworn rightwing enemy. As part of Stalin’s expression of good faith, he handed over to Hitler a number of leading exiled German communist leaders, who had sought asylum in Russia. Not surprisingly they were tortured and executed. This practice stopped only after Hitler invaded Russia and Stalin encouraged the now decimated ranks of German communists to re-join the ‘anti-Nazi’ underground resistance.

In the early 1970’s, as Mao’s China reconciled with Nixon’s United States and broke with the Soviet Union, Chinese foreign policy shifted toward supporting US-backed counter-revolutionaries, including Holden Roberts in Angola and Pinochet in Chile.

China denounced any leftist government and movement, which, however faintly, had ties with the USSR, and embraced their enemies, no matter how subservient they were to Euro-American imperial interests.

In Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China, short-term ‘state interests’ trumped revolutionary solidarity. What were these ‘state interests’?

In the case of the USSR, Stalin gambled that a ‘peace pact’ with Hitler’s Germany would protect them from an imperialist Nazi invasion and partially end the encirclement of Russia.

Stalin no longer trusted in the strength of international working class solidarity to prevent war, especially in light of a series of revolutionary defeats and the generalized retreat of the Left over the previous decades (Germany, Span, Hungary and Finland) .The advance of fascism and the extreme right, unremitting Western hostility toward the USSR and the Western European policy of appeasing Hitler, convinced Stalin to seek his own peace pact with Germany.

In order to demonstrate their ‘sincerity’ toward its new ‘peace partner’, the USSR downplayed their criticism of the Nazis, urging Communist parties around the world to focus on attacking the West rather than Hitler’s Germany, and gave into Hitler’s demand to extradite German Communist “terrorists” who had found asylum in the Soviet Union.

Stalin’s pursuit of short term ‘state interests’ via pacts with the “far right” ended in a strategic catastrophe: Nazi Germany was free to first conquer Western Europe and then turned its guns on Russia, invading an unprepared USSR and occupying half the country. In the meantime the international anti-fascist solidarity movements had been weakened and temporarily disoriented by the zigzags of Stalin’s policies.

In the mid-1970’s, the Peoples Republic of China’s ‘reconciliation’ with the US, led to a turn in international policy: ‘US imperialism’ became an ally against the greater evil ‘Soviet social imperialism’.

As a result China, under Chairman Mao Tse Tung, urged its international supporters to denounce progressive regimes receiving Soviet aid (Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, etc.) and it withdrew its support for revolutionary armed resistance against pro-US client states in Southeast Asia. China’s ‘pact’ with Washington was to secure immediate ‘state interests’: Diplomatic recognition and the end of the trade embargo.

Mao’s short-term commercial and diplomatic gains were secured by sacrificing the more fundamental strategic goals of furthering socialist values at home and revolution abroad. As a result, China lost its credibility among Third World revolutionaries and anti-imperialists, in exchange for gaining the good graces of the White House and greater access to the capitalist world market.

Short-term “pragmatism’ led to long-term transformation: The Peoples Republic of China became a dynamic emerging capitalist power, with some of the greatest social inequalities in Asia and perhaps the world.

Venezuela: State Interests versus International Solidarity

The rise of radical politics in Venezuela, which is the cause and consequence of the election of President Chavez (1999), coincided with the rise of revolutionary social movements throughout Latin America from the late 1990’s to the middle of the first decade of the 21st century (1995-2005).

Neo-liberal regimes were toppled in Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina; mass social movements challenging neo-liberal orthodoxy took hold everywhere; the Colombian guerrilla movements were advancing toward the major cities; and center-left politicians were elected to power in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador and Uruguay. The US economic crises undermined the credibility of Washington’s ‘free trade’ agenda.

The increasing Asian demand for raw materials stimulated an economy boom in Latin America, which funded social programs and nationalizations. In the case of Venezuela, a failed US-backed military coup and ‘bosses’ boycott’ in 2002-2003, forced the Chavez government to rely on the masses and turn to the Left. Chavez proceeded to “re-nationalize” petroleum and related industries and articulate a “Bolivarian Socialist” ideology.

Chavez’ radicalization found a favorable climate in Latin America and the bountiful revenues from the rising price of oil financed his social programs. Chavez maintained a plural position of embracing governing center-left governments, backing radical social movements and supporting the Colombian guerrillas’ proposals for a negotiated settlement. Chavez called for the recognition of Colombia’s guerrillas as legitimate ‘belligerents” not “terrorists’.

Venezuela’s foreign policy was geared toward isolating its main threat emanating from Washington by promoting exclusively Latin American/Caribbean organizations, strengthening regional trade and investment links and securing regional allies in opposition to US intervention, military pacts, bases and US-backed military coups. In response to US financing of Venezuelan opposition groups (electoral and extra parliamentary), Chavez has provided moral and political support to anti-imperialist groups throughout Latin America.

After Israel and American Zionists began attacking Venezuela, Chavez extended his support to the Palestinians and broadened ties with Iran and other Arab anti-imperialist movements and regimes. Above all, Chavez strengthened his political and economic ties with Cuba, consulting with the Cuban leadership, to form a radical axis of opposition to imperialism. Washington’s effort to strangle the Cuban revolution by an economic embargo was effectively undermined by Chavez’ large-scale, long-term economic agreements with Havana.

Up until the later part of this decade, Venezuela’s foreign policy – its ‘state interests’ – coincided with the interests of the left regimes and social movements throughout Latin America. Chavez clashed diplomatically with Washington’s client states in the hemisphere, especially Colombia, headed by narco-death squad President Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010). However recent years have witnessed several external and internal changes and a gradual shift toward the center.

The revolutionary upsurge in Latin America began to ebb: The mass upheavals led to the rise of center-left regimes, which, in turn, demobilized the radical movements and adopted strategies relying on agro-mineral export strategies, all the while pursuing autonomous foreign policies independent of US-control. The Colombian guerrilla movements were in retreat and on the defensive – their capacity to buffer Venezuela from a hostile Colombian client regime waned.

Chavez adapted to these ‘new realities’, becoming an uncritical supporter of the ‘social liberal’ regimes of Lula in Brazil, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Vazquez in Uruguay and Bachelet in Chile. Chavez increasingly chose immediate diplomatic support from the existing regimes over any long-term support, which might have resulted from a revival of the mass movements.

Trade ties with Brazil and Argentina and diplomatic support from its fellow Latin American states against an increasingly aggressive US became central to Venezuela’s foreign policy: The basis of Venezuelan policy was no longer the internal politics of the center-left and centrist regimes but their degree of support for an independent foreign policy. Repeated US interventions failed to generate a successful coup or to secure any electoral victories, against Chavez.

As a result Washington increasingly turned to using external threats against Chavez via its Colombian client state, the recipient of $5 billion in military aid. Colombia’s military build-up, its border crossings and infiltration of death squads into Venezuela, forced Chavez into a large-scale purchase of Russian arms and toward the formation of a regional alliance (ALBA). The US-backed military coup in Honduras precipitated a major rethink in Venezuela’s policy.

The coup had ousted a democratically elected centrist liberal, President Zelaya in Honduras, a member of ALBA and set up a repressive regime subservient to the White House. However, the coup had the effect of isolating the US throughout Latin America -not a single government supported the new regime in Tegucigalpa. Even the neo-liberal regimes of Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Panama voted to expel Honduras from the Organization of American States.

On the one hand, Venezuela viewed this ‘unity’ of the right and center-left as an opportunity toward mending fences with the conservative regimes; and on the other, it understood that the Obama Administration was ready to use the ‘military option’ to regain its dominance. The fear of a US military intervention was greatly heightened by the Obama-Uribe agreement establishing seven US strategic military bases near its border with Venezuela.

Chavez wavered in his response to this immediate threat: At one point he almost broke trade and diplomatic relations with Colombia, only to immediately reconcile with Uribe, although the latter had demonstrated no desire to sign on to a pact of co-existence.

Meanwhile, the 2010 Congressional elections In Venezuela led to a major increase in electoral support for the US-backed right (approximately 50

Chavez faced several options: The first was to return to the earlier policy of international solidarity with radical movements; the second was to continue working with the center-left regimes while maintaining strong criticism and firm opposition to the US backed neo-liberal regimes; and the third option was to turn toward the Right, more specifically to seek rapprochement with the newly elected President of Colombia, Santos and sign a broad political, military and economic agreement where Venezuela agreed to collaborate in eliminating Colombia’s leftist adversaries in exchange for promises of ‘non-aggression’ (Colombia limiting its cross-border narco and military incursions).

Venezuela and Chavez decided that the FARC was a liability and that support from the radical Colombian mass social movements was not as important as closer diplomatic relations with President Santos. Chavez has calculated that complying with Santos political demands would provide greater security to the Venezuelan state than relying on the support of the international solidarity movements and his own radical domestic allies among the trade unions and intellectuals.

In line with this Right turn, the Chavez regime fulfilled Santos’ requests – arresting FARC/ELN guerrillas, as well as a prominent leftist journalist, and extraditing them to a state which has had the worst human rights record in the Americas for over two decades, in terms of torture and extra-judicial assassinations. This Right turn acquires an even more ominous character when one considers that Colombia holds over 7600 political prisoners, over 7000 of whom are trade unionists, peasants, Indians, students, in other words non-combatants.

In acquiescing to Santos requests, Venezuela did not even follow the established protocols of most democratic governments: It did not demand any guaranties against torture and respect for due process. Moreover, when critics have pointed out that these summary extraditions violated Venezuela’s own constitutional procedures, Chavez launched a vicious campaign slandering his critics as agents of imperialism engaged in a plot to destabilize his regime.

