Alt Left: Who Supports Who in the Russo-Ukraine War

Contrary to what the media tells you, the whole world is not turning on Russia over this war. It’s only the Anglosphere, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and most of Europe. That’s it!

Pro-Russia

Arab World: Unknown but there seems to be a lot of support for Russia because Arabs will take the opposite of whatever side the US is on because they hate the US.

Syria: Strong support for Russia because Russia helped them in the Civil War.

Iran: Similar situation. Most seem to support Russia because they support the opposite of the US because they hate the US and because Russia is an ally.

Pakistan: My limited understanding is that a lot of people support Russia because they hate the US so much.

Africa: Unknown. No country has sanctioned Russia. The Central African Republic is strongly supporting Russia because Russia helped them.

Latin America: Unknown. No government has sanctioned Russia. The media are all fulminating against Russia but the opinion of the average person is not known.

South Ossetia: This new country supports Russia because Russia helped them, and in fact they are sending a contingent of troops there.

China: The Chinese people support Russia completely. In part this is a legacy of the Cold War when both countries were allies. Plus China is starting to realize that once the West gets done taking down Russia, China is next on the chopping block.

Armenia: People support Russia. Armenia is sending a contingent of troops.

Serbia: Most Serbs support Russia due to ancient roots and Serbs’ hatred of the US and NATO. The Serbian government is anti-Russia, so the people and the state are at odds here. There have been large pro-Russian rallies.

Bulgaria: Most Bulgarians are supporting Russia due to common Slavic Orthodox heritage. There have been large pro-Russian rallies.

Brazil: All of the media is fulminating against Russia but comments on news articles are now running majority pro-Russia. The media and the people are at odds.

Belarus: Most are pro-Russia.

Trending Pro-Russia

Spain: The government and media are anti-Russia but comments on news sites are now running ~4

Unknown

India: Unknown, ally of Russia.

European countries not mentioned: Unknown, media and governments are mostly Russophobic.

Anti-Russia, Pro-Ukraine

Romania: Many years of anti-Russian propaganda have created a Russophobic population. Most are ignorant of the situation though. Extremely Russophobic media.

Sweden: Similar situation as Romania. Many years of Russophobic hate propaganda have created a country of Russia-haters. However, most people don’t understand the issue well. Media is strongly Russophobic.

Germany: Most are supporting Ukraine and the population is Russophobic. However, ~1

Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Georgia, US, and the UK: Strongly pro-Ukraine and Russophobic in media, state, and population. In Georgia the population is anti-Russia, but the government is more neutral. In Czechia and Slovakia, the governments are extremely anti-Russian, but the opinion of citizens is not known. Reports indicate that Russophobic hysteria is so extreme in the US that people are getting fired from their jobs for supporting Russia.

Alt Left: The Basic Culture of Ukraine Is Ukrainian Nationalism, Which Is a Form of Fascism and Sometimes Nazism

Alt Left: The US Opposes Al Qaeda, Except When We Support Them

In addition to running the Al Qaeda Armies in Libya and Syria to overthrow Qaddafi and Assad, we also run the Al Qaeda Army in Yemen to overthrow the pro-Iran Houthis, in Turkey to support Al Qaeda Syria, and in Iran to overthrow the government. In every one of these places, the Al Qaeda Army is actually the (((Al Qaeda Army))) because they have Israeli support, especially in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Yemen. So it’s not even Al Qaeda. It’s more (((Al Qaeda))).

However, we oppose the Al Qaeda Armies in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Somalia, Mozambique, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and the Sahel because in those places, they are attacking our allies.

Any of it make sense? Of course not! The USA sucks. The whole West is basically fascist.

Yes, both of those branches of Al Qaeda are funded and armed in part by the US and also by (((Israel))), (((France))), the UK, (((UAE))), Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar. There were intelligence agents from all of those countries literally embedded with Syrian Al Qaeda. We know this due to an interview with a top Al Qaeda leader in a cave by an East German journalist.

10 US intelligence agents were trapped by Assad’s army in Aleppo when his army conquered the city. That’s why the US was freaking out at the end. Assad even published every one of their names, ranks, everything. I think they were actually DIA, but they’re just as bad the CIA. Assad allowed them to be smuggled out. The DIA was involved in faking that (((Sarin gas attack in Damascus))) that never even happened. This was proven by the UN recently.

The DIA was also deeply involved in the rouge Ukrainian warlord oligarch was shot down hat airliner in the Ukraine to frame Russia, which has been covered up by the West ever since, including a fake judgement against Russia by NATO-run Netherlands, complete with literal faked forensic evidence. They scattered parts of what they said were a Buk missile as the site where the plane went down. Actually only one part and we don’t know how they linked it to a Buk.

We have literal eyewitness reports that a rogue element of Ukraine, a governor of a state who acts like a dictator – (((Kolomoisky))) is the culprit.

A lot of the really nasty foreign false flags, etc. are actually run by the DIA because it is US military and they are really good at actual military stuff. The CIA, not so good. Anyway, the DIA takes orders from the CIA. They’re both ratfuck agencies.

For instance, the people involved in recent paramilitary operations in Venezuela were active duty US military, often Marines or especially Special Forces, who are great at doing dirty work. One of these guys was recently caught in Venezuela with maps of oil refineries and huge cache of bomb material. There have been mysterious explosions that took out the entire Venezuelan electrical system that coincided with a US military mission to fascist Brazil (remember I keep telling you we love fascists?).

I am certain that US military – Special Forces or DIA – was involved in those explosions. There are regular sabotage attacks carried out against the oil industry and the electric sector by the Venezuelan opposition (You know, the “democratic” opposition), the same opposition which also tried to assassinate Maduro. Colombia was invoked in that assassination attempt and I know for a fact that the Pentagon was deeply involved.

You understand why I hate it when people say, “Support the troops?” Seriously, fuck the Pentagon. They’re no better now than they were in Vietnam and I came directly out of that protest movement. I walked door to door with my father for the antiwar “Clean Gene” Gene McCarthy antiwar campaign in the Democratic primary in 1968.

Alt Left: Conservative Arguments against Deficits

Found on the Net:

In 2011, the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman characterized conservative discourse on budget deficits in terms of “bond vigilantes” and the “confidence fairy.” Unless governments cut their deficits, the bond vigilantes will put the screws to them by forcing up interest rates. But if they do cut, the confidence fairy will reward them by stimulating private spending more than the cuts depress it.

In other words, like all conservative economics, it’s nonsense. Or superstition. Or magic. Or they know it’s a big fat lie and they won’t admit it. Probably the latter.

Not to mention that there are no true conservatives anywhere on Earth who even believe in anti-deficit theory in the first place. All modern conservatives, given the chance in office, will balloon deficits wildly. In the US, this is due to another scam. Conservatives deliberately blow up deficits to cause an artificial debt crisis. Then the lying dogs start screaming about the deficits that they themselves created (without acknowledging that they created them) and demanding the destruction of most if not all social spending to fight the deficit crisis. The fact that they got away from this scam for decades is outrageous.

The corporate media of course is in on the whole scam and never blew the whistle on them even once. Americans, who are profoundly idiotic in terms of political economics, finally started to catch onto this scam under Trump a full 40 years after it was implemented under silver-tongued Scammer-in-Chief Ronald Reagan. In terms of political economics, Americans are some of the dumbest people on Earth. All over the world, people vote their class interests. Only in the US and a few other places such as Hong Kong and Colombia do they not do so. Americans are the ultimate class cucks.

Venezuealans and Nicaraguans, dumb spics in most Americans’ minds, have a far greater sense of political economics and class consciousness. No way on Earth could you put a scam like this over them. They won’t fall for it. It’s rather pathetic when dumb spics are vastly more intelligent on political economics than Americans are.

I guess Brazilians and Colombians are dumb enough to fall for it. But Peruvians, Paraguayans, Argentines, and increasingly Chileans ain’t falling for this crap anymore. Neither are Hondurans. Or apparently Mexicans. Salvadorans supposedly have great class consciousness but they just voted in a rightwinger named Bukele. Guatemalans are permanently class cucked and confused, possibly terrorized into supporting rightwing economics, though most of them don’t seem to have a clue about politics or economics. Ecuadorians are apparently easily fooled.

Outside the Western Hemisphere, no one falls for this crap except in the UK for whatever weird reasons they have. The Baltics became extremely class cucked as a reaction against Communism and it was deadly for them. Indians seem pretty class cucked. At any rate, if they have any money at all, they go hard rightwing on economics. You can’t put this scam over anywhere in the Arab World. They won’t stand for it. The Arab World is run by populists. Nor could you in Turkey.

For that matter, in most of the former USSR, it’s not possible to class-scam people. 70 years of the USSR guaranteed that class consciousness is pounded into the sense of all workers. This is what rightwing idiots don’t get about the fall of the USSR. They didn’t end up with this neoliberal paradise full of class cucks that they wanted. Instead, they ended up with a permanently militant working class and a permanently socialist or social democratic state. You can change the form (the state) but you can’t change the contents (what’s in people’s minds).

Alt Left: Neuveau Fascism in South America and Europe

Manuel Rodriguez: Back to politics. What is going on in Bolivia is worrying me. We have fascist squads lynching “undesirables” like peasants. We also see that there have been placed barricades with rubbish and tires that block vehicle mobilization, causing people to be fed up and remove the barricades. You know what this all reminds me? The guarimbas of 2014 in Venezuela and Nicaragua. I can see where this is going.

————————– Separate: There is an tendency that is pretty worrying going on at least in Latin America.

The people are tired of the structural inequalities from the neoliberal policies of the right, causing them to lose in elections whenever they appear as they are, and the people are conscious enough.

The mutation consisted on swapping in the public’s mind the Traditional Right image with Center-Right, which seems like a more popular alternative. The complementary tactic is for thee Center-Right to dress up as the Center-Left, which in reality are already prepared sell-outs whose main purpose is try to divert votes from the Left to help the Right win.

The media did their thing, which was to help Center-Left Boric would win over the Leftist Jadue. The whole purpose of Center-Left Yaku Pérez’ candidacy was to make the Leftist Andrés Arauz lose.

That strategy seems to be being recently changing. They are changing the Center-Right for populist Trump-style fascist Far Right candidates. The most worrying thing is that they are getting a lot of support from the population. Bolsonaro is an classic example. Jose Antonio Kast is a more recent example. It seems that Vamos in Argentina is going to win in the parliament.

I would like to point out that the election in Ecuador was profoundly unfair. First of all, the main opposition party kept getting banned, and its leaders all have warrants out for their arrest on fake charges. This “lawfare” is similar to what was done in Brazil. By the way, the FBI greatly assisted the Brazilian fascists in the lawfare against the Left down there. The US is also engaging in lawfare against Venezuela.

Vamos are Argentine fascists?

Obviously Bolsonaro is a fascist, and Kast is clearly a Pinochet-style Chilean fascist.

Why are people voting fascist? I don’t get it. Although Chile and Argentine both have deep fascist blocs in each country, in my opinion mostly because those are majority-White countries. Brazil is also a majority-White country, which may be why they are going fascist too.

In Latin America nowadays, where you lack a White majority, fascism is hard to install because Latin non-Whites hate fascism. They’ve had quite enough of it. However, they do support it in Colombia. On the other hand, Colombia is also a fairly White country. Fascist roots in Colombia go back to Independence. The country simply has developed a culture of popular fascism for whatever reason. Turkey is very similar. The people get no benefit for voting fascist, but they keep doing it anyway.

There are fascist governments in non-White Haiti, Honduras, and Paraguay, but all of those are dictatorships. The Right seized power with fascist coups – armed in Haiti and Honduras and legislative in Paraguay – and they have ruled by dictatorship ever since.

In the Americas, Whiteness is associated with rightwing authoritarianism and fascism. In Europe this is not the case, but Whites are a huge majority over there. It appears that Whites go fascist when they are in the minority, but Argentina and Chile are majority-White, so I don’t get it.

Really any population descended from the Catholic Spaniards divides into the typical Far Right-Far versus Left Collectivist pattern. This pattern is also seen in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and Lebanon, all Mediterranean countries. This is also seen now somewhat in France. Spain, France, and Italy are Catholic, Greece is Orthodox, Turkey is Muslim, and Lebanon is mostly Catholic and Muslim. Mediterranean countries are collectivist, so politics tends to be collectivist. Islam, Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity are collectivist religions.

Left collectivism is Communism and socialism, while Right collectivism is fascism.

The Catholic East European fascism in Poland and Hungary is different and has a Catholic socially conservative and anti-Communist tint. Liberation theology never took hold in Eastern Europe except in Czechia, where there is a long tradition of “Catholic Communism.”

In Ukraine, the Baltics, and Belarus, the fascism is simply Nazism, pure and simple. Ukraine and Belarus are Orthodox, and the Baltics are Catholic (Lithuania) and Protestant (Latvia and Estonia). The Nazism here stems from World War and the independence movements in these countries making alliances with the Nazi occupiers who promised them independence. The Communists in turn were seen as anti-nationalists who thwarted these nations independence dreams. See below for more on that.

In Orthodox Georgia and Russia, fascism nationalist – ethnic nationalist in Georgia or simply nationalist or “Russian Empire nationalist” in Russia.

Protestant Northern Europe is more individualistic. The Right there is just about dead except in the UK and the Baltics. The Right in the UK is a pale copy of US politics. See below for the anti-Communist roots of the Right in the Baltics.

The Right in the northern individualist parts of Europe is mostly anti-Muslim. It’s conservatism is toned down like all politics in Northern Europe is toned down, so it’s not really fascist, instead a type of Woke Anti-Islam. Otherwise they are very left on social issues. One of their leaders in the Netherlands was a gay man. And they support a more socialist economics, but this is the case for both the Right and Left in most of Europe proper other than the Baltics.

