Minority Languages in Siberia

John writes:

I read that the ancestors of modern day Aboriginal Canadians/Americans still live in parts of Siberia but they are fading away linguistically and culturally due to Russian culture, do you know anything about this? I know that the indigenous people of Russia were all Mongoloid and Siberia was all Mongoloid type people before the Russians came. So how is it that Russia is not causing harm to these cultures?

Russia has a pretty progressive attitude towards these folks. None of them are separatists, so there is not much to worry about. Russia doesn’t settle it with Russians because no Russian wants to go live in Siberia. I suspect they might even let some of these groups separate because I am not sure how much Russia cares about all these frozen wastes. I just wrote a huge paper on these groups that will appear soon in a new book. Russia lets all of these groups use their languages as much as they want to. They can study them in schools, or they can even use them as a medium for instruction as long as kids end up fluent in Russian too. They can declare one or more of their languages as official state languages alongside Russian. They can use the language alongside Russian in government and universities. They can have newspapers, magazines, TV and radio in their languages. The USSR supported language rights, and the new Russia has more or less inherited that mindset. Quite a few of even the small groups related to Amerindians still speak their languages. For instance, the Altai languages are still widely spoken. Children are still being raised as native speakers in some of these languages. However, many are on their way out with most speakers age 40+. Some languages have only elderly speakers and are moribund. Speakers of these languages often suffer from lack of funds for learning materials in the schools, and their media productions either lack funding or tend to get shut down due to financial issues.

Turgenev!

Turgenev is usually listed as one of the great Russian writers of the 19th Century along with Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov and Nikolai Gogol. He was the favorite Russian novelist of Henry James and Joseph Conrad, who both said he was better than Dostoevsky. Vladimir Nabokov rated him below Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gogol but ahead of Dostoevsky. Although Turgenev quarreled with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky during his lifetime, both eventually came to praise him. After he died, Tolstoy said:

His stories of peasant life will forever remain a valuable contribution to Russian literature. I have always valued them highly. And in this respect none of us can stand comparison with him. Take, for example, Living Relic, Loner, and so on. All these are unique stories. And as for his nature descriptions, these are true pearls, beyond the reach of any other writer!

Turgenev never married but had many lovers and affairs. He had a lifelong affair with a Spanish-born opera singer who was raised in Paris. He spent most of his time in Western Europe, especially Germany and France. He preferred cosmopolitan Western Europe over his native land. He died at age 64. He was particularly noted for his great ear for dialogue, as you can see in the excerpt below. Just to give you a taste of what he is like, here is a passage from the play, A Month in the Country:

You know, Ratikin, I noticed this a long time ago …You are wonderfully sensitive to the so-called beauties of nature, and talk about them exquisitely … very intelligently … so exquisitely, so intelligently, that I feel sure nature should be indescribably grateful to you for your beautifully chosen, happy phrases about her; you court nature, like a perfumed marquis on his little red-heeled shoes, pursuing a pretty peasant girl … the only trouble is, I sometimes think that nature will never be able to understand or appreciate your subtle language – just as the peasant girl wouldn’t understand the courtly compliments of the marquis; nature is simpler, yes, cruder than you suppose – because, thank God, she is healthy …Birches don’t melt, they don’t have fainting fits like ladies with weak nerves.

Nnnice!

Why Russia Is Not An Imperialist Country

thelyniezian writes:

Out of interest, why is it you would suppose Russia is not an imperialist country? Perhaps because al it is really doing is seeking to hang onto and maintain its sphere of influence, not trying to aggressively expand it in the way the US seems to be doing?

They don’t exploit anyone. They have a cooperative or solidarity attitude towards their alliances similar to the Bolivarian Trade Bloc in Latin America. They don’t give orders. They don’t threaten countries that won’t obey. They don’t push austerity programs via the IMF. They don’t push free trade treaties with other countries that would wipe out that country’s industry so that Russian capital and corporations can come in and colonize the economy. Russia is an ally of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Laos, and China. All of those are openly socialist or Leftist countries more or less. No imperialist country would ever cooperate with socialist countries. They don’t do that. Imperialist countries try to destroy all socialist or even vaguely progressive countries. That is what imperialism is all about. Russia doesn’t care what kind of economic system you have. You can have any sort of economic system you want from radical capitalism to heavy socialism and Russia will work with you. Imperialist countries always impose economic systems on their vassals, usually a neoliberal or radical capitalist model so that the imperialist country can exploit the vassal state by taking over its industries via investment and corporations, buying its raw materials exports for way too cheap and forcing the vassal to import expensive finished products from the imperialist state, after forcing out of business all of the local industries that engaged in import substitution. Russia doesn’t menace, invade, conquer and colonize countries that did nothing at all to them. Russia does not impose sanctions on other countries. Russia doesn’t not go into other countries and steal billions of their dollars or confiscate all their gold reserves. Russia doesn’t throw its weight around like a bull in a china shop.

Attack, Russia, Attack!

A great piece from the Saker. All along, Saker has been urging that Russia not send forces into Eastern Ukraine because the horrible downside for Russia will be too much. For instance, he argued that if Putin attacked the Ukraine:

  • The US and EU would wildly ramp up sanctions against Russia.
  • They would quickly make what is left of the Ukraine part of NATO and plant NATO bases all over the country. They would probably plant lots of nice missiles all over those bases.
  • A new Cold War would be ramped up by the US with its EU colonies/slaves/servants in the EU going along. Defense spending in the US would ramp back up wildly to Cold War levels. The START treaty would be cancelled and US nuclear bomb production would begin again.
  • A massive propaganda barrage in the US and in its EU vassals would portray Putin as “the new Hitler.” There is no opposition media in the US or the EU, so the entire media apparatus of every state would be used to promote the new Putin = Hitler lie. 100’s of millions of Western sheep would go along because if you blast the same propaganda on every channel and in every paper and magazine for long enough, a lot of people start getting brainwashed. Even smart, sophisticated cosmopolitan Europeans.
  • It would kill all chances for a negotiated peace, which is what Putin really wants.
  • The US and NATO might get involved in the war. Certainly the US is insane enough to do that, but would they really? Who knows?

The problem is that all of that is doomed to occur anyway. No matter what Putin does in Eastern Ukraine, endlessly ramped up sanctions are on the table. Ukraine is already a Western allied state except for Crimea and the West. It is filled with FBI and CIA agents and Blackwater mercenaries. So Ukraine is already a fanatically Russia-hating NATO state no matter what Putin does. No sense worrying about a new Cold War, as no matter what Putin does, the US has already started a new Cold War against him anyway. Bulgaria already tried to step out of line and disobey their US master, but John McCain quickly threatened them, and the Bulgaria, the supplicant slave, quickly scurried back into line. Putin is already the new Hitler and nothing he does from now on is going to change that. The Putin = Hitler propaganda campaign is going full bore with no end in sight. The campaign will continue no matter what Putin does. Obviously, with his inauguration speech, the Ukrainian leader has completely sold out to the USA, who is now giving him marching orders. From now on, he is America’s bitch. The US has outmaneuvered the EU folks who were trying for a negotiated agreement to the crisis. The EU has surrendered that option and now they are all lining up with the US anyway. So a negotiated solution is not going to happen anyway – the Ukrainian leader has just ruled it out. The US is a paper tiger, as Mao said. For all the bleating and bellowing, at the end of the day, America is just another mangy cur barking away in the junkyard. Let the dogs bark all they want to. I really do not think the US is insane enough to jump into a war with Russia. Are they insane enough to do that? Of course they are. But would they? That is really doubtful. So in essence all of the dreaded consequences of a Russian invasion of the Ukraine have already happened anyway even though no Russian soldier has so much as stepped one foot over the border. In other words, Putin has nothing to gain by refusing to fight and leaving his fellow Russians to hang. And he has absolutely nothing to lose by going on. I would advise Putin to go in quickly, seize the major cities, and fight any Ukrainians who resist. The Ukrainians will probably just retreat. After they retreat, put Russian peacekeepers in the Donbass National  Republic just as Russia has done in Transdniestria,  South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Let them declare themselves a separate country like the three states above have done. The three states above all want to join Russia, but Russia does not want to take them in for whatever reason. Virtually no one will recognize the new independent country (almost no one has recognized the new nations above) but it matters not. Just as in the three countries above, do not allow the DNR to join the Russian state. Let them sit in de facto independence. Go! Go! Go Putin go!

Saker rant: Please tell me my worst fears will not come true!

Several Serbian commentators have expressed their concern, if not outright worry, about what is happening right now in Novorossia. I have to admit that I now share that concern. While I am not Serbian myself, some of the longtime readers of that blog know that I have had the opportunity to follow the entire war in Bosnia and Croatia literally minute by minute while working for the UN far away from Yugoslavia, but with daily access to UNPROFOR reports and with the possibility to debrief any UNPROFOR officers including two Force Commanders. For me this war will forever feel ‘raw’ because that was the event which really opened by eyes to the nature of the so-called “free and democratic West” and which, combined with the war in Chechnya, eventually cost me my career. I will thus readily admit that I might be over-reacting. In fact, my brain tells me one thing, but my gut tells me another and as a result I am feeling a very unpleasant but persistent feeling of alarm. It all began when I finally listened to the full inauguration speech of Poroshenko. Up to that moment, I had some hopes that while even though this would be difficult, some kind of reasonable beginning of some kind of peace process could be negotiated with the man. I knew that the guy was an unprincipled prostitute, but it was precisely that “quality” which made me cautiously hopeful: better a rational prostitute that a crazed lunatic, right? Listening to him I understood that in this case Poroshenko was completely bought by the USA and that vague European effort to negotiate something had be summarily tossed out into the trash bin. As I wrote in a previous post, his message to Novorossia and Russia was as simple as it was blunt:

  • No federalization
  • No state status for the Russian language
  • No recognition of the Novorossian political leadership
  • Full and unconditional surrender of the Novorossian Defense Forces
  • Crimea will forever belong to the Ukraine