Chavez’s new-found ally on the Right, President Santos has not reciprocated: Colombia still maintains close military ties with Venezuela’s prime enemy in Washington. Indeed, Santos vigorously sticks to the White House agenda: He successfully pressured Chavez to recognize the illegitimate regime of Lobos in Honduras- the product of a US-backed coup in exchange for the return of ousted ex-President Zelaya.

Chavez did what no other center-left Latin American President has dared to do: He promised to support the reinstatement of the illegitimate Honduran regime into the OAS. On the basis of the Chavez-Santos agreement, Latin American opposition to Lobos collapsed and Washington’s strategic goal was realized: a puppet regime was legitimized. Chavez agreement with Santos to recognize the murderous Lobos regime betrayed the heroic struggle of the Honduran mass movement.

Not one of the Honduran officials responsible for over a hundred murders and disappearances of peasant leaders, journalists, human rights and pro-democracy activists are subject to any judicial investigation. Chavez has given his blessings to impunity and the continuation of an entire repressive apparatus, backed by the Honduran oligarchy and the US Pentagon.

In other words, to demonstrate his willingness to uphold his ‘friendship and peace pact’ with Santos, Chavez was willing to sacrifice the struggle of one of the most promising and courageous pro-democracy movements in the Americas.

And What Does Chavez Seek in His Accommodation with the Right?

Security? Chavez has received only verbal ‘promises’, and some expressions of gratitude from Santos.

But the enormous pro-US military command and US mission remain in place. In other words, there will be no dismantling of the Colombian paramilitary-military forces massed along the Venezuelan border and the US military base agreements, which threaten Venezuelan national security, will not change. According to Venezuelan diplomats, Chavez’ tactic is to ‘win over’ Santos from US tutelage.

By befriending Santos, Chavez hopes that Bogota will not join in any joint military operation with the US or cooperate in future propaganda-destabilization campaigns. In the brief time since the Santos-Chavez pact was made, an emboldened Washington announced an embargo on the Venezuelan state oil company with the support of the Venezuelan congressional opposition. Santos, for his part, has not complied with the embargo, but then not a single country in the world has followed Washington’s lead.

Clearly, President Santos is not likely to endanger the annual $10 billion dollar trade between Colombia and Venezuela in order to humor the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s diplomatic caprices. In contrast to Chavez policy of handing over leftist and guerrilla exiles to a rightist authoritarian regime, President Allende of Chile (1970-73) joined a delegation that welcomed armed fighters fleeing persecution in Bolivia and Argentina and offered them asylum.

For many years, especially in the 1980’s, Mexico, under center-right regimes, openly recognized the rights of asylum for guerrilla and leftist refugees from Central America – El Salvador and Guatemala. Revolutionary Cuba, for decades, offered asylum and medical treatment to leftist and guerrilla refugees from Latin American dictatorships and rejected demands for their extradition.

Even as late as 2006, when the Cuban government was pursuing friendly relations with Colombia and when its then Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque expressed his deep reservations regarding the FARC in conversations with the author, Cuba refused to extradite guerrillas to their home countries where they would be tortured and abused.

One day before he left office in 2011, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva denied Italy’s request to extradite Cesare Battisti, a former Italian guerrilla. As one Brazilian judge said -and Chavez should have listened: “At stake here is national sovereignty. It is as simple as that”. No one would criticize Chavez efforts to lessen border tensions by developing better diplomatic relations with Colombia and to expand trade and investment flows between the two countries.

What is unacceptable is to describe the murderous Colombian regime as a “friend” of the Venezuela people and a partner in peace and democracy, while thousands of pro-democracy political prisoners rot in TB-infested Colombian prisons for years on trumped-up charges.

Under Santos, civilian activists continue to be murdered almost every day. The most recent killing was yesterday (June 9,2011): Ana Fabricia Cordoba, a leader of community-based displaced peasants, was murdered by the Colombian armed forces.

Chavez’ embrace of the Santos narco-presidency goes beyond the requirements for maintaining proper diplomatic and trade relations. His collaboration with the Colombian intelligence, military and secret police agencies in hunting down and deporting Leftists (without due process!) smacks of complicity in dictatorial repression and serves to alienate the most consequential supporters of the Bolivarian transformation in Venezuela.

Chavez’ role in legitimizing of the Honduran coup-regime, without any consideration for the popular movements’ demands for justice, is a clear capitulation to the Santos – Obama agenda. This line of action places Venezuela’s ‘state’ interests over the rights of the popular mass movements in Honduras.

Chavez’ collaboration with Santos on policing leftists and undermining popular struggles in Honduras raises serious questions about Venezuela’s claims of revolutionary solidarity. It certainly sows deep distrust about Chavez future relations with popular movements who might be engaged in struggle with one of Chavez’s center-right diplomatic and economic partners.

What is particularly troubling is that most democratic and even center-left regimes do not sacrifice the mass social movements on the altar of “security” when they normalize relations with an adversary.

Certainly the Right, especially the US, protects its former clients, allies, exiled right-wing oligarch and even admitted terrorists from extradition requests issued by Venezuela, Cuba and Argentina. Mass murders and bombers of civilian airplanes manage to live comfortably in Florida.

Why Venezuela submits to the Right-wing demands of the Colombians, while complaining about the US protecting terrorists guilty of crimes in Venezuela, can only be explained by Chavez ideological shift to the Right, making Venezuela more vulnerable to pressure for greater concessions in the future.

Chavez is no longer interested in the support from the radical left: his definition of state policy revolves around securing the ‘stability’ of Bolivarian socialism in one country, even if it means sacrificing Colombian militants to a police state and pro-democracy movements in Honduras to an illegitimate US-imposed regime. History provides mixed lessons.

Stalin’s deals with Hitler were a strategic disaster for the Soviet people: once the Fascists got what they wanted they turned around and invaded Russia. Chavez has so far not received any ‘reciprocal’ confidence-building concession from Santos military machine. Even in terms of narrowly defined ‘state interests’, he has sacrificed loyal allies for empty promises. The US imperial state is Santos’ primary ally and military provider.

China sacrificed international solidarity for a pact with the US, a policy that led to unregulated capitalist exploitation and deep social injustices.

When and if the next confrontation between the US and Venezuela occurs, will Chavez, at least, be able to count on the “neutrality” of Colombia? If past and present relations are any indication, Colombia will side with its client-master, mega-benefactor and ideological mentor.

When a new rupture occurs, can Chavez count on the support of the militants, who have been jailed, the mass popular movements he pushed aside and the international movements and intellectuals he has slandered? As the US moves toward new confrontations with Venezuela and intensifies its economic sanctions, domestic and international solidarity will be vital for Venezuela’s defense. Who will stand up for the Bolivarian revolution, the Santos and Lobos of this “realist world”? Or the solidarity movements in the streets of Caracas and the Americas?

Chairman Mao Revisionism

Repost from the old site. All Westerners agree that Mao was even worse than Stalin, so it was time to do a particularly evil and hateful troll, the pro-Chairman Mao troll. Mao never starved 23-35 million or whatever to death during the Great Leap Forward, though there were 15 million dead through overprocurement and mass stupidity. The 23-35 million figures are derived by Western scholars by outrageously adding in the “deaths” of people who never even got born in the first place! Yes, during the GLF, many women were malnourished and did not give birth, and this effect lasted for a few years even after the famine. A decline in the birth rate due to eggs and sperms not participating in fertilization is incredibly called murder! At the same time, there was a wildly declining death rate every year before the GLF, and then a few years after, the death rate started drastically plummeting once again, so all that happened in the GLF was a wildly declining death rate went up (in one year quite a bit) for a few years, then began plummeting again. It is also said that during the GLF, Mao heard about the famine deaths and refused to do anything about them. I do not know enough about the episode to take a position on that one way or another. Clearly, there was a serious lack of democracy within the party, and this led to the problems. The GLF disaster happened like this: First there was the China-Soviet split, which was actually a pretty stupid development, and was evidence of Mao’s excessive radicalism. Problems were based on Khrushchev’s notion of peaceful cooperation with the non-Communist world versus Mao’s idea that the non-Communist world was an enemy that had to be confronted. As a result of this stupidity on Mao’s part, the USSR left China, taking all of their advisors and aid with them. The advisors and aid had been essential in building up China from 1949-1958, and now all of this was crashing to a halt. Now China would have to build herself up all by herself with no help from anyone. As Stalin did in the 1930’s, Mao decided to industrialize the Chinese state on the backs of the peasants. There is no other way. You have to feed all those urban workers somehow or other. Mao set wildly unrealistic demands for the rural harvests, and the local party leaders bought into the nonsense. There were natural disasters, yet the local leaders reported harvests vastly in excess of what actually occurred. Hence, there was vast overprovisioning and famine resulted in the countryside. There are some problems with the 15 million figure, but that is the figure that the Chinese census came up with. Most of the deaths were due to disease. Travelers in China, even to the worst-hit regions, did not report any obvious signs of famine, however, they did report that rations were very tight. Interviews with Chinese later indicate that there was a famine in China during this period, even in the cities, that people were reduced to eating grass in the fields, and that people did indeed die, mostly of disease. The anti-Mao types claim that Mao knew about the starvation but said basically, the Hell with them, let them starve. I do not know enough about the situation to comment on this, but due to the lack of democracy in the party, apparently there were delays in telling the top leadership what was really going on in the countryside, and instead they were told what they wanted to hear. The West looks at this most complex series of events and sees only mass murder, but what do you see? 140 million minimum have been killed in India alone as a consequence of not following the Chinese model in 1949, and 4 million more die every single year, and no one even says a peep but Lindsay the evil Commie mass murder lover. Chairman Mao broke Stalin’s record of doubling life expectancy in the shortest period of time, from 32 in 1949 (which the US loved) to 65 in 1976, a mere 27 year period, whereas Stalin took 40 years. And this, the greatest humanitarian achievement of all time, was done by the worst murderer of all time, Chairman Mao. It was 1949-1953 and 700,000 landlords were being tried all of China. They were dirty, horrible and awful criminals almost all guilty of theft, rape, extortion and murder. They raped the girls and women and killed the men and the peasant was dead at 32, his life hovering between life and death the whole way, but the West just loved it that way, and the kind folks that enforced this evil went to Taiwan and swore to reinstall the system that always killed way more than Mao, to the terror of the Chinese people, who rallied around the man who saved their lives, Mao. The people put the despicable criminals on trial, and the people killed the warlord mass murderers themselves. It was Chmielnicki and Desallines and Nat Turner all over again. The party was supposed to intervene but they never did, and for this they are now condemned. Even then, Mao rued the excesses while he praised the notion of revolutionary terror. The GPCR (Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) came for 10 years and went and many great and wonderful things happened along with many horrible and insane things, and it was all mixed up. The UN said the Barefoot Doctor Campaign during the GPCR was one of the greatest public health campaigns ever undertaken. The Western liars now say that 30 million people were killed during the GPCR! Unbelievable! There were 1 million excess deaths in the GPCR, but it was also a time of wildly exploding life expectancy and a rapid decline in the death rate, so it was all mixed up. Most of the deaths were said to be suicides as people were nearly hounded to their deaths. I guess it’s better than a bullet in the head. There were also about 29,000 executed during the GPCR. Keep in mind that during the GPCR China saw increases in life expectancy that were the greatest such achievements that mankind has ever achieved. A new book by a fellow named Jung Chiang has stated that Mao killed 80 million people! Wow! How did he manage that? And at the same time, produce the quickest doubling of life expectancy in a nation in the history of mankind. You don’t set records of doubling life expectancy by killing tens of millions of people. Forget it. This book has been panned by just about every single China scholar alive, but it’s still being quoted reverentially by the West. No one knows how many Mao killed. Forgetting about the Leap, because there were no intentional deaths there, there were 1.7 million excess deaths in which the regime either persecuted people into taking their own lives or the regime actually executed people. No one knows about any deaths beyond the 1.7 million. Surely there were executions from 1953-1965, but no one knows how many. There was a Gulag system from 1949-1976, and surely folks died there, but no one knows how many. Obviously the true number of deaths is over 1.7 million, but until the CCP opens its archives, we will never know the true numbers. The CCP has never opened its archives, and God knows if they ever will.