The Economic Right is only popular in the UK, where the political economics mirrors the US, and in Czechia, the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. In all of these places except the UK, it is an anti-Communist reaction where many people are angry about living under Communism in the past, so they have gone to extreme Right economics as an overreaction.

In Estonia and Latvia, support for the economic Right has been disastrous and has almost destroyed both countries. The Economic Right has little power in Russia and Belarus, with only 10-2

Alt Left: Karl Marx, “The Genesis of Capital”: The Creation of Capitalism and Its Link to Modern Land Reform

This fascinating document is available in booklet form as it is only ~35 pages. It is an excerpt from the larger Capital volume. It’s not an easy read but it’s not impossible either.

Some of the writing is gorgeous. I read one sentence to my very anti-Communist liberal Democrat father and he swooned over the prose. That one sentence was both perfect and beautiful, though it dealt with some terrible.

In many places, this is forceful – see the fencing of the Commons in the 1300’s, done deliberately to force the peasants into the capitalist mode or production. Indeed theorists said that if the peasants could not be shoved into capitalism, there would be no capitalism, for their would be no workers. It was essential to destroy the peasants ability to live off the land for themselves in order to force them into worse circumstances as industrial workers.

We see this very same rhetoric employed today in India – where it is argued that the tribals in Chattisargh and other places must be uprooted from the lands, have their lands stolen from them to give to mining and forest industries, and forced into the capitalist mode in cities in order to properly develop the economy. It is argued that India cannot develop its economy until the Adivasis have been destroyed. Note that as with the ancient peasants, the Adivasis will live much poorer lives in the cities than the were in the rural areas.

In Colombia, we see something very similar. In Colombia, small farmers own a lot of land. They are able to subsist off this land and they do not need to participate in the larger economy. They grow enough food for themselves and some city people. The process of the Colombian revolution and the genocidal response of the Colombian oligarchy to it is all throwing the peasants off of these small plots, stealing their land at gunpoint (the paramilitaries are used for this), and terrorizing or killing them if they refuse to hand over their land.

The land is then confiscated by latifundias or large landowners who by and large control the Colombian economy. They grow coffee, bananas, etc. and raise cattle for export, generating money for the economy in the process.

In fact, this process has been going on all over Latin America for over 200 years as sort of a slow-motion process of ethnic cleansing and land theft. Smalholders are able to live off the land in Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Paraguay, and Brazil, and this is seen as unacceptable as they only grow food for themselves and possibly for city-dwellers but the produce cannot be exported.

These countries wish to develop an export model of agriculture based on the large scale production of food crops for export mostly to the US. In return, their ability to produce their own food is destroyed, in my opinion, rendering their economies completely backwards. The people are then rendered vulnerable to the purchase of imported food from the US, often packaged or canned food that is not very good for you.

As you can see, the country gets screwed and the US wins both ways. By destroying the basis for feeding themselves, the US wins an export market for its processed foods. By replacing these with food crops for export to the US, the US gets to make money by importing and selling these food crops. In return the country gains nothing.

Only a small landholding and import-export elite (maybe 2

And in the process, of course, the country generates a revolutionary movement, often an armed one.

This can be seen in areas of Colombia. In one particular part of Southern Colombia, most of the rural peasantry had been thrown off the land and most of the land was now held by a few large landowners who were raising cattle on the land. The peasants had been terrorized off of their stolen land and formed ghettos in a large city nearby, which increased the poverty rate and the slump percentage of the city by a lot. Here they were poor, unhealthy, poorly fed and clothed, living in slums in shacks with no sewage systems, clean water or electricity.

These slums began to generate a lot of street crime as they tend to do. Outside of the cities on the main roads, there were soldiers and paramilitaries everywhere and one went from one armed roadblock to the other. Curiously enough, a large guerrilla movement had developed among the few remaining peasants and in teeming slums. Armed guerrillas extorted the latifundias for money that they called “war taxes.” The latifundias now paid a lot of money for paramilitaries to patrol their lands.

In the slums, an urban guerrilla movement was developing. Police, soldiers and paramilitary members were attacked with bombs, RPG’s and automatic weapons all the time and took significant casualties. The war had now moved to the city where there was no war before. Bomb and gun attacks hit city police stations on a regular basis. Death squads and army units roamed the land and the unarmed Left in the form or human rights activists, labor union members and organizers, community organizers and activists, environmentalists, campesino organizations, organizations of slum-dwellers and indigineous leaders were murdered and tortured to death on a regular basis.

The idiot US and the West see this as a process of “Communist guerrillas trying to subvert Colombian democracy, shoot their way into power, and set up a murderous Communist dictatorship which will destroy freedom and prosperity in Colombia”. The vast majority of Americans and others in the West actually buy this bullshit. Many on the Left refuse to support the Colombian guerrilla, insisting that they are anachronistic and that they should try to seek power peacefully. However, since the FARC disarmed, former members and members of newly formed political parties have been massacred like flies. So state terror blocks all road to peaceful change, leaving no alternative but the way of the gun.

Obviously the ridiculous analysis of this situation that Westerners believe has no basis in reality. The Western media cheers on the genocidal Colombian state and says that the Colombian democracy is waging a war against irrational and bloodthirsty terrorism, typically linked with drug trafficking to describe them as criminals and destroy their legitimacy.

As long as this process goes on, Colombia’s economy will stay forever backwards.

It is necessary to do a land reform in the rural areas before any country can prosper economically. Indeed this “socialist” project of land reform which the US spent decades in the Cold War slaughtering millions of people to stop was actually implemented by the US in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan in order to fend off a Communist threat. Oddly enough, it ended up creating the basis for subsequent booming development in those places.

Land reform was and is the basis for the Communist and Leftist revolutions and guerrilla forces in South Vietnam, Thailand, Colombia, Nepal, Peru, Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay in the past 55-65 years, with some of the revolutions happening later 40 years ago. In Paraguay this process has just started several years ago when a FARC split has taken up arms agains the state.

Alt Left: Fascism, In Its Many and Varied Forms, Continues to Rampage Across the Planet

Rambo: Your friend there is wrong, Highbrow. Fascism is NOT dead. Just look around the world. Trying my best not to spout clichés, it’s very much alive and well. Maybe that’s what Highbrow has been trying to remind people of.

Yes, and fascism now is taking dramatically different forms than it has in the past. In general, fascism is political process set up by capitalists when they are facing a serious threat from the Left. Any rightwing authoritarian regime or dictatorship against the Left, especially a popular one, can only be seen as fascist.

Therefore, there were many fascist regimes in the world in the last 75 years. States in bold house current fascist regimes. States in normal print indicate past fascist regimes:

In Latin America in Guatemala until 1995, El Salvador until 1992, Honduras, Nicaragua until 1979, Haiti, Colombia, Brazil, Peru under Fujimori in the 1990’s, Ecuador, Bolivia under Hugo Banzer in the 1950’s and briefly last year, Argentina under Videla and Uruguay under the generals in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Paraguay, and Chile under Pinochet, but also in Spain under Franco until 1975, Portugal under Salazar until 1974, Croatia and Serbia after the Balkans War, Greece under the generals in the late 1960’s, Ukraine, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan under Zia in the 1980’s, India, Iran under the Shah until 1979, Liberia under Samuel Doe in the 1980’s, Zaire under Mobutu, South Africa under apartheid, Rhodesia under Ian Smith, Morocco under the king, Brunei under the Sultan, the Philippines, Vietnam under Thieu and Diem, Thailand Burma under the generals, Indonesia under Soekarno, South Korea under Singhman Rhee in the 1950’s until 1980, Taiwan in the 1950’s until 1980 and China in the late 1940’s under Chiang Kai Chek, and Fiji.

Incipient fascism is creeping in the US, the UK, Israel, Poland, and Hungary.

There is presently strong fascist opposition in Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Belarus, Lebanon, and Hong Kong.

Pro-fascist democracies exist in the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Georgia in particular and frankly, in the entire EU and NATO because the EU and NATO are supporting the fascist opposition in Latin America, the fascist government in Ukraine, and the fascist opposition in Belarus these days.

There are arguments that the Taliban is fascist, but I’m not buying it. I’m also not buying arguments about “Islamo-fascism.” Nor do I think China, North Korea, Belarus, or Russia are fascist.

Alt Left: Nothing Worse Than a Fed

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not real keen on the rest of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alt Left: The People Choose Democracy over Aristocratic Rule in Latin America

Down in Latin America, once the Left takes over the state, they prove to be so popular with the poor majority that the oligarchic parties of authoritarian Right shrink to ~2

The Right literally cannot win in places that have tasted socialism like Nicaragua and Venezuela. The only way they win is by cheating, election fraud/rigging, and coups of various kinds – electoral, lockout, economic, legislative, judicial, and military. Or they run as Leftists and then turn hard right the minute they get in like Lenin Moreno in Ecuador.

In other places, people seem to be rejecting aristocratic rule.

A majority in Colombia seems poised to elect a fairly leftwing politician.

A literal Marxist, a Palestinian Chilean, has been leading polls in Chile for some time now.

A Marxist just barely won the Presidency in Peru.

The rightwing coup in Bolivia was overthrown, and the Left won handily again.

Argentina has been electing the leftwing Peronist Fernandez dynasty for some time now. The only way the Right won last time was because rightwing banksters on Wall Street deliberately crashed the economy so the Right got in on the protest vote.

In Paraguay, the last democratic election elected a Leftist, a former priest. He was overthrown in a legislative coup, and it’s been a rightwing dictatorship ever since.

Honduras elected a leftwinger, and a moderate one at that, in its last democratic election. The US immediately sponsored a coup, and it has been a rightwing military dictatorship ever since.

The Left has been winning in various Caribbean islands for some time.

Haiti has been under one form or another of rightwing dictatorship ever since US Special Forces removed President Aristide at gunpoint in a military coup. Aristide’s party, Lavalas, was extremely popular and got 9

The fascist Bolsonaro is now unpopular, and the moderately leftwing Workers Party is now ahead in the polls. The PT was removed in a judicial coup via lawfare with the help of the US FBI (I knew there was a reason I hated feds). The President and Vice President were literally put in prison on completely fake charges. This is the only Bolsonaro got in. However, Brazil definitely has a significant base for fascism as in Colombia for whatever reason.

Lopez Obrador or AMLO for short won the recent election in Mexico, a country long marred by extreme election fraud. He’s the most leftwing president in some time. However, he has governed from the Center. Nevertheless, the Mexican oligarchy (with deep ties to the Catholic Church) nevertheless has been threatening a coup ever since he took office.

The Right only won in Ecuador last time around because Lenin Moreno banned the leftwing party and exiled its leader, Correa. The government has stated that he will be jailed if he returns. The charges are faked. The Right only won last time around because the election was grossly unfair. There was no actual election fraud in terms of altering the vote, but the campaigning leading up to the election was grotesquely unfair.

Alt Left: Fascist States around the World in the Past Century

I will be leaving World War 2, where many such regimes were created in  Europe, out of this discussion because I don’t understand it well.

A discussion of fascism is very important because the Republican Party is already a fascist political party in the sense of a rightwing authoritarian party along Latin American oligarchy lines.

The Type of State the Republicans Are Aiming At

Similar regimes were installed in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Iran, Turkey (a Mussolinist + Nazi extrerminationist model), Greece, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Zaire, Kenya, Liberia, Indonesia (a classic Mussolinist model), Philippines, South Korea, Brunei, Taiwan, South Vietnam, Thailand, Nepal, Gabon, Angola, and South Africa, not to mention the many such regimes installed in Latin America, where the rightwing authoritarian or dictatorship regime has become a classic model. Many of these had a fake democratic facade over what was basically a dictatorship.

Nazi extreminationism with an ethnic component has been installed in Turkey and possibly Azerbaijan. Those models are governing to this day in the fake Croatian and Serbian states inside Bosnia. The present Croatian and Serbian regimes have overtones of WW2 like fascism, as does Hungary under Orban. Nazi-style exterminationist regimes, albeit with Communists and leftwingers substituted for Jews, have been installed in Iran, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan in the past.

One could argue that Israel is now a Mussolinist style fascist government, albeit with a facade of democracy in which various fascist parties compete to rule the fascist state.

Rightwing Authoritarian Models in Latin America in the Last Century

It’s not so much the Nazi, National Socialist or classic fascist models of World War 2, although Trump and Berlusconi do resemble Mussolini, and Berlusconi created a classic Mussolinist fascist state in Brazil along the lines of the previous years of Operation Condor in Pinochet’s Chile, Velasco’s Argentina, the generals’ Brazil, Salazar’s Paraguay, the Uruguayan dictatorship, and Banzer’s Bolivia.

Somewhat different but similar “kill the Communists” regimes were created in Ecuador in the 1980’s, Fujimora and Belaunde’s Peru, Venezuela in the late 80’s, Uribe and many others’ Colombia (where it has become the only form of the state and Uribismo is almost a classic fascist Mussolinist model), Somoza’s Nicaragua, Bautista’s Cuba, Trujillo’s Dominican Republican, Rios Montt’s Guatemala, and ARENA, D’Aubisson, and Duarte’s El Salvador, Haiti under the Duvaliers, where it became a model followed to this day, and the present government of the generals in Honduras.

The model has not yet been installed in much of the Caribbean, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, and the Guyanas, but it’s been generalized as the classic model in Latin America in general for over a century now. There are rumblings now to create another rightwing authoritarian regime in Peru and Mexico.

