Does Multilingualism Equal Separatism?

Repost from the old site.

Sorry for the long post, readers, but I have been working on this piece off and on for months now. It’s not something I just banged out. For one thing, this is the only list that I know of on the Net that lists all of the countries of the world and shows how many languages are spoken there in an easy to access format. Not even Wikipedia has that (yet).

Whether or not states have the right to secede is an interesting question. The libertarian Volokh Conspiracy takes that on in this nice set of posts. We will not deal with that here; instead, we will take on the idea that linguistic diversity automatically leads to secession.

There is a notion floating around among fetishists of the state that there can be no linguistic diversity within the nation, as it will lead to inevitable separatism. In this post, I shall disprove that with empirical data. First, we will list the states in the world, along with how many languages are spoken in that state.

States with a significant separatist movement are noted with an asterisk. As you can see if you look down the list, there does not seem to be much of a link between multilingualism and separatism. There does seem to be a trend in that direction in Europe, though.

Afterward, I will discuss the nature of the separatist conflicts in many of these states to try to see if there is any language connection. In most cases, there is little or nothing there.

I fully expect the myth of multilingualism = separatism to persist after the publication of this post, unfortunately.

St Helena                        1
British Indian Ocean Territories 1
Pitcairn Island                  1
Estonia                          1
Maldives                         1
North Korea                      1
South Korea                      1
Cayman Islands                   1
Bermuda                          1
Belarus                          1
Martinique                       2
St Lucia                         2
St Vincent & the Grenadines      2
Barbados                         2
Virgin Islands                   2
British Virgin Islands           2
Gibraltar                        2
Antigua and Barbuda              2
Saint Kitts and Nevis            2
Montserrat                       2
Anguilla                         2
Marshall Islands                 2
Cuba                             2
Turks and Caicos                 2
Guam                             2
Tokelau                          2
Samoa                            2
American Samoa                   2
Niue                             2
Jamaica                          2
Cape Verde Islands               2
Icelandic                        2
Maltese                          2
Maltese                          2
Vatican State                    2
Haiti                            2
Kiribati                         2
Tuvalu                           2
Bahamas                          2
Puerto Rico                      2
Kyrgyzstan                       3
Rwanda                           3
Nauru                            3
Turkmenistan                     3
Luxembourg                       3
Monaco                           3
Burundi                          3
Seychelles                       3
Grenada                          3
Bahrain                          3
Tonga                            3
Qatar                            3
Kuwait                           3
Dominica                         3
Liechtenstein                    3
Andorra                          3
Reunion                          3
Dominican Republic               3
Netherlands Antilles             4
Northern Mariana Islands         4
Palestinian West Bank & Gaza     4
Palau                            4
Mayotte                          4
Cyprus*                          4
Bosnia and Herzegovina*          4
Slovenia and Herzegovina*        4
Swaziland                        4
Sao Tome and Principe            4
Guadalupe                        4
Saudi Arabia                     5
Cook Islands                     5
Latvia                           5
Lesotho                          5
Djibouti                         5
Ireland                          5
Moldova                          5
Armenia                          6
Mauritius                        6
Lebanon                          6
Mauritania                       6
Croatia                          6
Kazakhstan                       7
Kazakhstan                       7
Albania                          7
Portugal                         7
Uzbekistan                       7
Sri Lanka*                       7
United Arab Emirates             7
Comoros                          7
Belize                           8
Tunisia                          8
Denmark                          8
Yemen                            8
Morocco*                         9
Austria                          9
Jordan                           9
Macedonia                        9
Tajikistan                       9
French Polynesia                 9
Gambia                           9
Belgium                          9
Libya                            9
Fiji                             10
Slovakia                         10
Ukraine                          10
Egypt                            11
Bulgaria                         11
Norway                           11
Poland                           11
Serbia and Montenegro            11
Eritrea                          12
Georgia*                         12
Finland*                         12
Switzerland*                     12
Hungary*                         12
United Kingdom*                  12
Mongolia                         13
Spain                            13
Somalia*                         13
Oman                             13
Madagascar                       13
Malawi                           14
Equatorial Guinea                14
Mali                             14
Azerbaijan                       14
Japan                            15
Syria*                           15
Romania*                         15
Sweden*                          15
Netherlands*                     15
Greece                           16
Brunei                           17
Algeria                          18
Micronesia                       18
East Timor                       19
Zimbabwe                         19
Niger                            21
Singapore                        21
Cambodia                         21
Iraq*                            21
Guinea-Bissau                    21
Taiwan                           22
Bhutan                           24
Sierra Leone                     24
South Africa                     24
Germany                          28
Namibia                          28
Botswana                         28
France                           29
Liberia                          30
Israel                           33
Italy                            33
Guinea                           34
Turkey*                          34
Senegal                          36
Bangladesh                       39
New Caledonia                    39
Togo                             39
Angola*                          41
Gabon                            41
Zambia                           41
Mozambique                       43
Uganda                           43
Afghanistan                      47
Guatemala                        54
Benin                            54
Kenya                            61
Congo                            62
Burkina Faso                     68
Central African Republic         69
Solomon Islands                  70
Thailand*                        74
Iran*                            77
Cote D'Ivoire                    78
Ghana                            79
Laos                             82
Ethiopia*                        84
Canada*                          85
Russia*                          101
Vietnam                          102
Myanmar*                         108
Vanuatu                          109
Nepal                            126
Tanzania                         128
Chad                             132
Sudan*                           134
Malaysia                         140
United States*                   162
Philippines*                     171
Pakistan*                        171
Democratic Republic of Congo     214
Australia                        227
China*                           235
Cameroon*                        279
Mexico                           291
India*                           415
Nigeria                          510
Indonesia*                       737
Papua New Guinea*                820

*Starred states have a separatist problem, but most are not about language. Most date back to the very formation of an often-illegitimate state.

Canada definitely has a conflict that is rooted in language, but it is also rooted in differential histories as English and French colonies. The Quebec nightmare is always brought up by state fetishists, ethnic nationalists and other racists and nationalists who hate minorities as the inevitable result of any situation whereby a state has more than one language within its borders.

This post is designed to give the lie to this view.

Cyprus’ problem has to do with two nations, Greeks and Turks, who hate each other. The history for this lies in centuries of conflict between Christianity and Islam, culminating in the genocide of 350,000 Greeks in Turkey from 1916-1923.

Morocco’s conflict has nothing to do with language. Spanish Sahara was a Spanish colony in Africa. After the Spanish left in the early 1950’s, Morocco invaded the country and colonized it, claiming in some irredentist way that the land had always been a part of Morocco. The residents beg to differ and say that they are a separate state.

An idiotic conflict ensued in which Morocco the colonizer has been elevated to one of the most sanctioned nations of all by the UN. Yes, Israel is not the only one; there are other international scofflaws out there. In this conflict, as might be expected, US imperialism has supported Moroccan colonialism.

This Moroccan colonialism has now become settler-colonialism, as colonialism often does. You average Moroccan goes livid if you mention their colony. He hates Israel, but Morocco is nothing but an Arab Muslim Israel. If men had a dollar for every drop of hypocrisy, we would be a world of millionaires.

There are numerous separatist conflicts in Somalia. As Somalians have refused to perform their adult responsibilities and form a state, numerous parts of this exercise in anarchism in praxis (Why are the anarchists not cheering this on?) are walking away from the burning house. Who could blame them?

These splits seem to have little to do with language. One, Somaliland, was a former British colony and has a different culture than the rest of Somalia. Somaliland is now de facto independent, as Somalia, being a glorious exercise in anarchism, of course lacks an army to enforce its borders, or to do anything.

Jubaland has also split, but this has nothing to do with language. Instead, this may be rooted in a 36-year period in which it was a British colony. Soon after this period, they had their own postage stamps as an Italian colony.

There is at least one serious separatist conflict in Ethiopia in the Ogaden region, which is mostly populated by ethnic Somalis. Apparently this region used to be part of Somaliland, and Ethiopia probably has little claim to the region. This conflict has little do with language and more to do with conflicts rooted in colonialism and the illegitimate borders of states.

There is also a conflict in the Oromo region of Ethiopia that is not going very far lately. These people have been fighting colonialism since Ethiopia was a colony and since then have been fighting against independent Ethiopia, something they never went along with. Language has a role here, but the colonization of a people by various imperial states plays a larger one.

There was a war in Southern Sudan that has now ended with the possibility that the area may secede.

There is a genocidal conflict in Darfur that the world is ignoring because it involves Arabs killing Blacks as they have always done in this part of the world, and the world only gets upset when Jews kill Muslims, not when Muslims kill Muslims.

This conflict has to do with the Sudanese Arabs treating the Darfurians with utter contempt – they regard them as slaves, as they have always been to these racist Arabs.

The conflict in Southern Sudan involved a region in rebellion in which many languages were spoken. The South Sudanese are also niggers to the racist Arabs, plus they are Christian and animist infidels to be converted by the sword by Sudanese Arab Muslims. Every time a non-Muslim area has tried to split off from or acted uppity with a Muslim state they were part of, the Muslims have responded with a jihad against and genocide of the infidels.

This conflict has nothing to do with language; instead it is a war of Arab Muslim religious fanatics against Christian and animist infidels.

There is a separatist movement in the South Cameroons in the nation of Cameroon in Africa. This conflict is rooted in colonialism. During the colonial era, South Cameroons was a de facto separate state. Many different languages are spoken here, as is the case in Cameroon itself. They may have a separate culture too, but this is just another case of separatism rooted in colonialism. The movement seems to be unarmed.

There is a separatist conflict in Angola in a region called Cabinda, which was always a separate Portuguese colony from Angola.

As this area holds 6

The Cabindans do claim to have a separate culture, but language does not seem to be playing much role here – instead, oil and colonialism are.

Syria does have a Kurdish separatist movement, as does Iran, Iraq, and Turkey – every state that has a significant number of Kurds. This conflict goes back to the post-World War 1 breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The Kurds, with thousands of years of history as a people, nominally independent for much of that time, were denied a state and sold out.

The new fake state called Turkey carved up part of Kurdistan, another part was donated to the British colony in Iraq and another to the French colony in Syria, as the Allies carved up the remains of the Empire like hungry guests at a feast.