Wikipedia on Mao

Repost from the old site. Granted, he’s a controversial fellow all right, but this hit piece is just an outrageous travesty of anti-Communist propaganda. The discussion page shows the details of the travesty, including the banning of anyone promoting an opposite point of view (a typical smarmy Wikipedia “Neutral Point of View” practice). My 1990 World Book article on China< and my Time-Life book, China, from 1962 (height of the Cold War) are vastly more fair than this. World Book is hardly pro-Communist and Time-Life was always fanatically anti-Communist. Fact is, Wikipedia is run by a bunch of little libertarian shits. Jimmy Wales is a wild-eyed, fanatical libertarian crazy person, and he’s using his evil website to try to poison the mind of a planet in favor of his libertarian nightmare. That’s his right, but the US “free press” (there is no free press in the US) really ought to call him on it. I’ve seen all sorts of MSM bullshit about Jimmy and his jerk-off webcyclopedia, and every single one of them has been a fawning valentine (as we call such pieces in the journalism field). Never once has even one article hinted that Wikipedia is grossly unfair, or that it is run by various cabals that are all tied in with the super-cabal of ultra-right libertarian Hindutva-Zionists around Wales. It might be nice to let the world know exactly what the politics of him and his creepy followers really are. Let them know that Wales was furious that the federal government had done anything whatsoever to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina before, during and after the storm in any way whatsoever. Can you imagine? In Wales World, there is no role for a government to play in a world-class hurricane. Need to be rescued? Call your friend who obviously has a helicopter, or pay $1000’s for some Israeli-cum-Halliburton mercenaries to come rescue your ass. No government help to put up victims afterwards, to clean up the mess, or even to collect the fucking bodies. Let the epidemics come. No government help to rebuild the city afterwards. Let it stay underwater oozing gators, toxic waste, mold, decaying flesh and ruined structures. All of this is the proper domain of the private sector! Can you imagine how many people would have died? I mean, this is what we got anyway under Libertarian Lite George Bush, but in Jimmy World, things would have been incalculably worse. Look. If that’s Jimmy’s worldview, no problem. Hell, there are still dedicated Pol Potists out there. But the world really ought to know what Jimmy Wales’ fanatical ultra political views are so they can decide whether or not they agree. They should also be told how he uses his fake unbiased Webcyclopedia like Rupert Murdoch uses his media empire, to push reactionary politics in the name of “fair and balanced” bullshit. That the “liberal media” MSM refuses to do this is worrying. It makes me wonder how reactionary they really are. Is the MSM as ultra-right as Wales, or are they just scared to talk about it? What’s up?

Notes

1. Here is some text from my World Book article on China. Note how the very rightwing World Book encyclopedia is able to acknowledge that Mao did many great things: The Communist government has achieved an impressive record of economic growth. The Communists have provided widespread job opportunities, job security and a more even income distribution to the workers…China’s farm output has expanded greatly under the Communists…Production of chickens and livestock has improved significantly since 1950… Under the Communists, industrial production has grown at an average rate of 12 All of the Communists’ health programs have resulted in a population that is much healthier than before. The Communists have almost wiped out cholera, typhoid and many other horrible diseases that used to kill millions of Chinese every year.

Murdering Mao

Nice from a Maoist list I am on. The author is Harry Powell. He lays out pretty well the rightwing offensive to completely discredit the modern socialist experience as a total failure which was led by the worst homicidal maniacs that ever lived. How do we counteract that? For starters, Communists should quit killing people, no matter how much they deserve it. Communists kill one person, and the rightwingers will scream about it for the next century. Note that this is not just a rightwing offensive, but it’s also being carried out by centrists, liberals and even Leftists like Trotskyites, who do themselves few favors by indulging in counterrevolutionary ideology. Finally, the idea of a Labor figure accusing the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition of being “Maoist” is ridiculous!

MURDERING MAO

Here are the opening paragraphs of a recent article in a British national Sunday newspaper:

Chairman Cameron’s regime is not a million miles from Mao

Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer, Sunday 19 December 2010

I put it down to Tony Blair. Also to Margaret Thatcher. And to Mao Tse-tung. To understand this government, you need to appreciate the debts that it owes to these three influences: Labour’s triple election-winner, the Conservatives’ most radical postwar prime minister, and the Chinese dictator responsible for the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in history. To be fair to the coalition, it is not their ambition to replicate the body count heaped up by the Communist party of China during Mao’s lethal reign. Nor does this government share many of the late tyrant’s political ends. Yet in its methods, I am increasingly struck by the strange similarities between the regime of Chairman Mao and that of Chairman Cameron. Some of the coalition’s senior figures are conscious of this; some of them are even proud to draw the parallels between themselves and the author of The Little Red Book. In recent weeks, I have heard one important figure in the government talk of unleashing a “cultural revolution” in the public services and another hailing devolution of power away from the centre using Mao’s old slogan: “Let a thousand flowers bloom.”

Further on:

I have actually heard more than one member of the cabinet explicitly refer to the government as “Maoist”.

And:

They are urged on from within Number 10 by the prime minister’s principal strategist, Steve Hilton, who is probably the most Maoist person in the government.

It is but the latest episode in a never-ending barrage of propaganda to discredit the first wave of socialism in the world and those who led this revolutionary movement. Andrew Rawnsley, a prominent apologist for the New Labour Government that was, now tries to undermine the current Conservative/ Liberal Democrat Government in Britain by likening it to the socialist regime in China during the period when Mao Tse-tung was its leader. Rawnsley is trading on an assumption, probably accurate, that most of his readers believe that Mao and his comrades were mass murderers. Mao, he tells us, was “responsible for the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in history”. This is the accolade normally reserved for Stalin but now, it seems, he has been overtaken by Mao. Factual accuracy – like specifying just how many millions Mao was supposed to have killed – is not highly prized in this sort of writing. It was, of course, a hundred and not a “thousand” flowers which Mao called upon to bloom. But the facts don’t matter here. The main point is that Rawnsley thinks that the worst thing he can say about the Cameron/Clegg Government is that it is “Maoist”. Rawnley’s article is based on what over the last twenty years or so has become a major trait in the dominant bourgeois ideology of Western capitalist societies: the idea that socialism has failed, that attempts to bring about socialist transformation were led by homicidal mass murders and have been complete disasters. Most people in countries such as Britain and America think that they “know” this to be “true”. Rawnsley feels confident that his readers will share this “knowledge” with him. Recently I was talking with a Trotskyite, a history teacher, who told me that “Mao murdered millions”. I asked him to tell me something about which people were murdered, how, where, when and why. All he could say was that “there is this book which tells you about it” although he could not name the title and author and he had not read it. Further discussion revealed that he knows nothing about the history of modern China and he conceded that this is the case. I quoted Mao to him: “No investigation, no right to speak.” Here we have a person interested in history and socialism but his knowledge of People’s China has no doubt been picked up from exposure to the popular mass media. Like most of us, he assumes that the ideas he absorbs from the general culture in which he lives are true until he comes across contradictory evidence. Given this climate of opinion, communists have an ideological mountain to climb, something I have discussed in my pamphlet Media Representations of the Socialist Period. There is a linguistic dimension to this reactionary ideological obfuscation. In recent years in Britain I have encountered young people from mainland China, especially students, who think of themselves as “communists” but whose outlook is completely bourgeois. They find it confusing to encounter an English person calling himself a communist but who is highly critical of the present regime in China on the grounds that it is on the capitalist road. One postgraduate journalism student tried to clarify my ideological confusion for me by quoting Teng Hsiao-ping: “For all to become rich, a few must become rich first.” Of course, most people in the West still think of China as “communist” and given the media images of billionaires, corruption and consumerism in China today this simply compounds this linguistic mess. Is it possible for communists to undermine this sort of reactionary ideology which proclaims that socialism has been a disastrous failure? However hard we may strive to do so, we are only likely to meet with some success if the objective conditions are favourable for us to do so. Now in Western capitalist societies we may be entering a period when it is possible to begin to undermine some of this reactionary nonsense. The imperialist wars on Iraq and Afghanistan followed by the world-wide financial crisis of two years ago have considerably weakened bourgeois ideological hegemony, the dominance of reactionary ideas. The student protests in Britain over raising university fees together with the general movement across Europe against public spending cuts on services and benefits could provide the right climate of opinion for an ideological fightback. But are there any communists left to do it?