Counterrevolution is ongoing in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela and has succeeded recently in Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, and Haiti. There were recent rumblings in Argentina, where the large landowners (who were never broken up as there was no land reform)  were making threats of a coup if their riches were touched. There were failed attempts recently in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Another attempt is ongoing in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Alt Left: Malcolm X on Gusanos (Worms) or Anti-Castro Cubans

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

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

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

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

The CIA supported Pol Pot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alt Left: Rural Land Reforms: An Overview

What’s odd is that imperialism went along with land reforms in a lot of other places such as Europe and the Middle East. All of the Middle East has done a land reform.

That was one thing the wave of Arab nationalist leaders who came to power in 1950-1970 did right away, including the Baath in Iraq and Syria, Yemen, Nasser in Egypt, the FLN in Algeria, Tunisia, and Qaddafi in Libya.

I believe there was some type of land reform done in Palestine too. If you read Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian Leftist, in the 1930’s, he talked about how terribly exploited the Arab fellahin or peasants were in Palestine.

If you went to Yemen in the 1960’s, there was a portrait of Nasser in every house.

I’m not sure if a land reform was ever done in Morocco. It’s been ruled by a fairly rightwing king for a long time.

A land reform was probably done in Lebanon, but I don’t have details. Likewise with Jordan.

Nothing grows in the Gulf anyway, so there’s no need for a reform.

I’m not sure about Sudan or Mauritania, but I doubt much grows in Mauritania except date palms.

In all of these places, land reform was a very easy sell for whatever reason, probably because neoliberal capitalism seems to be antithetical to Islam itself. The feudal lords of the former Ottoman Empire had tried to justify feudalism on the basis that in the Koran it says something like, “Some are rich and some are poor, and this is a natural thing” but that never went over too well.

The idea that in an Islamic country, the rich Muslims were viciously exploit the poor Muslims is nearly haram on its face. You just can’t do that. All Muslims are part of the ummah. All the Muslim men are your brothers and all the Muslim women are your sisters. Also individualism never made it to any part of the Muslim World other than the Hindu variety in Pakistan and Bangladesh, but that’s not really the same radical individualism that we have in the West. It’s just an ancient caste based system.

The first thing the Communists did in Eastern Europe was to do a land reform. You will never hear it here in the West, but until 1960, the Communist regimes in the East were very popular with industrial workers and also with the peasants.

In most of the world, peasants and rural dwellers are leftwingers. This is even the case in Western Europe in France.

The US is odd in that it’s farmers are so reactionary. That goes against the usual trend.

Yes, farmers are said to be conservatives, but that usually just means social conservatism. In most of the world, peasants are literally Alt Left: left on economics and right on social and cultural issues.

A land reform was definitely done in Iran.

Obviously one was done in the USSR, and the large landowners have not yet consolidated themselves in the former USSR, mostly because everybody hates them. Large landowners have taken over some of the state farms in Russia, but for whatever reason, they are not very productive. In fact, many of the state farms are still in existence. I am not sure what sort of arrangement they have now.

5

After World War 2, the US supported land reforms in some places as a way of heading off a Communist threat. This is one great thing about the Communists. So many great steps of social progress were only done out of fear or terror that if these were not done, the Communists would take over. Now that that threat is gone, one wonders what motivation the oligarchs have to give up anything.

In particular, land reforms were done in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. They went over very easily. And in fact, the subsequent economic growth occurred right on the back of these reforms. There is a good argument that you can never develop a proper economy without first doing a land reform.

First of all, you need to get rid of the problem of rural poverty.

Second of all, you need to feed your own people. Large landowners in these countries typically grow food for export or simply fallow the land and keep it as an income base or a source of wealth.

When crops are grown for export, there is a problem in that the nation does not grow enough food to feed its people. This is a problem in Cuba and Venezuela right now, and it should not be. These are very fertile countries and there is no need to import food, but they have gotten hooked on some sort of “crack” of importing their food for whatever reason, possibly because most of their farmland was being used to grow crops for export.

When a nation can feed itself, this means it can feed its urban workers. This is extremely important and it is part of the reason that Stalin went at such breakneck speed in his collectivization. He had to feed his urban workers so he could industrialize because even back then, he was looking into the future and seeing that he was going to have to fight Hitler.

I’m not quite sure why, but no country seems to be able to properly industrialize and develop as long as the problem of rural poverty exists.

And once you are feeding your own people, you have solved a lot of other problems. Money that would be wasted importing inferior food from the West, especially the US, can now be spent on actual development of a national economy. The elimination of rural poverty gets rid of a constant revolutionary bur in the side of the state.

The US has always opposed land reform in Latin America because large US corporations are usually involved in growing foods for export down there. See Dole Pineapple in Guatemala. We want all of their agricultural land to go for export crops so US corporations can grow those crops or make money importing them. And we do not want them to grow their own food. That way there won’t be so much land for export crops which we need to make money off of.

Also, we want them to spend all of their food money importing lousy processed food from the US. So we make money on food both ways – importing food from crops grown for export to the US and in exporting processed food to the Latin America. This processed food is not very good for you and it is implicated in a lot of health problems in these places.

This is why the US opposes most efforts at land reform in the Americas.

An exception was made in El Salvador. After 200,000 people died, the US and the Salvadoran oligarchs were forced to the negotiating table and a land reform was one of the first things they pushed. I recall a piece written soon afterwards where the reporter went out to the rural areas and interviewed recipients of the land reform. They basically said, “Well, at least we can eat now. It wasn’t like that before.”

In semi-feudal countries, there is debt bondage whereby large landowners rent out their land to sharecroppers or peasants who never seem to get out of debt. This is a very primitive form of development.

The Philippines is notable that there has never been a land reform. And of course they have a vicious Communist insurgency.

Nor has there been one in Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Paraguay, Honduras, or Argentina. The first five countries are horribly screwed up. Colombia and Paraguay have active armed leftwing guerrillas, and Guatemala did for many years. Haiti is a disaster. Honduras has a vicious rightwing dictatorship that has murdered over 1,000 people.

Argentina is mostly urbanized, but the landed rural elite still runs the country. Any talk at all of land reform or even taxation of large estates as was done recently under Christine Fernandez, and the ruling class starts making ominous threats of a coup. I assume something similar is going on in Uruguay. Those countries are urbanized though, so large landownership is not such a problem.

I’m not sure if there has ever been a land reform in Brazil, but there is no dearth of large landowners.

The fact that Colombia, Guatemala, and Haiti are so backwards is largely because there has never been a land reform.

The land reform was incomplete in Venezuela.

It is interesting that every country that fails to do a land reform seems to end up with a Communist or Leftist insurgency at some point or another. It’s almost without fail. This goes to show you that most Communist insurgencies in the Third World are over the most basic things dating all the way back to French Revolution: land and bread (food).

As far as land reforms go, they were done in Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Peru.

I’m not sure about Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Jamaica, Belize, the Guyanas, Chile, and most of the Caribbean.

And I’m not sure if one ever got done in the Dominican Republic after Bosch.

In El Salvador, 200,000 had to die in order for a land reform to take place. Roberto D’Aubission, the godfather of the Salvadoran death squads and the most favored visitor at the US Embassy, once said that “We will have to kill 200,000 people in order to prevent socialism in El Salvador.” What he meant by socialism was land reform.

It is notable that no land reform was ever done in India, nor in Pakistan or even Bangladesh. I had a friend whose parents were large feudal landowners in Pakistan who rented out land to farmers who ended up in debt peonage. In 1986, 14 million people a year were dying of starvation related diseases in the capitalist world. Most of that was in South Asia in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. Most of these deaths were attributed to the problem of the private ownership of land.

There is a problem with the private ownership of land. In the US, we think this is sacrosanct, but on a worldwide basis, it doesn’t work very well. What do you need all that land for? What do you need more than, say, an acre and a house? Nothing, unless you are a farmer.

In China, all land is owned by the state. All homeowners lease the land, often on 100 year leases. I’m not sure how it works in the countryside.

In Mexico, much of the land is owned by the state also, a product of the land reform that occurred after the Revolution. One of the major demands of the Revolution was land reform. Pre-revolution, most peasants usually lived like serfs. The state land in Mexico is called ejidos.

If you ever can’t make it in the city, if you become unemployed or homeless, you can always go out to the countryside and take up residence in an ejido, which are something like communal lands that are formed by the group that makes up the ejido. You join this group, work the land, and get a share of the crop. At least you have enough food to eat. So in Mexico the ejidos are a stopgap measure.

In China too, if you can’t make it in the city, you can always go back to the rural areas, take up residence, and work the land. At least you will have enough to food to eat. It is illegal to be homeless in China. If you are homeless, the police pick you up and put you in shelters, which are something like college dorms. They also encourage you to go back to the countryside if you have relatives back there. In recent years, many people have moved from the countryside to the cities to make more money. Those that don’t make it can always move back to the farm.

There was debate a while back about privatizing state land, but it ran aground on the idea that the state ownership of land was necessary as a stopgap measure in the event of urban poverty. In addition, state ownership of land has prevented the development of a national oligarchy or plutocracy.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been adamant that the  development of a national oligarchy or plutocracy must be prevented at all costs. Once they develop, they are sort of like an infection in that they soon spread and take over society. The CCP has billionaire party members who are members of the People’s Assembly.

Guess what these “Communists” are advocating for? Reduction or elimination of taxes on the rich, massive reductions in social spending, state repression of labor, and the privatization of land along with most of the rest of the economy. I think this goes to show you that billionaires are the same everywhere. Whether in a Communist or capitalist country, a rightwing or leftwing country, billionaires always have precisely the same class interests that barely vary at all. It’s usually something like this:

Reduction or elimination of taxes on the rich, massive reductions in social spending, state repression of labor, and the privatization of land along with most of the rest of the economy.

This goes to show that class interests of various classes are nearly a  law in a mathematical sense and not even a theory of social science. This was what Marx was getting at when he spoke of the laws of economics. They are so predictable that we can almost class them with the laws, theorems, and corollaries of mathematics instead of the typical “true for now” theories of most of the sciences.

I have a feeling that a Hell of a lot more things are laws, too, especially in terms of basic human behavior. So many of these things seem almost unchangeable. Of course they would never apply to everyone, but it’s pretty obvious that they are general tendencies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is a critique of the book:

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

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

From the article.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, neoliberalism doesn’t work either:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From D and E:

Real wages dropped spectacularly, by -11.

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

Guys like D and E are still writing today:

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

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

In other words, they faked the data.

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

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

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

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

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

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

See? They’re making it up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alt Left: The US Imperialist Regime Change Playbook: Engage in Violent and Seditious Activities Towards the Targeted Government, Provoke Repression, and then Impose Sanctions, Fund Contras, or Sponsor a Fascist Coup to “Restore Order and Democracy”

In Venezuela and Nicaragua, the US staged violent riots with armed insurgents that attempted to overthrow the government, and then slammed sanctions on the governments when they cracked down on the seditious traitors. Obviously when you crack down on seditious traitors, it’s hard to be real democratic about it, as you start to throw lots of traitors in jail, shut down their treasonous organizations and political parties, forbid the seditious political parties and politicians from running for office again, and often have to start censoring the media because of the frankly murderous lies that the opposition yellow press prints, which actually results in getting a lot of people killed.

During these seditious coup attempts, the reporting is completely dishonest in the US and about as fake as you can get. Outrageous acts of murder committed by the putschists are breathlessly reported by the treasonous local and overseas US press and having been committed by the government, working people into a fever pitch. Opposition fascist liars flood social media, riling everyone up.

But do you see how they provoke repression? This is the imperialist playbook. Provoke repression with illegal and seditious activities, and then scream dictatorship when the law enforcement arms of the state try to restore some order. Wave after wave of sanctions were slammed on the Nicaraguan government by Democrats and Republicans both. When it comes to support for imperialism and alliance with the forces of violent revolutionary fascism and reaction around the world along with rightwing and fascist dictatorships in power, support for fascist states and forces is a bipartisan affair.

The US supports the fascist opposition in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Belarus, and Ukraine. The US supports the fascist states of Turkey, Israel, India, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil, Honduras, and Haiti and opposes the anti-fascist forces fighting against them. Face it, America loves rightwing dictatorships and fascist governments and opposition forces.

Alt Left: The Left Won in Mexico

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Modern Western Liberalism: Liberalism at Home, Fascism Abroad

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

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

Everything Is the Opposite of What It Really Is

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

Elections That Never Make Sense

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sanctions

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

Syria

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

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

I researched every one of those massacres in depth.

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

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

The Ties Between Fascism and US Imperialism Are Deep

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

Alt Left: Right and Left in Islamic and Catholic Societies

If you’re not careful, the media will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and cheering the people doing the oppressing.

Malcolm X

This is precisely the function of the media in a capitalist society. The Chinese media is not like this because, duh, China is not a capitalist country! Nor is the Iranian media because Iran is not a capitalist country. In fact, Iran is almost something like “Islamic Communism.” I’m not wild about Ayatollah Khomeini, but he did have a strong social justice streak.

The Revolution was populist, pro-independence, and anti-imperialist. Iran is almost based on a Muslim version of Liberation Theology or “the preferential option of the poor.” The social safety net is huge in Iran. Also, much of the economy is run by the state. It’s actually run by religious charities, often with ties to the military and the IRGC. I believe these religious charities do not operate at a profit. Small businesses are not bothered at all, as in all Muslim countries. I was reading Ayatollah Khameini’s tweets for a while on Twitter, and I could have been reading Che Guevara. Basically the same message.

Islam is just not friendly to neoliberal economics or radical individualism. It is a very collectivist religion in a very collectivist society.