So this was Poroshenko’s “peace plan”. In fact, Juan was absolutely right: it was a declaration of war combined with an ultimatum demanding a total and unconditional surrender. The fingerprints of Uncle Sam were all over the place. I was appalled by the lunacy of this “peace plan” but soon my disgust turned into horror when I saw the Russian reaction. Instead of walking out from this zoo (Poroshenko got US-style standing ovations at each of the worst of his statement), the Russian ambassador just sat there. The Ministry of Foreign affairs did not comment either. As for the Russian media, it did summarize the event, but most of its attention was focused on the latest kidnapping of yet another two Russian journalists and on the floods around Barnaul in Russia. As for Putin, he announced that the had ordered the FSB to close down the section of the border which had been liberated by the NDF to prevent “the passage of illegal groups”. Not good. Not good at all. And it did remind me of Bosnia. Quick flashback: the Bosnian Serbs had basically won the war and defeated both the Bosnian-Croats and their supporters in Croatia and the Bosnian-Muslims and their supporters from the Muslim world. And yet they had to do that in spite of Milosevic who had agreed to cooperate with the Anglo-Zionist by participating in the Empire’s blockade of the Bosnian-Serb even though he knew full well that the Croats were getting convoys full of weapons, ammo and supplies from Croatia and that the Muslims were getting the same courtesy of the US and Turkish Air Forces. Milosevic sold out his own people against a promise to be allowed to rule over Serbia and Montenegro. That promise was eventually broken (most Anglo-Zionist “promises” are), but at that time he thought he could negotiate with the devil. He then sold out the Serbs of Kosovo (the cradle of Serbia no less than Kiev is the cradle of Russia). That he then died poisoned in the Hague is hardly a consolation to me. Now, as a good friend told me: Putin is not Milosevic and, besides, if Putin caves in now he would be committing political suicide. I agree. Or, should I say, my brain agrees. My gut is in full “red alert” mode and I have been walking with a knot in my stomach since 2 days now. Here is why, First, I don’t think that Putin can simply pretend not to have noticed Poroshenko’s absolutely insane speech. What a candidate says is, indeed, not very relevant, but an inaugural speech is really a totally different matter: it is, by definition, a *program speech* which outlines the goals of the new President. Second, what is happening now in Slaviansk, Kramatorsk and the rest of Novorossia is a humanitarian catastrophe and Putin has promised to prevent that. Third, Russia’s careful and non-provocative stance is gradually being interpreted by the western media as a sign of weakness and this perception might be, in part, the cause for the escalation in both atrocities by the regime in Kiev and of the increasingly arrogant anti-Russian rhetoric of Western politicians. I am most definitely not an admirer of Dugin, but he recently said something which I fully agree with: he said that the future of the planet is being decided in Slaviansk, Kramatorsk, Krasnyi Liman and the rest of Novorossia because the outcome of this battle will decide whether Russia can stand her ground against Anglo-Zionist Empire and thereby initiate the liberation of the rest of the world or whether Russia will basically cave in. I fully agree with him. It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of the planet is being decided right now in Novorossia. This is why I have a knot in my stomach. So far, I am most definitely not seeing the kind of reaction Poroshenko’s speech deserves. And it is not just words, like some say. The day of Poroshenko’s inauguration saw a violent increase in artillery strikes on Novorossia and an attack on a high level Novorussian official. Today – a Ukie artillery shell hit a church were the faithful were assembled for the feast of the Pentecost. Putin has promised the Russian people (in Russia proper and outside) that he would not allow massive atrocities to take place against the population of Novorossia. They are clearly happening now. As for the “new” regime in Kiev, it is every bit as Nazi as the worst Right Sector lunatic would want. Uncle Sam has basically crushed every EU attempt at a negotiated outcome. This is most definitely not Putin’s fault or the fault of the poor people of Novorossiia, but there can me no more hope for a reasonable negotiated settlement. Russia has to act now and used her armed forces to liberate Novorossia. Not to do so would be a betrayal of the Russian people. My brain tells me that Putin will give the order to do so very soon. But the memories of Bosnia haunt me. So far Putin’s track record is excellent, pretty close to perfect. But for all my support for his policies, I never *trusted* him, at least not fully. Honestly, I cannot image what will happen if he does not give the order to move in because if he fails to do so he would be giving up on the entire strategic plan of what I call the Eurasian Sovereignists to “resovereignize” Russia and liberate her from the Anglo-Zionist Empire. I cannot and do not want to believe that 14 years of struggle involving a great deal of dangers and, at times, truly superhuman efforts will now go to waste. And yet I have this knot sitting there inside my gut and that knot gets worse and worse with each lame and vapid statement coming out of the Kremlin. The US is hell-bent on war with Russia and the EU has completely sold out. Nothing new here, the European elites *always* joined in what I call a “Ecumenical anti-Russian coalition” with the SOB of the day against Russia: they did so when the Papacy launched a crusade on Orthodoxy, they did so under Napoleon, they did so during the Crimean War and they did so during the Third Reich. So now that Eurotrash is on the side of Uncle Shmuel (a more accurate name for Uncle Sam, don’t you think?). What else is new? This latest war might not be a “hot” one (although I really would not put anything past the Anglo-Zionist So please tell me that I am wrong and that when push comes to shove Putin will have willpower and courage to stand his ground against what I can only call a satanic coalition of the most evil ideologies and people I can think of. I fully supported Russia’s non-intervention right up until Saturday and Poroshenko’s speech, but that policy has been taken to its limits and, to my immense regret, it has failed, primarily due to the truly unbelievable cowardice and immorality of the European political leaders (may they all rot in hell for selling out their own people the way they did it!). It makes no sense to hope for a last minute miracle: those accursed EU bureaucrats did not find even a atom of dignity or decency inside themselves and as a result a full-scale Cold War v2 in Europe is now inevitable (the Bulgarians pushed their treachery one step beyond and under orders from McCain agreed to stop the work on South Stream). My brain tells me that Putin will give the order. Soon. But I have that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Please tell me that Putin is not Milosevic. Please tell me my worst fears will not come true.

A Trotskyite Gets It Right for Once

The Trots are split on the Ukraine question. Quite a few of them are supporting US imperialism and backing the neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian government. Others urge support for Russia and the eastern separatists. Yet more seem to be saying that neither side should be supported. This last is similar to their line in WW2 – Trotsky held that WW2 was simply a battle of one group of capitalists (the Allies) against another group of capitalists (the Axis). He also also continued to advocate the overthrow of the USSR regime even when it was clearly under threat from the Axis. Thankfully, one of Stalin’s secret agents killed this traitor in Mexico City. Never was an icepick put to better use! Every now and again, a Trot gets it right:

Imperialism is not just a rude word for US foreign policy.

But he follows it with typical Trot nuttiness:

It is a global system of which Moscow is as much a part as Washington.

Um, nope. Russia is not an imperialist country, and it is not part of the US imperial project. Then he revisits it with a reprise of Trotsky’s fence-sitting in the early days of the war:

Or should we have taken sides in the Valentine’s Day massacre and supported the North Side gang against Al Capone in the name of a multi-centric underworld?

But this line was a stroke of genius. I will bold it below just to highlight how important it is to realize this: Imperialism is not just a rude word for US foreign policy. Oh yeah! Nail, meet hammer.

Russia Says Nyet to the New World Order

Great article from the Saker on a very curious admission by agents of US imperialism on why they are so furious about Russia’s refusal to go along with the US imperial project. The reference below the Yeltsin period during which Russia was a colony of the US, Europe and Tel Aviv and was drained of nearly all of its public assets by Russia-hating oligarchs, with proceeds going to banks in London, Tel Aviv and New York. Medvedev was basically a traitor, a Russian neoliberal in bed with the US and Europe. No wonder such praise was showered on him. Since 2012, a group of Russian patriots or Russian nationalists led by Vladimir Putin has been in control with the goal to put the interests of Russia first and foremost. US imperialism generally hates all nationalist regimes in its imperial colonies. Nationalist regimes are usually called Leftist or Communist and then attacked in various ways, typically with violent coups such as the one that just hit the Ukraine. After the coup, nation sellers, sold out to US capital, are put back in charge and lovers of the homeland are sidelined. Whatever Putin’s faults are, at least he is a Russian patriot. And surely it is for that flaw if for no other that he has earned the contempt of the West. How dare he put his country first! Putin represents a “slave rebellion” in the would-be imperial hinterlands of Empire.

Very interesting admission by a senior US diplomat: Russia “betrayed” the NWO

I was just watching Alain Soral’s latest video when I heard him offer a very interesting explanation for why the Anglo-Zionist Empire hates Putin so much. The article Soral quotes is entitled The End of the New World Order and it has been written by Christopher R. Hill, “former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, was US Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, a US special envoy for Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and the chief US negotiator with North Korea from 2005-2009”, i.e. a big shot in the US imperial nomenklatura. Here is what Hill writes:

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and ongoing intimidation of Ukraine appears to mean the end of a 25-year period whose hallmark was an effort to bring Russia into greater alignment with Euro-Atlantic goals and traditions. Now the question is: What comes next? (…) [the] new world order held for almost 25 years. Except for Russia’s brief war with Georgia in August 2008 (a conflict generally seen as instigated by reckless Georgian leadership), Russia’s acquiescence and commitment to the “new world order,” however problematic, was one of the great accomplishments of the post-Cold War era. Even Russia’s reluctance to support concerted Western action, such as in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990’s, was based on arguments that could be heard in other European countries. Russian democracy certainly had its share of flaws, but that hardly made it unique among post-communist countries. (…) Americans do need to understand the challenge they are facing from a Russia that no longer seems interested in what the West has been offering for the last 25 years: special status with NATO, a privileged relationship with the European Union, and partnership in international diplomatic endeavor.

Bingo! For all the wrong reasons (the usual crap about a resurgent and revanchist Russian Empire), Hill is absolutely right: Russia has absolutely zero interest in the “Western project”. Yup! From 1991 (and really even before that) to 1999 Russia was an imperial colony run by a collection of mostly Jewish oligarchs who hated Russia and who literally stole everything they could. From 1999 to 2012 Putin and his “Eurasian Sovereignists” had to share power with Medvedev’s “Atlantic Integrationists” (for the meaning of these terms see here and here) but since 2012 the former have pretty much seized full control of the Russian state. Hence the apparent change in course since 2012 and the West’s hysterical reaction of outrage, impotent frustration and barely contained hatred for the men whom they see as the number one enemy of the NWO on the planet and in that assessment they are actually absolutely correct, if late. Yes, today Russia has fundamentally turned away from the NWO and purged most, if not all, of the pro-NWO elite in Moscow. The future of Russia is in Asia and in the great Russian North and there is nothing the Anglo-Zionist Empire can do about that.

Napoleon Bonaparte, Great Man?

Here we deal with yet another conqueror, prefiguring Woodrow Wilson by a century and the Wilsonian neocons by 200 years. Napoleon was actually doing Europe a favor by conquering it, taking out one ancien regime after another and replacing them with modern states. One gets tired of the accolades for this man who was, like Alexander, yet another conquering tyrant. First he betrayed the ideals of newly birthed Republic by installing himself as dictator. The he crowned himself King, er, Emperor, blessed by none other than the Pope himself. This was not the first time a sovereign had crowned himself. Napoleon’s excuse was that he did not want any arguments among the court elite about who would presume to hand him the crown in the name of the people … Of course, the self-crowning was a matter of Napoleon asserting his political independence, underlining how much he owed his elevation not to the pope but to himself and himself alone. In the age-old conflict between the spiritual and the temporal, Napoleon was vigorously asserting the supremacy of the temporal. This sent not only a political but a personal message. Soon after, he trampled Europe, making the world safe for demogogueracy, the beginning of a cycle: Destroy Europe -> Defeat -> Exile -> Try again -> Defeated again -> Exiled yet again. Not exactly a winning formula! In 1812, he made the error, always fateful to any conqueror including Hitler 130 years later, of trying to conquer Mother Russia. He ran into the same problem that all would-be Russia conquerors run up against: that nasty beast called the Russian winter. His army was nearly destroyed in the process: When one takes into account the Russian military losses – according to one estimate, as many as 300,000 dead – one an reasonably assert that up to one million people died between the end of July 1812, when the expedition into Russia was launched, and February 1813, with the remnants of the army continuing to die from wounds, disease, malnutrition and exhaustion. Of the 27,000 Italian troops only 1,000 made it back. Of the 25,500 Saxon soldiers that went into Russia, 6,000 came back alive. Looking at figures for individual regiments sometimes tells an even bleaker story. Raymond de Montesquiou-Fezensac had 3,000 men under his command. Of those 200 came back with him and another 100 were eventually returned from prison – that is, nine-tenths of his effectives were dead or missing. Italians: 9 Montesquiou-Fezensac’s regiment: 9 Saxons: 7 It would be hard to imagine a worse defeat. Of course, Russia herself was devastated with 300,000 dead. Russia is always willing to sacrifice for the Motherland – see the 27 million lost in WW2. In the entire campaign, 1 million men died for, frankly, nothing at all. Hmmm, I just did imagine a worse defeat than the Russian campaign. It was called Waterloo. The astonishing thing about Waterloo is not so much that Napoleon lost the battle as his reaction to it. In all, 55,000-60,000 men were killed and wounded during that day in the space of a few square kilometres, along with 10,000 horses. But Napoleon still retained control over about 117,000 men in the north, yet he did not attempt to rally his troops, nor continue the fight and bring the battle to the enemy at another point. Are you kidding? Napoleon suffered 57,000 casualties and lost 10,000 horses in a single day in an area whose perimeter could probably be strolled by a man in an hour. That’s one Hell of a horrific defeat. Followed by Napoleon’s curious frozen inaction with his remaining troops sequestered to the north. Waterloo along with the Russia campaign turns received knowledge about Napoleon on its head. The great militarist was also a terrible general at least some of the time. The usual exile followed this, across the seas this time. Europe, torn to a hundred anarchic bits, tried to patch itself together from the devastation and entropy resulting from by one man’s egomania. Napoleon Bonaparte, great man? Why? All quotes from Philip Dwyer, Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power (2013)

Does Radical Capitalism Work Anywhere?