Ukrainian Nationalists are Nazis – An Example

A recent comment from a Ukrainian Banderist (Ukrainian nationalist) type exemplifies their anti-Semitism. Their anti-Semitism is particularly vicious, and in fact it looks a lot like Nazism. This particular variety plays into the standard anti-Semitism of most anti-Semites: opposition to Communism since Communism is a Jewish plot; Communism is a Jewish plot to “exterminate Whites;” 100 million “Russian Christians” were deliberately murdered by Communist Jews; Jews are Khazars, not real Hebrews; the USSR, even as late as 1932, was 100 Truth is that you will hear almost all US anti-Semites move over to this position at some point in the development of their anti-Semitism, it’s a logical development as one’s anti-Semitism matures and becomes more virulent. There is a major problem with this anti-Semitic line laid out above: it’s straight up Nazism 100 proof! So, as an anti-Semites’ anti-Semitism grows and matures to full bloom, he tends to go all the way to the ultimate anti-Semitism, Nazism itself. We see this increasingly even in the pro-Palestine movement, which is increasingly adopting the overtly Nazi argument above, and some Arabs are adopting it also.

The Holodomor was a very true event. Here in Chicago, when growing up with immigrant Ukrainian nationals, they all said the same thing: “The Bolshevik Jews from the Kremlin came done and did it!” Why do you think Ukrainians joined the Germans in wiping out communism/Jewish control of the Ukraine? Why do you think the Ukrainians have resentment toward the Jews? The Holodomor! The Communist/Bolshevik (mostly Khazar Jews) leadership deliberately starved millions of Ukrainian kulaks because they would not submit to collectivization and agricultural wealth transfer to the Jewish communists (and many cases lining their own pockets). The Ukrainian leaders/politicians were rounded up and shot by the Jewish run NKVD and the rest of the populace starved out of existence. Hunger was so bad that mothers ate unborn fetuses. Mao Tse Dong did this in china in the 50’s, learning from Jewish commissars sent there in the 50’s. Same events like this happened in African nations; starving African nigs into starvation; deliberately. Some of the graves of murdered Ukrainian nationals and leaders discovered years later during and after WW2 were blamed on the “Nazis’ by the Jewish run media (shit like Katyn forest lie hyped by the Jews saying “Nazis did it!”). We know now the Jews controlling the media lied (Katyn)to us for 50-60 years. This Lindsay guy who runs this website is obviously a Jew who is protecting his tribes’ crimes during that era. He is a “Holodomor Denier!” His facts in Holodomor denial supporting sound factual, but many are slanted/ are easily disproven. Their was no widespread wheat rust in the 30’s, some happened in the early 20’s. Farm animals were killed because of pending stealing/confiscation by the Bolsheviks How many starved? Hard to say because of poor records. 3-7 million. Some estimates as high as 10 million. Remember, Communist Jewry and their tyranny in USSR killed almost 50 million Russians/Christians from 1917-1986.

Almost none of this is true. It’s true, I suppose, that 1/2 of the livestock in the USSR were killed by the kulaks because they were about to be confiscated or collectivized. But the fact is that the kulaks’ killing 50 It’s not true that there was no wheat rust. It’s looking more and more like much of the famine was natural – a wheat rust epidemic. The epidemic was worst in the Eastern Ukraine and the Cossack Lower Volga region to the east. All of these areas were strong supporters of the USSR. This is also where the famine was worst. The famine was worst in the Ukraine because that is where the harvest failure was worst. Why did the USSR starve worst of all their supporters in the Eastern Ukraine and the ethnic Russians in the Lower Volga if their intent was solely to kill Ukrainians? Why did they kill so many other Russians, including 1 million in Siberia, if they were only trying to kill Ukrainians? The Holodomor narrative makes no sense at all. The USSR was not run by Jews in 1932. The Jewish era ended in 1927 at the latest. There were a lot of Jews in the NKVD for some reason, but they were not the majority, and by 1936 (before the Great Terror) they were gone. It’s probably true that Stalin executed Ukrainian leaders. Stalin killed 390,000 Ukrainians in dekulakization. If you want to call that a genocide, you are welcome to, but the famine was no genocide. The Holodomor narrative depends on a number of lies. One is that there was a bumper crop in the Ukraine in 1932, but in the midst of the dekulakization campaign, the Soviets confiscated all of it, herded the Ukrainians into internment camps, refused to let them leave, and did not allow them any food, so they starved. None of this is true. The central claim, one of a bumper crop, is false. The harvest completely collapsed in 1932 for a variety of reasons. One was wheat rust, another was the chaos and civil war surrounding the too rapid development of collectivization whereby the old system was ended before the new one was set up yet. Killing 1/2 the farm animals in the country played a role. Kulaks destroyed a tremendous amount of the crop by setting it on fire in fields and in their own stores, harvesting it and piling it in fields to be destroyed by rain, armed attacks on collective farms where they set fire to fields and grain stores. This was why the USSR confiscated most of the crop – the kulaks were destroying it. In return, the Ukrainians were given rations, but rations were very tight that year. Few died of actual famine. Instead, most died of disease epidemics often related to poor sanitation and lack of modern medicine to treat the diseases. There was no deliberate withholding of food. Instead, there were tight rations. Ukrainians were not herded into concentration camps. Instead, they were put on collective farms. It is not possible for a mother to eat her unborn fetus. Please explain how this is possible. Mao did not learn his lesson from the Bolsheviks and perpetrate a deliberate famine during the Great Leap. Anyway, not many died. In only one year during the Great Leap was the death rate higher than 1949-prior. That year was 1959, when there were 4.5 million excess. Mao saved and prolonged more lives than anyone in human history. There have been no deliberate famines in Africa that I am aware of other than during wartime. Notice that this Ukrainian Nazi also hates Blacks, as he casually calls them nigs. It’s a fact that almost all Nazis, Ukrainians or otherwise, hate Blacks. Black people ought to become more aware of the menace posed by these people. As far as why Ukrainian nationals in Chicago insist en masse in believing in something that apparently did not occur, I do not know.

Mao Zedong: Greatest Humanitarian That Ever Lived

John UK asks:

It is said more people died in India than in China during Mao’s rule is this true?

Yes, between 1949-1979, there were 100 million excess deaths in India over and above the deaths in China. That is, 100 million deaths occurred in India due to not following the Chinese model. The excess deaths are continuing at a rate of 4 million/year and by now they should be about 170 million. So capitalism in India has killed 170 million over and above the deaths in China, by not following the Chinese model. We know this because China and India were at the same level in 1949 and now China has vastly surpassed India. All this Mao was the biggest murderer of all time crap are nothing but lies. Indian capitalism killed many times more than Mao did. Instead of being the greatest murderer ever, Mao was the greatest humanitarian that ever lived. He doubled life expectancy from 32 in 1949 to 65 in 1980, setting a world record. Mao saved more lives than any human being that’s ever lived. In only one year did the death rate exceed that of prerevolutionary China, in 1959 in the middle of Great Leap famine. Even most of the years of the Great Leap and during all of the Cultural Revolution, the death rate was below, typically far below, the rate of 1949. Since China has headed to capitalism, schools and medical clinics have closed all over the land. Lack of health care is killing millions of Chinese people. Health care is now only available for pay, and most people can’t afford health care or medications, so when they get sick, they hope they get better, and if not, they just die. The entire US media and both political parties have never stopped cheering for this miserable state of affairs.

Chinese Communism: The Gift of Life and Health

Repost from the old site.

The success of Chinese Communism, particularly in terms of health care:

Between 1952 and 1982 [with most of the change happening before 1976], China reduced the rate of infant mortality from 250 to 40 deaths per 1000 live births, decreased the prevalence of malaria from 5.5 percent to 0.3 percent of the population, and increased life expectancy from 35 to 68 years (Hsiao et al 1996).

In 1949, under the Nationalist Chinese so beloved by Americans, fully 20

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao instituted the Barefoot Doctors program, serving the health care needs of 90

This is what I mean when I say that Mao was one of the world’s greatest humanitarians.