Neoliberalism hasn’t caught on much of anywhere in the Muslim world other than Indonesia and the Southern Philippines, and they had to murder 1 million Communists in cold blood to get there in Indonesia and the Moros have always rejected Catholic rule in both a political and economic sense. it is notable that the Maoist NPA are also huge in Mindanao, home of the Moros.

Pakistan, too, has inherited the selfish economics and even feudalism in land tenure straight from Indian Hinduism. They even have caste, which would be considered an aberration in any decent Muslim society.

All of the Arab countries are basically socialist at least in name, and that was never a hard sell there. It’s true that 100 years ago, the Arab lands were mostly feudal in nature, with big landowners and peasants in debt bondage. They rich had co-opted the religious authorities like they always do, and the mullahs preached that Islamic feudalism was right and proper because the Prophet had said, “It is normal that some are rich and some are poor.” But it was always a hard sell, and it had a very weak foundation.

After independence, socialism was instituted in most if not all Arab countries at least in name. In particular, huge land reforms were done in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Palestine. I assume something like that was done in Algeria too. It was a very easy sell, and everyone went along with it without a hitch. The mullahs quickly changed from support for feudalism to support for socialism.

Hamas rules Gaza and I was shocked at how huge the social safety net is. The many religious charities run the safety net, which is distributed under the rubric of Islam. This is done instead of the state doling it out.

Mohammad himself didn’t have much to say about economics, but he wasn’t a neoliberal capitalist or a feudalist.

In Christian societies, the rich have utter contempt and hatred for the poor, who they regard as little more than human garbage. If you want to see this philosophy in action, look at the classism in Latin America. As all Muslims are part of the umma, and hence, as all are brothers and sisters, it is simply unconscionable that wealthy Muslims would be able to openly hate poor Muslims. You simply cannot treat your fellow Muslims like that. It’s not officially haram but it might as well be.

European Style Fascism in the Middle East

It is instructive that the only place in the Arab world where neoliberal economics and in particular Libertarianism took hold was in Lebanon, and even there, it was only among Catholic Maronites. Most Arab Christians look east to Antioch (and before that, Constantinople) to the Eastern Orthodox church, which is really just the eastern wing of Catholicism.

The Maronites, though, deride Antioch and instead look to Rome. They see themselves as European people instead of Arabs. Many deny that they are Arabs and instead refer to themselves as “Phoenicians.” It is interesting that the only real classical fascism in the Arab World  took hold in the Lebanese Maronites, where the Gameyels imported it from Europe in the 1930’s.

The Jews of Israel also developed a very European form of fascism starting with Jabotinsky and his book The Iron Wall in 1921. This man was an open fascist. He is considered to be the spiritual father of the Likud Party. During the 1940’s, the armed Jewish rebels split into leftwingers who were almost Communists and rightwingers who were more or less fascists.

The Kahanists today look a lot like a European fascist party. And in fact, the entire Israeli rightwing around Likud, etc. looks pretty fascist in a European sense. So Israeli Jews are really Jewish fascists or fascist Jews. It has never been an easy ride for liberal and secular US Jews to support the Orthodox religious fanatics and rightwingers if not out and out fascists in the Likud, etc. in Israel. This was always completely unstable, and after that latest war, it’s finally starting to fall apart. But the seeds of destruction were already there.

But note that the Jews of Israel very much look to the West and see themselves as Europeans (which many are for all intents and purposes). They align themselves with the Judeo-Christian European society that many of them came from.

Half of Israeli Jews are Mizrachi Jews from the Arab World, and they have always had a Judeo-Islamic culture. However, when they moved to Israel, this was dismantled by perhaps not entirely. They rejected it due to the association of Arabs and Islam with the enemy, which is correct.

Economics and Catholicism

This radical classism and near-feudalism in Latin America was supported by the Catholic Church, which was always a very rightwing institution because they were always in bed with the rich. There were always Left splits in Catholicism like Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker. The Catholic clergy in the US has tended to be quite leftwing.

There is a long history of “Catholic Communism” in the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, the Basque Country, France, Italy, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Cuba, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay. The IRA was a leftwing Catholic armed group. A lot of priests were caught hiding IRA cadre. So was the ETA in the Basque Country of Spain.

Catholic Leftism never caught on in Poland and Lithuania due to hatred of Russia and the USSR. Nevertheless, both are more or less socialist countries.

Even today there is an active “Catholic Communist” movement in Cuba that is very lively. In Honduras and Colombia, Catholic priests actually led guerrilla bands. Liberation Theoloy is something like “Jesus Christ with an AK-47.” The Leftist who recently took power in Paraguay was a former Catholic priest.

The ELN was founded by a priest, Camilo Torres, and many Catholic clergy even supported the Shining Path! Edith Lagos, a 20 year old woman, was the leader of a very early Shining Path column in Peru. She was killed in 1980 and the entire town of Ayacucho, 30,0000 people, came out for her funeral which was held at midnight. The lines of mourners stretched through the whole city. All of the priests in town blessed her body, and she was given a proper Catholic funeral.

I believe that the PT or Workers Party of Brazil has a large Liberation Theology component. The Catholic clergy had an excellent relationship with the FARC in Colombia. Of course, the Catholic clergy played a big role in Venezeula, and Hugo Chavez himself was a practicing Catholic. The FMLN Salvadoran rebels were explicitly Catholic, as were the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. One of the Sandinists’ top leaders, Tomas Borge, was a Catholic priest. Jean-Paul Aristide in Haiti was a Catholic priest. Catholic believers are now allowed to join the Communist Party in Cuba, and near the end of his life, Fidel Castro said he was a “cultural Catholic.”

After Vatican 2 and Liberation Theology began to spread out via the seminal documents written by Gustavo Gutierrez in Brazil, “A Theology of Liberation,” otherwise known as “exercising the preferential option for the poor,” it began to spread in Latin America. It started with local priests and especially Catholic lay workers in impoverished areas and then slowly spread. Even today, Catholic layworkers and especially seminaries are very leftwing, while the Vatican itself is not. A lot of seminaries are hotbeds of homosexuality, and the gay priests and lay workers are quite open about it. It is estimated that 1

Alt Left: Lousy People Make Lousy Countries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colombia sucks because it’s full of Colombians.

Guatemala sucks because it’s full of Guatemalans.

El Salvador blows because it’s full of Salvadorans.

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

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

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

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

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

Alt Left: The Chameleon-Like Nature of Fascism

I wrote this in objection to a paper under review right now on Academia by a Left professor of Somatic Psychology, a PhD and a very smart man, who quotes Wilhelm Reich, a Jewish pro-sex and anti-fascist writer, as saying that fascists are out of touch with their bodies. Presumably antifascists are in touch with their bodies and not repressed. Apparently sexual repression and being out of touch with your body is part of the genesis of fascism. I don’t agree. Here is my response, in part.

I think that quoting Reich on fascism is not the greatest idea. He’s not the best person to ask about fascist theory. The modern intellectual descendants of Reich (the Cultural Left) don’t have a very good view of fascism.

Further, Reich was an extreme sexual libertine who may have molested his sister and raped his maids as a boy. Reich’s sexual libertinism was rejected by all Communists in the last century and is still condemned in existing Communist countries. So Reich’s critique is ill-formed, as the Communists were just as bad as the fascists when it came to Reich’s libertinism.

Fascists are sexually repressed? I don’t know. I’ve run into some MAGA women lately who are ridiculously libertine to the point of being degenerate or depraved. They’re about this far from becoming out and out porn stars. Yet fascists they are. A friend used to be an actor in the porn industry. He told me that the industry is full of conservatives. I’m aware of a few pornstars who were basically White Supremacists.

Donald Trump’s fascism was nearly a “pornographic fascism.” He cavorted with pornstars, cheated on all of his wives, made lewd remarks about his own daughter and the teenage underage daughters of his friends, reportedly attended sex orgies, and may have raped a 13 year old girl and forced a 12 and 13 year old girl to have sex with each other. He’s as libertine as Reich, yet he’s a fascist.

Better definitions are coming out of serious scholars of the Left. There area number of modern scholars who are trying to pin down exactly what fascism is. Almost all are operating from the Left. Among these superb modern theorists of fascism are David Neiwert who blogs at Daily Kos, the authors of a blog called Three Way Fight (not sure if it’s still up), along with excellent political scientists working out of the universities.

Better older analyses of fascism also come from Lenin and especially from Trotsky, who wrote some of the best essays on fascism ever written.

A “popular dictatorship against the Left” seems to be the best definition. “Palingetic nationalism” is another, referring to the bird that rises from the ashes in mythology. Fascism appeals to “the everyman,” “the man on the street” – “the shirtless ones” of Peronist fame. That’s the appeal – to your “basic man” and “basic woman.” It also appeals to strong primitive drives of aggression, violence, projection of failures onto outsiders, expansionism, often imperialism, an opposition to liberalism and democracy. It also opposes equality and in favor of hierarchy.

Fascism involves a reverence for sacred violence bordering on the religious, a worship of “the greatness of the ancestors,” a dialogue to restore “the glory days of yore” from the ruins of the “degenerate present”, ruined by liberals, democracy, anti-nationals, nation-haters, and traitors.

Fascism has historically supported a return to traditional values and a rejection of degenerate modernism, but as we can see in the “pornographic fascism” of Donald Trump, that’s not necessarily the case anymore.

Fascism also always advocated a return to traditional male female role models, but that need to be a hindrance to basic equal de jure rights for women, as seen in the many successful MAGA women and the many often-religious MAGA men who love and cherish their wives.

Fascism has typically targeted minorities and has been racist. People think that fascism is inherently anti-Semitic, yet many early Zionists such as Jabotinsky were open fascists and supported the fascist movement in Europe. Some of the early Israeli guerrillas were Jabotinskist fascists.

I’d argue that Israel has been fascist from Day One, but certainly with the coming of Sharon and Netanyahu, the ideological descendants of Jabotinskyist fascism, Israel became literally a fascist country. Jacobinsky is the hero and spiritual founder of the Likud Party. He was an early Zionist who wrote a book in 1921 called The Iron Wall. He and his followers were strong supporters of the fascist parties in Europe in the 1920’s and 30’s. Some of the early Zionist guerrilla organizations were Jabotinskyist fascists.

In Lebanon, the Gemayalist Phalangists named after a general named Gemayal, are an actual literal fascist party. Even their name is fascist as phalange is a popular name for fascist parties. They are Christian Maronites who see themselves as transplanted Europeans, descendants of “Phoenicians,” who despise Arabs and Islam. They are also the most pro-Israel party in Lebanon. This founder of this party had photos of Hitler in his school locker when he was in high school and the party’s ideology is modeled on the classic European fascism of the 30’s.

Israeli fascism is not anti-Semitic at all, and many White Supremacists actually support Israel as the model for the racist state they wish to set up. Many dislike Jews in the Diaspora who are seen as anti-national, but have no problem with the fascist Jews in Israel and see them as fellow fascists.

A number of the anti-immigrant Right parties in Europe are pro-Israel, including the National Front in France, the AfD in Germany, and the neo-Nazi party in Austria! They often like Israel because of its strong anti-Muslim orientation. Along the same lines, the Muslim-hating Hindu nationalist fascists ruling India in the form of the BJP party, are very pro-Israel.

The pro-fascist Spanish and Italian conservatives, remnants of former large fascist movements in those countries, are pro-Israel. The fascist Saudis, Bahrainis, Egyptians, Moroccans, and Ermiratis are now pro-Israel. They’ve always been Rightists so it’s no surprise. So philosemitic fascism is absolutely possible and even existing.

Arab nationalists have always been quite fascist despite their Leftist trappings. Saddam was a fascist, as was Hafez Assad. Some think Bashar Assad is a fascist. The North African leaders, all Arab Nationalists, were fascists in the sense that they tried to destroy the Berbers’ identity and make everyone into an Arab. The Assads and Saddam also attacked Kurds and Assyrians, in both cases in attempts to turn everyone into an Arab. Saddam also attacked Turkmen. And he discriminated against Iraqis of Iranian background in the South so much that he threw hundreds of thousands of them out of the country.

The Moroccan fascists are even expansionists, having invaded Spanish Sahara. The Indonesian fascists committed genocide in East Timor and Aceh and in the entire country against Communists when they unleashed a genocide in 1965 that murdered 1 million Communist in less than a couple of months. It was as bad as the Rwandan genocide.

All of these are examples of “Muslim fascists,” so fascism and Islam are quite compatible.

There seems to be a view in the West that fascism must be White Supremacist and of course it must be anti-Semitic.

None of the above were White Supremacists. They were all non-Whites, and none were self-haters.

Also as you can see above, fascism need not be anti-Semitic.

I also listed a number of fascist and anti-Islamic movements, rightwing dictatorships along with the post-fascist conservatives in Spain and Italy. The former fascist followers of Mussolini and Franco simply melted into the rightwing movements of both countries. In Spain it was the Conservative Party, a party with fascist roots.The Francoists simply changed clothes and melted into the Conservative Party. Francoism is still extremely popular, mostly in the form of anti-separatism, these days. I’ve been to their very popular websites.

Burlusconi in Italy has inherited the descendants of fascism in Italy. A fascist and racist separatist and somewhat White Supremacist movement has formed in Northern Italy. They are White Supremacists in the sense that  they claim the are Celts or “pure Whites” and they despise Southern Italians as de facto “niggers.”

A friend in Italy told me that fascism was still very popular in Italy to this very day, although it was also widely hated as the Left in Italy is often Far Left or almost Communist. There are cities in Sicily were the leftwingers are all Communists and the rightwingers are all fascists. They engage in street battles all the time.