Capitalist Caucasian wrote:

Whites thrive under capitalism. Asians thrive under both, and blacks cannot thrive on any economic system, but totalitarian, authoritarian communism does the job of not letting a black society burn to shit. Like black Muslims, for example. Or the fact that some of the smartest, well behaved nigs are Nation of Islam members.

Not really true. Look at the 19th Century White world in the beginnings of industrialization and tell me things were thriving. Or the Potato Famine. Look at how the gangster capitalists have looted the Ukraine since 1991. Latvia went radical free market and the economy collapsed worse than the Depression and all that remains is a hollowed out shell. Estonia lies in ruins. Greece and maybe Ireland are disaster areas. Europe was feudal until WW1, and Eastern Europe was feudal until WW2. The life expectancy in capitalist Albania in 1949 was 32 years. With the return to capitalism in Russia, there was an economic crash three times worse than the Great Depression, life expectancy collapsed, gangsters inside and outside the country stripped the place bare, and 15 million people died, more than Stalin killed. Radical capitalists came to power in Chile and Argentina, two White countries, ran the economies into the ground and murdered 15,000 people in Chile and 30,000 in Argentina. Capitalists caused all of these messes. Whites don’t do so great under radical capitalism either. Nobody does. The thriving White world you are talking about is mostly not run by Libertarian neoclassical free marketeers. Most of those countries are run by social democrats who call themselves socialists and are members of the Socialist International. Asians do well under well under capitalism? In 1949, China was ruined by war and warlords, the nation was under feudal rule, and life expectancy was 32 years. Not sure which Asians you are talking about? Filipinos and Indonesians do not seem to be doing well under radical capitalism. The only real hardcore free market Asian states are Hong Kong and Singapore. All the rest are either socialist to some degree or becoming that way. Blacks do pretty well under both Islam and Communism. At the very least, the resulting societies are orderly, well-behaved, calm and have little crime and chaos. Sometimes I think Black people need the “stern father” approach.

"New Cold War," Same Old Imperialism

This guy is a Trotskyite, but I often agree with his analysis of capitalism and US imperialism, which is 10 First of all, he is correct that the US was an imperialist country long before the Cold War and even before there was a Soviet Union. The Monroe Doctrine, still in effect today, was an imperialist policy. The US was actually a formal imperialist power around the turn on the century, and in a way, it still is now as the US retains colonies and refuses to free them as the UN has demanded. Everything else he says is also right on.

The New “Cold War” Is The Same Old U.S. Imperialist War

by Steven Argue

Cartoon depicting the brutal and murderous U.S. colonization of the Philippines long before there was a Soviet Union. As many in the U.S. today declare that Russian opposition to U.S. aggression in Ukraine and Syria are indicators of a new “cold war”, it is important to remember what the so-called “Cold War” was in the first place during the time of the USSR. Before the so-called “war on terror” there was the Persian Gulf War, and before there even was a Soviet Union there was “the war to end all wars”, “the white man’s burden”, and “manifest destiny”. All of these were / are to justify one of the most bloodthirsty imperialist systems that has ever existed on the face of the Earth, that of U.S. imperialism. The fact that the U.S. used the existence of the Soviet Union to justify their blood thirsty imperialist wars, coups, and dictatorships in places like Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, etc. simply had nothing to do with any reality of an actual war between the USSR of the time and the USA. The so-called “cold war” was nothing but a hot U.S. imperialist war against the people of the world, a war that continues under different names. Today, as usual, the USA is on a drive to overthrow every independent nation in the world. This has continued under Obama with his overthrow of elected governments of Ukraine and Honduras, putting a death squad government in power in Honduras and a murderous fascist junta in power in Kiev that includes open neo-Nazis who hate Ukraine’s national minorities, including Russians. Likewise, Obama waged a bombing and proxy war in Libya that overthrew that country’s government, a government that committed the crime of spending some its oil money on providing everyone with free housing, education, and health care. This gave the Libyan people a far higher life expectancy than other oil rich countries in Africa ruled by U.S. backed dictators. Likewise, the United States is currently trying to overthrow the elected capitalist government of Venezuela for similar “crimes” of disrupting total capitalist profit by spending oil money on the people. In Libya, the imperialists brought to power genocidal religious fanatics who committed ethnic cleansing against Black Africans, commits rampant torture and murder, and is allowing the imperialist oil companies to rob Libya of its natural resources unhindered by pesky spending on human needs. Likewise in Syria, the United States is giving weapons to genocidal religious fanatics that have slaughtered religious and ethnic minorities. Russia is in the cross-hairs of U.S. imperialism today, in part for strongly opposing U.S. imperialist intervention in Syria and Ukraine. Russia itself today is a weak capitalist country, but for the U.S. imperialists, it is not weak enough. An important adviser to the Obama administration is Brzezinski whose plans for Russia include economic isolation, regime change, and then breaking Russia into three pieces. Russia itself is not an imperialist power in any Marxist sense. Russia has more foreign direct investment coming into the country than going out. Likewise, Ukraine has had very little foreign direct investment from Russia and very large amounts coming in from the EU. U.S. and EU imperialist strategy in the region has been to force a government on Ukraine that carries out IMF austerity and isolates Russia. They got this with the February coup along with a government that is likely to be friendly to imperialist exploitation of gas reserves through environmentally devastating fracking in western Ukraine. Russia, on the other hand, is merely trying to maintain trading partners as the United States tries to isolate it and is not trying to dictate what sort of economies and austerity countries around them maintain. While United States imperialist policy is one of forcing austerity and privatization on countries, Russia has been equally capable of trading with countries that maintain planned socialist economies, to the benefit of the working class, like the planned socialist economy of Belarus. Meanwhile, such countries, like Belarus and Cuba, are under U.S.economic blockade because their planned socialist economies and independent governments prevent large amounts of foreign imperialist exploitation. To the extent that Russia is now providing a small counterweight to blood thirsty and rapacious U.S. imperialism, the imperialists are building up NATO forces, pouring on lies similar to Bush’s lies of weapons of mass destruction, and speaking as if the so-called “cold war””is back. Yet, then and now, the so-called “cold war” has never been anything but a hot U.S. imperialist war against the people of the world. – Steven Argue of the Revolutionary Tendency

"Calling Things by Their Proper Names in the Ukraine"

Another great post from The Saker! As you can see below, this is the actual truth of the situation. It is utterly at odds with the propaganda lies reported by the US and the West, who have constructed their own alternate reality of what is going on. Read up to free your mind of US media brainwash!

Calling Things by Their Proper Names in the Ukraine

Life often seems like one long never ending Asch conformity experiment: even when there is overwhelming evidence that something is “A”, the media, and those zombified by it, confidently state “non-A”. That this kind of doublethink is also applied to the conflict in the Ukraine should surprise nobody, but it is still important to “call a stone and stone” and to give a clear and unambiguous characterization of what has happened so far and what is about to happen this Sunday. So today I want to re-state the obvious using the most direct and unambiguous language possible. My hope is to contribute to wake up at least one comatose person out there by calling things by their proper names. So far we have this: a thoroughly corrupt but democratically elected President (Yanukovich) was overthrown in an armed coup by (lavishly – 5 billion dollars) paid agents of a foreign power. The new regime is composed exclusively either of corrupt oligarchs (like Iatseniuk) or neo-Nazis (like Parubii). Regardless, this regime has received the full and unconditional support of the US/EU and all those client-states worldwide which depend on them. The junta in power has unleashed a sustained campaign of terror against all those who dare to oppose it, including civilians (Odessa and Mariupol massacres) and their own armed forces (massacres near Volnovakha yesterday and near Lisichansk today). Since the regular police is now disbanded and since the regular armed forces are clearly unwilling to execute the criminal orders of this illegal junta, the sole power basis of this unelected regime are death squads like the “Donbass special battalion”. Furthermore, while the US/EU have accused Russia of being behind all the troubles, not a single Russian spy, agent or saboteur has been produced in support of that thesis. In fact, not only has Russia not intervened in the Donbass, Putin has officially asked the people there to delay their referendum, he has withdrawn Russian forces from the border and he has even ordered Russian forces to move out of their regular bases if they were anywhere near the border. At every single step of this crisis Russia has offered to negotiate with the US, the EU and even the junta. All refused except for the short lived February 21 agreement which the foreign agents broke the next day only to be immediately recognized by the US and EU as a legitimate government. Not a single person was killed or seriously wounded during the Russian military operation in the Crimea. In contrast, the junta has now used machine guns, mortars, artillery, combat helicopters and combat aircraft against entire cities of the Donbass. While the Russian social media is full of expressions of sympathy and compassion for those killed in the Ukraine, the Ukrainian social media is awash with hateful racist slurs about what they call the “colorads” (a kind of insect with the same colors as those on the Saint George ribbon). Other anti-Russians slurs used are “Moskal” and “Titushki”. Speaking of which, Iulia Timoshenko intercepted venting her hatred at the Russians in a telephone conversations in which she said that “these accursed Moskals should be executed with nuclear weapons”. And now, in the middle of what can only be called a civil war, this regime of racist corrupt and bloodthirsty freaks will organize “Presidential elections” after two of the main opposition parties (Regions and Communists) had their offices firebombed, their representatives attacked, their deputies expelled from the rump Parliament and their supporters burned alive, shot, stabbed, clubbed to death, kidnap and tortured. And, no doubt, the Anglo-Zionists will declare these elections free and fair. The above is not tragic or otherwise “disturbing”. It is obscene beyond words! So let’s state is clearly: the “West” is supporting a Nazi farce which will only result in more blood and lost lives. The second thing which needs to be stated with equal clarity is this: whatever regime is declared elected on Sunday (or in three weeks in case of a second round) it will have zero legitimacy and it will no be viable. The third thing which everybody is desperately trying to pretend not to see is this: the Ukraine as a unitary country is gone and will never come back. The West has been working on this ugly experiment since the late 16th century and its objectives have not changed: to create an anti-Russian and anti-Orthodox “Ukraine” controlled by the Vatican and the Western plutocracy. So while the the US has invested 5 billion dollars into “democratizing” the Ukraine, the West has spent much more during FOUR CENTURIES to try to cripple Russia and subjugate its people. This is why the “West” is so adamant and willing to risk it all to prevent this 400 year old project from coming tumbling down. And yet it is amazing that anybody sane could have seriously believed that this obscene alliance of ex-Communists (Farion), Jewish oligarchs (Kolomoiskii), neo-Nazis (Iarosh), Latin Uniats (Tiagnibok) and racist thugs (Parubii) would ever succeed in building something. No, all that people like these can do is hate, destroy, kill, lie, torture and terrorize. There is no “creative capacity” in folks like Parubii, Liashko, Turchinov or Tiagnibok. There is only the characteristic Satanic hatred for light, for peace, for truth, for freedom and for love. And, frankly, I believe that the same is true for those who lovingly nurtured them for years and now unconditionally support them: Obama, McCain, Nuland of course, but also Hollade, Merkel, Hague, Ashton and the rest of them Eurobureaucrats. So there. I did it. I said it in plain language, I bolded out the parts I wanted to stress and even added some red color to what I consider the most important. Childish? Maybe. Am I venting? Yes, of course! What is wrong about venting when somebody sees an abomination being committed by a few evil men while the rest of mankind stands by by in total, deafening, silence? Of course, this post is not very academic or objective. So what!? François Rabelais once wrote “Science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’âme” (“Science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul”). When faced with such blatant evil supported by such blatant lies it is sometimes appropriate to set science aside for a while and let one’s conscience speak out. I want to conclude this post with these beautiful words of Yehuda Bower who encapsulate the entire philosophy of this blog: Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. And above all, Thou shalt not be a bystander This is also my intention. The Saker

Ukraine mini-SITREP May 22th, 00:14 UTC: "Ukie Attack Appears Imminent" (UPDATED!)