Some argue that some progress in infant mortality would have occurred even without Maoism. Given the horrific record of the semi-feudal Nationalists, that seems dubious, but just for the record, let us compare India to China in this regard. India’s infant mortality rate was an outrageous 139 per 1000 in 1972, and China’s was 60.

India had been ruled since independence by a nominally socialist party which had written into India’s Constitution that India was a socialist country. Surely, a rightwing India would have done far worse in this regard. Comparing India and China in 1972, we find that Maoism was saving the lives of 1.5 million babies a year compared to India.

The purpose of this simulation is to show that Maoism was saving the lives of millions of Chinese every single year.

It is possible that no system in human history ever saved so many lives so quickly as Maoism.

According to the US Census Bureau, by 1998, China’s infant mortality rate was the same as in 1976 at 45. Over 22 years, there had been zero progress at reducing infant mortality. In 30 poorest counties studied, the infant mortality rate actually rose during the 1980’s from 50 to 72 (Hsiao et al 1996). This is an example of the mass killing associated with China’s move towards capitalism.

That Maoism ruined the economy is a most peculiar statement. Industrial production grew at 10

One of Mao’s greatest achievements was the reduction of the discrepancies, including life and death, between the cities and the countryside. This reduction was truly revolutionary in world historical terms. By 1979, rural infants were 70

Starting in the 1980’s, the government cut back on health care, and clinics began demanding payment from patients. Only 25

A study found that 30

At the same time, the rural collectives were often broken up and replaced with private farming. What this meant was that one could no longer afford to be a barefoot doctor, so the barefoot doctors program disintegrated as barefoot doctors returned to farming to survive.

The number of health care workers in the cities increased, and the number in the countryside decreased by 36

In 1978, 85

References

Bloom, Gerald. 1998. Primary Health Care Meets The Market In China And Vietnam. Health Policy 44: 233-52.

Hsiao, William C. L and Liu, Yuanli. 1996. Economic Reform and Health – Lessons from China. New England Journal of Medicine 335: 430-432.

Hsiao, William C. L. 1984. Transformation of Health Care in China. 310: 932-6;

Hsiao W.C., William C. L. 1995. The Chinese Health Care System: Lessons For Other Nations. Social Science and Medicine 41: 1047-55.

Liu, Yuanli, Hsiao, William C. and Karen Eggleston. 1999. Equity in Health and Health Care: the Chinese Experience. Social Science and Medicine 49: 1349-1356.

Sidel, Victor W. and Sidel, Ruth. 1973. Serve the People; Observations on Medicine in the People’s Republic of China. New York, NY: Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.

Yu, Mei-Yu and Sarri, Rosemary. 1997. Women’s Health Status And Gender Inequality In China. Social Science and Medicine 45, Vol 12: 1885-1898.

Russia and China’s Moves Towards Ultranationalism

A commenter, John UK, attempted to defend the fascist and ultranationalist nature of the Chinese and Russian states on the grounds that they are fighting US imperialism. Whether they are or not is not particularly relevant. Anyway, why are Chinese ultra-sweatshops better than US imperialism?

These days both China and Russia are essentially fascist states. Putin smells like a fascist! He even has some fascist “youth league” where they go to these Hitler Youth type “summer camps” where they learn to attack Putin’s enemies – journalists, human rights groups, basically liberal society. He encourages his fascist youth group to “make lots of babies.” That’s natalism. Fascists are natalists. Natalism is not progressive. It’s fascist.

The youth group is even called Nashi. You know? Nashi? What does that sound like? Sounds like Nazi huh? There’s no way that’s an accident.

Putin’s shock troops serve the billionaire elite. The billionaires run their own private armies, like Mafias or death squads. They do whatever they want. When citizens protest their latest plans, like confiscating 10,000 acres for their development scheme, Putin calls his KGB style shock troops out to attack the people, Latin American style. Putin has his critics, like journalists, murdered on a regular basis. He shuts down opposition TV, radio and papers. He has committed genocide in the Caucasus for years now.

I support the armed secessionists in the Caucasus to the hilt. They certainly have a right to self-determination.

I appreciate that Putin is a nationalist and he stands up for his people and takes on US and NATO imperialism, but he’s a fascist nevertheless.

China seems to have abandoned socialism in favor of a form of 19th Century Industrial Revolution capitalism that kills at least 600,000 Chinese a year through overwork alone. It’s basically a murderous and even genocidal state, like a typical 3rd World capitalist state such as India. Mao was always a nationalist, and he always had fascist leanings. He treated the Tibetans horribly. Other minorities were terribly abused during the Cultural Revolution.

The Chinese have now replaced socialism with a particularly virulent type of Chinese ultranationalism with some really scary, fascist-like undertones. It’s sickening and downright frightening the way the PRC keeps threatening Taiwan. Isn’t it clear that they will never allow a free Taiwan to exist?

The Han invasions, riots and pogroms in Xinjiang recently reminded me of Kristallnact. The Han invasions and repression of the Tibetans are disgusting and ought to embarass any so-called progressive regime. Shame on them.

Great Site On Ethnic Groups In China

Repost from the old site.

From the Chinese government.

That isn’t really the homepage; I can’t find the homepage, so just click to the left on any ethnic groups you want to read about.

Lists all of the official minorities, with a good anthropological background for them, along with a good history, a bit about the language, customs, religious beliefs, culture, etc., then onto recent history.

The history and recent history is written according to Marxist economic analysis, and shows how the coming of the Chinese Revolution really did improve things for many minorities.

I’ve been scared to read the part about the Tibetans and Uighurs.

I’m sure in the case of Tibet it will talk about how the revolution ended feudalism (Yes, there was real feudalism in Tibet.) in Tibet and made life better for most Tibetans. One thing no one tells you about the Free Tibet crowd was that the Dalai Lama presided over a particularly horrible modern form of feudalism, complete with castes and out and out slavery.

The site does provide a tremendous amount of evidence that the Chinese revolution has resulted in tremendous improvements in the lives of many Chinese minorities. Anti-Communists seem to be blind to that fact. Life in China in 1949 and the decades prior was no picnic!

It’s pretty cool to have an anthropological overview of lots of interesting ethnic groups written strictly from a Marxist perspective. More typical is this one, still very well-done, but written by hardline Estonian anti-Communists. It deals with the ethnic groups of the Former Soviet Union.

I wasn’t aware that the USSR had destroyed every single ethnic group in the country until these stalwart Balts informed me. I realize the Balts are pissed, but it needn’t taint your scholarship.

Making Chop Jewey Aliyah in Israel

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edhtdoPukk0&feature=player_embedded#!]

Too weird.

“Funny, you don’t look Jewish.”

How will they handle the dietary laws? When you’re a Jew, you practically need a dictionary, an encyclopedia and a rabbi at your side to figure out what’s for dinner, and a Chinaman eats anything that moves and “has its back to the sky,” as the Chinese say.

Are Whites Necessary For Modern Civilization?

A White nationalist commenter comments on the Neandertal thread:

Robert, I don’t get your strange form of ethnocentrism. You claim to think “we’re the best,” as a sort of superstition, while knowing that we’re not really the best; while in many respects “we’re the best,” is obviously true. You can’t compare Black supremacist ideology with White supremacist. The former may take things a bit too far and sometimes be a bit off the facts, but the latter is simply laughable.

Whites may not be perfect, but they do have a fairly high IQ and the most impressive track record in terms of scientific progress and high culture.

As far as the West not always being dominant– the Chinese had not discovered that the Earth was a sphere or that the sun was larger than the Earth by 1600 AD. We beat them to it by more than a millennium.

They were also amazed by Euclid as they had nothing comparable in mathematics; they had no system of formal logic or precise scientific method; excluding the Great Wall, no ancient architecture to compare with our great Cathedrals and monuments etc. you could go on and on. The Asians today have more great pianists to play Chopin, but where is the Asian Chopin? They are impressive people, but clearly less innovative.

The Arabs had a bit of a renaissance partly due to having better access to ancient Greek manuscripts; but it was short lived. Who’s following in the tradition of Classical Civilization today?

This whole “the West has only been ahead for a few hundred years,” line is silly. We really are in a different league than everyone else.

I get your point about it being in ill taste to constantly harp on and on about your own group’s superiority. But when we’re under attack – being flooded with nonwhites and told that Western Civilization really isn’t anything to be proud of, and even if it is, nonwhites will do just fine preserving the West despite having historically shown little to no ability to do so – well then we need to start making the case for being able to do something they can’t. The facts are on our side, we just need to have the nerve to use them.

If we want to preserve the civilization we love we’re going to have to accept that we can’t avoid hurting nonwhites’ feelings by telling them that they’re unable to maintain Western Civilization on their own.

As far as my form of ethnocentrism, well, it’s completely normal. Most ethnicities do think that their people are better or the best. It’s normal thinking. Many of these folks are also often non-racist to anti-racist. The two things are quite compatible. I don’t want to get into scientifically proving that we Whites are superior. What for? It’s a disgusting enterprise, and probably won’t be fruitful anyway.

I have some extremely serious problems with this line of thinking. For starters, its presumptions.

I do not think that NE Asian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Siberian, Taiwanese, Singaporean, or Vietnamese people lack the ability to produce a great modern civilization. They can clearly do so. I see them as continuing to be able to produce great and modern civilizations into the future. I don’t even have a problem with the civilizations produced by SE Asians in general.

I doubt if the problems of Indians, South Asians, Central Asians and Arabs are due to their genes. After all, the UAE right now is one of the most spectacularly modern places on Earth. Saudi Arabian cities look like Tuscon suburbs. Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait are quite similar. What’s so inferior about that? Sure, Islam is fucked, but there’s nothing in these folks’ genes that keeps them from producing great modern societies.