My friend told me that the Red Brigades, an anti-fascist Far Left group of Communists that attacked the state, was extremely popular in Northern Italy, particularly in Vicenzia Province where he lived. His sister was a strong supporter of the Red Brigades, and she came from a normal middle class background in Trieste.

Fascism is said to be anti-Muslim, yet we have Islamic fascism in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Morocco, and probably the Taliban in Afghanistan. Turkey and Azerbaijan are classic fascists of the 1930’s type, however they have married this to Ottoman imperialism and Islamic jihadism, particularly the genocidal variety that held sway in Turkey from 1880 until 1940.

That the Taliban are a new sort of fascism was an argument of the Leftists at Three Way Fight. I’m not sure I agree with that. Other Muslim fascists used to rule in Indonesia,  Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iran. Above I listed more Muslim fascists in the Arab World, who might better be described as rightwing dictatorships.

Fascism is chameleon-like and changes shape endlessly to mirror and capture whatever times it is in. I can even see chameleon-like fascists adopting yoga, meditation, and bodywork, the “Left” body psychology mechanisms the author refers to. Hitler was a vegetarian and a good animal rights supporter, if terrible in so many other ways.

This aspect of fascism of what makes this political mercury blob so hard to pin down. Indeed, many fascists pose as anti-Nazis and anti-fascists and accuse anti-fascists of being fascists! I’ve seen this with my own eyes.

Problem is the Modern Left starts talking about fascism, and it immediately degenerates into propaganda and nonsense where we push views that line up whatever biases our Left formation is pushing du jour. The Cultural Left, which is almost devoid of intelligence or intellectual honesty of any sort, in particular cannot be relied upon, as almost everything coming out of there is propaganda and a lie in some form or another. For instance, the Cultural Left argues that White Supremacists, anti-feminists (or what feminists would call misogynists), homophobes, and transphobes are all “fascists.”

That’s utter nonsense as none of this Identity Stuff has anything to do with the Left in the first place, as the Left is only about economics and many Communists of the last century were in fact social conservatives described under the epithets above. Many of the antifascist fighters fighting in the Allies in World War 2 were White Supremacists, racists (in particular, racist against Blacks), “misogynists” (or at the very least strong sexists), and virulent homophobes. Trannies didn’t exist back then, but they would have been hated much worse than gays.

The very racist White Southern Democrats of that time absolutely despised Hitler, Mussolini, and the rest of the European fascists along with the Japanese, who were promoting a sort of “fascist militarism.”

The Cultural Left would have us believe that Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hoxha, Deng, Ho Chi Minh, the Bulgarian Communists, etc. were all fascists because they were social conservatives. Homosexuality was banned as a bourgeois vice in the Eastern Blog. The Shining Path executed homosexuals and cocaine abusers (another bourgeois vice). The Khmer Rogue were terribly racist. I don’t think anyone will deny that they were Communists.

Even Strasserites are Communists, granted they were odd ones. Further, Strasser had no biological race-based objection to Jews. He had an economic objection. And he wasn’t the best anti-Semite. He kept asking the others why they were so overboard on the Jewish Question.

Stalin wasn’t the best on women’s rights.

The Bulgarian Communists had opinions on race that would be considered Nazism nowadays.

As noted, homosexuality was banned in all of the Communist World. Castro put them in labor camps. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation even today doesn’t have the best policy on gays nor on Jews for that matter. I’m pretty sure they are Communists.

Trans people were not even acknowledged by any Communist country ever.

We have to completely rethink our view of fascism.

It is perfectly possible to have a libertine fascism in a porn-drenched society, which is what we just went through with Trump. MAGA folks are not repressed at all in my observation. They’re not out of touch with their bodies. The Sex Revolution of the 60’s which I was a part of took care of that.

MAGA fascism even allowed for equal rights for women. MAGA women do not appear to be discriminated against legally. A lot of them made a lot of money and held high positions.

Fascism has always been homophobic, yet the Nazi brownshirts were full of homosexuals, and I’ve talked to many gay MAGA types.

I assure you that there are gay MAGA folks. I’ve talked to a number of them. Mitch McConnell is a lifelong homosexual. He’s as fascist as they come. The first brownshirts were full of homosexuals. The Republican Convention welcomed an open fascist, the founder of Ebay, to their convention. They gave him a standing ovation.

I’m aware of Neo-Nazis to this day who are open homosexuals. James O’Meara was one. A number of White Supremacists have been outed as closeted gays. One was murdered by his young Black boyfriend. A friend used to be involved in these groups and he told me that was a LOT of homosexuality in this scene.

Brazilian fascist integralism was multi-racial and formally anti-racist, populist to the core. But Bolsonaro does not come from this milieu; he represents an actual throwback in some ways to classical European fascism of the 1930’s.

Fascism has traditionally been racist, but Black and Indian fascism is a real thing. I believe that fascism knows no color. The Tonton Macoutes of Haiti were black fascists. The Black Hutu government in Rwanda was fascist, as was Mobutu in Zaire and Samuel Doe in Liberia.

A fascist indigenist Indian rights activist is running for President in Ecuador. He’s pulled support from Cultural Left morons who support his Identity Politics while overlooking his fascism, a typical error of IP types, who are the a scourge of the Left.

Obviously modern fascism opposes transsexualism, but that’s not necessarily the case into the future. Caitlin Jenner, a fully-transitioned transwoman, is MAGA.

In the future we may see even forms of fascism that offer equal rights to gays and maybe even transsexuals.

Repost: Englishes, Portugueses, and Chineses

In the comments to a previous post, Goyta made several comments. First of all he noted that the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are considerable, especially when a Brazilian hears a less educated, working class or rural Portuguese.

He also said that when European Portuguese are interviewed on Brazilian TV, Brazilians wish they had subtitles. Wanting to have subtitles when you see a video of someone speaking is actually a symptom that you are dealing with another language. He said the differences are particularly severe when it comes to IT. He said he cannot understand 9

It does appear that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are pretty significant, more significant than the differences between US and British English.

On other hand, I find Hibernian English spoken in Ireland to be nearly incomprehensible, though it is said to be just a dialect of English. It’s clearly been influenced extensively by the Irish language. Scots, the regional English spoken in Scotland and exemplified by the movie Trainspotting , is actually a completely separate language from English. That movie actually needed subtitles. On the other hand, there is a Scottish English dialect that is not Scots that is pretty intelligible.

We can always understand British English no matter who is writing it. Same with understanding spoken Australian and New Zealand (Kiwi) English. British English is often written a bit differently in slang expressions, but we pick them up. The formal writing is totally understandable.

There have been huge fights on Wikipedia between British English and US English speakers with complaints from the Brits of bullying by the Americans. There was an attempt to fork the English Wiki into Br and US versions but it failed. Wikipedia demands that you have an ISO code in order to get a Wikipedia and ISO codes only come from SIL, who publishes Ethnologue. I petitioned for a few new languages a couple of years ago and they all got shot down.

There is an ongoing war between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese on the Portuguese Wikipedia with complaints from the European Portuguese of bullying on the part of the Brazilians. Gotya noted that he, a Brazilian, could not read Portuguese IT materials. This is unfortunate. All written British is intelligible to us. We can read anything written in the UK, though most of our reading material here is from the US. I can read The Economist and The New Standard and The Spectator with no problems at all.

As a Californian, I speak completely normally, of course, and have no accent whatsoever! Haha. We can understand the Midwest accent perfectly, though it can be different. It sounds “flat”. They also insert rhotic consonants before some consonants at the end of a word and the raising of the preceding vowel – “wash” becomes “worsh”.

The Oklahoma accent is different and sometimes it can be hard to understand. I heard some people speaking Oklahoman in the doctor’s office the other day for a minute or so I thought they were speaking a foreign language! Of course they were mumbling too. Then I asked them where they were from and they said Oklahoma. At that point, I had caught onto their accent and could understand them perfectly.

I do not know why the Texan accent is said to be hard to understand. We understand it perfectly, but it sounds funny. We make a lot of jokes about it. George Bush has a strong Texan accent. There is also an Arkansas accent (Arkies) that is different but understandable. This is also the source of jokes. In this part of California there are many Whites who still speak Arkie and Okie. They are the descendants of those who came out here from the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. Steinbeck wrote a book about this called The Grapes of Wrath.

Other than that, there are no accents in the West.

There is some sort of a Kentucky-Tennessee accent, but I am not sure if they differ. This is also a source of jokes. It’s sort of a general Appalachian accent, and it’s the source of jokes about inbred hillbillies and whatnot.

The Southern accent is well-known but usually understandable. My brother went to live in Alabama though and he said that the workers in the factory he worked at were often completely unintelligible. The Blacks were worse than the Whites, and they had separate accents. He has imitated their incomprehensible accent to me and it’s pretty hilarious.

I have heard poor Blacks from Memphis on the Cops show who were completely unintelligible to me. People with more money and status tended to be more comprehensible. I sometimes have a hard time understanding a Mississippi or Alabama accent, but it’s no problem. Our Southern politicians all have thick Southern accents.

Cajun English from Louisiana is often unintelligible to us, but the people with more money and status are quite intelligible.

There is also a Black accent from the coast of South Carolina called Gullah that is hard to understand. The Blacks from around there speak something like it and you can pick it out if you are sharp. It has a pretty, lilting sound to it. It’s different from the standard Southern accent and is sort of charming. Moving up the coast, there is a Virginia accent that is softer, pleasant and charming.

There is the famous New York accent, which to us laid back Californians sounds horribly rude, obnoxious, loud and belligerent. Some forms of it also sound ignorant – these tend to be associated with working class Whites in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

One thing they do is to glide and lengthen rhotic consonants – “New York” becomes New Yawwk” “Brooklyn” becomes “Bwwoklyn”.

A similar accent seems to be spoken in New Jersey, but it may be different. One again, it involves lenition of rhotic consonants, in this case turning them into dipthongs with long vowels. “New Jersey” becomes “New Joiisey”. This is also a source of jokes. There is a Boston accent which is completely understandable. Ted Kennedy speaks that. It involves the lenition of hard consonants into glides and the end of a word – “car” becomes “caw”.

I believe there is a sort of a slow drawl from Vermont and New Hampshire too. Those people, especially the older men, are known for not talking much. Men of few words.

Some Blacks around here still talk with thick Black accents that sound Southern even though they were born in the Central Valley. There is also an “Ebonics” English (for lack of a better word) that is spoken here by sort of ghettoish or semi-ghettoish Blacks. It is frankly, almost completely unintelligible. They seem like they are talking with their mouths full, mumbling and speaking extremely fast, running all of the sounds together.

Everyone who talks like this can also speak Standard English thank God, and they can quickly move in and out of that Ebonics talk when you talk to them. It’s sort of a language for them to talk so that we can’t understand them, I think. To us, it sounds sloppy, low class and ghetto, but it reportedly a full-fledged language. The Blacks in the Caribbean do not speak English! That makes me feel good because I can hardly understand a word they say. Each island has its own form of Creole English which is a completely separate language.

I think that Indian English (Chichi derogatorily) and West African English need to be split into separate languages because they are often incomprehensible to us. This is a case of regional Englishes evolving on their own. Further, West African English often differs a lot in its written form.

Indian English is often so mangled in its written form that it is incomprehensible, but more educated writers are comprehensible. The tendency to drop articles is very annoying and makes written Indian English sound ignorant to us. Don’t mess with our damned useless articles!

Reading about the Chinese languages, there are efforts underway to get speakers to speak proper Putonghua, whatever that means. Speakers from different parts of China still speak Putonghua with an accent that can be heavy at times.

Here in the US, we do not have this problem. Even our politicians still speak in heavy regional accents, and no one cares. We can always understand them. There is no national effort to get everyone to speak proper English that involves wiping out regional accents, though I understand that in the corporate world, they are offering classes to help people get rid of Southern accents, which are stereotyped as sounding backwards, ignorant and racist. I think this is sad. Our regional accents are what makes this country great.

Goyta also notes that Brazilians are starting to speak Spanish and the neighboring Spanish speaking countries are starting to speak Portuguese. When I was dealing with them 5-10 years ago, most Brazilians did not speak much Spanish (They acted like it was extremely low on their list of priorities) and Spanish speakers had zero interest in learning Portuguese (In fact, they regarded the suggestion as offensive and preposterous!)

Goyta notes that with regional integration, more Portuguese are speaking Spanish and more Spanish speakers from nearby countries are learning Portuguese. Spanish is becoming a prerequisite to getting a good job in Brazil. This is good as it’s good to see Latin Americans getting together.

It is also true that in China there has been a big fight over Chinese language classification. The unificationist – fascist types, associated with the Communist government (and actually with the Nationalist government before also – this is really a Chinese elite project) insist that there is only one Chinese language. This goes along with racism of Northern Chinese against Southern Chinese and to some extent vice versa. This racism is most evident in the Cantonese vs Mandarin war in China.

Cantonese speakers say that they speak the real Chinese and that Northern Chinese speak a bastardized tongue derived from the old Manchu language. Cantonese speakers also resent that a Northern Chinese was turned into the national tongue and imposed on them against their will. They also say that Northern Chinese are really from the South and that the real NE Asians are the Mongolians, Koreans, Manchu, Japanese, etc. Genetic studies show that this is not the case.

Northern Chinese say that Southern Chinese are not real Chinese and their blood is “contaminated” with Tai types like the Tai, Zhuang, Vietnamese, etc. There is probably something to this. Although Putonghua is the only official language in China and there is a war going on against the regional Chineses, enforcement has been held off against Cantonese. And Cantonese  areas are still where you will hear the least Putonghua and the most regional Chinese in all spheres of life. Cantonese is also allowed on the radio and TV, whereas regional Chineses had previously banned from the media.