This conflict is more about colonialism and extreme discrimination than language, though the Kurds do speak their own tongue. There is also a Kurdish separatist conflict in Iran, but I don’t know much about the history of the Iranian Kurds.

There is also an Assyrian separatist movement in Iraq and possibly in Syria. The movement is unarmed. The Assyrians have been horribly persecuted by Arab nationalist racists in the region, in part because they are Christians. They have been targeted by Islamo-Nazis in Iraq during this Iraq War with a ferocity that can only be described as genocidal.

The Kurds have long persecuted the Assyrians in Iraqi Kurdistan. There have been regular homicides of Assyrians in the north, up around the Mosul region. This is just related to the general way that Muslims treat Christian minorities in many Muslim states – they persecute them and even kill them. There is also a lot of land theft going on.

While the Kurdish struggle is worthwhile, it is becoming infected with the usual nationalist evil that afflicts all ethnic nationalism. This results in everyone who is not a Kurdish Sunni Muslim being subjected to varying degrees of persecution, disenfranchisement and discrimination. It’s a nasty part of the world.

In Syria, the Assyrians live up near the Turkish and Iraqi borders. Arab nationalist racists have been stealing their land for decades now and relocating the Assyrians to model villages, where they languish in poverty. Assad’s regime is not so secular and progressive as one might suspect.

There is a separatist conflict in Bougainville in New Guinea. I am sure that many different tongues are spoken on that island, as there are 800 different tongues spoken in Papua New Guinea. The conflict is rooted in the fact that Bougainville is rich in copper, but almost all of this wealth is stolen by Papua New Guinea and US multinationals, so the Bougainville people see little of it. Language has little or nothing to do with it.

There are separatist movements in the Ahwaz and Balochistan regions of Iran, along with the aforementioned Kurdish movement. It is true that different languages are spoken in these regions, but that has little to do with the conflict.

Arabic is spoken in Khuzestan, the land of the Iranian Arabs. This land has been part of Persia for around 2,000 years as the former land of Elam. The Arabs complain that they are treated poorly by the Persians, and that they get little revenue to their region even though they are sitting on a vast puddle of oil and natural gas.

Iran should not be expected to part with this land, as it is the source of much of their oil and gas wealth. Many or most Iranians speak Arabic anyway, so there is not much of a language issue. Further, Arab culture is promoted by the Islamist regime even at the expense of Iranian culture, much to the chagrin of Iranian nationalists.

The Ahwaz have been and are being exploited by viciously racist Arab nationalists in Iraq, and also by US imperialism, and most particularly lately, British imperialism, as the British never seem to have given up the colonial habit. This conflict is not about language at all. Most Ahwaz don’t even want to separate anyway; they just want to be treated like humans by the Iranians.

Many of Iran’s

There is a separatist movement in Iran to split off Iranian Azerbaijan and merge it with Azerbaijan proper. This movement probably has little to do with language and more to do with just irredentism. The movement is not going to go very far because most Iranian Azeris do not support it.

Iranian Azeris actually form a ruling class in Iran and occupy most of the positions of power in the government. They also control a lot of the business sector and seem to have a higher income than other Iranians. This movement has been co-opted by pan-Turkish fascists for opportunistic reasons, but it’s not really going anywhere. The CIA is now cynically trying to stir it up with little success. The movement is peaceful.

There is a Baloch insurgency in Pakistan, but language has little to do with it. These fiercely independent people sit on top of a very rich land which is ruthlessly exploited by Punjabis from the north. They get little or no return from this natural gas wealth. Further, this region never really consented to being included in the Pakistani state that was carved willy-nilly out of India in 1947.

It is true that there are regions in the Caucasus that are rebelling against Russia. Given the brutal and bloody history of Russian imperial colonization of this region and the near-continuous rebellious state of the Muslims resident there, one wants to say they are rebelling against Imperial Russia.

Chechnya is the worst case, but Tuva reserves the right to split away, but this is rooted in their prior history as an independent state within the USSR (Tell me how that works?) for two decades until 1944, when Stalin reconquered it as a result of the conflict with the Nazis. The Tuvans accepted peacefully.

Yes, the Tuvans speak a different tongue, but so do all of the Siberian nations, and most of those are still with Russia. Language has little to do with the Tuvan matter.

There is also separatism in the Bashkir Republic and Adygea in Russia. These have not really gone anywhere. Only 2 Adygea speak Circassian, and they see themselves as overrun by Russian-speaking immigrants. This conflict may have something to do with language. The Adygean conflict is also peripherally related the pan-Caucasian struggle above.

In the Bashkir Republic, the problem is more one of a different religion – Islam, as most Bashkirs are Muslim. It is not known to what degree language has played in the struggle, but it may be a factor. The Bashkirs also see themselves as overrun by Russian-speaking immigrants. It is dubious that the Bashkirs will be able to split off, as the result will be a separate nation surrounded on all sides by Russia.

The Adygean, Tuvan and Bashkir struggles are all peaceful.

The conflict in Georgia is complex. A province called Abkhazia has split off and formed their own de facto state, which has been supported with extreme cynicism by up and coming imperialist Russia, the same clown state that just threatened to go to war to defend the territorial integrity of their genocidal Serbian buddies. South Ossetia has also split off and wants to join Russia.

Both of these reasonable acts prompted horrible and insane wars as Georgia sought to preserve its territorial integrity, though it has scarcely been a state since 1990, and neither territory ever consented to being part of Georgia.

The Ossetians and Abkhazians do speak separate languages, and I am not certain why they want to break away, but I do not think that language has much to do with it. All parties to these conflicts are nations in rebellion announced that they were not part of the deal.

Bloody rebellions have gone on ever since, and language has little or nothing to do with any of them. They are situated instead on the illegitimacy of not only the borders of the Burmese state, but of the state itself.

Thailand does have a separatist movement, but it is Islamic. They had a separate state down there until the early 1800’s when they were apparently conquered by Thais. I believe they do speak a different language down there, but it is not much different from Thai, and I don’t think language has anything to do with this conflict.

There is a conflict in the Philippines that is much like the one in Thailand. Muslims in Mindanao have never accepted Christian rule from Manila and are in open arms against the state. Yes, they speak different languages down in Mindanao, but they also speak Tagalog, the language of the land.

This just a war of Muslims seceding because they refuse to be ruled by infidels. Besides, this region has a long history of independence, de facto and otherwise, from the state. The Moro insurgency has little to nothing to do with language.

There are separatist conflicts in Indonesia. The one in Aceh seems to have petered out. Aceh never agreed to join the fake state of Indonesia that was carved out of the Dutch East Indies when the Dutch left in 1949.

West Papua is a colony of Indonesia. It was invaded by Indonesia with the full support of US imperialism in 1965. The Indonesians then commenced to murder 100,000 Papuans over the next 40 years. There are many languages spoken in West Papua, but that has nothing to do with the conflict. West Papuans are a racially distinct people divided into vast numbers of tribes, each with a separate culture.

They have no connection racially or culturally with the rest of Indonesia and do not wish to be part of the state. They were not a part of the state when it was declared in 1949 and were only incorporated after an Indonesian invasion of their land in 1965. Subsequently, Indonesia has planted lots of settler-colonists in West Papua.

There is also a conflict in the South Moluccas , but it has more to do with religion than anything else, since there is a large number of Christians in this area. The South Moluccans were always reluctant to become a part of the new fake Indonesian state that emerged after independence anyway, and I believe there was some fighting for a while there. The South Moluccan struggle has generally been peaceful ever since.

Indonesia is the Israel of Southeast Asia, a settler-colonial state. The only difference is that the Indonesians are vastly more murderous and cruel than the Israelis.

There are conflicts in Tibet and East Turkestan in China. In the case of Tibet, this is a colony of China that China has no jurisdiction over. The East Turkestan fight is another case of Muslims rebelling against infidel rule. Yes, different languages are spoken here, but this is the case all over China.

Language is involved in the East Turkestan conflict in that Chinese have seriously repressed the Uighur language, but I don’t think it plays much role in Tibet.

There is also a separatist movement in Inner Mongolia in China. I do not think that language has much to do with this, and I believe that China’s claim to Inner Mongolia may be somewhat dubious. This movement is unarmed and not very organized.

There are conflicts all over India, but they don’t have much to do with language.

The Kashmir conflict is not about language but instead is rooted in the nature of the partition of India after the British left in 1947. 9

The UN quickly ruled that Kashmir had to be granted a vote in its future, but this vote was never allowed by India. As such, India is another world-leading rogue and scofflaw state on a par with Israel and Indonesia. Now the Kashmir mess has been complicated by the larger conflict between India and Pakistan, and until that is all sorted out, there will be no resolution to this mess.

Obviously India has no right whatsoever to rule this area, and the Kashmir cause ought to be taken up by all progressives the same way that the Palestinian one is.

There are many conflicts in the northeast, where most of the people are Asians who are racially, often religiously and certainly culturally distinct from the rest of Indians.

None of these regions agreed to join India when India, the biggest fake state that has ever existed, was carved out of 5,000 separate princely states in 1947. Each of these states had the right to decide its own future to be a part of India or not. As it turned out, India just annexed the vast majority of them and quickly invaded the few that said no.

“Bharat India”, as Indian nationalist fools call it, as a state, is one of the silliest concepts around. India has no jurisdiction over any of those parts of India in separatist rebellion, if you ask me. Language has little to do with these conflicts.

Over 800 languages are spoken in India anyway, each state has its own language, and most regions are not in rebellion over this. Multilingualism with English and Hindi to cement it together has worked just fine in most of India.

Sri Lanka’s conflict does involve language, but more importantly it involves centuries of extreme discrimination by ruling Buddhist Sinhalese against minority Hindu Tamils. Don’t treat your minorities like crap, and maybe they will not take up arms against you.

The rebellion in the Basque country of Spain and France is about language, as is Catalonian nationalism.

IRA Irish nationalism and the Scottish and Welsh independence movements have nothing to do with language, as most of these languages are not in good shape anyway.