The North Africans should do pretty well too. Last I heard Libya is quite a modern country.

The Turks and the people of the Caucasus can produce modern societies, as can the Iranians. Iranian weaponry now is considered to be dangerously lethal by both the US and the Israelis. Recall the Iranian anti-ship missile that destroyed the Israeli warship off of Lebanon in the last war. Kickass product.

The Pakistanis and Indians produced nuclear weapons. No small feat that.

I do have a lot of worries about the abilities of Africans to produce great societies, but it’s basically their problem, not mine. We are not going to let Africans flood in here anyway.

Furthermore, looking at history is not too relevant. Sure, Africa did not produce much in the past, on their own. But Africa is no longer isolated from all outside influences. The great leaps of knowledge, science and innovation that occur in the rest of the world are readily available to educated and skilled Africans soon after they are invented or thought up. Therefore, Africa has a much better chance to become successfully modern than in the past.

Caribbeans, I don’t know. Trinidad and Tobago has a PCI of $20,000/year with totally free health care for all and 100

As suggested in the African example above, the modern world is changing so much that it can hardly be compared to older worlds. Technology is global, and it reverberates around the globe like lightning, as does knowledge in all forms. The smart people anywhere produce innovation and knowledge, and then these facts and things move around the planet faster than you can blink your eyes.

They are made available from more skilled societies to societies that are not as skilled. Therefore, the differential IQ factors are somewhat modulated as knowledge and innovation produced in high-IQ societies flows to lower IQ societies for free.

The Hispanics are flooding in, it is true. Their societies seem to be rather chaotic and violent, but if you go to their capital cities in the wealthier districts, you will think you were in any large US city. There’s no real observable difference. Their problems are mostly due to issues of wealth distribution.

It’s hard to use national IQ’s to calculate national potentials. For instance, Cuba has 2

Medical discoveries and breakthroughs occur regularly in Cuba and are published in scientific journals. Cuban biotechnology, a high-IQ industry, competes effectively with biotech from huge Western corporations and sells its excellent competitive products the world over.

All of these achievements have been done with a Cuban IQ of 85, lower than that of US Blacks, who White Supremacists consider to be a failed people, mostly due to an IQ of 86.8 or so. If Cubans can do so well with an IQ lower than US Blacks, how can US Blacks be a failed people due to IQ?

I don’t really believe that other societies produce inferior musicians or music, but maybe my tastes are different from yours.

What I would like to do is to eliminate illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration. I don’t care what race or ethnicity comes here, as I don’t buy your arguments that they are genetically inferior per se.

I would say that the combined average IQ of the immigrants we let in cannot be lower than the US average (either 98 or 100 right now, depending on scale used). So if 100 immigrants of whatever constellation of groups is let in, let their combined average IQ be 98-100. If the Jamaicans, Nigerians, Filipinos, Mexicans, Palestinians, Indians, Thais and Algerians we let in all average 98-100 IQ, what’s the worry? I don’t buy your argument that a 98-100 IQ person from one of these ethnicities is still somehow genetically inferior to a 98-100 IQ White American.

You say that Whites are going extinct and we are being flooded with non-Whites, but how are you going to save the White West? Even if you cut off all non-White immigration, you will still be only 66

Not to mention cutting off non-White immigration will be politically impossible. All the non-Whites will oppose it. Now you need to get 79

Do you honestly think that you can pull that off? It sounds impossible. Both political parties, the entire MSN media, etc will be deadset against it and will flood society with propaganda against it calling those who support it KKK, White Supremacists, Nazis, racists, etc.

The “China Has Moved to Capitalism” Lie

In the comments section, a defender of capitalism (who I think doesn’t understand it very well) takes issue with my defense of Maoist China:

True, Maoism has a spotty record, but compared to India, Communist China looks like paradise.

Compared to India, many parts of Oakland look like paradise!

Under Mao, China experienced great famines, political repression, persecution of intellectuals during the cultural revolution, and other problems during the so-called “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution” (More like “Great Leap Backwards” and the “Cultural Devolution”).

Only when Deng Xiaoping took over did China begin to prosper, which they did by adopting Capitalism. As he said, “I don’t care if a cat is black, white, red, or yellow, so long as it catches mice” (paraphrase). While China is more Socialist than India due to its relative absence of baseline poverty, China’s economic growth came more from Capitalism than Communism.

Of course, let’s also not forget that China has a ton of people. Therefore, even if the vast majority of people are poor, there are at least 400-500 million well educated and middle class people, which is more than the entire population of the United States. I know that India also has a ton of people and they’re not doing as well, but you get my point. Besides, India’s on the rise.

Robert, I think you too often conflate Capitalism with neoliberal economics and corporate America. Adam Smith hated corporations and believed in a truly free market.

If he were alive today, he wouldn’t approve of corporations outsourcing jobs, corporate tax breaks at the expense of working people, or the fact that many politicians are on the payroll of corporations and special interests. He wouldn’t approve of monopolies that harm local industries and drive people out of business.

I’m just as angry about corporate greed and theft as you are, but to attribute various ills to Capitalism is just wrong.

Also, let’s be honest, Can you name a nation that became wealthy through an economic system that wasn’t Capitalism? Sure, you have European nations that are Socialist in many ways, but they got rich in the first place through Capitalism. The wealthy non-western nations (ie. Japan, South Korea, Singapore) became wealthy by adopting western ways, which practiced Capitalism.

Well, I hate capitalism. Recall that I am a socialist. However, I support any kind of socialism, from piecemeal programs in places like the US to social democracy in Europe to China’s neo-Communism. The best system is a mixed economy with capitalist, socialist, collective, family and other forms of ownership. I call that socialism. You may call it what you will.

First of all, China and India were in the same place in 1949. Even all through the Mao era, China kicked India’s ass, and they are still doing so under neo-Communism. Maoism and neo-Communism simply kick ass on the Indian system, period.

Also understand that China’s economy grew by about 10

The Great Leap Forward did have a problematic famine, and in one year, there were 4.3 million excess deaths as compared to 1949. But in the years immediately before and after that year, the death rate was vastly higher in 1949.

The real killer was capitalist China! Every year, Maoism was saving a good 10 million plus lives.

We need to take this into consideration when thinking of why people put up with Maoism.

A new system comes in, Maoism. It’s repressive, but so was the old system. More importantly, the state cares about you, the lowly worker or peasant. And with each year after 1949, increasingly fewer and fewer people are getting sick and dying. People are living longer and longer every year. Looking back at the previous system, many more people were sick, many more were dying, and people were not living as long. Sure, there was a small setback and a famine for one year, but there was more like a short return to the bad old days.

Seen in this context, you can see why the people regarded Maoism as a Godsend and not some killer system. Sure, the system killed a few people, but many more were being killed before. You do the math!

It is important to note that China’s recent growth has not occurred due to “capitalism.” Most of that growth is coming from public firms, generally controlled by small municipalities and labor collectives. Under Mao, all firms were officially owned by the workers. Such is the case in China of today – all Chinese firms are officially owned by the workers. Sound like capitalism to you? The 3rd largest manufacturer of TV’s in the world is a public firm – it’s owned by the workers – a socialist enterprise.

Under the Chinese system, municipalities and labor collectives run firms. They compete with each other. For instance, if a municipality has a very successful enterprise, they will make lots of money. They will pay their workers more and give them better benefits. So workers flock to those cities from all over China to try to work for that firm. In this way, cities compete with each other. Sound like capitalism to you?

The cities that do best turn into “company towns.” They provide public housing for the workers, public transportation, public day care, etc. Sound like capitalism to you?

It is illegal to own land in China. Does that sound like capitalism to you? This is another Mao era decree that the radicals have been trying to get rid of. Chinese land ownership is so fair precisely because of the forbidding of the private ownership of land. Were that not in place, a few rich people would own all of rural China, like they do in India.

The state owns all the land. You go out into the wild areas, and it’s all state-owned. And much of it is protected too. If the state didn’t own that land, private speculators would have bought up a lot of that land and destroyed it.

They do let you lease the land your home is on. And if you have been paying rent on your home for a long time, increasingly, the state is just giving you the house. You own your house. You can even sell your house to someone else. You can sell the land-use rights on the land that you own the rights to. The state gives you a house to live in for free. Sound like capitalism to you?

There is a system of free public education available to most Chinese, through the graduate level. Sound like capitalism?

China offers health insurance, but it’s rather expensive, and most cannot afford it. But it covers 85

The Chinese state is now planning to spend a tremendous amount of money upgrading the rural areas, because there is starting to be some serious poverty there. People are leaving the rural areas to work in the cities. The state will spend vast sums of money on roads, infrastructure, irrigation, schools, housing, health care, etc in the rural areas. Only a socialist state would do that. Capitalist states never do these things.

All farmland in China is owned by the state. It is often managed by rural collectives though, and they can keep a lot of what they sell. A capitalist country where all farmland is owned by the state? Come on.

The banks in China are very heavily regulated. This is why China largely avoided the latest Neoliberal World Recession. Sound like capitalism to you?

China has not “moved to capitalism.” It is a mixed system with capitalism, socialism and other forms of ownership, a huge public sector and a vast state with tremendous spending power that spends wild amounts of money. The state has very heavy involvement in the economy, including planning it in some ways.

Deng’s reforms have resulted in millions of Chinese dying for lack of health care who would have not have died otherwise. That is because under these wonderful capitalist reforms, all state medical clinics began charging for visits and medicine. Many people can’t afford it, so they just get sick and die. Was it worth it? I say no.