The Putonghua-only campaign has been too successful and regional Chineses are being wiped out. There is now a regionalism movement arising in China to promote and retain regional Chineses.

I think that the Putonghua campaign has been good, but that China should promote bilingualism. The Putonghua campaign has not yet been successful. As of 2001, only 5

China clearly needs a language that they can all speak. For its entire history, many Chinese have not been able to speak to each other, including folks from one village to the next if you go to the southeast and the central coast. Provinces like Fujian, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Henan and Hunan are notoriously multilingual.

Most of these places have a lot of very high mountains, and transportation was typically very poor. Even today, you can scarcely get around by vehicle and you sometimes have to walk from one place to the next, sometimes for dozens of miles! Bottom line is they were very isolated from each other.

These places also retained a tradition of being hideouts for “hillbilly” types where there was a lot of unemployment and many folks turned to crime. Also criminals fled to the mountains where they could hide. Upshot was that due to all of this, and people seen as backwards, lazy, stupid and thieving, people from the rest of China had no interest in going to these places anyway. When people left these parts of China to go to big cities, they were stereotyped in a way similar to how ghetto Blacks and Browns are in the US. This made them want to stay in their mountains.

Alt Left: How the US Staged Fascist Coups in Many Countries the World Over in the Last 70 Years

After World War, the Cold War was started and the murderous Dulles Brothers Installed the Policy known as Containment. This was implemented between 1946-48. As part of this policy, the US overthrew nationalist, social democratic, and even liberal democratically elected governments all over the world as part of the “War on Communism.” We replaced them with rightwing dictatorships. Although it is arguable, in general all rightwing  authoritarian regimes or dictatorships are probably fascist. Rightwing dictatorship = fascism.

These regimes were found most of Central America in Guatemala after 1954, in El Salvador and Honduras since forever, and in Nicaragua under the Somozas.

They were found in all of South America at one time or another. We can see them in the generals after 1964 in Brazil, the democratic facade duopoly regimes in Venezuela in Colombia (especially after 1947 and again in 1964, Ecuador, Peru until the generals’ revolt in 1968, Bolivia under Banzer after 1953, Paraguay under Strausser, Argentina and Uruguay under the generals in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and Pinochet in Chile.

They were also seen in the Caribbean in Cuba under Bautista, the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, and Haiti under the Duvaliers.

In Southeast Asia, they were found in Thieu in South Vietnam, Sihanouk in Cambodia, the monarchy in Laos, the military regimes in Thailand, Suharto in Indonesia, the Sultan in Brunei, Marcos in the Philippines, and Taiwan under Chiang Kai Chek.

In Northeast Asia, a regime of this type was found in South Korea from 1947-on.

They were found South Asia with Pakistan under Generals like Zia, in Central Asia in the Shah of Iran, and in a sense, the Arab World with Saddam (Saddam was installed by the CIA), King Hassan in Morocco, the Gulf monarchies, and Jordan. Earlier, they were found in the monarchies in Libya and Egypt that were overthrown by Arab nationalists. Also, Israel played this sort of role with a democratic facade.

We also found them in the Near East in the military regimes in Turkey (especially Turgut Ozul) and for a while in Greece under the colonels in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

NATO formed the backbone of a “rightwing dictatorship” in the background of Western Europe (especially Italy), where Operation Gladio NATO intelligence essentially ran most of those countries as a Deep State behind the scenes. These regimes were found in Spain under Franco and in Portugal under Salazar along with its colonies.

These regimes were not so much in evidence in Africa except in South Africa and Rhodesia and most prominently, Mobutu in Zaire and Samuel Doe in Liberia.

The fascist forms of these rightwing dictatorships varied, most being nonracist fascism but a few being racist fascists (Turkey), and others being Mussolinists (Suharto in Indonesia with his “pangesila”)

Alt Left: How the Cold War Against Communism Ended up Being a War against Nationalism, Social Democracy, and even Liberalism

All of these liberal Democrats signing on to this media war on Venezuela need to recognize that the corporate media is using the Venezuelan example as part of a “war on socialism” to discredit the very word socialism and everything associated with it.

Remember when Trump said before Congress that the US will never be a socialist country? Here, socialism refers to social democracy in either in name/action, which exists in 9

Remember how the entire Congress, including the vast majority of Democratic Congressmen, gave that fascist a standing ovation when he said that? And liberal Democrats dare to claim that they are on the left! They’re not on the left of anything, except maybe the left wing of Republican Party.

The corporate media and the US money/government elite (The Deep State, basically) despises anything that even smacks of socialism, especially social democracy which they truly hate because it is most likely to be implemented. This started during the Cold War but it was already going on in the Depression, when US fascists nearly staged a military coup against FDR, who they said was a Communist.

But during the Cold War the demonization of anything smacking of socialism, no matter how mild, really got under way with two bloodthirsty killers, the Dulles Brothers, who initiated the policy of Containment and created the CIA out of the wartime US intelligence agency, effectively turning the US into a militarized, national security state.

In other words, they initiated what boils down to the US Deep State or the foreign policy establishment of the United States. Note that the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about is absolutely part of this Deep State too, as it and the national security state are each part of each other.

It was during this era when the US overthrew countries all the time for the tiniest movements towards social democracy and a lot of times simply for implementing social liberalism, the ideology of the US Democratic Party!

For instance, Aristide in Haiti was overthrown for the simple reason that he raised the minimum wage.

The US Democratic Party gave complete support to both of these coups, without a single dissenting member. My “liberal Democrat” father, actually a “Cold War liberal,” a truly awful group of people, gave his complete support to the fascist coup that overthrew Aristide. Why? Because Time Magazine told him it needed to be done. My father foolishly believed that Time Magazine was a liberal or at least Centrist project though it’s never been either.

So the Democratic Party supports raising the minimum wage, sure, but overseas, if you do it, the Democratic Party will call you a Communist and overthrow you in a fascist coup! Disgusting or what?

Nationalist, Social Democratic, and even Liberal Governments Overthrown by the CIA in the Last 70 years

Arbenz in Guatemala was overthrown in 1954 simply for implementing a mild social democracy. About

Juan Bosch came to power in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and started to implement a mild social democracy. The US media demonized him as a Communist, and soon LBJ staged a fascist coup to overthrow him.

The Mossadegh government in Iran was elected in 1953 for electing a nationalist who nationalized British Petroleum’s oil and set about to implement a mild social democracy with nationalist overtones. He was overthrown by the US and UK and a fascist monarch called Reza Shah was installed and held power for the next 26 years.

A leftwing government was elected in Guyana around 1970, and the Western media went into hysterics. In reality, he was just a social democrat. The “liberal” UK soon overthrew him in a fascist coup.

The US waged economic war against Manley’s government in Jamaica in the late 80’s and early 90’s. He was never anything but a social democrat.

The Left took power in Brazil in 1964 after they won an election. In truth they were just social democrats. They were quickly overthrown in a fascist coup by generals in the military a year later.

A social democratic government that contained a few Communists was elected in 1960 in Iraq. The CIA overthrew that government in a bloody coup and installed Saddam Hussein with specific instructions to get rid of and crack down on the Communists.

Patrice Lumumba in the Congo came to power in 1964. I believe he was never anything more than a social democrat. Nevertheless, the Western media went insane, calling him a Communist. A year later he was overthrown with the help of US intelligence. It is a proven fact that Donald Rumsfeld, then working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, helped set up his arrest and subsequent execution by being tied to a tree and shot.

Alt Left: Rightwing Authoritarianism Via Coup in Latin America: Some Recent Attempts and Successes

The following Latin American countries have recently had attempted or successful fascist coups and most are at the moment by rightwing authoritarian states or dictatorships.

Brazil: legal or judicial coup (lawfare) to remove a Leftist president on false legal grounds. Immediately started killing Leftists in the streets as soon as they got in. These are actual, real deal, Mussolini-style fascists in the European tradition. Most Latin American fascists are quite different from that.

Paraguay: Parliamentary coup to remove a Leftist president on a completely false basis by the rightwing Legislature.

Bolivia: Armed coup with rioting to remove a Leftist president over fake election fraud – the military and police were heavily involved.

Ecuador: Coup by devious lying – the conservative ran as a Leftist allied with the Leftist president who could not run anymore. As soon as he got in, the first he did was turn to the Right, say he had never been a Leftist, and attack the Left, harassing, arresting, and issuing arrest warrants for most of the Left he claimed to be a part of. False criminal charges were filed against the former President, so he can’t come back.

Colombia: The Left is kept out of power permanently by a death squad rightwing dictatorship with a democratic facade that stays in power simply by committing mass murder against the unarmed Left. Why do you think the Left in Colombia took up arms? All legal avenues for change were blocked and the army (with US Special Forces help) was running around the country looking for Leftists so they could murder them. The Left said we can either sit here in our villages and wait for the army to come out and kill us or we can pick up a gun so at least we have a hand when they come to kill us so we can shoot back.

Nicaragua: Armed coup of Venezuela/Bolivia type (mass rioting) attempted. Smashed by the Sandinistas.

Venezuela: Ongoing coup attempt for 22 years now ever since Chavez and the Bolivarians took power. So far all attempts of coups of all sorts – including economic, lawfare, parliamentary, rioting, assassination, military revolt, currency manipulation – have failed.

Haiti: Permanent fascist regime installed by the US. The very popular Lavalas Party, which won 9

Honduras: Democratically elected Leftist president overthrown by a military coup greenlighted by Hitlery Clinton and led by the rightwing army. After they seized power, 1,000 unarmed Leftists were murdered by quickly formed death squads.

Mexico: A Leftist President won the election, and already the light-skinned wealthy elite is making a lot of noises about taking him via a coup, and in fact a vague coup attempt seems to be forming. Many of the upper middle class and middle class Mexicans support this effort.

Now I will look at the US and show how the Republican Party, a fascist party since 2002 at least, is modeling its fascism or rightwing authoritarianism on the model implemented by the Latin American elites.

US: The fascist US Republican Party seems to be modeling its fascism or rightwing authoritarian politics on the reactionary and fascist Latin American elite. I urge everyone to watch Latin American politics very closely because whatever you see down there, you’re going to see here sooner or later.

That means the appearance of death squads. That sounds insane, but that is always a feature of these states the Republicans are modeling themselves on. And did you notice that the US capitalists and conservatives quickly went fascist in the face of a serious threat from the Left (Sanders, the Squad, Occupy Wall Street, BLM/antifa riots this summer)? Remember what I said in the previous post – when the capitalists face a serious threat to their money and power from the Left, they most always go fascist in a last ditch attempt to keep their money and stuff.

Alt Left: Repost: Whites Act a Lot Different When They Are in the Majority as Opposed to the Minority

This is actually a somewhat rewritten repost of an old post that people are still commenting on.

Whites can actually act pretty good when they are a majority. Blacks are actually treated quite well here in the US by the majority Whites in my opinion. We US Whites probably treat Blacks better than anybody else. Obviously that wasn’t always the case, and that’s unfortunate, but no one is convicted for life of anything, and redemption is always possible. In fact, were there no redemption, we humans would still be acting like complete animals.

But when Whites get in the minority as in Latin America, South Africa, and Rhodesia, they didn’t act very good. And that’s to say the least.

And in Latin America, there is pretty much no such thing as race. It’s a deracialized continent. Nevertheless, look at how White those vicious Latin American fascist elites are.

Nevertheless, I would like to point out that those elites get a lot of dark-skinned people to do their dirty work for them. The death squads in Central America were populated with lower middle class mestizos. The fascist street mobs in Nicaragua and Venezuela are quite dark-skinned. They look very mestizo. However, the ones in Venezuela were said to be criminals who were hired by the rich to riot in the streets.

And there are progressive Whites all over Latin America. Very leftwing light-skinned people are or were in top positions of government in Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Jamaica, and Uruguay. The leftwing governments in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Argentina, and Cuba are full of Whites.

The leadership of the FMLN, URNG, FARC, ELN and Shining Path guerrillas  is or was often White. The same was true with the leadership of the guerrillas in Argentina, Uruguay, and Honduras in years past. Many of the rank and file in the FARC and ELN are White.

Typically the guerrillas in Latin America have or had a White leadership and a mestizo (and in some cases mulatto or zambo as in Colombia) rank and file. Sort of like the fascist Latin American White elites, right? The leadership is all White, but the rank and  file street fighters are mestizos.

The Whites lead, the mestizos follow. This is Latin America.

Alt Left: A Bit about the Weathermen and the Black Liberation Army

I remember watching the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. That was pretty impressive. Saw the whole thing on TV at age 10. I was already quite interested in politics and foreign affairs at that age. Mayor Daly, a Democrat, hauled his cop goons out and they set about busting heads. Not long after that was the Days of Rage, and that’s when the peaceful antiwar movement petered out. Now the antiwar movement had a violent wing.

Out of this wing grew the Weathermen. The Weathermen and others set off 50,000 bombs in US in the early 1970’s. The almost always phoned them in ahead of time so people could be evacuated and they usually went off in the middle of the night.

They did kill one man, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, staying late in the lab when a Weathermen bomb went off at 3 AM. Everyone screams about that, but the Weathermen were trying to stop the war. That’s what all the bombs were about. They killed one guy. How many did Nixon kill? Who killed more? The Weathermen were trying to end the war and save lives. Was Nixon? Hardly.