The Corsicans are in rebellion against France, and language may play a role. There is an independence movement in Brittany in France also, and language seems to play a role here, or at least the desire to revive the language, which seems to be dying.

There is a possibility that Belgium may split into Flanders and Wallonia, and language does play a huge role in this conflict. One group speaks French and the other Dutch.

There is a movement in Scania, a part of Sweden, to split away from Sweden. Language seems to have nothing to do with it.

There is a Hungarian separatist movement, or actually, a national reunification or pan-Hungarian movement, in Romania. It isn’t going anywhere, and it unlikely to succeed. Hungarians in Romania have not been treated well and are a large segment of the population. This fact probably drives the separatism more than language.

There are many other small conflicts in Europe that I chose not to go into due to limitations on time and the fact that I am getting tired of writing this post! Perhaps I can deal with them at a later time. Language definitely plays a role in almost all of these conflicts. None of them are violent though.

To say that there are separatists in French Polynesia is not correct. This is an anti-colonial movement that deserves the support of anti-colonial activists the world over. The entire world, evidenced by the UN itself, has rejected colonialism. Only France, the UK and the US retain colonies. That right there is notable, as all three are clearly imperialist countries. In this modern age, the value of retaining colonies is dubious.

These days, colonizers pour more money into colonies than they get out of them. France probably keeps Polynesia due to colonial pride and also as a place to test nuclear weapons and maintain military bases. As the era of French imperialism on a grand scale has clearly passed, France needs to renounce its fantasies of being a glorious imperial power along with its anachronistic colonies.

Yes, there is a Mapuche separatist movement in Chile, but it is not going anywhere soon, or ever.

It has little to do with language. The Mapudungan language is not even in very good shape, and the leaders of this movement are a bunch of morons. Microsoft recently unveiled a Mapudungan language version of Microsoft Windows. You would think that the Mapuche would be ecstatic. Not so! They were furious. Why? Oh, I forget. Some Identity Politics madness.

This movement has everything to do with the history of Chile. Like Argentina and Uruguay, Chile was one of the Spanish colonies that was settled en masse late. For centuries, a small colonial bastion battled the brave Mapuche warriors, but were held at bay by this skilled and militaristic tribe.

Finally, in the late 1800’s, a fanatical and genocidal war was waged on the Mapuche in one of those wonderful “national reunification” missions so popular in the 1800’s (recall Italy’s wars of national reunification around this same time). By the 1870’s, the Mapuche were defeated and suffered a devastating loss of life.

Yet all those centuries of only a few Spanish colonists and lots of Indians had made their mark, and at least 7

Because they held out so long and so many of them survived, they are one of the most militant Amerindian groups in the Americas. They are an interesting people, light-skinned and attractive, though a left-wing Chilean I knew used to chortle about how hideously ugly they were.

Hawaiian separatism is another movement that has a lot to do with colonialism and imperialism and little to do with language. The Hawaiian language, despite some notable recent successes, is not in very good shape. The Hawaiian independence movement offers nothing to non-Hawaiians (I guess only native Hawaiians get to be citizens!) and is doomed to fail.

Hawaiians are about 2

There are separatists in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, but I doubt that language has much to do with it. Like the myriad other separatist struggles in the NE of India, these people are ethnically Asians and as such are not the same ethnicity as the Caucasians who make up the vast majority of the population of this wreck of a state.

This is another conflict that is rooted in a newly independent fake state. The Chittagong Hill Tracts were incorporated into Bangladesh after its independence from Pakistan in 1971. As a fake new state, the peoples of Bangladesh had a right to be consulted on whether or not they wished to be a part of it. The CHT peoples immediately said that they wanted no part of this new state.

At partition, the population was 98.

I don’t know much about the separatist struggle of the Moi in Vietnam, but I think it is more a movement for autonomy than anything else. The Moi are Montagnards and have probably suffered discrimination at the hands of the state along with the rest of the Montagnards.

Zanzibar separatism in Tanzania seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with language, but has a lot more to do with geography. Zanzibar is a nice island off the coast of Tanzania which probably wants nothing to do with the mess of a Tanzanian state.

The conflict also has a lot to do with race. Most residents of Zanzibar are either Arabs or descendants of unions between Arabs and Africans. In particular, they deny that they are Black Africans. I bet that is the root of the conflict right there.

There were some Talysh separatists in Azerbaijan a while back, but the movement seems to be over. I am not sure what was driving them, but language doesn’t seem to have been a big part of it. Just another case of new members of a fake new state refusing to go along for the ride.

There were some Gagauz separatists in Moldova a while back, but the movement appears to have died down. Language does seem to have played a role here, as the Gagauz speak a Turkic tongue totally unrelated to the Romance-speaking Moldovans.

Realistically, it’s just another case of a fake new state emerging and some members of the new state saying they don’t want to be a part of it, and the leaders of the fake new state suddenly invoking inviolability of borders in a state with no history!

In summary, as we saw above, once we get into Europe, language does play a greater role in separatist conflict, but most of these European conflicts are not violent. In the rest of the world, language plays little to no role in the vast majority of separatist conflicts.

The paranoid and frankly fascist notion voiced by rightwing nationalists the world over that any linguistic diversity in the world within states must be crushed as it will inevitably lead to separatism at best or armed separatism at worst is not supported by the facts.

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 5

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 5

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 1 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.

The Out of India Model for Indo-European

Related to “There was no Aryan Invasion” folks, mostly Hindu nationalists and Indian nationalists. Out of India Model. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia page makes it seem somewhat plausible. It’s not. Not plausible, that is. It’s nonsense. Indo-European speakers did not come out of India. India is not the homeland of the Indo-Europeans. The true homeland is in far southern Russia north of the Caucasus, or, even better, in Anatolia. This is what really happened: an Indo-Aryan migration. Read through that piece and it becomes quite clear that this is what really happened. Part of the problem is with the word invasion. There was no invasion. They just moved in. Michael Witzel, a Sanskritist, has been in the forefront of attacking the Out of India model. Here is a good page savaging most of their arguments. He takes apart one of their leader proponents, N. Kazanas of Greece, a guy who is little more than a dilettante. It takes a little while to get through this stuff as it’s a bit heavy going, but I was able to do it. Once you do it, the Out of India Theory lies in ruins. One of the OOI arguments is that Indo-Aryan peoples have no memory of a migration. But who does anyway? Most IE peoples do not remember their obvious migrations either. Romans said they came from Troy. This is a lie. Gypsies say they came from Egypt. Fiction. Here is an argument against an Indo-Aryan incursion:

we have an archaeologically attested culture of many centuries if not millennia with undoubted literacy but without any traces of religious texts, legal codes, scientific works and even simple secular fables (except most laconic legends on indecipherable seals), and, in quick succession, even as the older culture declines, an intrusive illiterate people with no archaeological attestation at all who yet produce within a few centuries (according to the AIT) all the literature that was missing from the previous culture. This is a unique situation that makes little sense.

However, this very thing happened in Greece. First, a Minoan cult, a Helladic civilization, but no literary texts, then, in a few centuries, then, within a few centuries, an explosion of literature, poetry, religion, philosophy, the Homeric texts, etc. Further, it does not produce “all the literature that was missing from the previous civilization. It produces new literature at a very rapid pace – see the Yayoi invasion of Japan from Korea and the rapid replacement of the Jomon culture for something similar. Another argument is that archeologically, the record of civilization in India is continuous – that is, there is no obvious disruption dating from an Aryan invasion. However, as a general rule, culture, archeologically, is continuous in all parts of the world. Culture is continuous in Europe too, and we know full well that Indo-Europeans took over and supplanted earlier groups. Is there a record of this takeover culturally? Well no, but it happened. However, keep in mind that horses and chariots showed up with the Indo-Aryans and were not found in India previously. OOI folks say silly things like, “Egyptians had chariots too” (Point being?). Anyway, horses and chariots did not develop in India. They came down from the steppes with the I-A speakers. Surely if OOI is true than Sanskrit would be the most ancient IE language. It’s not at all. It only goes back 3,500 years too. The Anatolian branch may well date back 8,000 years. If OOI is true than borrowings from other Indian languages such as Dravidian and Munda would be found in all branches of IE, no? But of course they are only found in Indic, which we would expect if Indic speakers migrated into India and not out of it. Going back to pre-Indo-Aryan times, paleontologists find differences between bones even between Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. Also, there are no I-A bones found here. Of course not. Aryans will not show up for 1000’s of years. Yes, Harappans built wheels, but they built no spoke-wheeled chariot. This came only with the Aryans. OOI folks have no explanation for this. Indeed, Aryan chariots are built from woods from the Punjab plain, not wood from say the steppes. But this is not a valid OOI argument. Invaders always use whatever is available. Aryan immigrants brought chariot technology with them from the steppes. To make chariots in their new homeland, they used local wood. This is surprising?

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 10 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 5 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.

Indonesian Soldiers Torture Papuan Men

The video in question is available on my video site. This is extremely shocking footage of Indonesian soldiers in West Papua torturing a Papuan man and his father. Indonesia stole West Papua from the Papuans in 1965, and has waged a genocidal and racist war against the Papuans ever since, a war that has killed 100,000 Papuans. Soldiers are extremely racist and view Papuans as little more than animals. Papuans try to fight back using very primitive weapons, but they are no match for the modern Indonesian military. US imperialism has backed the Indonesians to the hilt in this war because US corporations want to exploit various raw materials in Papua. The footage was filmed on a cellphone in May by one of the soldiers taking part in a military operation in the Punkak Jaya region of the Central Highlands of West Papua. The operation was launched against the Free Papua Movement, an armed group seeking freedom from Indonesian colonialism, but the troops are mostly just torturing, raping and murdering civilians like they always do. It is apparently “trophy footage.” This video is just a small part of a much larger video that shows the two men being tortured. In the bigger video, the older man is stripped naked, has a bag put over his head and has a burning stick applied to his genitals while he screams in agony. The young man has a knife held to his face. Details of who the victims are hard to come by since the area is a closed military zone, and journalists are banned from the area. However, the older man is missing and probably dead, while the young man has been released. Indonesian troops have been killing, torturing and raping Papuans with impunity since 1963. Victims have been as young as 3 years old. For many years, Indonesian troops have been taking trophy photos, now escalating to films, of Papuans being killed and raped. They show this media to Papuans in order to humiliate them. The footage appeared just recently, on October 20, 2010 and caused a bit of a media stir.