Deng’s reforms have resulted in the closing of schools all over rural China. In some areas, 80

The great growth in Western Europe occurred after World War 2 in the context of a mixed socialist-capitalist system called social democracy. It’s not true at all that Western Europe developed due to capitalism.

Japan has had a social democracy since World War 2, but the benefits are provided by corporations, not by the state so much.

South Korea, Taiwan and Japan all had extensive land reforms that helped their economies take off. Your economy will never go anywhere with semi-feudal relations in the countryside.

Taiwan has an extensive social democracy in place.

Singapore has a very well-developed social democracy. Furthermore, Singapore is not reproducible. Sure, it’s rich, but the area around it in Malaysia is poor. Malays commute to work in Singapore every day. Singapore’s riches have come via paying low wages and buying cheap materials from surrounding poor countries.

None of those East Asian states developed via neoliberalism. They all had land reforms, extensive social democratic programs run by either corporations or the state, and especially massive state involvement in the economy, even including economic planning.

India is up and coming? 50

The “pure free market” of Adam Smith was nothing of the sort. Actually, Smith was an advocate of state intervention to protect society from the ravages of unfettered capitalism. He described pure free market capitalism as one of the most evil systems ever designed by man.

You ever hear neoliberals quote Smith on that? Of course not. All neoliberals are liars. They pick and choose what they want out of Smith and elide the rest. They describe China as “capitalist”, but if we tried to transplant a tiny bit of the Chinese system to the US, they would scream “Communism!”

The pure free market you laud is nothing but neoliberalism. Guess what? It doesn’t work. It only works for about the top 20

It creates incredible inequality and tons of poverty at the same time it produces vast riches at the top, and is everywhere associated with a tremendous amount of corruption of the political class. Everywhere you have a pure free market, you generally have a massively corrupted political class, since the capitalists purchase the state via money-based elections and their control of the media. Corruption under pure free market conditions is not a bug, it’s a feature. It goes right along with it, always.

Maoism in China: A Look at the Record

The current lie, or meme, in US, if not world, popular culture, is “Mao ruined China.” If they are being charitable, they say, “Mao nearly ruined China.”

People can and do say anything to further their cause, in this case, the cause of neoliberal capitalism and especially imperialism. Since Maoism is one of most potent enemies of both these days, it needs to be stamped out by any means necessary, lies, truth, whatever it takes, just take it out, who cares how you do it.

Let’s take a look at the real record here.

Keep in mind that the comparisons to India are because China and India were at the same level in 1949. The record below indicates how horribly India has failed compared to Maoist and even neo-Communist China. There’s no comparison. China kicked India’s ass. Indian capitalism has been nothing but 60 years of repetitive failure.

In 1949, the Chinese peasantry existed on the border of starvation and death. Life expectancy was 32 years. As if that was inevitable, note that in Russia in 1913, life expectancy was 32 years. By 1949, it was 63 years. A 32 year life expectancy for China in 1949 was not inevitable for any possible universe. More than anything else, that figure alone represents the utter and complete failure of Chinese semi-feudal capitalism.

If a peasant was ill, if he had money, he could go to a clinic in the city. If not, he would wait until he either got better or died. There were no medical facilities in the rural areas. People might add that this was inevitable in any possible China. But was it really? This was the situation in Russia in 1916. By 1949, there were clinics in every Russian village, and hardly a Russian lacked for medical care. Why was horrific lack of medical care inevitable?

By 1976, there was a polyclinic in every Chinese commune and a medical facility in every district.

Apologists, generally neoliberals who oppose all state spending on health care, since health care is a matter of private sector, say that this was inevitable. But was it really? Says who? China had not accomplished this in the decades before 1949, so why would they have accomplished it afterwards? Further, there are many nations where health care is still about as bad as 1949 China. The Maoist record on health care was so Earth-shatteringly great that even the UN’s World Health Organization complemented China on its achievement.

In 1949, China had serious problems with smallpox, leprosy, pestilence, cholera, malaria and tuberculosis. By 1976, they were nearly wiped out. Apologists say that this was inevitable? But why? The Chinese capitalists had failed, or not even tried to eliminate epidemic diseases before, why would they have suddenly changed their tune after 1949? Further, these diseases continue to be epidemic in many parts of the world, including India. India started out at the same place as China in 1949, so it’s a useful comparison.

Population growth was controlled, hunger was solved for the first time in Chinese history, and the principal fatal infectious diseases were controlled, in contrast to India, Indonesia and South America, where hunger and infectious diseases are still catastrophic problems. By comparing China to South America, India and Indonesia we can clearly see how disastrously capitalism has fared in those places and how totally Maoism has kicked capitalism’s butt.

Starvation, poverty and illiteracy were wiped out. China was self-sufficient in food for the first time ever. For the first time ever. For the first time ever. Repeat that as many times as you want to until it sinks in. So much for the lie that “Communism brings nothing but starvation.”

The industrial growth rate was double that of India. Keep in mind that China’s and India’s industrial growth rates were about the same in 1949. In industrial growth, Maoism has left India in the dust.

In 1949, China had about the same number of scientists per capita as India. In the meantime, China under Mao and his successors has completely devastated India in the number of scientists per capita. Communist China made huge efforts to increase the number of scientists in society through incredible increases in the availability of education and offering free education to the masses who only had private education for the rich before.

India’s education system is a catastrophe, and the nation places zero emphasis on producing scientists or educated people of any nature. The public education system is disastrously underfunded, and most Indians can’t afford to go to school. The rich send their kids to private schools, but that’s not good for society, as it does not produce the number of highly skilled people that a society needs to develop.

It will take India 150 years to catch up with China in the number of scientists per capita.

Most Indian scientists leave the country; most Chinese scientists stay in China and serve the nation. As you can see, the Communists have cultivated a love of service and of nation in their scientists.

Indian scientists are essentially traitors with purely capitalist values. They spout Hindutva nonsense and the Indian ultranationalist fascist mantras of the day, but they have no love of nation. Their only value is money, and they quickly hop the first plane out of India to hightail it to the UK or the US to cash in on the big bucks, leaving their catastrophe of a nation in the lurch.

From their new perches in the West, they preach contempt for the Whites that enabled them to earn these fat wads of cash while dishonestly singing jingoist praises for the glorious Jai Hind, Bharat India that they so unceremoniously dumped.

Consumption of electricity in agriculture went from 20m kilowatts/hour to 6,000m. Grain production rose 4

I am not sure why agriculture has failed so badly in India, but semi-feudal relations in the countryside and lack of land reform must have something to do with it. As long as India is under capitalist rule, there will never be the necessary land reform that this suffering land needs, as the feudal lords have always owned the Indian state and always will until revolution sweeps them away.

Many or most Indian farmers are actually sharecroppers in perpetual debt slavery to large semi-feudal landlords. Until this system is eliminated, India will never develop into a real nation.

Production of chemical fertilizers increased 32X, steel 4.2X, oil 63X. Those figures are amazing. Fertilizer increased by 32 times! Oil increased by 63 times! Wow.

Why was this inevitable? If it was inevitable, why had capitalist China so failed to develop these essential industries before 1949? Easy. Because capitalist China, ruled by feudal lords, placed absolutely zero emphasis on the development of a national economy. The feudal lords of capitalist China cared only about increasing their own wealth,the nation be damned. Today we see the same thing in Latin America and the same underdevelopment that results. Some people never learn.

One argument which makes no sense is that India already tried socialism, and it failed. But exactly what kind of socialism was that, anyway? It was a fake crony socialism with a small public sector in which almost all of the economy was in private hands, mostly in the hands of monopoly capital. There was no land reform in the countryside where  semi-feudal relations continued to rule. Sure, the Communists have been running West Bengal for 20 years. Who on the Left thinks there is any kind of real socialism or Communism in West Bengal?

If China and India were practicing the exact same kind of system (they were not) then why was China creaming India every step of the way, year and year out, even all through the Mao era? Answer. Indian socialism wasn’t any good, and it hardly deserved to be called socialism.

There was nothing good about Indian “socialism.” It left 50

The state sector was and is tiny. The state sector in India, including local, state and national levels combined, is about 5-10

In India, for all intents and purposes, in most places, the state is nearly nonexistent. It’s always been that way, a tiny, corrupt, crony capitalist state, even during the Indian Socialism era. The Indian state is a neoliberal dream, with a minimal government and the ruined society that always flows from that.

Industry grew by 10

Looking at these figures with a clear eye, you can see why so many Indians are getting behind Maoism. True, Maoism has a spotty record, but compared to India, Communist China looks like paradise.

Revisions to Races of Man Classification

Repost from the old site.

Click to enlarge. This is the chart from the paper, The Origin of Minnan & Hakka, the So-called “Taiwanese”, Inferred by HLA Study, utilized in this post.

I usually try to be very conservative about adding in new races to my races of man post, but sometimes I just feel like I’m forced to. Based on this article, and in particular, the figure above, forced me to make some new splits.

The question was what to do about the Taiwanese people. Not the Taiwan aborigines – but the Hakka and Min Nan people of SE China who settled in Taiwan in the past 400 years. It turns out that they appear to be a discrete race, and that they are linked to Singapore Chinese and the Thai Chinese. In Singapore and Thailand, Chinese form a market-dominant minority position.

They are a minority of the population, but they tend to run businesses and be very wealthy. Similar cases are seen in Indonesia and the Philippines, where tiny Chinese minorities of 2-3

So the interesting question arises – who exactly are the Chinese minorities of Thailand and Singapore? By genetic studies, we can now see that they are SE Chinese people related to the Min Nan and the Hakka.