This is looking pretty bad of course. Looks like there might be a major offensive on a few towns in the Eastern area coming very soon. The truth is that the Ukrainian army doesn’t even want to fight. So they had to round up the National Guard which is mostly composed of Uniates from Galicia, who make up the bulk of the Maidan activists, the Ukrainian nationalists and the fascists. There are also Right Sector thugs and the militias of various oligarchs, which are also made up of thugs. The problem with the thugs is that they are probably not very good soldiers. Only the thugs and the militias are being supplied by the junta because those are the only forces that are reliable. The Ukrainian army troops are not being resupplied. The regularly complain that they are out of food. They beg food from civilians in the Eastern areas and the civilians regularly come out to supply them with food. How pitiful is that! The US aid a huge supply of MRE’s to the regime to feed their troop but these wonderful freedom fighters who overthrew a regime accused of corruption sold every one of the MRE’s on the Internet and pocketed the money. The “corruption” cry never made sense because the people who replaced the overthrown government were just as corrupt as he was – in fact, they were even worse. This horrible Yulia Timoshenko woman, darling of the US, is a wonderful democratic freedom fighter only if you think Eva Peron was the same. She is an oligarch, a serious criminal, and she owns a vast mansion on a huge estate just like all the oligarchs do. She kills people, that is, she has people killed. She has had at least one man killed, and in looks like she actually has had several people killed. This is America’s heroine! GRAD’s are Russian missile launchers, a pretty nasty weapon, like a super mortar. I do not know what an OTR-21 missile is but it sounds pretty nasty. The guidance systems for these things have always been run out of Russia and if so, this weapon is not going to be of much use to the Ukies because the Russians will just mess with it so the missiles don’t work. Perhaps they have a Western guidance system now. If this attack goes down as they say it will, it will be quite nasty. I have heard of Slaviansk and Kramatorsk a lot but I have never heard of Krasnyi Liman. Slaviansk and Kramatorsk are close to each other and Krasnyi Liman may well be in the same area. There have been quite a few casualties in the East, completely unreported by the Western media. The accuracy of these reports is not known, but we have gotten reports from civilians out of the East that there have been many casualties of citizens and fighters in the East, possibly in the hundreds. The source was complaining the the Ukies were not letting them bury their dead.

Ukraine mini-SITREP May 22th, 00:14 UTC/Zulu: “Ukie attack appears imminent” (UPDATED!)

I am getting a lot of emails warning me that a massive assault seems imminent in the Slaviansk – Kramatorsk – Krasnyi Liman area. The local commander, Strelkov, has posted a warning about this and RT is also echoing the same concern. I am also getting warnings from contacts in the Ukraine. The Ukies are not too keen in fighting at night so I expect that attack to begin tomorrow morning, in roughly five hours. If this attack beings, let’s all try to gather information about what is happening. I will try to keep you posted and please feel free to post any information you come across. In particular, since I do not fellow social media networks (FB, Twitter, etc.) at all, I would ask those of you who do to keep us informed if you see something interesting. Many thanks and kind regards, The Saker UPDATE: just got this from a contact: Grads are on the move as of 3 hours ago, confirmed, destination unknown. Ukes are shooting off and on at civilian targets as of an hour ago, confirmed, suburbs of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, casualties if any unknown. Unconfirmed reports say a bridge in or near Lugansk city has been dropped on a major road to the city, waiting more info on that report. Reliable source says OTR-21 missiles are also on the move, destination unknown, direction unknown. I do not know if the navigation systems for these devices have been changed to west system or if they are still tied to the system in Russia. Scattered fighting around Slavyansk area at this time, confirmed.

Ukraine mini-SITREP May 21th, 20:42 UTC

Let me explain a bit about the below. Apparently two sets of Russian journalists were captured in Eastern Ukraine by the US-supported putschist forces. One group was badly beaten up and then photographed with their heads on the group with guns pointing at them. Now this sick State Department bitch, Jen Psaki, says that both that group of Russian reporters and another group detained the other day were apparently spies! Huh?! They were reporters, come on! Nothing has been heard from either group as the first group is still incommunicado. Obviously the regime is really trying its best to provoke a Russian armed military response for whatever reasons. As they take their orders from the US Empire, that then means that the US is absolutely adamant about trying force Russia into a military response in the East for whatever bizarre reasons. If Russia goes into the East, expect the propaganda to go crazy. Oleg Tsarev is an opposition politician with the Party of Regions. He formerly served in Parliament until he took leave due to constant threats. A major backer of the regime, Kolomoisky, recently threatened him via phone call in a very odd way, saying that they had uncovered a plot to have him killed for $1 million, and he best leave the country. There was no plot to have him killed – instead, Kolomoisky was threatening Tsarev’s life. Now mysterious forces have burned Tsarev’s house to the ground. Previously, his neighbor’s house had been burned to the ground by accident. The reference to Psaki talking about a fire is a reminder to the US response to the burning deaths of a large number of unarmed opposition protesters by US-supported fascist thugs in the Labor Hall in Odessa. The US media acted as if they fire had just mysteriously taken place of its own accord, or else that the protesters had set the building on fire themselves. The media also managed to somehow blame Russia for the whole mess, saying that the protesters were actually armed Russian agents. Actually, everyone was from Odessa, none of them were either armed nor Russians and they did not set themselves on fire of course. The disgusting bombing of the Belgrade TV station during the Kosovo War by the US is then referenced. The US also bombed the offices of Al Jazeera in Kabul and in Baghdad during the invasions of both countries. Obviously the US makes a habit out of targeting journalists reporting for the other side.

Ukraine mini-SITREP May 21th, 20:42 UTC

It’s not really news, but it still amazes me: for two days in a row no Jen Psaki, speaking for the regime in Washington, has declared that the USA has doubts about the real affiliation of the Russian journalists working for the Russian new outlet LifeNews. Even though the professional record of these journalist is in the public domain and very well know (they have worked for many years including abroad), Mrs Psaki believes it is possible that there were spies. Ditto for the reporters of Russia Today which are still being held incommunicado.

This is about how the corporate media is reporting things.
This is about how the corporate media is reporting things.
Also in the news, the house of Oleg Tsarev has finally been burned. I say finally, because: 1) The oligarch-mobster Kolomoisky had promised that to Tsarev 2) Tsarev had predicted that too 3) The house next to Tsarev had already been torched by mistake I suppose that Mrs Psaki will speak of a “natural fire”, or a “spontaneous combustion” or even an “operation of the Russian special forces” and threaten Russia with more sanctions.
State Department spokespersons are also the most shameless liars, and Psaki is no exception.
State Department spokespersons are also the most shameless liars, and Psaki is no exception.
As for the Western media, it couldn’t care less. Just like when Uncle Sam bombed the TV station in Belgrade. After all, anybody opposing the Anglo-Zionist Empire is a) a propagandist and b) subhuman. Kind regards, The Saker

Ukraine SITREP May 20th, 16:28 UTC: Deliberate Chaos

Via the fantastic Vineyard of the Saker blog. He does regular updates on the situation in the Ukraine. This report is 10

Ukraine SITREP May 20th, 16:28 UTC/Zulu: deliberate chaos

I think that we can all agree that the situation in the Ukraine is one of total chaos.

  • Renat Akhmetov, the local oligarch-mobster, had declared that his companies will go on a “warning strike” for 3 hours per day because Akhmetov was angered that the authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) had taken over the control of the railways which resulted in losses for his company.

  • One of the officials of the DRP reacted to Akhmetov’s threat by declaring that the DRP authorities have begun the process of nationalization of the companies located on the territory of the DRP, in other words, Akhmetov’s holdings.

  • The military forces of the neo-Nazi junta have begun shelling several cities in the eastern Ukraine destroying several buildings

  • The military commander of the DRP forces, Igor Strelkov, has made a poignant and blunt appeal for a much bigger mobilization of men, especially officers, in the volunteer forces defending the DRP against the junta’s military.

  • Ukrainian death-squads have, yet again, kidnapped a team of Russian reporters, this time of the TV station LifeNews, accusing them of being the “information-component” of a terrorist movement.

  • The Russian government has indicated that the military forces which had been on maneuvers had returned to their bases. NATO denied that.

  • The Russian military has completed the building a network of pipelines which are now fully supplying Crimea with fresh water.

  • The leader of the Ukie Nazis, Iarosh, has announced that if he is elected he would launched a guerrilla war in Crimea.

So what is really going on? I think that while it is premature to make grand conclusions and predictions, we can begin by agreeing on a number of basic facts. First, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the junta in Kiev is clearly provoking Moscow in every possible way. If one could maybe see some marginal and far-fetched military rationale for the kind of random artillery strikes the Ukies are unleashing on Slavianks, Kramatorsk and other cities, the arrest of the LifeNews news-crew makes no sense at all. They were put on their knees, beat up, held with their faces to the ground – all on video which was then “leaked” to Youtube as if the death squads were provoking the Kremlin with a “what are you gonna do about it?” message/ Second, I believe that the appointment of Biden’s son to the board of directors of the main Ukie energy company whose concessions are all in the eastern Ukraine is also a way of further provoking the Kremlin. So why would the junta do all this? First, I think that it is reasonable to accept as an axiom that the freaks in Kiev don’t “decide” anything at all. They just take orders from the USA and execute them. We saw that clearly during Biden’s recent trip to Kiev when he had a meeting with the junta’s “government” which he – Biden – “chaired” sitting at the head of the table (yet another deliberate in-your-face provocation). Second, the US knows that the eastern Ukraine is lost, and they are absolutely correct. Even if we fully believe what Strelkov says (more about that later), there is no doubt that the vast majority of the folks in the Donbass hate the neo-Nazi freaks in Kiev and that they do not want a common future with the rabid Galicians from the western Ukraine. So if plan ‘A’ was to seize all of the Ukraine, put a pro-US neo-Nazi and hysterically Russophobic regime in power, and take over Crimea for the US/NATO, plan ‘B’ is simpler: provoke Russia into a military intervention in the eastern Ukraine. While the Russian military could easily take under control all of the Donbass and even all the lands to the Dniepr river as the proverbial hot knife through butter, the political benefits for the Anglo-Zionist Empire would be immense: 1) A new Cold War with Russia justifying the existence of NATO. 2) Cutting-off Russia from the EU market (including energy). 3) Blaming Russia for the Ukie economic collapse. 4) Justifying a major surge in US/EU military budgets to “protect Europe”. 5) Isolating Russia internationally, especially at the UN. 6) Declare Putin a “new Hitler” (what else?) and allocate billions for regime change in Russia. 7) Use the crisis to bring Europe to heel to the Anglo-Zionist “master” 8) Impose Iran-like sanctions on Russia to try to hurt it economically 9) Justify a US/NATO move into western Ukraine and the creation of a new Korean-style demarcation line along the Dniepr with the free and civilized “West” on one side, and the “freedom hating and imperialist dictatorial Russian Asiatic hordes” on the other. 10)Blame the EU economic collapse on the ‘Russian threat’ I would argue that for the Anglo-Zionists plan ‘B’ is almost better than plan ‘A’. For one thing, plan ‘B’ makes it possible to blame Russia for anything and everything conceivable on Russia. We have already seen this tendency in the absolutely ludicrous warning that should the Presidential elections next Sunday in the Ukraine fail – Russia would be sanctioned for it. Next I propose to slap some major sanctions on Russia if there is an earthquake in San Fransisco or if there are riots in Paraguay… Also, while plan ‘A’ was really a very long shot, plan ‘B’ is already working. Let me give you an example: the Russian media. For those who cannot follow the Russian media, especially the Russian TV, it is hard to image the degree of openly expressed *rage* at the developments in the Ukraine. Some folks who are naturally inclined to see the “hand of CIA” in everything are even arguing that the “US-controlled” Russian media has been tasked by Langley to stir up Russian public opinion to such a degree as to force Putin to agree to an intervention in the Ukraine. According to this thesis, if Putin does not order a Russian military intervention, he will face a major crisis and his popularity will crumble under the waves of outrage from the Russian population. This is a neat and elegant theory. It is also wrong (thank God!). The fact is that Putin’s popularity has soared over his handling over the Ukrainian crisis as shown by the screenshot of a recent TV report.