An Anti-Indian Diatribe

This comment comes from an Indian woman living in India. I agree with every world she says. She is right. This is why I support the Maoists in India. They seem to be the only force able to change the country for the better. Everything else has been tried and everyone else has failed. Even most of the Left, Indian social democracy, the Indian socialism of Congress, the Indian Communism of the Indian Communist Party in Bengal, neoliberalism, nothing has worked. The neoliberals say, “Just give us time! Just give us time! It will work after a while.” When is it supposed to start working? They’ve had 62 years. Time to start something new. Neoliberalism in particular has failed. It’s enriched maybe 1 What a delightfully typical Indian middle-class response. Might I ask how much your two-car household (of which one is a Volkswagen – woohoo) pays its maid and how many hours she slaves for that sum? Is she offered a cup of tea from the same crockery that you and your spoilt spawn use? Or does she have a cast-off plastic mug with a crack down the side? Get real! The reason India is a mess because of people like you who quote numbers that reflect your mundane middle class existence in some twisted self congratulatory fashion. Like building tanks? Shame they did not build more power generators and roads of some quality. Or invest in revamping an education system that makes us a nation of unthinking idiots blinded by our own smug mediocrity. This cheap healthcare you speak of? Is it accessible to the 900 million poor? Think your maid could afford cancer treatment for her children at a private hospital…? Or even a simple root canal? This uneven distribution of wealth you are talking about from your substandard ivory tower – by which I refer to whichever building you currently live in – no doubt built on the foundations of bribery, corruption, and poorly paid migrant labour, not to mention seriously compromised building standards – but I digress…This distribution of wealth begins from you and me. One less gold necklace for the wife, one less play station for the spawn, and a fairer wage to those we employ – put your money where your mousepad is. The Government is going to do nothing for the poor in our country… that 900 million who eke out a living in this our MAHAN BHARATH. But given the apathy and false sense of pride we Indians wear today like some sort of holy mantle – and no one may as a result, say anything against it – that just consigns the vast majority of this so called democratic (my arse) nation to live out this misery, passing it on to the next generation with no hope, no sense of a future and no change. This is a country where Chief ministers own TV stations and there are over a million court cases pending. This is a country (in a nation of primarily dark skinned people) were we have a best-selling cream called Fair and Lovely (for f’s sake, does no one get the implications, but me) and a movie industry which perpetuates the myth that being light skinned means being beautiful. This is a country where politicians can march into a restaurant and drag out four girls, beat the crap out of them and no one does anything…this is a country where no one wants to face the truth. We are where we are today, because of a multitude of factors, driven by international market forces, not our own so-called greatness. because we are not that great. We are unthinking, we are complacent, we are arrogant and most of us – let’s face it – are pretty damn stupid. Indian journalism…I have never seen worse journalism in my life. Diluted, watered down rubbish is what the media gives us, while it airs advertisements of how brilliant we are as a nation. Yes we are filthy – even the middle classes and above. Most of us are unaware of deodorant – though God knows most of us need it and it’s happily available. As a nation, our parenting skills are the worst on the planet. With children being kept up at silly hours, babies sleeping with parents till they are teenagers, and learning the same bad habits we acquired from our parents…and as for our social and religious hypocrisy – we could teach Saudi Arabia a thing or two. I keep using the word ‘we’ here, because you see Rahul, I come from the privileged classes, I went to some of the best and oldest public schools in the country and am a member of most of India’s most ridiculously posh colonial clubs. But luckily for me, I see through the very thin veneer of 21st century civilization we cover ourselves with. Underneath it, we have not changed for 2000 years. And no amount of car manufacturing, or tanks or UN reports or self-glorification is going to change that fact. The only thing that will change it is when people like you – my peers – wake up to how awful we really are as a nation on so many counts. You can bang on about our colonial masters and tell me how bad it was and how wonderful our dhoti-clad Mahatma was…but without a thought would deny our fellow brothers and sisters an decent wage or plain simple human rights. Frankly…I would cheerfully welcome back the British. Give me a Margaret Thatcher over an Indira Gandhi any day. Or a Tony Blair over a Manmohan Singh in a heartbeat. We are socially sick, morally destitute, spiritually bereft and politically corrupt and the only reason we deny it as much as we do, is because we know all of this is true. Want to do something for India…well stop rabbiting on about the tanks and wheat exports and car manufacture and our civilized behaviour and wake up and smell the roses. or in our case, our neighbors’ rotting garbage neatly deposited in front of our front gate. Your views above are valid and they work…for a small, small fraction of India’s population. It is however not true, not by a long shot for the vast majority. Does this not concern you, at all? Does your pride in our country not make you want the same privileges for everyone? And even if you say you do, I’m inclined not to believe you, because how else would you have a maid come and sweep and clean for you everyday for a pittance, unless she was deliberately kept poor and stupid, by a ruling class and a political and social system that thrives on oppression and control and domination. And oh you know what else…I hope the whole world wakes up and sees what a mess we are…we need to be collectively shamed into making things better. Nothing else will move us – and frankly I’m not sure even that will. We will progress – as momentum gathered over the years and our massive population will ensure the economy continues to grow. But your Playstation addicted child’s (I can’t believe you said that so proudly btw) child may see a different country and it wont be a better place. Today we have a polluted, corrupt, elitist society – and you sunshine, are part of the problem. You and everyone else like you. But if you plan on telling me how unpatriotic and overly Westernized I am…feel free. Patriotism is not blind faith. It is the recognition and subsequent correction of a problem. And we have too many. Starting with a mindless, automaton middle class steeped in it’s arrogance and self-righteousness. Let’s make a change there! I for one would like to call for a mass, cross country non-violent action – let’s not vote again for any leader, let’s not pay taxes, let’s picket peacefully outside our politicians houses and refuse to co-operate with the Government until they start doing their fucking job. Like creating sensible policies, promoting on merit, holding themselves fully accountable and fire-able for non-performance. Why are the civil services in India given housing, or cars and drivers and peons and all that malarkey? On one hand the Government bleats incessantly about our colonial past, tearing down beautiful old building,s changing names of roads and towns and cities…and yet they cling to the worst aspects of tat colonial rule…an awe and reverence of the Government Servant. In a democratic country they are there to serve us, not the Queen, but we haven’t quite worked that out have we? I would also like to add at this point that for a country that breeds like rats, and that gave the world the Kama Sutra, we are sexually repressed and ignorant – to put it very mildly. And that could be a whole other conversation. I could go on and on…but a word to Mr Lindsay… ashamed as I am to admit it…Kudos…you summed up India – the real India – perfectly. And it is my sincerest hope that someday I can say otherwise. My views make me a pariah in my own country…but I see myself as voice in the wilderness… no doubt I will be beheaded. My apologies to you for using this space to have such a rant, but in my humble and much-disliked opinion…every little helps! Indians need to hear this from another Indian. And a female Indian at that! 🙂 In my next life, I shall be born as a particularly objectionable reptile of some sort for not being a true-blue daughter of the soil.

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 2

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao instituted the Barefoot Doctors program, serving the health care needs of 9

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 1

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 7

Starting in the 1980’s, the government cut back on health care, and clinics began demanding payment from patients. Only 2

A study found that 3

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 3

In 1978, 8

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.

The Roots of Fascism in Pakistan and Sri Lanka

Great article from one of my favorite websites, The Left Coaster. It’s basically the left wing of the Democratic Party in the US. They sure don’t agree with the idiot 5

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. The conflicts in Pakistan and Sri Lanka have their roots in the fascist language policies of the state. India,on the other hand, for all its faults, has had a good language policy from the very start. English was chosen as the national language, and each state chose its own majority language as the language of the state. To communicate with the central governments, the states would use English. Much ethnic tension and violence was actually defused in India by this very progressive policy.

Pakistan, insanely, chose the language of only

Sri Lanka was worse. Sinhalese, the language of 7

The genocide reached a peak this spring when the state wiped out the remains of the Tamil Tigers, and slaughtered 100,000 Tamil civilians at the same time. The media in the West and India did nothing but stand up and cheer during the whole Tamil Holocaust. Sickening. Now the war’s over, but tens of thousands of Tamils are in concentration camps.

Sinhalese settler-colonists, like the Jews of Israel, have invaded Tamil lands to throw the Tamils off, steal their land and confiscate it for Sinhalese settlers. Not one word of this in the filthy Western media, who apparently have never met a fascist they didn’t like. Both political parties support the fascist Sri Lankan state.

On a worldwide scale, only the Left has managed to peep in protest over the Sri Lankan fascist genocide. This is one reason I’m a Leftist. We’re the only honorable people left on the globe.

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.

Why Is Indian Nationalism So Dangerous?

fpy asks why I think that Indian nationalism is particularly dangerous.

What makes Indian nationalism uniquely malignant?

They are basically all ultranationalists. They’re fanatics. Seriously, horribly brainwashed fanatics. They’re about as brainwashed as your average North Korean.

I have never met an Indian who was not livid with rage over Kashmir. And their heads were filled with lies. 9

The truth as I studied it in the early 1990’s was that maybe 9

I have talked to many Indians on this subject, and they are almost all insane. Dangerously insane. These views are typical: All Kashmiris want to stay with India. Or, following Golda Meir, there are no such thing as Kashmiris. 10

Even now this War of the Stones, which is so obviously a grassroots popular rebellion, is being blamed 10

It’s hard to believe that educated people could believe this crap, but they do. Ignorance and rage on that level are frightening. Your average Indian reminds me of an Israeli, or a Turk. Basically a flaming, lying, brainwashed, ultranationalist, militant, militaristic kook.

And they are seriously filled with hatred and rage, especially towards the West. They are dangerous people. The place has nuclear weapons!

Full of rage at the failed nature of their society, yet at the same time filled with tremendous pride. Their whole thing is that India was the greatest state on Earth until evil Muslims and British took over and ruined it. They’re furious at the West. We came in there, told them their religion was shit, told them their culture was crap, told them their science was garbage, and they’re still pissed.