The Min Nan and Hakka both speak languages that are called Chinese dialects, but in reality, they are completely separate languages. Both languages are doing fine – Min Nan (Southern Min) with 49 million speakers and Hakka with 34 million speakers.

Min Nan and Hakka both strangely lack official status anywhere, although Southern Min is widely spoken in Taiwan. It’s odd that some of the world’s most widely spoken languages lack official status – Min Nan is the 24th largest language, and Hakka is the 35th largest language, in terms of numbers of speakers.

Both languages are vigorous and are in good shape. Southern Min has a roman script that is fairly widely used. Hakka also has a roman script, but I am not sure how widely it is used.

Southern Min is actually a number of separate languages: Min Nan proper, Amoy, Click to enlarge. Here is a map of the various Chinese languages. These are not Chinese dialects, but actual separate languages. Some may be dialects of other Chinese languages though. The main languages are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Min, Xiang, Hakka and Gan. Ping, Hui and Jin are classed above as dialects of those larger languages.Jin is classed as a dialect of Mandarin, but it is actually a separate language with 45 million speakers, making it around the 25th largest language in the world.Min is said 5 separate languages, but it is actually many separate languages. The 5 separate recognized languages are Min Nan, Min Dong, Min Zhong, Min Bei and Puxian. Min Nan itself is a number of separate languages. Huizhou, or Hui, is a separate language that is actually a set of related languages. Wu is more than one language.

Ping is traditionally considered to be part of Cantonese, but it is a separate language. Mandarin is also a set of related languages instead of one language. Cantonese is also be more than one language. Hakka is also be more than one language.

It is nonsense to say someone speaks “Chinese”. There is no such thing as a language called “Chinese”.

Instead, there are various languages in the Chinese language family – at least 14 separate languages, and actually many more. Mandarin is by far the largest of these languages, and most of the smaller languages are suffering under the influence of Mandarin. In addition, the Chinese government favors Mandarin and does not support the other languages much, if at all.

I also split off a group called the Li and another group called the Oroqen based on the chart above.

The Li are a transitional group between the Northern Chinese and the Southern Chinese, though they live on Hainan Island in the far south of China. They speak a Tai-Kadai language called Hlai which has 667,000 speakers. Use is vigorous; the language is doing well, but it is generally not written, although a Roman script exists. Mandarin is used for writing.

The Oroqen are nomadic people who live in far northeastern China and speak a Tungusic tongue. As you can see from the chart, they are closer to the Japanese than to the NE Chinese. There are only 1,200 speakers left out of a small 7,000 population, but there are 800 monolinguals, and use is vigorous by those who speak the language.

They live by hunting and used to practice shamanism. They still lack an official script for their language, but there are radio programs in Oroqen.

The truth is that both the Oroqen people and their language are in poor shape, and most of the blame can be placed on the Communist Chinese regime, even though the regime has also done many good things for the Oroqen. The Cultural Revolution in particular was a period of insanity, stupidity and terror.

An Oroqen Race was added to the NE Asian Major Race due to the extreme divergence of these people. I also added Inner Mongolians to the Mongolian Race inside of NE Asian.

I added the Buyei to the Tai Race within the SE Asian Major Race and created a new race called SE Chinese Race, consisting of Min Nan, Hakka, Singapore Chinese and Thai Chinese. The Buyei live in southern China and northern Vietnam and speak a Tai language that has over 2 million speakers yet has no official status. Buyei language use is vigorous, and it is in good shape.

There is a romanized script, and there are newspapers in the language, but they mostly use Mandarin for writing. The Buyei language is probably made up of a few separate languages, because some of the dialects are not mutually intelligible. The language is very close to the Zhuang language.

The SE Chinese Race really consists of the descendants of the ancient Chinese people known as the Yueh. The Yueh, or Yue, formed a state in southeastern coastal China during the Warring States Period and the Spring and Autumn Period. The state lasted from about 525 BC to 334 BC. The Chinese were already involved in metallurgy and were producing excellent swords during these periods.

The new lineup looks like this:

Northeast Asian Major Race*

Japanese-Korean Race Southern Japanese Race (Honshu Kinki – Kyushu) Ryukyuan Race Ainu Race*** Gilyak Race** Northern Chinese Race (Northern Chinese – Qiang – Manchu – Hui) Oroqen Race Sherpa-Yakut Race Nepalese Race (Nepali – Newari) Mongolian Race (Mongolian – Inner Mongolian – Buryat – Kazakh) Northern Turkic Race (Dolgan – Altai – Shor – Tofalar – Uighur – Chelkan – Soyot – Kumandin Teleut – Hazara)*** Central Asian Race (Kirghiz – Karalkalpak – Uzbek – Turkmen) Tuva Race Tungus Race (Even – Evenki – Russian Saami) Siberian Race Beringian Race** (Chukchi – Aleut – Siberian Eskimo) Koryak-Itelmen Race Reindeer Chukchi Race General Tibetan Race (Tibetan – Lisu – Nu – Karen – Tujia – Hui – Akha – Burmese – Bai – Yizu – Pnar – Mizo) Bhutanese Race Siberian Uralic Race (Nentsy – Samoyed – Ket – Mansi – Khanty) Nganasan Race Uralic Race (Komi – Mari) North American Eskimo Race

Southeast Asian Major Race*

Southern Chinese Race (Hmong – Mien – Dong – Henan Han – Yi – Naxi) Li Race Southeast China Race (Hakka – Min Nan – Singapore Chinese – Thai Chinese) South China Sea Race (Filipino – Ami Taiwanese Aborigine – Guangdong Han) Tai Race (Thai – Lao – Lahu – Aini – Deang – Blang – Shan – Dai – Vietnamese – Muong – Buyei) Kachin Race (Kachin – Va – Nung – Lu) General Taiwanese Aborigine Race (Ayatal – Bunun – Yami) Island SE Asian Race (Paiwan Taiwanese Aborigine – Sea Dayak – Sumatran – Balinese) Indonesian Race (Sulawesi – Borneo – Lesser Sunda) Malay Race (Javanese – Sarawak – Malaysia) Zhuang Race (Senoi – Zhuang – She – Santhal – Ho – Nicobarese) Austroasiatic Race (Mon – Khmer – Khasi – Nongtrai – Bhoi – Maram – Kynriam – Wajaintia) Meghalaya NE Indian Race (Khasi – Garo – Lyngngam) Philippines Negrito Race (Aeta – Ati – Palau Micronesian) Mamanwa Philippines Negrito Race Andaman Islands Negrito Race** Semang Malay Negrito Race***

References

Lin M, Chu CC, Chang SL, Lee HL, Loo JH, Akaza T, Juji T, Ohashi J, Tokunaga K. March 2001. The Origin of Minnan & Hakka, the So-called “Taiwanese”, Inferred by HLA Study. Tissue Antigens:57(3):192-9.

On the Contradictions of Race Realism and Leftism

A commenter asks:

Robert, how do you square being ultra-left in the USA with being anti-cultural-Marxism? I mean, as a white male, don’t you sometimes feel like a 1940s-era Jewish Nazi?I mean, I understand your views on policy, and I agree with them to an extent, but how do you handle the fact that most of your political allies are destructive and antithetical to your professed worldview?

Easy! As far as economics and a general view of society, I’m a socialist, a Communist, a Marxist, etc. No, I do not believe that the rich get everything, the poor get nothing and everyone else, not to mention society, the environment and every non-domesticated non-human living creature gets screwed. I hate capitalism, and I use a Marxist analysis in evaluating many of the things that are happening in society. Marx did not have much to say about race. In a few places, he can be found quoted as an out and out racist, typical of the times. Lenin hadn’t much to say about it either. Even Stalin didn’t say much about it, other than condemning anti-Semitism. Mao talked a bit about race, but if he had 100 million Africans living in the Middle Kingdom, maybe he would not have been so PC. Under socialism, race usually doesn’t matter all that much for some reason. I’m not sure why that is, but that’s just how it goes. Some ethnic groups are incorrigible. The Hungarian Communists forced assimilation on the Hungarian Gypsies, and even outrageously forced sterilization on some of them. No one ever said they were bad Commies for doing so. The USSR and Mao’s China were quite brutal with minorities who acted up. Neither tolerated any amount of street crime. Cuba has the 6th highest incarceration rate in the world, and almost all of it is street crime, not political crime, often theft. The more you look at the history of the Eastern Bloc and China, the more you see what the disconnect really is, between the Cultural Marxism of the West, which has never ruled any state on Earth and between actually existing socialist societies, which were often quite different. However, Marxism *is* a science, or at least it is supposed to be. I would love if the Left and the liberals were right on race. I spent years believing that and more years desperately trying to prove them right. They are just wrong. The Left and the liberals are wrong on race. They are telling lies. The problem is that all race realism plays directly into the hands of the Right for the time being. So I can see why the Right opposes it. But as a science, we should be able to figure out a race-realist Marxism. Hell, we can come up with a theory for anything. My colleagues are just wrong on race in the West. But over in India, Nepal, the Philippines, Peru, Colombia, Palestine, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, where the real struggles are taking place, there is no discussion of race realism or Cultural Marxism. It’s just a matter of justice. The USSR and China had no need for Cultural Marxism. It’s a fetish of the West. The ultra-Left in the West is insane on race, but I don’t support their Western project anyway (revolution in the West). What am I supposed to do, man? I mean, I’m a Commie. I’m supposed to turn into a rightwing jerk just because the Left is nuts on race? Forget it. What can the Right offer me? I don’t agree with them on one single thing. Race is only a small part of things. Economics is much larger.

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