January 2014 – May 2014

Here we are dealing with a huge cultural difference between Russians and western people, especially Anglos: Russians are *very* weary of war. They will accept it and they will even accept to die in a war, but only one in which the moral issue is really clear-cut like during the 2nd Chechen war, 08.08.08 or the Russian intervention in Crimea. In all three of these cases the first and foremost consideration to support or oppose the Russian military intervention was a *moral* one. While public opinion is gradually shifting towards a support for a Russian military intervention in the Ukraine (most public opinion polls suggest that Russian would back one), the military itself and even the Kremlin are weary of falling into the Anglo-Zionist trap of plan ‘B’. Emotions are strong, but emotions should not decide of war and peace issues. In the 2nd Chechen war, in 08.08.08 and in Crimea emotions were sky-high, but the decision to use military force was taken on pragmatic, rational and carefully measured reasons, not just an surge of outrage. As I said it many times, when threatened, Russians to not get angry, they concentrate. This is what is happening now. Coming back to the media, another very interesting phenomenon is taking place: high visibility Russian Jews are clearly in the lead of the movement to take action (though not necessarily a military one) against the Junta. Very well-known Jewish personalities like Vladimir Soloviev, Alexander Gordon, Roman Ratner (current head of the Alia battalion, an Israeli special forces battalion compose of Russian Jews), Avigdor Eskin and many others. While rabid Jew-haters will dismiss this under the usual list of pretexts having to do with Jewish hypocrisy, playing both sides, etc. I personally believe that this is truly an expression of the loathing that Russian Jews have for Ukrainian neo-Nazis. I would add that it is pretty clear to me that most Russian nationalists also believe in the sincerity of these Jews and welcome them in a struggle against a common enemy. Does that mean that from now on there will be a long and uninterrupted “love fest” between Russian and Jewish patriots? Most definitely not. The list of outstanding issues of very strong disagreement and even opposition is huge, but this is an interesting “temporary cease-fire” if you want, a typically Russian (and Jewish!) way of keeping priorities straight and agreeing to a temporary tactical alliance against a common foe. Furthermore, there are a lot of Russian Jews who have always felt a sincere and strong love for Russia and the Russian people (if only because a lot of them came from mixed marriages) and who welcome the opportunity to not have to chose between both sides and to be both patriotic Jews and patriotic Russians. I know, to some this sill sound extremely naive. But I personally have known many such Russian Jews, in Israel, Europe and Russia, who really did have a double-loyalty, but one which openly *added* two sincerely loyalties. Of course, some felt more Jewish than Russian, but others felt more Russian than Jewish. These matters are subtle and complex, not as black and white as some knee-jerk Jew-haters would want them to be. As the Russian expressions goes “the East is a subtle realm” and both Russians and Jews are first and foremost folks of the East, not of the West. Coming back to what I call the Anglo-Zionist plan ‘B’, we now can understand the Russian stance: not to be pulled in or, if that is impossible, to be pulled in as last as possible. Why? For a few basic reasons: 1) To have as clear-cut a moral case as possible. 2) To give time to world public opinion to realize that it is being lied to by the western corporate media (that already seems to be taking place, if slowly). 3) To maximize the support for such an intervention in the eastern Ukraine. 4) Because time is very much on the Russian side, to give every opportunity to the junta freaks to further commit blunders. 5) Because a victory of the DRP forces is still possible At this point I want to get the the military balance on the ground in the Donbass. To sum things up. A very large Ukrainian force is currently deployed in the eastern Ukraine. It is opposed by a very small force of volunteers. There are two reasons why this conflict has not been settled in 24 hours. First, the vast majority of the Ukrainian military personnel does not want to fight. Second, the threat of a Russian military intervention is real and, I would add, has nothing to do with the forces allegedly deployed at the Russian-Ukrainian border. Let me explain this as the corporate media is completely missing this. Let me give you an example of what could happen. Let’s us assume that a few multiple-rocket launcher batteries around, say, Slaviansk suddenly decided to get serious and open up with a sustained artillery barrage similar to the one the Georgians unleashed on Tskhinval in the first hours of the 08.08.08 war. In response to that, Russia would not need to send armor and troops across the border. Putin could order missile and air-strikes which could literally obliterate the offending Ukrainian artillery units in a matter of *minutes* (one single Iskander missile armed with a fragmentation or fuel-air explosive warhead could do the job!). Unlike the western reporters (which is a misnomer, they should be called “parroters” because they parrot the government lies), the Ukrainian military commanders all fully realize that they are all very much within reach of enough Russian firepower to send them all the a better world in minutes. Would you want to obey orders to shell Slaviansk while knowing that there is a bulls-eye painted on our exact position by many Iskander missile operators and that if the Russians fire it, you will neither see, nor hear it coming (not even on radar)? All the reports on the ground concur to say that while the various Ukrainian death squads (the “National Guard”, the Dniepr and Dniester battalions, the various oligarch-owned death squads, etc.) are extremely hostile and even shoot civilians for fun, the Ukrainian military is mostly shy or even pretty friendly to the locals. Here is what is happening really: Ukrainian death squads are far more busy dealing with the Ukrainian military than with the Donbass forces. For one thing, this is easier and safer for them (like all death squads, they are staffed with lunatics, perverts and cowards): why risk your life fighting some pretty motivated folks when you can instead bully regular military commanders to do the fighting for you? As for the Ukrainians, they cannot openly defy these orders, but they can make darn sure that they are minimally executed. Furthermore, by all accounts, the death squads get all the support while the regular military forces are under or not paid at all, they are under fed, under equipped, they have little or not medical support and the logistics are plain horrible. In fact, Igor Strelkov admits this in his address. His concern is that with the gradual escalation the already small forces of volunteers is having to shoulder am immense effort while hundred of thousands of men, including military trained ones, are sitting at home and sipping beer. Is that really true? I believe that this is indeed very true. There are many reasons for this state of affairs. To begin, an entire generation of Ukrainians have been raised in abject passivity. “Work, shut up and mind your business while we fleece you” was the order of the day under the various oligarch-controlled regimes of the “independent Ukraine”. Second, there are not one or two but at least THREE local powers in the Donbass right now: the local mobsters, the Kiev junta and the local resistance. This creates a huge confusion were many people are both afraid and do not want to get burned. Third, most people clearly that Russia will solve the problem for them and think “we will vote for sovereignty, and the Russians will come to liberate us sooner or later”. And never forget that that there are death squads operating all over the Ukraine right now. The purpose of massacres like the one in Odessa or Mariupol is to terrify the locals by showing how ruthless and murderous you are and it works (death squads are of the most time honored traditions of the Empire!). So it is all well to sit in the safety of my house in sunny Florida and wish that the folks in the Donbass would take up arms, except for my wife and family are not threatened. My house will (probably) not get assaulted at night by man in black, and I am unlikely to be disappeared, tortured and murdered. This also applies to most of the readers of this blog. Of course, Strelkov clearly sees where all this is heading (escalation) and he is concerned that the currently small resistance will not be able to cope with a constantly growing junta escalation: it all began with baseball bats, the they switched to Molotov cocktails, then handguns, assault-rifles and machine guns. Now they have already used mortar and artillery fire. We have confirmed reports of helicopter-fired unguided missile attacks and this morning I got a report of a Sukhoi attack. Add to this oligarch-paid death squads and you clearly will see what has Strelkov so worried and, let’s face it, disgusted with the passivity of the locals. But keep in mind that even if his appeal is not heeded, and even if the key cities are re-taken, the Donbass is already lost. In fact, the latest report out of Kiev says the Ukie rump-Rada has adopted a memorandum stating that “Ukrainian troops deployed in the country’s east should immediately return to their bases”. Now, I am not holding my breath (Uncle Sam will never agree), but who knows what might happen (maybe the Germans are getting involved now?). I believe that nobody really knows. There are simply too many variables to confidently state that this or that will happen. Heck, we are not even sure of what has already happened! This is an extremely chaotic situation in which most unpredictable things could happen (for example, an oligarch could e bought by Moscow or a resistance figure could be bought by the USA – it really could go either way). The fact is that with the notable exception of true believers (on both sides), the vast majority of Ukrainians are still in the “what is in it for me?” mode. Again, this is in no way different form the position of most Russians in 1917, 1991 or 1993. While this kind of apparent passivity has nothing to do with some “lack of democratic culture in the past of these societies which only recently were feudal” and all the rest of the garden variety western racism supremacist, it is a direct result of a profound alienation with, and suspicion of, the elites. These folks just so Yanukovich hand power to neo-Nazis and run abroad! They have been burned over and over again. And, this is crucial, there is no Ukrainian Putin to follow. When Putin came to power in Russia it took less than a month for the armed forces to feel that “this guy has got our backs”. It took the rest of the population a little longer, but now the vast majority of Russians actually trust Putin. Whom should they trust in the Ukraine or even in the Donbass. Figure which appeared just a few weeks ago and which nobody really knows or figures which are known for decades for being thief, crooks and pathological liars? Whom would you trust if you were living in Donetsk or Lugansk? Would you risk your life and the life of your family on such a choice? Exactly. So while I understand the frustration of Strelkov (and most of us!) with seeing a territory with millions of people defended by only a few hundred courageous men, and while I also catch myself getting enraged in discussed with the news out of the Ukraine and day-dreaming about Polite Armed Men in Green obliterating the Ukie death-squads, I also understand why this has been and will continue to be a slow process: it is simply too fluid and too rapidly shifting to take any premature or rash decisions. The Anglo-Zionists are desperately trying to trigger an over Russian intervention, and there is a pretty good chance that they might succeed, no doubt, but the good news is that time is running out fast, very fast, soon the economic crisis is going to start really biting and the unrest will spread far beyond the Donbass. As for the Presidential elections next Sunday, they are going to be such a mega-farce that it serve no other purpose than to maybe give NATO a justification to move forces into the western Ukraine at the “request” of the new President. Will the West recognize this election? You betcha it will! As Vladimir Soloviev put it on Sunday, “even if there will be only one candidate and one person voting, the West will call these elections free and fair“. But for the people of the Ukraine this will be a self-evident farce which will only alienate them further, including the neo-Nazis. In fact, Yulia Timoshenko (who, by the way, seems to have gone completely insane) has even declared that if the billionaire oligarch Poroshenko is elected (as all polls seem to suggest) she will launch yet another revolution with Maidan and all. Following the example of the Ukraine, not it is “Banderastan” which is committing national suicide and that entire house of cards will be coming down soon (unless a last minute effort by Germany helps delay or stop this, but I am not holding my breath). We all need to show some patience now. Sorry for the very long SITREP, but I have to cover a lot of ground. Many thanks and kind regards, The Saker