Failed nations that are full of pride yet and full of rage at their fall, especially at the scapegoats who ruined their glorious nation, who dream of the Lazarus rising from the fire to reclaim to glories of old, are very dangerous states. These are the essential ingredients of fascism. And Indian nationalists have that in spades.

They remind me of Germans in the interwar period. Very fascist-like people.

Anti-Communist Bullshit About North Korea

Via the BBC.

It’s true that the regime lies all the time, and lies to its own people, and that there is a omnipresent propaganda system based to a large extent on lies. There is also rewriting of history.

However, there were some serious problems with this video. Frankly, this shit is just straight up anti-Communist propaganda from the capitalist BBC.

First of all, the hostess discusses the rewriting of history about the Korean War. According to the North, the Americans poured across the border and invaded North Korea. This did not occur.  But according to this BBC crap, it was the North Koreans who actually poured across the border. This lie is what almost all Americans believe about this war.

I would definitely say that the North Korea was the aggressor in the initial stage of the Korean War. However, speaking technically, the two sides had been attacking each other back and forth across the border for some time before the war started. The best analysis of the actual start of the war is that both sides simultaneously attacked each other. The Western media will never tell us this. Who’s rewriting history now?

The central lie of this video, as with all Western capitalist propaganda about North Korea, is the “Communism starves the people” lie. Actually, Communism does not starve the people. Other than brief famines during rapid collectivization, Communist regimes have generally done a much better job at insuring that everyone gets enough to eat than capitalist regimes.

There are shortages of certain foodstuffs, and there is a lack of variety, but definitely, everyone’s stomach gets fed. In China, the USSR, Cuba, Vietnam and the East Bloc, huge strides were made in in basic nutrition. To this day, the former nations of the USSR have very low rates of malnutrition. Communism is great for filling your belly.

If Communism per se is to blame for North Korea’s food crisis, how is that North Korea was able to feed its people just fine from 1945-1993, for 47 years. Did something change in 1993? The system is the same. If anything, there is much more capitalism in the system now than during 1945-1993, yet the food problem is much worse. How does this argument make sense?

Another argument of this video is that North Korea’s electrical power problems are caused by Communism. Yet there were no electrical power problems from 1945-1993. The system is the same now as then. What changed?

The problems of the system really have nothing to do with Communism, central planning or any of that. The truth is that the system collapsed in 1990. The USSR was selling North Korea oil at 10 cents on the dollar. The whole system, from heavily mechanized agriculture to oil dependent industry, relied on this cheap oil. In 1990, the subsidy collapsed and suddenly they had to pay the world price for oil. Overnite, the price of oil went up 10X. It would be as if here in the US we suddenly had to pay $30/gallon for gas. What would our economy look like? Come on.

The 10X increase in the price of oil collapsed the economy. There was no oil to run the heavily mechanized agriculture. There was no oil to run the oil dependent industries. Factories were shuttered. Agricultural production collapsed. Here it is, 17 years on, and things are not much better. They still can’t afford oil to run their farms or industry. That’s why you see bicycles in the video and cows working in the fields. Most of North Korea’s machinery broke down, and there was no money to replace it. The central problem is that the state is broke.

The North Korea haters are asked what exactly North Korea should do to remedy this crisis. They don’t seem to have any answers. I honestly think that the state is doing the best it can to provide people with electricity and food, just as it always has. It’s just that agricultural production has collapsed along with electricity production, and it’s going to be hard to get them going again with empty state coffers. I don’t buy that the state is deliberately starving people. That’s what capitalist countries do.

The Significance of the Refoundation of the Maoist Movement in Pakistan

This is an interesting document outlining the prospects for revolution in Pakistan.

If not for Islam, Pakistan would probably already be in a revolutionary situation right now.

Bangladesh, where objective conditions are just as bad as in India, if not worse, has seen little progress in an actual armed struggle by Maoist forces, mostly due to the presence of Islam. Islamic Bangladesh has recently seen a large movement towards Islamism, though the nation’s elites are still secular. The Islamic parties are very large and popular.

Your average poor, starving peasant, who ought to be on board with revolution, is instead wasting his time jerking off with Islamist reactinaries. The Islamist militias have attacked the Maoists many times, killing many cadres. The state is probably using them for this purpose. This is reminiscent of the situtation in Indonesia in 1965, when Islamist militias were used to kill 1 million Communists in less than a year, a massacre that the CIA was involved in from start to finish.

Every time revolution rears its head in the Islamic World, the Islamists immediately condemn them as “atheists” and slaughter them. I assume that your average religious Muslim supports this massacre of the apostates.

Since Islam is so embedded in the population, I am dubious at the prospects for revolution in Pakistan. The Islamists will quickly condemn the Maoists as “atheists” and will be free to slaughter them. Further, the state will use the Islamist militias, as it already does. For instance, the Pakistani state used the Islamist militias to kill Benazir Bhutto recently. Further, getting pegged as atheists will make it hard for the Maoists to get support.

The revolutionary situation in Hindu countries is much better for some reason. Maoism went over great in Nepal, and the Maoists are doing well in India. In Nepal, the Maoists simply asked, “What’s Hinduism done for you lately?” The answer in general was nothing. Hinduism was used via the caste system by local elites to repress the peasants in a feudal to semi-feudal manner. In India, most of the Hindu Maoists have not really given up Hinduism. I suspect that Hinduism is not as deeply embedded in your average peasant’s psyche as Islam is.

Nevertheless, I understand that the PMKP is already quite popular among peasants oppressed by semi-feudalism. They hold large rallies in favor of land rights and lots of peasants show up. I assume that they don’t directly attack Islam – that would be idiotic in Pakistan. I have a Pakistani friend who comes from a feudal landlord family, and even she supported the PMKP, saying they were good for the peasants.

At any rate, I don’t think a revolutionary situation exists in Pakistan right now, and it will be a while before one starts up. And that’s almost all due to Islam.

The Significance of the Refoundation of the Maoist Movement in Pakistan

August 12, 2010

A Statement to the Seventh National Congress of the Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party

From the General Secretary of Revolutionary Initiative

With our fists raised as high as our hopes for the future of the Pakistani revolution, Revolutionary Initiative, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist pre-party formation in Canada, offers a red salute to the comrades convening the August 2010 7th National Congress of the Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party (Pakistan Workers and Peasants Party).

We understand that the 7th Congress will mark a return of the PMKP to the Maoist origins of the party, as established by its founders Major Ishaq Mohammed, Afzal Bungish, Eric Sperian, and Ghulam Nabi Kaloo in the 1960s.

The new program of the PMKP will effect a decisive break with the pseudo-alternatives currently being presented to the people of Pakistan: the perpetuation of a backward semi-colonial, semi-feudal society maintained by the pro-imperialist military and civil bureaucracy, comprador bourgeoisie, and feudal ruling elite; versus the equally backward social program offered up by the Taliban of Pakistan. By breaking with the revisionist Left, which looks to U.S. imperialism for enlightenment through its brutal “War on Terror”, the PMKP is setting a course to truly rally the peasants, proletarians, and the progressive petty-bourgeois elements to the anti-imperialist cause.

Further, by exposing the program of the Taliban as fascism in a different form, the PMKP has truly placed itself at the vanguard of all the toiling masses in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s lackeys to the imperialists and the Taliban only appear to be irreconcilably opposing forces, but in practice they are two sides of the same coin. The world will never forget that it was U.S. imperialism, during the course of the Cold War, which helped create the Taliban with the unwavering support of the Pakistani state.

Due to the Pakistani ruling classes’ subservience to U.S. imperialism, the vast majority paid a steep price for the maintenance of the country’s incredible state of economic backwardness. Today, this relationship has brought only new sufferings, with U.S. imperialism raining down drone attacks upon the heads of Pakistani civilians.

With a population of 170 million people, 4

As the PMKP’s new draft program reads, it is the semi-colonial aspect of Pakistan’s countryside that remains the “main obstacle to the release of productive forces and the progress of our country”. This is what makes the heavily exploited and oppressed peasantry the “main force in the peoples democratic revolution carried out under the leadership of the proletariat.”

It is these conditions that make Pakistan ripe for People’s War. If the Maoists do not lead the struggle of the people, the Islamic forces will continue to prevail in their reactionary mobilization of the masses in their pseudo-opposition to U.S. imperialism.

The floods that are currently ravaging Pakistan, bringing great misery and dislocation to as much as 1

It is our hope that the floods do not derail the plans for the 7th Congress, but if they do, we know it will be because of the urgent need for the revolutionary vanguard to serve and guide the people in a time of great hardship. It is inevitable that the imperialists and the reactionaries in Pakistan will use the catastrophes to strengthen their legitimacy and order, just as the imperialists and reactionaries have done in Haiti with the great earthquake there in January 2010.

In addition to the great consequences that the rise of the Pakistani Maoist movement will have at the domestic level, the Pakistani revolution would also affect historic transformations at the regional and world levels.

Regionally, the revolution in Pakistan would carry the revolutionary tide sweeping South Asia deeper into the Muslim world, breaking the monopoly of the clerical fascists in the struggle against imperialism, which they do not fundamentally oppose and do so in appearance only for their own opportunistic and self-aggrandizing purposes.

At the world level, the rise of a revolutionary communist tide in Pakistan would deal a blow to the ideological basis of the imperialist ‘War on Terror’. In the Western imperialist countries, Muslims are being scapegoated to divert the rest of the masses from the true geopolitical and economic interests of the NATO bloc of imperialists: to plunder the world, exploit the toiling masses, and gain the upper hand in the inter-imperialist competition with the other imperialists and regional geopolitical rivals, especially Russia and China.

The masses in the West are blackmailed into supporting the imperialist war of aggression in Afghanistan through the specter of Taliban rule. But we know that the war against the Taliban, a war on domestic reactionaries and exploiting classes, can only be the class war of the toiling masses, not the imperialists. The world was reminded of this on May 1st, 2010 when the PMKP rallied and marched in North-West Frontier Province for the support of the revolution in Nepal.