I still support the bombing campaign of the Weathermen to this day. In fact, in the 1980’s, I was on the mailing list of their aboveground organization, the John Brown Book Club out of the Bay Area. I got their bimonthly, Breakthrough. They were already pretty insane by them. Hell they were insane back in the day.

Remember that lunatic Bernadine Dohrn’s crazy rants praising the Manson murders? These idiots were already on the “White people are evil” thing. Dohrn would give speeches telling young White women to kill their White babies after they were born so as not to create more evil White people.

Ten years later, in 1981, they hooked up with some crazies called the Black Liberation Army. I believe the BLA was a radical split from the Black Panthers. In the early 1970’s, debate swirled around the Panthers. The war was still on. The Panthers had not achieved their goals.  But they were still ostensibly committed to more or less peaceful change. At least they were not committed to open armed struggle.

The bomb-throwers called the peaceful change types sellouts. They felt, as usual, that peaceful change would get them nowhere and the only way to achieve their revolutionary goals was armed struggle. Most of this group split off from the Panthers and  the Panthers said good riddance. Attempts to link the Black Panthers to the BLA radical armed revolutionaries are false and sleazy. Don’t fall for it. The Panthers were ok.

Joanne Chesimard (Assata Shakur) was one of their most famous guerrillas. They were completely insane of course, like all the armed groups back then, but I have to admit she was one badass bitch. She’s in Cuba now.

She’s wanted for the shooting death of a police officer who was killed in a shootout with BLA members they pulled over in a car. She’s innocent. She got shot and was badly hurt. Hell, she was in the back seat and didn’t even have a gun. The driver, a man, fired most of the shots including the bullet that killed the cop. He himself was killed.

Incredibly, Chesimard escaped after that shootout (!). She was later imprisoned in a federal prison but the her comrades in the BLA actually broke her out of a federal prison in Florida by disguising themselves as workers delivering linen to the prison. They broke her out in a wild scene and even managed to escape. Chesimard then vanished off the face of the Earth for 2 years.

Actually she was underground, but you have to realize that the Weathermen, etc. were being helped by a huge network of maybe 1 million people, the vast majority of whom have never been caught and have never even been suspected of a crime. 2 years later, Chesimard mysteriously popped up in Cuba!

In 1981, the remains of the Weathermen had taken up the radical Black cause of the BLA, who were Black separatists who wanted to set up a Black state. The remaining Weathermen apparently felt that Blacks were the leading edge of the revolution.

See the parallels nowadays with BLM? The similarities don’t end there. The leadership of BLM itself and its associated organizations includes the remains of the old Weathermen, now reorganized as the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, still Communists but now apparently pursuing the peaceful road to power.

Another group called the Freedom Road Socialist Organization is also behind a lot of the BLM protests, especially the violent aspects. These are also Communists. I hate to give credit to wild rightwing accusations, but I assure you that the leadership of BLM and its associated organizations are literally Marxists and Communists.

The Weathermen and the BLA robbed a Brinks truck in September 1981 and a wild shootout ensued. Some guards were killed along with a some BLA men. It looks like the BLA were the ones who shot the guards. They were pulled over on the freeway and BLA fighters burst out of the back of the van, guns blazing. More people died. The survivors got away again but were quickly caught. So there ended the saga of the Weathermen.

The FBI conducted raids of activists associated with the Weathermen and the BLA soon afterwards but they came up empty-handed. Everyone had been tipped off and fled ahead of the feds. In one case, the suspects had left so quickly that the coffee kettle was literally still heating on the stove when the FBI burst in. I’m wondering if the Weathermen and BLA had people inside federal law enforcement who tipped them off.

The Weathermen who were arrested in the Brinks robbery, including a few women, are still in prison. One, (((Kathy Boudin))) died in prison of cancer recently. Incredibly, her son, who is probably quite radical himself, recently won the election for District Attorney for the city of San Francisco!

Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers went underground and stayed there for ~20 years (I told you they had a good support network), but were captured after decades on the lam. They were given very short sentences and pretty much let off the hook. I heard Ayers on the radio recently and he was completely unrepentant, defending every bomb the Weathermen ever set off.

They are both now professors in the Education Department of the University of Chicago. They are in deep with the Democratic Party in the area the Democratic city government in Chicago and are pretty much political fixtures in Chicago. Yes, Barack Obama appeared at a couple of roundtables where they were present. Much was made of this by the Retard Right, but there’s less there than their seems. Everyone who is anyone in Democratic politics in Chicago knows Ayers and Dohrn.

They’re cleaned up now anyway and for all intents and purposes, they’re respectable citizens. What’s wrong with this stupid country anyway? In Latin America, former armed Leftist guerrillas lay down arms and then get elected to top posts in the government. The Presidents of Uruguay and Brazil in recent years were both former armed guerrillas from long ago. Why are we so hung up and weird? Let me know when we join the rest of the continent of the Americas, as is our inevitable destiny .

Another Republican Lie: The War on Poverty Failed, Made Blacks Poorer, and Much Worse Behaved

Doug: Jason, the compassion comes after we see facts clearly. I’ve mentioned countless times that we need vocation schools at the high school level to train those kids that are not college-bound in some kind of useful profession.

The Left will never allow it because those schools would be about 1/2 Brown/Black and 1/2 White kids…in other words, too much for them to admit. Instead we keep denying the obvious. Teacher’s unions, a pillar of the Left, would also not allow it either. They literally don’t want any choice for kids–from charter schools to vocational schools.

Another rich example of compassion would be to admit that Johnson’s $21 trillion “War on Poverty” has not only failed but it’s INCREASED poverty amongst Black persons. At least 3

There’s TANF, Section 8 housing, Food stamps, Medicaid, AFDC, Head Start, hiring quotas, set-asides, and sharply lowered standards in police and fire departments and colleges and grad schools. “Free money” student loans that will never be repaid. We have free breakfasts for Black children and even free lunches.

Taken together, US Blacks live in a state of “custodial care” by Whites because they can’t take care of themselves.

Nothing has worked. Nothing ever will. This money is paid to the most unworthy people in the world by the most worthy people in the world. Until people take responsibility for themselves, families, and communities, nothing will ever work.

All this because our society cannot admit that Black intelligence is too low, they have a bad attitude, and have too little logic. Black criminality is far too high to support any higher level of civilization.

But what’s worse is that all this money and it’s perverse incentives (to break up marriages) has worsened Black life in America since 1964 and we can’t admit that either!

Since the start of the War on Poverty, black kids are not doing better in school, housing projects built for ghetto blacks are all slums (a complete lack of personal responsibility), drugs, gun violence, incarcerations, STD infections, and abortions remain at epidemic levels. Black high school completion rates are about the same as ever, ie., <5

Black culture is actually much worse now. Black culture is in virtual collapse with 7

“Reparations” has help cause a complete and utter Black cultural collapse.

The result of the cultural collapse is evident from appalling crime statistics, 7

You can throw all the money in the world at social programs, but laziness, addiction, bad attitudes and decisions, low intelligence, little impulse control, and high levels of violence, they will override any and all social programs. Of course the Left never wants to hear about personal responsibility when they are the most irresponsible. They want to blame our economic system and take more and more of your tax dollars and piss that money away on programs that aren’t working.

Black kids will never be hired when they often can’t speak or dress right and have no self-respect, no discipline and no education. This is the problem today, and it was the problem yesterday and 50 years ago. No amount of money or bureaucracy can fix this. Why don’t we admit that we’ve failed?

Instead, you get 10

First, the parts where I agree with you.

hiring quotas, set-asides, sharply lowered standards in police and fire departments. Sharply lowered standards for college and grad school admissions. “Free money” student loans that will never be repaid. We have free breakfasts for black children and even free lunches.

There aren’t any hiring quotas or set-asides. They’re mostly illegal. I know Affirmative Action is banned for the federal government. I also know it is banned here in California, the most liberal state in the country. Some private businesses and corporations have their own goals or whatever, but no one is forcing them, and all evidence indicates that this has not caused a lot of problems for US businesses. If it did they would stop doing it.

Standards have not been lowered for much of anything, although they are still being lowered for Blacks and Browns to get into elite universities. Standards have been lowered for the Bar Exam in California, but that applies to everyone. Most tests to get a police or fireman job are still pretty hard.

But I absolutely oppose all mandated affirmative action by the state and and all lowering of standards on testing to let more non-Whites in. I’ve had to take tests all my life. Had to take an SAT test. Had to take tests to graduate college with a BA. Had to take tests to get into grad school. Had to take more tests to get into education grad school. Then I had to take more tests to get a teaching job. Then I went back to grad school. I had take tests to even get through the program. Then I had to take a truly murderous test to get my Master’s Degree.

I don’t think people realize how significant those tests are. I had to pass them. If I didn’t pass them, I flunked. I wasn’t admitted to the program. I didn’t get the degree. There was no coddling, no, oh Bob is disadvanted and part of some dumb race of people so we have to lower standards for him. Hell no. I don’t pass and I’m gone. It’s do or die. Pass or fail. And I passed, without anybody lowering one damned standard to let me through. If I had to go through all that crap, the rest of  you have to go through the exact same thing. I never got a break or a lower barrier to jump over.

Why the Hell should you? Because you’re dumb? Bad answer. Because you’re part of a dumb race of humans? Bad answer. You’re not all dumb. I see smart Blacks, Black attorneys, physicians, Blacks doing every high level job Whites do, every time I turn on my TV. In my recent courtroom adventures, I saw four Black attorneys, two male and two female. They graduated law school. And they passed the damn bar. If they can do it, maybe you can do it. If you don’t do it, don’t cop out and blame racism. Go into some field where you can do well. It’s not that hard.

I’ve mentioned countless times that we need vocation schools at the high school level to train those kids that are not college-bound toward some kind of useful profession.

The Left will never allow it because those schools would be about 1/2 brown/ black and 1/2 white kids…in other words, too much for them to admit.

I definitely agree with you here, but I have no solution to this whatsoever.

Teacher’s unions, a pillar of the Left, would also not allow it either. They literally don’t want any choice for kids–from charter schools to vocational schools.

Charter schools don’t work. That’s now conclusively proven. The idea is that with charter schools, we get rid of the teacher’s unions, and then the kids will perform so much better. In other words, somehow teacher’s unions cause kids to fail in school!

It didn’t work because getting rid of teachers’ unions and presumably cutting their pay and benefits doesn’t make teachers work harder (Shocking!), and getting rid of teachers’ unions doesn’t make students perform better (Duh!). Teachers’ unions could care less about vocational classes. I taught school for many years. I met many vocational teachers. No one cares about them and their classes. Nobody wants to get rid of them.

Since the start of the war on poverty, black kids are not doing better in school…

A lot of falsehoods here. Black achievement has skyrocketed since the War on Poverty. Blacks have closed 1/3 of the achievement gap. Black Computer Science students saw their scores improve every year through the 2010’s. Black IQ’s skyrocketed since the War on Poverty. Their IQ’s are now 16.5 points higher than they were in 1965. Incredible!

Now we have “flash mob robberies” and “knockout assaults” that are overwhelmingly black crimes.

Anti-White flash mobs and the knockout game are not going on much anymore that I know of. That seems to have been a few years ago.

There are two groups of Blacks. One is ghetto culture, maybe 1/2 of Blacks. Obviously this culture is failed in all sorts of ways, but I can’t see any way to improve things. Surely cutting off all their money and making them vastly poorer won’t help a thing.

The other group is middle class Blacks, which may be up to 5

Black culture is actually much worse now. Black culture is in virtual collapse, with 7

Why did the single parenthood rate skyrocket? Because this is how Black people act in a free society. You want them to act better? Ok, put them in chains again like under Jim Crow. That’s literally how you do it. The single parenthood rate supposedly rocketed up due to “welfare,” but Blacks already had welfare since 1935. The Great Society didn’t increase welfare payments one nickel.

There were food stamps, Section 8, and Medicaid in the Great Society. So Black parenthood collapsed because now Black mothers could afford enough food to eat, to rent an apartment and to go to the doctor? Well, that’s just terrible! How dare they get all those things necessary for them to survive!

Black crime has collapsed. Sex crimes are 6

Section 8 housing

Section 8 rentals are not slums. They’re tearing down the housing projects. Now Section 8 is just a voucher that you take around to any renter who will take it. In this complex, a certain number of apartments are Section 8. I don’t know which they are or who rents them, but there are not many Blacks in this complex (thank God). It’s mostly Hispanics, a very few Whites, and yes, there are a few Blacks here and there and they’re at least a bit Ghetto too.

This is a beautiful complex, looks brand new, very well kept up. And there are Section 8 people here. The landlord does not tolerate any crap from anyone, and any tenants who act bad are quickly tossed.

The result of the cultural collapse is evident from appalling crime statistics, the fact that 7

AIDS cases are mostly Black? Well, those are mostly Black gay men I assume. Please tell me how the War on Poverty made Black gay men catch way more AIDS than non-Black men. By letting them survive? So if you let Black homosexuals survive, then they turn suicidal, go get fucked up the ass by a hundred guys, and get AIDS. Right? Just checking on your logic here.

STD rates are high among Blacks everywhere on Earth. A lot of Black people screw anything that moves, and they probably don’t take many precautions to keep from getting an STD. They also don’t go to the doctor like they ought to. This behavior is typical amongst the Ghetto Blacks. I’m not sure middle class Blacks are sexually any different from the rest of we White sluts and manwhores.

STD rates are extremely high in the Caribbean. They’re off the charts in Africa, where no Black gets a dime of social spending.

Fine. Take all the money away from social programs for Blacks and yell at them to take responsibility for themselves. Like millions of Bill Cosby’s like me haven’t been yelling at Black people every day for years to get their shit together? Is it working? I don’t think so. So your project to pull all that evil survival money away from Blacks so they have no money, no food, no place to live, and no way to go to the doctor.