Freedom of Press (TM) in the United States, Head of the Free World (TM)

Let us look at the latest crisis in the Ukraine. There has been a Western view of the Ukraine which has lined up precisely with the views of the US state, both major political parties, the entire US media and almost all of Europe. That is the pro-US, anti-Russia view of the situation in which Russia is 10 Well, almost all of this narrative is a total lie, but the West is in surprising agreement about this bit of fiction. The Western media has been about as objective as the USSR’s Pravda or North Korea’s media at the moment. Western media has simply become an outlet for the most outrageous propaganda, distortion and out and out lies. That has been its role anyway, in the US since the end of World War 2 and in Europe only recently, but this is a particularly egregious example of blatant totalitarian type propaganda. Let us look at freedom of speech (TM) and freedom of the press (TM) in the US, head of the Free World (TM). Extreme Right, nationalist, populist or racist right including Pat Buchanan types: Most of them are pro-Russian, which is interesting. They have no newspapers, no newsmagazines, no TV stations and no radio stations. They do have a presence on the Internet, but there is not a lot of traffic on these sites. Hard Right, right wing of the Republican party: party line as laid out above, strong pro-US, strong anti-Russia. Right, mainstream Republican Party: party line as laid out above, strong pro-US, strong anti-Russia. Liberal Right, Liberal Republicans, almost an extinct species: party line as laid out above, strong pro-US, strong anti-Russia. Centrist, splitting the difference between the two parties, cynical corporate invertebrates: party line as laid out above, strong pro-US, strong anti-Russia. Conservative Left, right wing of the Democratic Party, conservative Democrats: party line as laid out above, strong pro-US, strong anti-Russia. Left, mainstream Democratic Party, increasingly corporatist: party line as laid out above, strong pro-US, strong anti-Russia. Hard Left, left wing of the Democratic Party, liberals, base of the party, often “lesser of two evils” invertebrates though: party line as laid out above, strong pro-US, strong anti-Russia. Extreme Left, Leftists, socialists, Communists, etc, marginal to US politics, only pro-worker faction left in the US: Split, many are pro-Russia, however some like Super Jew (Lou the Jew) Louis Proyect and the magazine The Nation, are taking the party line above, and some of the Left are not really taking the pro-Russian line but more a sort of neutrality, let’s find a peaceful solution head in sand ignorant approach. Nevertheless, among the Leftist media is the only place where there is some freedom of speech on this issue. The Leftist media in the US have no newspapers, no major newsmagazines but some minor ones, no TV news, and no major radio news stations, although there is maybe one Left radio station on the dial at least here in California, where we have Pacifica Radio which gets some public funds that the Congress is always trying to cut off, thereby killing the station. There is some Internet presence, but traffic here is low. As you can see, there is almost no freedom of speech or freedom of press in the US on this issue because nearly the entire political spectrum and nearly 10 Freedom of speech is useless when the entire so-called political spectrum agrees. If they are all going to agree, why call it a spectrum at all? Freedom is press in the US is the same as it has always been – freedom of press here belongs to those who own a printing press, who are all rich and conservative. Freedom of press is pointless when all the newspapers, newsmagazines, TV news and nearly all the radio news is saying the same thing. Why bother to have a freedom of the press if all the media is going to say the same thing anyway?  

70,000 Reindeer Die of Starvation in Russia's North

Global warming. Although idiots say that the extremely cold, rainy and snowy winter and spring in the region does not fit in with global warming, actually it does because global warming is supposed to make the world’s climate more chaotic. Most regions will warm up, but some will actually get colder, snowier, more rainy, etc. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Junta Suffers Worst Losses Ever

Major battle. 6 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 8 more were wounded when they ran into a patriot ambush outside Kramatorsk. This is interesting as the patriots have usually just been fighting back against the junta troops. Now it looks like they are starting to go on the offensive. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Hunting Boars with Sinks in Russia

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtVkBJcypIQ] LOL this is too funny. Russia is turning into a hunter gatherer society I suppose. And the great hunter comrades destroy the vicious fascist pig! When you go out on a date with a Russian girl, the first thing she asks you is, “How good are you at killing wild boars?” Yeehaw, pulled pork for the whole neighborhood! In Soviet Russia, boar hunts you! In the US Southwest, especially in places like Arkansas, there is a huge wild boar problem. The main issue is that once they get to a certain size, they really have no natural predators other than mountain lions, and cougars have been eradicated from much of their native habitat other than some urban nightclubs. The boar problem is so serious in Arkansas that wardens issue permits for total eradication in some areas. They are also common in Florida and especially Georgia, so common that they are becoming pests. Boars here are an invasive species. The whole population stems from a few boars brought to the US by settlers 500 years ago. They also reproduce very fast. Even if 8