We look forward, comrades, to the great feats that the people of Pakistan will achieve under the leadership of genuine communists guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and we will show the masses in our country that the people of Pakistan are our friends and comrades, and that they strive for genuine democracy, for socialism and for communism, just like ourselves.

If the PMKP, alongside our comrades of the Shola Jawid (Communist Party Maoist of Afghanistan) and Sarbederan (Communist Party of Iran-Maoist), successfully organize and arouse the masses for national democratic revolution by way of anti-imperialist People’s Wars in Central and South Asia, genuine communists all around the world will rally to your cause, learn important lessons from your struggle, and promote them amongst the proletarians of their home countries.

If the PMKP holds fast to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism after the convention of the 7th National Congress, deeply uprooting the revisionism of the past decades, and boldly applies MLM to the conditions of Pakistan, then a glorious future lays ahead for the people of Pakistan and South and Central Asia. The era of imperialism is the era of world proletarian revolution. In this phase imperialism’s strategic decline, the phase of the second great crisis of capitalist imperialism that has plagued the world since the early 1970s, the conditions for proletarian revolution are inexorably improving.

Finally, this message of solidarity would not be complete without our own organization clearly identifying Canadian imperialism as a leading enemy of the people of the world, including the people of your country. A leading player in the occupation of Afghanistan and NATO is Canadian imperialism, the basis of which is Canadian monopoly-finance capital. As the imperialist war in Afghanistan more and more spills over into your country, your connection to the Canadian proletariat’s revolutionary struggle deepens more and more.

The proletarian youth who are being sent to Afghanistan only to return to Canada in body bags are also the victims of imperialist war, but they must be driven from Afghanistan just the same. The ruinous war in Afghanistan sets the basis for revolutionary agitation amongst the soldiers, no less than the Korean War and the Vietnam War radicalized whole generations of youth and soldiers in the West.

Together, let us hasten the movement towards socialism and communism on a world scale before the imperialists drag us further into a hellish world of war, avertable disasters, ecological catastrophe, and the day-to-day grinding exploitation and oppression of capitalism.

Red salute to the PMKP for taking up the banner of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism!

Onwards with the People’s War in Pakistan!

From Canada to Pakistan, long live the international proletarian revolution.

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.

Way Too Weird

Connections between ancient India and the ancient American Southwest and Mexico. The author, Gene Matlock, says that most of the world’s languages derive from Sanskrit. This is a lunatic Indian nationalist claim (incredibly, huge books of up to 700 pages have been written about this bullshit) for which there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

An Indian connection to the Philippines and the Australian Aborigines 12,000 YBP? I’m on board. An Indian connection to the Amerindians? I say prove it.

Way too weird, and some of the stuff is fishy.

About 5,000 BC or earlier, a brilliant deified Phoenician Naga king and philosopher named Kuvera (also Kubera) learned how to smelt copper, gold, and other metals. These activities took place in the kingdom named after him, Khyber (“Kheeveri”), which consisted of a group of craggy mountains in what are now Southeastern Afghanistan and Northeastern Pakistan (i.e. the Khyber Pass).

A Copper Age at over 7,000 YBP in the Indus River Valley Civilization? I’m OK with that. But the IRVC did not extend all the way up to the Khyber Pass. However, they were smelting copper at Mehrgarh, which is located in the Bolan Pass between Quetta and Sibi, an incredible 9,000 YBP (which indicates the extremely advanced nature of the ancient Indians/Pakistanis). That’s about 350 miles south of the Khyber Pass region.

Any evidence of Indian DNA in the Americas? Nope. Not yet anyway. At 7,000 YBP, Amerindians look like Ainu or Maori Polynesians, not Indians.

Interesting theory. All you can say about all this stuff (which is frankly a dime a dozen) is prove it.

India Has No Right to Exist

In the India Is a Shithole piece, James Schipper suggests that India has been free of significant civil strife:

Another thing for which India deserves credit is that, despite being one of the most multinational states in the world, it has managed to avoid serious internal conflicts. In terms of national composition, India should not be compared with the US but with Europe, which is of course divided in about 40 different states.

This is not true. Kashmir has been on fire since 1968 or so. There are now 500,000 troops locking the place down, and every day, another young Kashmiri or two at least is killed.

India was born in blood and sin, like the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and various settler-colonial states.

The difference is that the Indian state, incredibly, attacked her very own people from the start of the Indian state enterprise, and has been at war with them ever since. In this sense, India is an utterly failed state like Myanmar or Indonesia, two other former colonial states who have been battling insurgencies from the start from parts of the former colony who never wanted to join the new state.

India has about as much right to exist in its current form as Myanmar does. India is a failed state. It’s has failed to properly rule or provide for its people, and tens of millions of its citizens never consented to join the new state in the first place, but were dragged in kicking and screaming amidst slaughters.

Parents who can’t raise their children get their kids taken away. India’s children are its nations and peoples, whom it can’t and won’t care for because its ruling class is negligent and doesn’t care, like a crack-addicted Mom. Hence, India has no right to rule the peoples of the Northeast, Kashmir and Punjab and the Indian state in its current form should be dissolved as surely as Israel should be.

The Northeast has been in rebellion, often armed rebellion, nearly from Day One. There have been scores of armed groups fighting the state in that region, and many are still active. Bottom line is that India has no right to rule the Northeast, and as India is a cesspool anyway, why should the NE people be forced to live in a sewer? Let them secede and negotiate their way to modernity.

There is now a huge Maoist rebellion going on the East. There are easily 100,000 Maoists, and they have millions of supporters.

There was a huge rebellion in the Punjab a while back. It’s over, but it was nasty.

There is a continuous low level conflict going on with India’s Muslims, who regularly set off horrible bomb attacks on India’s Hindu cities. The Hindus are now responding by bombing India’s Muslim cities. Further, there have been many cases of inter-religious violence, mostly pogroms of Muslims by India’s Hindus and sometime riots by put-upon Indian Muslims. These pogroms started with the birth of the Indian state and the splitting of Pakistan, and to be honest, have never stopped.

In addition, there have been hundreds of killings of Christians in the East by Hindus, including burnings of churches and entire towns, pogroms, etc. This is ongoing as I write this.

Alt Left: India Is a Shithole*

This article sums up what modern India is all about, written by a fairly progressive fellow named Sean Kelley. I’ve been studying India for a while now, and the more I study it, the angrier I get. India, quite simply, sucks. Sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks and then sucks some more. I don’t know how long this suckiness has been going on, maybe forever. When the British first showed up, they were appalled. They tried to civilize the place, but the small-c conservative Indians kept objecting to getting civilized.

What sucks? India sucks. What about it sucks?

First of all, the state.

The Indian state has sucked from Day One, birthed in blood-soaked imperial and neo-colonial sin like America, Australia and Israel, with even less of an excuse as a long-abused colony themselves. Now, via alliances with imperialist America, the UK and Israel, India seems to be aping the worst aspects of its former imperialist and colonialist master. Like a crime victim going on a killing spree. Of all the ways to react.

The lousy nature of the Indian state is of course rooted in Indian society, as all states are rooted in the cultural formations of their societies. The Indian state sucks because Indian society sucks.

Why does Indian society suck? It’s hard to sum it up. First of all, you have one of the most callous and uncaring ruling classes, with the usual upper middle class allies, found on Earth.

Missing the good old days? Go to India. Nostalgic for debt slavery and bondage, feudalism (the real deal, not the semi-feudal modern kind), slavery (child and adult), child labor, shit in the streets like the Middle Ages Europe pre-Black Plague? Go to India. It’s all there in spades.

Even more appalling is that no one in India gives a damn. The bourgeois either live in denial or could care less if the lower classes live, die, or flop, gasping, somewhere in between.

The poor are too stupid and/or ignorant to know better, and many think that their savage and inhuman abuse, like something out of 1400’s England, is actually religiously ordained by God Himself. Sure, the bourgeois sold the poor this rope to hang themselves with or gave it to them, but they wrapped it up all up in one of the most barbaric cultural-religious systems known to modern Man, Hinduism, to give it the staying power of superglue.

The article makes clear that neoliberalism has ruined India beyond its prior Hellishness. Which is possible, since you don’t need to read Milton to learn that Hell can always get worse.

The pollution and the filth.

The pollution and filth is destroying India and turning it into an actual open cesspool/sewage ditch/garbage dump. One that traverses the whole country. It’s not only nauseous to breathe or look at the filth that surrounds you without respite, but it’s actually literally sickening. A visit to India means a continuous low-level infectious illness from all the filth drowning out your world.

Worse, Indians don’t care. See that guy shitting on the sidewalk? Pay no attention to him. OK, he’s getting up and walking away now. No problem, just don’t step it. The rich pay the trash collectors to keep their neighborhoods clean, and the Hell with everyone else. A callousness reminiscent of Anglo-Irish absentee landlords in 1820’s Ireland.

The one good thing about neoliberalism is a decline in bureaucracy. You gut government so there’s not much left. Bureaucracy means too many idle government slackers wasting time and messing around when they should be working. It could also mean an insanely underfunded state, which is probably the case with India.

The government doesn’t give a damn about anything but the rich. The state exists only to suck up to the rich or in its human form to move up classwise and become part of the elite class. The state cares nothing about workers, consumers, the environment – Hell, about anything relating to the people.

Everyone who works for the state is a crook, and they are all on the take. Schools and hospitals in rural areas are empty. Doctors and teachers collect salaries and never show up for work.

Nothing works. The electric grid is down most of the time, but you pay at the end of the month anyway even if you got little or no energy use out of the system that month. The roads are nightmarish, traffic is horrifyingly dangerous, and everything is so congested it makes Los Angeles look like a breezy Sunday drive in the country. The ports don’t work either – they look like something out of 1900. Let’s see, the ports don’t work, the roads don’t work, and bureaucracy stifles everything. How is this neoliberal paradise economy supposed to function anyway?

It’s tough in this neoliberal paradise to even purchase a product. Getting a hotel room is a pain in the rear end. Buying a new SIM card for your cellphone is a nightmare best avoided.