And this will make them act better.

Yeah right.

And then you will holler at them, “We took all your free money away, now you’re on your own, and you have to get your shit together!” And Black people are suddenly going to act way better and get their shit together.

This is the Republican fantasy about Blacks, and it’s about as insane as the Left’s fantasies about Blacks seen via Critical Race Theory.

The Great Society was never intended to turn Black people into White people. All it was intended to do was to allow people of all races to survive at a basic subsistence level. Do you know what it is like to live on one of those programs? Or even be to poor enough to qualify for them. You never have any money. Life blows, every day, forever. You are living in a world of shit in a sense. Why the most pathetic people on Earth are the subject of all this vitriol is something I will never understand.

Head Start

Head Start is preschool. That’s all it is. It’s preschool for poor people. I know a guy who drove a bus in Eastern Pennsylvania. Part of his route was taking the kids to and from Head Start. 10

Also, if Head Start doesn’t work (false), then preschool doesn’t work. Then why on Earth are all these White parents so insistent on preschool for their kids? Are they are all stupid? What about all the studies showing how preschool benefits kids? They’re bad science? If preschool doesn’t work, a lot of Whites are wasting their money.

And it’s not true that Head Start doesn’t work. The intention was never to turn Black people into Norwegians and Japanese. That’s not going to happen (though my co-blogger is about as deferential and polite as a Japanese woman). You can’t turn Blacks into Whites, not with our present tools. The only thing we can do is try to turn Black people into the best versions of themselves that we can.

Let’s try another one. Head Start works great for White people, but it doesn’t work for niggers for “whatever X reasons.” Why doesn’t it work for them? And they are different species? Are they all born with an anti-preschool gene? Come on. What works for Whites works for Blacks too because Blacks are humans. What works for one group of humans works for another group of humans.

Head start works. Not only that but it’s cost effective. Blacks who go through Head Start are less likely to drop out of high school, be incarcerated, go on welfare, or have an IQ below 70 (so it even lifts IQ’s at the low end). It seems like what Head Start does is lift up the group of Blacks that fall on the tail end intellectually and behaviorally. It lifts up the bottom. And as I said, it even pays for itself.

TANF

Welfare (TANF) pays $300/month. You trying to tell me that women actually don’t keep men around because it’s so easy to live on $300/month? You’re crazy. Tell you what. You Republicans say it’s easy to live on $300/month. Cool. So you do it. Live on $300/month for a while and then get back to us and let us know how it went, ok?

A lot of White people use all these programs. The lie is that this is White people’s tax money going to a bunch of no-good niggers and beaners. However, lots of Whites are on all of these programs. 3

The biggest lie of all is that the War on Poverty failed. I’m sure people on food stamps are eating a lot better than they were. I am sure that people on Medicaid are getting more and better medical care than they were. I am sure that people on Section 8 are happy to be able to rent a place rather than being homeless. I am sure that women’s little kids on WIC are eating a lot better than they would.

None of these programs were intended to solve any basic problem with Black people or with any race of people. We weren’t throwing money at any problem. The programs were intended to give some very poor people a basic, very low, no-fun level of existence so they could survive.

There were some problems that got solved.

Food stamps was because a lot of people didn’t have enough money for food. Now they do. Problem solved.

Section 8 was for people too poor to even rent an apartment. Now they have a roof over their heads. Problem solved.

Welfare (which was started in 1935, not by the Great Society but anyway) was based on the idea that all children must be supported. By taking welfare away you are saying that kids have no right to be supported and they should just die if their mother is poor. It’s not about the mother at all. It’s all about the kids. Problem solved, basically.

Welfare didn’t cause single parenthood. We’ve had welfare since 1935 and there were no problems. It’s not some new thing that the Great Society started.

Medicaid was for people who could not afford to go to the doctor at all. Now they can. Problem solved.

WIC was initiated because a lot of women were so poor that their kids were not eating right. So it enabled them to buy food to feed their little kids. Problem solved.

All you people who object to WIC, I’ve got a question for you. You got a problem with little kids getting enough food to eat?

Not one nickel has been thrown at the education system to try to lift up Blacks and turn them into White people. All schools get the same amount of federal dollars. They are funded by local property taxes. If any money was spent it was simply to support schools in Black and Brown areas at a level similar to that of White areas , in other words, to provide Blacks and Browns with a basic low level education. What’s wrong with that?

“Welfare” hasn’t caused any of those problems you described. Let’s look at welfare, now TANF. We got rid of it. Yay! That was cool, man! Why didn’t I think of that! The idea was just like above, take the free money away from those damned niggers and yell at them that now they’re on their own and they have to get their shit together or else. That’ll show em! That’ll make em get their shit together!

Guess what? It didn’t work. At all.

It didn’t improve any social pathology factors, not even one. There were no societal benefits at all. The only thing that happened was that those women (and their kids!) got even more poor. A lot of them went homeless along with their kids. It was a huge failure.

Tell you what. Let’s try an experiment! Let’s look at places like the Caribbean and Africa where there are none of these evil social programs at all. There’s nothing, no social programs, zero. No money, you don’t eat, and then you die.

Ok, Blacks should be free of pathology right? Nope! They act way worse! The fewer social programs they get, the worse they act.

Let’s look at Blacks in Brazil. Few social programs. They act far worse than they do here.

Let’s look at Blacks in Europe. Especially those from Africa act at least as bad as our Blacks and probably even worse.

Fact: Black people have these pathologies you describe everywhere they exist on this planet.

Now why that is is up for grabs. Maybe it’s genes, maybe it’s environment, maybe it’s something in the air. I don’t know. That’s for the social scientists, if there are any honest ones left, to untangle. Not my job.

I figure these social programs are sort of “buy off” programs to buy off Black people who would ordinarily act pretty bad. The more we support them at basic levels, the less poor they are, and they happier they are. If you take away these programs, they would probably act far, far worse and they might even riot so much that they wreck the country. We are buying them off, giving them money with the caveat that they need to act better now, and it seems to work.

Alt Left: America’s Salad Days, or When America Ran the World, 1945-60

The UN has been an American province for a long time. Let’s take after World War 2 for example. Sure, there was a UN. But from 1945-1960, the UN and the US were pretty much synonymous. Hence the pussilanimous and disgustingly murderous behavior of the US proxy called the “UN” in the Korean War. After World War 2, we had not only defeated all of our adversaries but most of our allies lay in ruins too. We weren’t running the world before the war – Germany and Pax Brittanica were vying for that honor – but we sure were after the war.

Some people think we allowed our allies to get destroyed on purpose so we could, in our usual slimy way, end up sidelining our allies and running the world, the World Dictatorship Ruled by the US being the main US project since 1945. I don’t know why Americans think it is groovy for the US to be this swaggering, belligerent, out of control outlaw organized crime gang that rules the world.

Do Americans really think that’s cool or something? Because that’s exactly what we are. We aren’t even a country. We’re an Outlaw Empire ruled by an Organized Geopolitical Crime Gang that happens to be the top gang in the world right now?

Anyway from 1945-60, the world was our oyster. Of course, we fucked it up like we fucked up everything. Even the Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Japan reportedly had sleazy Mafia-like subplots going on. After that, we finally started getting some good hard pushback from China and the USSR (Thank God and it was about time!), first in Cuba, next with the Missile Crisis and the Gary Powers affair, and especially in Vietnam.

The cycle of anti-imperialist revolutions followed in Algeria, the Philippines, Indonesia, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, India, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Palestine, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Dominican Republic, South Africa, Ireland, and Guyana. Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Mozambique, Angola, Rhodesia the Basques followed suit. Arab nationalist revolutions took Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq by storm.

The Shah fell in Iran in what was actually very much an anti-imperialist revolution. A revolution rocked Afghanistan.

But 1945-1960 were the America’s salad days.

Alt Left: The Myth of White Racial Loyalty in the Americas (Or Probably Anywhere for That Matter)

Commenter: Like I said, those are exceptions. White men still largely go after White women even if given the choice between White and other races. The White guys who go after Asian girls, for example, are basically the ones that either can’t get a White woman, or they want a traditional and more loyal partner, as White women are a bunch of egotistical, feminist, unfaithful whores these days.

In all of the New World, there was massive interbreeding between the Whites who invaded and conquered the continent and the Indians still there. Interbreeding was massive all over the continent with the exception of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. White men were quite willing to breed with Indian women and vice versa. No problem at all.

An early visitor to Brazil found a White man with 13 Indian brides. Such sights were not uncommon. In fact, Whites had bred so deeply into Brazil’s population that a project called Blanqamiento or Whitening was initiated to bring a lot of Whites over to make Brazil White. It didn’t work very well. Your average Brazilian is 5

Guyana is hugely mixed. Your average person is a mulatto, half-White and half Black.

Suriname is very similar.

All of the Caribbean is mostly Black due to the slave trade. However, there is White admixture.

The White invaders of Jamaica are nearly gone and Jamaican Blacks are

Similar things have occurred elsewhere.

In the Dominican Republic, 2

The Bahamas is 1

On some islands there is nothing left of the Whites, but some people called redbones, a Black word for a light-skinned Black.

There are almost no Whites on Haiti, however there are a tiny few, mostly Arabs, and they form part of the elite. Of course the Whites were massacred. However, a mulatto elite with substantial White admixture has traditionally ruled the place.

Cuba had many Whites and still does. However, there are also many Blacks and a vast number of mulattos. The Cuban genome is 3

There are reports of vanishing Blacks all over the continent. There were quite a few Blacks in Mexico at Liberation, especially on the East Coast. 200 years later, there are almost none. The Black population disappeared. What happened was that they bred into the White and mestizo population such that most Mexicans have 3-

There were many Blacks in Argentina in the late 1800’s. They seem to have vanished. What happened was they were bred out, and now the average Argentine has

Chile is similar. Pure Whites are not common. The upper class is Whites who are 2

Peru has a tiny White population and a huge mestizo population.

Upon Liberation, Mexico was 4

El Salvador was 10

Guatemala is

Ecuador is

In Venezuela and Colombia, Whites are only 20-2

Nicaragua is ~

Honduras has few Whites and almost everyone is a mestizo.

Panama is heavily mixed with White, Black and Indian.

In the US, almost all Blacks were pure when imported. Now your average Black American is 2

Alt Left: Communism/Socialism Isn’t the Cause of Latin America’s Problems; It’s the Solution

Transformer: Robert, I was arguing with this libertarian about the vicious cycle of inequality in Latin America and this was his response:

“Land monopoly is the core problem in Central America. Communism is the main reason the problem was not solved.”

I would like your response to his statement please. I personally disagree with his statement.

I think the reason the problem is not solved is because of a deeply poisonous rightwing reactionary elite as well as backward cultural traditions and attitudes that are obstacles to genuine land reform. Moreover, I think American foreign policy support for the rightwing oligarchy as well as the CIA aligning with these interest to overthrow democratic governments that try to correct the problem is a huge obstacle also.

Here.

I am not a supporter of Communism, and I think it is a far leftwing version of far rightwing libertarianism that you write about. Like you, I believe a free market economy with sensible regulations and a social safety net is the best solution. Pure capitalism and pure socialism are both two sides of the same coin.

My response: Sure, he’s wrong. That’s another one of their fake arguments. What the Hell is “land monopoly?” Your arguments of the cause of the problem are absolutely spot on perfect. That’s exactly the cause of all the mess right there in a small paragraph.

First of all, Communism barely exists in Latin America (only Cuba is Communist) so how in the Hell could it be the cause of all of the problems down there? This Libertarian is incoherent and dishonest, like all of them. He’s not only got the wrong cure, but like most rightwingers, he’s not even diagnosing the illness properly. All physicians know that without diagnosis there can be no treatment. As in medicine, so in political economy.

Communism especially of the Chinese variety would work very well down there. The Sandinistas, Evo Morales Movement Towards Socialism, Correa in Ecuador, the Worker’s Party (PT) government in Brazil, Father Aristide in Haiti, AMLO in Mexico, the FMLN government in El Salvador, the Kirchners in Argentina, and the priest who was running the Left government in Paraguay were all on the right track.

I also like very much what the Chavistas are doing in Venezuela. It’s not Communism at all. It’s something completely different, Socialism of the 21st Century. It also works very well when it’s not being sabotaged. Even with continuous coup-mongering and sabotage by the fascist opposition, the Chavistas had great success for many years.

Yes, it’s crashed now because the fascists and the US have really upped the ante. This time they think they can finally pull off the coup they have been trying to have for 18 years now. Yes, things are very bad in Venezuela now, and there are various reasons for that, but it’s not the model that is the problem. The model is the same as Chavez’ very successful one.

Not only that, but Maduro has gone much to the right of Chavez. He keeps caving in to the  fascists and putting in their proposals, but they keep trying  to overthrow him with a coup anyway. He’s being played. He needs to stop talking to the coupmongers. According to the insane law of cause and effect the right claims here, it must be the rightwing economic reforms Maduro has done that has crashed the economy. See how dumb it is to mess around with cause and effect. Just because to events parallel each other doesn’t mean they are causing each other.

The economy is crashing due to manipulation of the monetary system, some dumb mistakes by Maduro (not floating the currency), low oil prices, and lately US sanctions which are now nearly a blockade.

I also think the Cuban model has worked very well down there. The Sandinista model, to the right of both the Cuban and Venezuelan models, works extremely well. The instability recently was due to a violent coup attempt by the fascist opposition. Now they are under sanctions, so that might be hurting them too.

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)