More Out of India Idiocy

Here. This is the latest nonsense out of India purporting to undo the Aryan Migration Theory. It is written by high caste Hindu idiots for political reasons, namely to swipe back at South Indians and Dalits who claim that Aryans imposed caste Hinduism on them at the point of a sword. The fact is that South Indians misrepresent the case. The Aryans did not sweep into Northwest India, conquer the Dravidians, and push them south. The Aryans conquered in the north, and they bred in with and mixed with the locals. In time, caste Hinduism spread to the south of India. Michael Witzel is probably the pre-eminent scholar of Sanskrit and the Aryan Migration question. Here is his response to this irresponsible study, which unfortunately was published in a peer reviewed journal. Briefly, the India Today piece completely misrepresents the study and the authors of the study also make many other misrepresentations of the data. I am afraid that this is the way Indians do science, just like they do everything else – with massive corruption and political overtones. As more and more Indians get into science, we can count on science becoming more and more corrupt and less and less scientific. I asked Prof. M. Witzel about a popular news item in Indian English press. Here is his reply. Happy Holidays! N. Ganesan From Michael Witzel answering my question. ————————————– Well, Ganesan, I have answered that, based on my genetic etc. background info and info from my geneticist friends [who include Thangaraj, Pitchappan 🙂 ] — but this msg. has not appeared on IDDOLOGY@yahooo yet, where this “news” was broadcast a few days earlier… Here a copy: =========== The INDIA TODAY article (below) bristles with misrepresentations and outright misinformation, in part by the authors of the genetic study mentioned here: On Dec 11, 2011, at 7:19 PM, Sri Venkat wrote: > Dinesh C. Sharma New Delhi, December 10, 2011 | UPDATED 10:22 IST > > Indians are not descendants of Aryans, says new study. > <> Briefly, it is well known that “The origin of genetic diversity found in South Asia is much older than 3,500 years when the Indo-Aryans were supposed to have migrated to India”. Geneticists point to the Out of Africa movement around 65-75,000 years ago. As a result, Reich et al. have shown that two ancient population segments evolved in South Asia around 40 kya, the ‘Ancestral North Indians’ (ANI), (genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans) and the ‘Ancestral South Indians’. Add another, Neolithic migration from the Greater Near East some 10,000 y.a. Then, it is usually said that “migration of Indo-European speakers from Central Asia … was responsible for the introduction of the Indo-European language family.” Indeed. Indo-Aryan language, religion, etc. have been imported from the Ural steppes/Central Asia. Note the many *early*, pre-Vedic loan-words into *early* Uralic language, and now also loans from the Bactria-Margiana culture (2400-1600 BCE) into Indo-Aryan. By people with one or another genetic set-up (see below on R1a). The rest of the so-called “Aryan Invasion” is an outdated 19th century theory, just as the early 19th c. one that imagined Indo-Europeans migrated out of India (as some Hindutvavadins now reassert!). There was indeed a movement northward out of South Asia/Greater Near East during the warm period around c.40,000 y.a., but that is some 38,000 years BEFORE Indo-Aryans even came into existence. (Same mistake made in the 2005 CA schoolbook fiasco!) > > “Our study clearly shows that there was no genetic influx 3,500 years ago,” said Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj. Absolute genetic dates (just as in linguistic reconstructions) need to be supported by outside evidence, such as finds of skeletons. For the period around 1500 BCE, we still have error bars of 3000 years in genetic reconstructions, which makes pronouncements about a non-existent “Aryan” move into South Asia very moot indeed. We will have to await the further, so far very uncertain resolution of the early Y chromosome R1a haplogroup (c. some 20-34,000 years old), to form an opinion. Ra1 has been attributed to speakers of Indo-European (as it is prominent in Eastern Europe), but it also occurs throughout South Asia, tribal populations included. We need to know which one of its unresolved sub-strains moved, when and where. We do not know that…yet. When L. Singh says, “It is high time we re-write India’s prehistory based on scientific evidence,” we can only agree. However, not when he says, “There is no genetic evidence that Indo-Aryans invaded or migrated to India or even something such as Aryans existed”. Dr Singh does not understand that Indo-Aryan language (and religion) simply could not exist in thin air. You need a population. Obviously they had Ural area ancestors, whatever their genetic set-up upon entering from Afghanistan. Even his assertion, “If any migration from Central Asia to South Asia took place, it should have introduced apparent signals of East Asian ancestry into India” is patently wrong as Eastern elements entered Central Asia only much later. For further details see my recent message to the IER list. Cheers, Michael Sequel to my last, general comment: 1. First of all, it is rather unfortunate that the authors of the paper have highlighted the “Aryan Invasion Theory” in their summary and later on as well. That is 19th century talk! Since at least the 1950s (FBJ Kuiper 1955, Przyluski even in 1920s, etc.), Indologists have stressed the complex interactions between Indo-Aryan speakers and local speakers both in the Greater Panjab and beyond, from the oldest text (Rgveda, c. 1200-1000 BCE) onward, which has some clear non-IA poets and kings. The great, late Kuiper’s last paper (2000) has the title a “bilingual poet”. Since 1995, I too have written about acculturation, and that maybe “not one gene” of the Ural steppes people had survived by the time the pastoral Indo-Aryan speakers arrived in the Greater Panjab (via the Central Asian river pastures/Tienshan/Pamir meadows, the BMAC, Hindukush, etc., with many chances for gene flow from all these areas). That Indo-Aryan language, religion, ritual etc. have been imported from the Urals/Central Asia (note the *early* loan-words into Uralic, and now also BMAC loans words into Indo-Aryan!) is beyond any reasonable doubt. By people with one or another genetic set up, — which one that is the question. I will await the further resolution of the Y chromosome haplogroup Ra1* –note the “western” affinities in the paper of Brahmins and Ksatriyas even in U.P. — as to see exactly which genetic strain may have entered South Asia around 1500 BCE, — if any. 2. Co-author Lalji Singh says as per the article in DNA : “We have conclusively proved that there never existed any Aryans or Dravidians in the Indian sub continent. The Aryan-Dravidian classification was nothing but a misinformation campaign carried out by people with vested interests,” Prof Lalji Singh, vice-chancellor, Banaras Hindu University, told DNA.” Again harking back to *supposed* British interests in the 19th century. But, the two language groups definitely are as separate as they are from Bantu, Chinese or Papua. Indo-Aryan is definitely not = Dravidian language or its original culture, just as little as Basque, Uralic are not Indo-European. Confusion of language, genes, ethnicity, etc. Well, Lalji has stayed at Hyderabad for a long time. Did he ever try to speak Hindi/Urdu to native, mono-lingual Kannada speakers? He would had have as little luck as I would have with any Indo-European language in Estonia, Finland or Hungary. Why does he have to comment about things (language, culture) that he does not understand? ““The study effectively puts to rest the argument that south Indians are Dravidians and were driven to the peninsula by Aryans who invaded North India,” said Prof Singh, a molecular biologist and former chief of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad.” Same mistake. Of course, South Indians are Dravidian speaking. And they even are genetically (ASI) different from North Indians (ANI), which this co-author should know from his own (and D. Reich’s) paper. Same confusion of genetics, language, ethnicity (“race”)… The idea of Aryans “driving Dravidians’ South”, too, is 19th century talk. See above. The reality is much more complex. For example, Frank Southworth has shown that Maharashtra was Dravidian speaking well into the Middle Ages, and Gujarat too has Drav. place names. There was a lot of give and take between the two language families, as is seen in the many Dravidian loans in Sanskrit, etc. and the many Indo-Aryan loans in Drav. languages. 3. Unfortunately, as some years earlier before, Gyaneshwer Chaubey chimes in: “According to Dr Gyaneshwer Chaubey, Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, Estonia, who was another Indian member of the team, the leaders of Dravidian political parties may have to find another answer for their raison d’être.” A clear, political statement based on wrong science: see immediately below. By Dravidian parties he means those restricted to Tamil Nadu. Well, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra too speak Dravidian, as do many tribes in Central India (Gonds, etc.) “We have proved that people all over India have common genetic traits and origin. All Indians have the same DNA structure. No foreign genes or DNA has entered the Indian mainstream in the last 60,000 years,” Dr Chaubey said.” Sorry, *all Indians* with the same DNA structure? Their own paper says differently. He could also say that all ex-Africa populations have the same genetic origin… And no “foreign” genes? What about all these Persians, Greek/Macedonians, Saka, Kushana, Huns, Arabs 711 CE+, Muslim Turks (1000+, 1200 CE+), Mughals, Afghans 1700 CE, Portuguese, etc., British….? Sure, they all never had Indian wives… “Dr Chaubey had proved in 2009 itself that the Aryan invasion theory is bunkum. “That was based on low resolution genetic markers. This time we have used autosomes, which means all major 23 chromosomes, for our studies. The decoding of human genome and other advances in this area help us in unraveling the ancestry in 60,000 years,” he explained.” I hope he will learn to distinguish between the Out Of Africa migration, the Neolithic one from western Asia around 10,000 y.a. (detailed in this very paper!), and the trickling in of Indo-Aryan pastoral speakers c.1500 BCE?? 4. Said geneticists *still* cannot distinguish between speakers of a particular language and their genes. Writing in English — are Lalji Singh and Gyaneshwer both Anglo-Saxons? Or me, for that matter? It is one thing to explain genetic results to the gullible public, but to confuse them with wrong data from linguistics, archaeology etc. is despicable. 5. “According to Prof Singh, Dr Chaubey, and Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj, another member of the team, the findings disprove the caste theory prevailing in India.” ??? “Interestingly, the team found that instead of Aryan invasion, it was Indians who moved from the subcontinent to Europe. “That’s the reason behind the findings of the same genetic traits in Eurasiain regions,” said Dr Thangaraj, senior scientist, CCMB. Well, as detailed in my last note, the well-known northward movement into N. Eurasia from South Asia during the warm period around 40,000 years ago, has NOTHING to do with the 19th century’s “Aryan Invasion,” dated around 1500 BCE! I suppose they can count and calculate? 6. Finally, the unavoidable dot on the i, from the ubiquitous Dr K., — who has nothing to do with this genetic paper or topic. Bad choice by the DNA newspaper! “Africans came to India through Central Asia during 80,000 to 60,000 BCE and they moved to Europe sometime around 30,000 BCE. The Indian Vedic literature and the epics are all silent about the Aryan-Dravidian conflict,” said Dr S Kalyanaraman, a proponent of the Saraswathi civilization which developed along the banks of the now defunct River Saraswathi.” Through Central Asia?? There is no evidence at all for this, neither archaeologically or otherwise. Central Asia — deserts and all — was settled, pace Wells, only much later. Dr K. is not up to date: Rumania was reached already by 42 kya… As for “Vedic literature and the epics are all silent about the Aryan-Dravidian conflict”, he should re-read the Rgveda (in Sanskrit), not the outdated 100 year old English translation of Griffith. The non-Indo-Aryan speaking populations there (Dasyu, Daasa) clearly are in conflict with Indo-Aryan speakers… Finally, having studied *administration* (PhD Manila), he is not up to date on archaeology either. The Harappan civilization developed in the Piedmont west of the subcontinent (see books by the late G. Possehl) and it spread eastward, also to the Ghagghar-Hakra river, which Dr K anachronistically calls, in Hindutva fashion, Sarasvati — well before the river got its Vedic name, c.1200 BCE. In sum: for all discussants: as the old proverb has it, “shoemaker, stick to your own tools”! ‘nough said. Michael On Dec 11, 2011, at 11:50 AM, Michael Witzel wrote: > This paper  has been out for a few days, and I got a copy from a co-author, one of my Estonian friends. > > I have immediately protested to them and have also critiqued the comments published by DNA. Note that the latter comments are attributed just to three (not all!) Indian co-authors, but do not come from the slew of other authors. The reason, as usual, seems to be politics and notoriety (to attract more finances?) > > To set the record straight, a few general remarks first: > > 1. There is nothing new in the result about an early Out of Africa movement (to South Asia) of *anatomically modern humans* (not Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo Erectus) at c. 65-75 kya. There are some hints about earlier dates but they are based on debatable stone artifacts, not skeletons. > > 2. And we also knew well about the movements from there to northern Eurasian areas during the warm period around c. 40,000 BCE: archaeologically attested by skeletons, both in the Beijing area (Zhoukoudian c.40 kya, via S.E. Asia), and in Europa (Rumania, c. 42 kya). > > See my friend Peter Underhill (Stanford) et al. 2010 paper: > > 3. Obviously this early movement has nothing to do with the current Hindutvavadin theory of an “Out Of India” move of the Indo-Europeans, who would have settled Europe: that would be tens of thousands of years later. (The same mistake was made during the CA schoolbook affair … by a CA biologist! They never learn…) > > For a popular overview with maps see St. Oppenheimer’s website  or that of the National Geographic. > > Around 40,000 BCE there were neither “Aryans” nor Indo-Europeans around, not even speakers of the giant Nostratic language family, at best of the still earlier hypothetical Borean super-language family, proposed by my friend, the Africanist Harold Fleming (see WIKI). Likewise, no Dravidian language family yet, which may in fact be part of Nostratic anyhow. > > This northward move is a general phenomenon, as is the subsequent severe contraction southward during the last Ice age around 20 kya, when the four or five major human types (not “races”) developed in isolation: Europe, S.Asia, (Sunda Land: S.E. Asia), E. Asia, Sahul Land (New Guinea-Australia), — for example with two separate, independent mutations producing white skin color in Europe and in East Asia. > > 3. The paper by my Boston geneticist friend David Reich et al. has shown that South Asia has two ancient population segments evolving from the early Out of Africa people around 40 kya, the ‘Ancestral North Indians’ (ANI), (genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans) and the ‘Ancestral South Indians’ (ASI), so named after I had cautioned him and Nick Patterson about the political danger involving the naming of these groups. As you can see, even this nomenclature did not help to dispel preconceived Hindutva bias about “Aryans” and Dravidians. > > At 40 kya there were no “Aryans” and no “Dravidians” around yet. > > 4. If we then want to speak about “Aryans” (more correctly: speakers of Indo-Aryan language) and speakers of the early Dravidian language at all, we first of all have to disconnect language from ethnicity or “race”. I am not an Anglo-Saxon, just because I speak and write in English here, nor are Chaubey, Singh and Thangaraj. > > Language can change within 2 generations, as all Americans know and as Indians *should* know: not just in large cities, but also in tribal areas where people take over the dominant regional language, for obvious social reasons. > > The 3 Indian geneticists quote by DNA confuse language use with genetic setup, ethnicity, culture, religion etc. All of them easily (and *mutually*) transgress genetic boundaries. > > 5. If when then speak about Indo-Aryans or Dravidians at c. 3500 years ago, and want to link them with genetic data, we must take into account that all these studies are based on modern DNA, and depend on *assumed* mutation rates (going back to the Chimpazee-Human split of 5-7 million years ago); the genetic results thus provide good *relative* dates, but not absolute dates. > > Absolute dates (just as in linguistic reconstructions) need to be supported by outside evidence, such as finds of skeletons of anatomically modern humans, as mentioned above. (By the way these are earlier at Lake Mungo in Australia at c. 50 kya and Europe/China than in South Asia, where they only appear in Sri Lanka at c.30 kya. Facetiously: an Out of Australia migration to Eurasia?) > > 6. Worse, there are huge error bars in all these models. It may not matter very much if we have error bars of some 10,000 years for the Out of Africa move, but for the period around 1500 BCE, we still have error bars of 3000 years, which makes all pronouncements about a non-existent “Aryan” move into South Asia, based on current genetic data, very moot indeed. > > The “Western Asian/Central Asian” strain in northern India/Pakistan (as per this paper by Metspalu et al.) may well be due to Persian, Greek/Makedonian, Saka, Kushana, Hun, Arab (711 CE+), Islamic Turks 1000 CE/1200 CE, Portuguese etc. (1500 CE+) or British gene influx. > > I will await the further, so far very uncertain resolution of the Y chromosome R1a haplogroup to form an opinion. Ra1a has been attributed to speakers of Indo-European (as it is prominent in Eastern Europe) but it also occurs throughout South Asia, tribal populations included. We need to know which sub-strain moved: when and where. > > 7. All of which leaves most of the comments by Singh, Thangaraj and Chaubey high and dry. More about them in my next message. > > An interesting weekend, apparently. Luckily, the semester is over… > Cheers, > > Michael > If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site. Donations are the only thing that keep the site operating.

India As an Imperialist Country

Creaders writes:

The man white ally with India. The white man is always covering India. White man media do not report the real truth about India and all India transgression was forgotten. India is a key player against China. But I will honestly say its not a NATO style alliance but a low level type. India invade Diu, Daman, Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli from Portugal, no white man newspaper ever bark. India invade Hyderabad, white man keep quiet. India invade Kashmir, white man keep quiet. India invade Sikkim, white man keep quiet. When India invade Kashmir, India say Kashmir ruler like India but so I don care if they people hate India. When India invade Hyderabad, India say Hyderabad people like India, but I don care the ruler hate Indian. When India annex Manipur and Sikkim, both people and ruler hate India. India say fuck it, I just want your land, never mind if you hate me. In fact, Indian just know how to talk and talk. They are liars and can come out any reason to harm you. white man keep quiet. India invade China, white man keep quiet. China arrest India’s aggression in 1962 Sino-Indian war, white man say China is aggressor and send arm to India. India is really a crap nation.