The one thing that everyone raves about in India is the trains. Nearly all Indians will insist that the trains are wonderful. Maybe 5-10 years ago they were, but not anymore. The traffic has maybe tripled since that time, and almost no new cars or lines have been added as you would expect neoliberals to do. The lines are Hellish, and customer service is probably better in Hell itself. Worse, no one cares. Even worse than that, Indians think Indian Train Hell is Paradise itself.

Malnutrition effects 5

The starvation and malnutrition levels are actually worse than in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Kelly echoes this by saying that he’s been in 50 countries the world over, and even Ethiopia was less of a shithole than India. That’s a powerful indictment. To the Africans’ credit, most Africans, despite their IQ’s, will readily admit to you that their country is a shithole. They don’t like it, and they want change. Good for them.

The first part of getting out of a hole is not just to stop digging but to realize that you’re in a nasty hole in the first place and would prefer to climb out rather than digging your way towards China and sure death.

Indians not only won’t stop digging, they think that trying to dig your way to China is some kind of a cultural-religious noble endeavor. Any Samaritans stopping by to toss them a rope or offer a hand are showered with abuse for refusing to acknowledge that the Indian’s deep dug pit is actually the greatest civilization created by man. Predictably, most sane folks throw down the rope, say the Hell with em, and walk on.

The Indian keeps digging as the water fills in around his muddy and beaten feat. Hunger gnaws at his belly. In response to his dim and plunging prospects, he can think of nothing to do but shout, “Glory to Bharat!” while cursing Muslims, Christians and those nasty British. With every breath, the water’s creeping higher.

You wonder why I support the Indian Maoists. Of all of the people in India, only the Maoists seem to have a bat’s chance in Hell of negotiating some kind of a future lessening of the mess above. Everyone else is cheerily on board for stasis or worsening.

*About the title, I would like to sincerely apologize to all of the actual shitholes in the world. They were just poor innocent holes, sitting there in the ground minding their own business until some mean person came along and filled them up with shit.

I am truly sorry, shitholes, I didn’t mean to compare you with India.

Riots in Kashmir

Some good video of heavy duty riots in Kashmir in the past few days. Six people were wounded when security forces opened fire on the rioters, who were throwing stones and attacking the Indian forces with sticks.

There are few things more infuriating than discussing Kashmir with a typical Indian. I’ve discussed this subject with many Indians. Most of them were upper class Hindus, but a few were actually Punjabis. It’s a sad comment that after the failure of the Sikh Rebellion, many Punjabis have descended into the rank sewer of Indian nationalism.

The reaction when discussing Kashmir with an Indian is always the same. First, they start getting very angry, pounding the table, and raising their voice. They insist that all Kashmiris love India and want to be a part of India. The entire Kashmiri rebellion, such as it were, is being fomented from this evil behemoth called Pakistan. The Kashmiris themselves, loyal patriotic Indians, have nothing to do with it and even hate the Pakistani invaders.

One particularly brainwashed fellow insisted that there were no such thing as Kashmiris, there were only Indians. This brings to mind Golda Meir’s comment that there are no such thing as Palestinians.

Indians are about as stark raving batshit nuts on the subject of Kashmir as your average Israeli Jew is on the subject of Palestine. There’s no reasoning with them, no room for conversation, nothing.

Try to bring up the history of Kashmir and you get more defense, blockage, diversion and bluster.

Here is the history of Kashmir.

When India was granted its independence in 1947, there were about 5,000 princely states in India. Each one was in effect its own state with its own government, leadership, etc. The terms of the independence protocol were that each of the 5,000 states would have a right to decide their own future. Join India, be independent, join with some other princely states in another state, etc. The overwhelming majority of the states opted to join India. However, the entire Northeast, Kashmir, and a number of other states around India did not.

Very quickly, most of the small states that refused to join India were attacked by the Indian military and overrun.  Many people were killed by the Indian military in these blatantly imperialist endeavors. The entire Northeast was invaded, overrun and occupied. Many Northeasterners resisted, and they have been fighting the state off and on ever since. Pakistan was partitioned off, which was a good idea (Who wants all those hostile Muslims?) and this resulted in horrendous massacres on both sides as Hindus fled Pakistan and Muslims fled India.

Kashmir, in the northwest mountains, had few natural resources and was mostly known as a vacation spot, the Switzerland of India. The population was 9

The people of Kashmir wanted to join Pakistan, but the ruler of Kashmir was a Hindu prince. The prince wanted to join India simply because he was a Hindu. No one seemed to be able to make up their minds about what to do.

In the midst of this steamy stasis, Pakistani propaganda rallied many Pakistani tribesmen, mostly Pashtuns, over the mountain passes into Kashmir. This was basically an armed invasion of Kashmir by Pakistani forces, but the use of “independent irregulars” absolved Pakistan of responsibility. The prince called for the Indian army to come in and help him and joined India so he could officially call the army in. The Indian line is, “We were only trying to help.”

A messy war ensued, the end result of which was that Kashmir was split in half between Pakistan and India. India placed Kashmir under a lockdown of military rule, a dictatorship, that lasted for decades.

In the following decades, Kashmiris patiently tried to petition the state with their grievances. Mostly they wanted a UN Resolution to be implemented which called for elections in Kashmir so the people could decide what to do – join Pakistan, stay in India, or go independent. India has been flouting this UN resolution since 1948. As far as outlaw rouge states go, shitty big India is up there with shitty little Israel.

Peaceful protest was crushed for decades by the Indian state in the Dictatorship of Kashmir and real elections were banned for fear that Kashmiri nationalists would win. During this time, all politicians in Kashmir were appointed by India. Finally, some controlled elections were allowed, but only India’s handpicked candidates were allowed to run.

After decades of repression, some small Kashmiri independence groups began to be formed. At one point, there were more than 50 different armed groups fighting the Indian state. They were Muslim, but they tended to be pretty secular within the Kashmiri tradition.

By the 1990’s, the repression from the Indian state was in full swing. At this time, it was estimated that 9

There was mass rape of Kashmiri Muslims, death squads roamed the streets, homes were routinely invaded and either shot up or searched for captives who were disappeared never to be seen again. Kashmiris were rounded up in huge detainment camps. Entire neighborhoods would undergo lockdown, and hundreds of young men would be handcuffed to the ground while hooded informers roamed through the group, pointing out insurgents. It was a typical Hellish insurgency.

At the same time, there was almost zero reporting of this insurgency in the US, as the US has always been slavishly pro-India. There are various reasons for this, but the main one is that about 9

At some point in the 1990’s, Pakistan got involved in the Kashmir issue. Mostly the Pakistani state, nearly as vile as the Indian state, just used Kashmir to whip the public into idiot jingoism and support for a state that few Pakistanis in their right minds should support. In this way, support for Kashmir was used to defuse national tensions in the same sickening way that Arab dictatorships use the Palestine issue to rally support around an elitist state that avoids serving their people properly.

The Pakistanis funded radical Muslim jihadi groups who sneaked into Kashmir, set up bases in the area and engaged in armed fights with the Indian forces. Many of these groups were very hardline radical fundamentalist radicals who were not particularly popular with Kashmiris. But gradually the insurgency shifted from the local Kashmiri groups to the Pakistani jihadis.

Now, if you ask your average Indian dipshit, the entire phase leading up to the involvement of Pakistani jihadis in Kashmir simply never occurred. I tell them about this period of history and they act outraged, as if they are being told toweringly offensive lies. It’s clear that they have never heard of the entire phase of the struggle leading up to Pakistan’s involvement.

The only conclusion is that almost all middle class and higher Indians have been ridiculously brainwashed on this issue. One wonders how this occurred. Clearly, the Indian mass media, long controlled by an ultranationalist high caste Hindu elite, has never  told the Indian people the real story of Kashmir. Nor has the school system, as I assume that Indian students are heavily brainwashed even in school on Kashmir.

The Pakistanis are not innocent on this issue, but most of the ones I talked to are a lot saner than the Indians. Pakistanis tend to be calm and level-headed about Kashmir, if somewhat deluded.

But most Pakistanis do not want Kashmir to go independent or stay with India. They only want it to go to Pakistan. So in their own way, they are as contemptuous of the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination as the Indians are. If you tell Pakistanis that Kashmiris don’t want to join Pakistan (only ~

Things have calmed down in Kashmir these days, and even the Pandits, the Kashmiri Hindus, are returning to Kashmir. They were ethnically cleansed, it is true, mostly in the early 1990’s. Most Kashmiris now seem ashamed of this act, and try to distance themselves from it, but it happened, and many Pandits were killed in the process. However, at the time, many Kashmiris opposed the ethnic cleansing of the Pandits.

The Pandits, 1

The insurgency is now at a very low level, but that’s because there are 500,000 Indian troops in Kashmir, which is not a large area. Keep in mind that at its peak, the US had 150,000 troops in Iraq which is twice as large as Kashmir. It would be as if the US had 1 million troops in Iraq.

Consequently, Kashmir is now one of the world’s pre-eminent garrison states. While the insurgency has died down, street protests have become the latest form of resistance in the past few years. The scene has an Intifada feel about it. Huge throng of Muslim youths fight it out in the streets with Indian forces on at least a weekly basis. This Intifada style rebellion is almost completely absent from the US press. On rare occasions, one glimpses a startling article to remind you that all’s not ok.

Try to tell an Indian about these huge throngs of Muslim youths regularly protesting and rioting and you will get a violent bluster. They insist, incredibly, that this is simply not occurring.

At some point, a sane state would give Kashmiris the right to vote on their self-determination. Support for independence has withered from 9

There’s a little Kashmir backgrounder for you. You’re sure to never find that anywhere in the US or Indian media.

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 10

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

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 6

Not to mention cutting off non-White immigration will be politically impossible. All the non-Whites will oppose it. Now you need to get 7

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 Truth About ‘Indian Socialism’,” by Peter Tobin

Via my colleague Peter Tobin, an explication of Indian socialism. I told him that commenters were saying that India had already tried socialism and it had failed, so Maoism was doomed from the start and had already been tried anyway. I doubted this and asked him for an explication of Indian socialism, how it differed from Maoism and why it failed, particularly even in a socialist sense.

Peter is very smart, and he’s also a very good writer.

Regarding the notion about India having already tried socialism – it depends on what you call ‘socialism.’

Congress India was a progressive nationalist party which had an, admittedly, sizable socialist faction. During the twenties and thirties it became dominant and at Independence could claim the adherence of the two leading figures in CI, Nehru and Menon.

Their socialism, however, was that of the Second International, which from the beginning of the 20th century became an openly reformist option, which accepted the constitutional niceties of bourgeois democracy.

It specifically rejected the path of Communist revolution in favour of Fabian strategy, which envisaged socialism coming through an evolutionary process, in which the free market dissolved before the logic of more intense collective measures brought about by the tendencies of all markets to monopolize and all industrial processes to become more collective.

This process would be aided by socialist/social democratic parties enacting progressive legislation through a parliamentary system, in which it would compete in the ‘market place of democracy’ with openly bourgeois parties.

The parties who successfully operated within these parameters were initially the Scandinavian countries before the second world war and fairly spectacularly by the post-war Labour party in Britain, which nationalized the commanding heights of the economy, rail, steel, coal, etc and initiated the Welfare State. Other European countries, to a greater or lesser degree, followed this path, among whom the most outstanding was West Germany.

These developments were made possible by Marshall Aid, granted by America, as a means of competing with the Soviet bloc at on level and containing it at another, (Viz Harriman, Kennan).

It is also a hard fact that large sections of the economy were left in private hands, and the principle of the mixed economy was accepted, with the proviso – and certainty – that they would inevitably wither (see above).

The SI came from Marxism (especially that of the German Social Democrats) but it abandoned Marx’s revolutionary side (vide; Kautsky) because it claimed that socialism was economically determined, as against Lenin and the Third International who argued for revolutionary political intervention and the involvement of the masses, under the leadership of a vanguard Communist party.

The progressive left of Congress India emerged under the influence of, and eventually joined, the SI. Mao, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, etc. followed the path of Lenin and the TI.

It is true that Congress India did try to follow a Western type of parliamentary democratic socialism in the post-Independence spirit of optimism, and a diluted form of socialism was promoted which stressed economic planning and welfare. There were also state investments where there were no private interests. There was a State Commission in 1950 which saw the first 5 year plan launched in 1951, which while nationalizing some of new, but still insignificant, modern industrial sectors, e.g, steel, mainly concentrated on raising agricultural output.

Initially there were some good GDP growth rates, but there was almost complete failure to provide decent, comprehensive welfare and to alleviate the plight of the overwhelming rural majority. But this socialism was a half dead thing in a half dead world because in did not involve a land to the tiller or cooperative element, leaving the landlords and the zamindars in ownership and control.

Crucially, while the Ambedkar Constitution outlawed casteism in theory, in practice it remained a decisive social and cultural force. How can expect to build socialism without the involvement, based on equality, of the broad masses?

Capitalist, Brahminical corruption remained and grew in strength, and with India’s humiliating defeat by the Chinese in 1962, Nehru’s attempt to, as he said in 1955 to establish “a socialist pattern of society,” was effectively over and India started the march towards Anglo-Saxon style capitalism.

The Chinese Communist Party did not fuck around; they seized all the commanding heights of the economy, especially agriculture, freed the peasants from the grip of the landlords and began their long march based upon collectivization, mass participation and cultural revolution. Ultimately, wherever they are at the moment, it was much more successful than the feeble Indian attempt.

It is Mao’s type of socialism that the Indian masses need, not Nehru’s (who was only picked by Gandhi to divert radicalism from Communism). That is what the comrades in the CPI (Maoist) are fighting for.

Please point to these people that therefore, socialism is not homogeneous, but takes different forms given different objective historical and ideological conditions. Also there are some who wave the red flag in order to oppose it.

India tried a form of democratic socialism that has since failed in the developed countries to a greater or lesser extent, as most of these SI parties are now more or less on board with the neoliberal form of free market capitalism that has dominated the last thirty years.

India gained its Independence in heroic circumstances and after bitter struggle, but it did not follow through with a thoroughgoing revolution that emancipated and unlocked the creativity and potential of its peoples.

But it is never too late, so let the corrupt, gangster, Brahminical, comprador class tremble. There is a broom moving that will sweep them in to the dustbin of history. They know this and that is why they have launched Operation Green Hunt, with American and Israeli aid – and generally replaced the ‘world’s biggest democracy’ with the world biggest fascist state.

Inquilab Zindabad!

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 1

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 8

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, 8

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? 5

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 2

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

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 5

The state sector was and is tiny. The state sector in India, including local, state and national levels combined, is about 5-1

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 1

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.

Way Too Weird

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5fWTQvUxDQ]

This is “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies, from the 1969. However, the music is recorded by Sin Sisamouth, a Cambodian recording artist. I’m sure you’ve all heard of him. Pol Pot killed Sin Sisamouth, that bastard.

The footage is from some weird Cambodian movie from the 1950’s called Apsara, starring Princess Norodom Bopha Devi. I’m sure you’ve all heard of that movie too and of course the actress is very famous too. Back then, Cambodian royalty often starred in the movies! The woman in this clip is Sak Si Sbong. She’s really a babe. At the end, she starts to get the lead into the Sak for some Sbonging, but then it cuts out. I think after the ending, it turns into a porno flick, but unfortunately, that part was cut from this version.

Check out the black and white footage, the period cars and dude singing the Archies song in the Khmer language! The guitar sounds weird too, almost like surf music or a Hawaiian steel guitar. I really think you need to be on LSD to truly appreciate videos like that, but unfortunately, I don’t take that drug anymore. Oh well, I can always conjure up a flashback.

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-

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.

Paper Adds Support to Aryan Invasion Theory

Note: Repost from the old blog.

The notion that an “Aryan Invasion” that occurred 3,500 years ago in India and subsequently shaped the physical and religious landscape of the country is a controversial one, but it is steeped in Indian sociocultural politics.

Though it is uncontroversial outside of India, a huge debate has heated up inside India.

On the one side are the Dalits and their allies. The Dalits claim that they were the original Indians and practiced some sort of a nice, utopian religion. I don’t know if it was Goddess worship, but I guess it was something like that. The Dalits really hate Hinduism because Hindus have decided that Dalits are doomed through life to be lower than whale shit, and that’s at the bottom of the ocean.

So the Dalits say that these Aryans (White folks) invaded down from the steppes to the north and west (possibly Tajikistan or around Iran) and conquered a large part of India. They brought with them Hinduism and caste. They made themselves the lighter Brahmin caste and made the darker folks lower castes, and the darkest of all Dalits. So the Aryan invasion started the whole mess.

Hindu nationalists (Hindutvas) love their Hindu religion and feel that it can do no wrong, so they dislike this Aryan Invasion Theory. Their whole line is that there was no Aryan invasion.

Hinduism was native to India and was not some wicked religion brought by evil lighter-skinned dudes.

White nationalists, some high caste-Indian racialists, and Afrocentrists all support the Aryan Invasion Theory. White nationalists feel that there are two races in India – light-skinned cool guy “Aryans” in the north who are smart and get everything done in India, to the extent that anything gets done there in the first place, and darker Dravidians, who are apparently inferior muds or something.

In reality, there are just Indians of varying shades. The ones towards the northwest to tend to be more European-looking and lighter, and the ones heading to the south and east tend to get darker and more Dravidian looking. However, there are plenty of dark-skinned North Indians with varying degrees of Dravidian features, and in the south, there are a lot of lighter folks with more European features.

The “Aryans” and “Dravidians” have gotten so mixed in over 3,500 years that these categories no longer make much sense, except to idiots. In which case, they are encouraged to continue using them.

High-caste Indian racialists go along with this and hang out in White nationalist forums trying to convince White nationalists that funny- looking light-skinned Indians are really just White people too, albeit with patchouli oil and a taste for curry. White nationalists are dubious about admitting wogs into their midst of their White purity.

Afrocentrists like this theory because they moronically think that Dravidians are Black folks. Except they’re not. Actually, all Indians are pretty closely related and are very distant from Africans – they are no closer to Africans than anyone else on Earth. Any resemblance to Africans is just convergence, genetic drift, or coincidence.

Well, India was populated by all these really cool Indian Black folks, and then evil White dudes came in, brought an evil White Supremacist religion called Hinduism, and cruelly imposed it on the darkies.

In the midst of all of this swarming intellectual idiocy, it falls to the scientists to add some sense to the discussion.

The interesting paper  listed in the references  section adds to the evidence for an Aryan invasion.

They did find that higher-caste folks tended to be lighter than lower-caste Indians, but that was just a trend. There are light-skinned low-caste Indians in the northwest, and many of the Brahmins of South India are quite dark.

They also found a trend for lighter skin and more European features and genes towards the northwest and darker skin, more indigenous features and more Asian genes as one moved to the south and east. The paper felt that they had evidence for a large introgression of European-looking peoples maybe 3000-4000 years ago, though things have gotten pretty mixed up since.

Other papers studying the genetics of India have concluded Indians have been evolving, more or less in situ without a lot of outside inputs, for 15-20,000 years (call it 17,000 years). The result has been this endlessly varying type we call the East Indian. And where did the Indian stock come from prior to 17,000 years ago?

The authors were not sure, but they felt that the seed for the stock that started to grow the modern Indian tree came from the Middle East 17,000 years ago.

India, along with North Africa, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, is also one of main staging grounds for the evolution of Caucasians and proto-Caucasians from 39,000-52,000 years ago. In particular, there was a movement Ainu roots than to any Alan invasion.

Even today, the Japanese ruling class looks different (some say, more Caucasian) than the rest of the Japanese, who are closer to the Yayoi, rice-farmers from Korea who invaded 2,300 years ago and conquered the island, displacing the Ainu. The Ainu, despite superficial Caucasian appearances, are actually anthropologically Australoids close to Aborigines. Genetically, they are Asians.

References

Bamshad M, Kivisild T, Watkins WS, Dixon ME, Ricker CE, Rao BB, Naidu JM, Prasad BV, Reddy PG, Rasanayagam A, Papiha SS, Villems R, Redd AJ, Hammer MF, Nguyen SV, Carroll ML, Batzer MA, Jorde LB. 2001. “Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations.” Genome Res 11: 994–1004.
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