I thought US imperialism was bad until I heard about Indian imperialism. India is obviously one of the imperialist countries. Even worse, like the early United Snakes, Zionist Israel, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, it has been conquering and annexing land since the day of its birth. I suppose one could argue that many new nations engage in a “nation-building project” that involves some sort of conquering of other people’s land to annex their lands into the new nation. However, if we look around the world, we do not see a lot of examples of new imperialist countries engaging in nationalist conquests upon independence. In the modern era, the examples are not many: Nazi Germany: program of conquest, annexation and colonization in WW2. Imperial Japan: program of conquest, annexation and colonization in WW2. Fascist Italy: program of conquest, annexation and colonization in WW2. Indonesia (independence in 1949): Program of conquest and annexation of Aceh, East Timor and part of New Guinea now called Irian Jaya. There was also a project of settling colonized lands with settlers in order to subdue the natives. A number of genocides ensued. This project was led by an openly fascist political party pushing a fascist project called Pangasinan. Pakistan (independence in 1948): Attempted to annex Kashmir by force (uncertain if Kashmiris wanted to be annexed by Pakistan). Annexed Balochistan by violence soon afterwards after Balochis voted not to join Pakistan. Israel (independence in 1949): Its very birth was created by invasion, conquest, ethnic cleansing and displacement of natives. Colonization of new land by settlers followed. The following years, more and more land was conquered, more natives were thrown off the land, and more settlers were moved onto new conquered land. The project continues to this day. Russia (newly independent in 1991): Invaded and conquered Chechnya which declared independence from the new Russian nation. Later invaded other Caucasus republics attempting to break away from the new nation. Armenia: Invaded and conquered part of Azerbaijan called Nagorno-Karabagh on an uncertain moral basis but strategically because it was full of Armenians. Later conquered “buffer zones” of Azeri territory similar to Israeli “security buffers.” Georgia: Invaded South Ossetia when South Ossetia refused to join the new country called Georgia. Morocco: Invaded and conquered Spanish Sahara after the region was decolonized. It then settled the area with 200,000 settlers. Sudan: Upon independence in 1954, launched a war against South Sudan that continued for decades and killed 2 million people. Eritrea: Soon after achieving independence in 1991, Eritrea attacked Ethiopia and tried to annex border land. It also attacked Djibouti and tried to annex part of that country. Ethiopia: After independence, Ethiopia immediately annexed Eritrea. This led to a 30 year war which Eritrea finally won and achieved independence from Ethiopia. Somalia: The new nation of Somalia attacked Ethiopia in 1977 and attempted to conquer the Ogaden region and annex it to Somalia. Libya: In 1978, Libya attacked Chad and attempted to annex a strip of land called the Aouzou Strip. However, India seemingly takes the cake. Soon after independence, India quickly invaded Hyderabad, Diu, Daman, Goa, Dadra, Nagar Haveli, Sikkim, Manipur and Kashmir. All of these places had decided that they did not want to be part of India, but India invaded them anyway. Sikkim was actually a separate country, but India invaded it anyway and annexed the place. Many people died because of India’s imperial conquests. The Manipur conflict lasted many years and the Kashmiri conflict continues to this day. Many other areas in the Northeast also refused to join India in the beginning and all were attacked sooner or later. In the midst of this wild imperial conquest spree, apparently India received 10 When you talk to Indians (generally high-caste Indians) one thing you will note is the fanatical nationalism many of them have. Many don’t know their country’s history, but if you recite it to those who know about it, almost 10 Of late, radical Indian ultra-nationalism has been married to Hindu fanaticism in the form of Hindutva ideology. This is a marriage of fascist ultra-nationalism and with radical religious fundamentalism. The result has been a potent movement that looks fascist in many respects. This nascent fascist movement has taken high caste and middle class Indians by storm. We should not sit idly by and watch this fascist movement form while we twiddle our toes. Instead we should watch this dangerous movement very closely. It threatens not only India itself but parts of the rest of the world too.

The USSR Did Not Fail

It’s commonly argues that the USSR failed. I would argue that it did not fail at all; instead, it was a spectacular success. For instance, in pre-revolutionary Russia there were famines and starvation deaths, often countless ones, every single year. There was never enough food to go around. Safe drinking water was rare outside the cities. Hardly anyone had electricity. Soon after the USSR was established, everyone had safe drinking water. The whole country was wired up. And after the collectivization famines of the early 1930’s, full food security was achieved for the first time in Russian memory. And Soviet citizens at the end of the USSR’s reign ate just as well as West Europeans, as noted in a previous post. It depends on your definition of success. In fact, since the return of capitalism, agricultural production of fruits, vegetables and livestock collapsed. Production of all these things was much higher in the USSR. This is what I would call a “market failure.” Apparently the reason for this market failure is that farming has been privatized, and the oligarchs with all the money in Russia now do not see agriculture as a profitable medium, hence they refuse to invest in it as there’s no money in it. And the banks don’t want to loan for farmers as they see it as a risky loan. The majority of farm production is now occurring on small family farms, not large concerns.

Review of Peter Fritzsche's Germans Into Nazis, by Robert John

Repost from the old site. I am proud to present a book review by a new guest author, Robert John. His biography is at the end of the piece. In this piece, he reviews a book by Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis. This book takes on, in part, a thesis by a best-selling book by Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Goldhagen’s book was wildly controversial, to say the least. His thesis was that Nazism was a normal evolution of the virulent anti-Semitism inherent in German society for decades, if not centuries. An anti-Semitism spanning all of society, from top to bottom, urban to rural. Goldhagen gives examples of how ordinary Germans knew full well the nature of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews, but either did nothing about it, or cheered it on. He cites postcards sent back by German soldiers to family at home, telling gleefully about how the soldiers were massacring Jews on the Front. The reaction to Goldhagen’s book was ferocious, much of it coming from conservative Catholics, anti-Semites and German nationalists but also from serious scholars. To this day, Goldhagen is a favorite whipping boy of anti-Semites and Holocaust revisionists and deniers, except that their own behavior seems to prove Goldhagen correct. So those who hate Jews take exception to Goldhagen saying that Germany was a nation of Jew-haters. One would think they would cheer this assertion on? Regarding this review, here are some facts for those lacking background in this matter: After World War 1, Germany was hobbled at the Treaty of Versailles with horrible reparations that were essentially unpayable and ruined the economy. John points out correctly that Versailles led logically to the rise of Nazism. Immediately afterwards, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, German Communists attempted to overthrow the state. They were defeated. German anti-Communists, including most of the middle class, noted that many of the leaders of the Communist revolutions in Russia and Germany were Jewish. History is not kind to losers. For better or worse, German Jews were blamed for a few of them having led the failed German revolution. In the 1920’s, Germany had a series of very unstable governments known as the Weimar Republic. At the same time, there was widespread political violence in the streets, often between Communists and socialists on one side and nationalists and proto-fascists on the other. The economy was devastated and it took a wheelbarrow full of worthless money to buy a loaf of bread. At the same time, a wealthy and decadent class lived it up in the nightclubs of Berlin. Many of this decadent artist class were Jewish and many were also homosexuals and bisexuals. The movie, Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli, about the life of gay author Christopher Isherwood, was set in Weimar Berlin. Comedians and artists, many of whom were Jewish, ridiculed German nationalism and the things that patriotic Germans held dear to their hearts. This nationalism, along with traditional German culture, was held by these artists as having led to the war and the disastrous defeat. Enraged German nationalists saw only decadent urbanites, many of them Jewish, attacking German culture and values. Further, the decadent lifestyle in Berlin enraged traditional elements in Germany. The wild life of the rich in the cities aroused rage amongst the immiserated poor, workers and middle classes. While German Gentiles were being economically ruined, many German Jews had avoided economic destruction by stashing their money outside the country early in the crisis. No doubt this led to charges that the Jews were failing to invest in Germany. In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, as German property values plummeted, German Jews were able to return bring their money back and buy up much of the country for 10 cents on the dollar. By 1932, German Jews, After quotas on Jews in government jobs, the professions and universities were lifted in the 1920’s, the ranks of attorneys, doctors, judges and law professors were quickly filled by high-IQ Jews. 1/2 of German law professors and Berlin attorneys were Jewish. 1/3 to 1/2 of Berlin doctors were Jewish. 2 Many Germans were outraged at the overnight Jewish success and implied humiliation of German Gentiles and insisted that the Jews must have cheated to get these positions. Just before they seized power, Nazi propagandists made much use of these figures. They also claimed that most politicians and civil servants were Jews, which was not true. Only a few high-ranking civil servants were Jewish. There were few Jewish politicians – during the entire Weimar Period, there were only 8 Jewish members of the Reichstag from Berlin. After 1922, there were almost no Jewish Cabinet ministers. Similar claims that most pickpockets were Jewish and that German prisoners were filled with Jews were also false. Looking at figures from 1925, only 1.0 As you can see, the Nazis were engaging in some scapegoating and out and out lying about German Jews. The Weimar Regimes (republican democracy) seemed to be powerless to remedy any of these problems. Democracy came to be seen as symbolic with ineffectual government that fiddled while the nation burned, with decadent intellectuals and artists who attacked beloved German culture and values, with an outrageous gap between rich and poor, and with a disastrous economy. So the Nazis ran on a platform of “the Hell with democracy”. At the same time, similar fascist movements were spreading across Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe, where most nations had fascist governments during this period. Even Finland and the Baltics had fascist governments. Fritzsche’s book points out that the Nazis succeeded due to good old politics, Karl Rove style. They appealed to workers, women and liberals, though their program was secretly hostile to all three. They attacked social conservatism and the rich while hiding the fact that support for these elements was an essential nature of their project. Even the name “National Socialists” was chosen along the same lines, to co-opt the rising Socialist and Communist movements in Germany. By playing such dishonest political games, they gained support of socialists, Communists, liberals and even some Jews. While the socialists and Communists seemed boring or dangerous, the Nazis were all about getting Germans to feel good about themselves and have fun at the same time. Instead of Reagan’s “Morning in America”, it was “Morning in Germany”. After they seized power, no German socialist or Communist was fooled by the Nazi lies about being a socialist party. In fact, at its core, Nazism was hostile first and foremost to liberals, union members, socialists and Communists. Communists, socialists and union members were the first to go the concentration camps, Dachau being the most famous. The Jews were number four on the list, after these three! After they seized power, at the Night of the Long Knives, the Left Nazis were all killed or driven out of the party. Through the 1930’s, most of the German Left went to ground, fled the country or took up arms against the government. The German Communist Party declared war on the Nazi regime during this period. The name “National Socialists” has confused many people, including rightwing ideologues. There is much more to the refutation of the disgusting rightwing lie, “Nazis were a leftwing, socialist movement” but I will save it for another post. I realize that a quick, ignorant, emotional read of this piece could lead one to the conclusion that it is some defense of Nazism. If you read it closely, intelligently and soberly, you should notice that it is nothing of the kind. I hope you enjoy John’s piece.

Those Abnormal Germans? Understanding Goldhagen Robert John*

Germans into Nazis Peter Fritzsche Harvard University Press, 1998 269 pages. ISBN 0-674-35091-X The history of this century has been dominated by the horrors that came from the inferno of World War I. The rise of Nazism in Germany is only comprehensible by taking into account the national hardships and frustration provoked by defeat and the harsh and punitive treaty of Versailles, in which President Wilson played the leading role. Peter Fritzsche, professor of history, University of Illinois, and the author of Reading Berlin 1900 (Harvard), gives an account of what gave the German National Socialists their electoral victories in 1932 and why. Why were 37.4 percent of German votes cast for the Nazis in the July 1932 legislative elections, when for the first time they became the largest party; the SPD was second with 21.6 percent? Half a century after their destruction, new accounts of German National Socialism, and its leader, still contend for space on bookstore shelves. Many seek to explain German support for a leader portrayed as the most dangerous archfiend of recorded history, or to analyze the dynamics of that leader himself. Daniel Goldhagen, in his best-selling book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, suggested that Hitler was little more than a midwife in a German war against the Jews. Goldhagen blamed successful appeal to widespread German anti-Jewish prejudice for the Nazi victories. He alleged that by the time Hitler came to power in 1933, racial anti-Semitism had already made Germany “pregnant with murder.” Fritzsche gives an account of some of the confusion of patriotism and social turbulence from 1918 to 1933. He quotes the Berliner Tageblatt of 10 November 1918:

Yesterday morning . . .everything was still there – the Kaiser, the chancellor, the police chief – yesterday afternoon nothing of all that existed any longer.

The March 1917 Menshevik Revolution in Russia was being re-enacted in Germany, with Friedrich Ebert playing the role that Kerensky had played in Russia the year before. With knowledge of the red terror the Bolsheviks were waging in Russia, and some awareness that the majority of their leaders were Jewish, gave grounds for the development of a counterrevolution with anti-Semitic elements. Like most other historians of the Allied Powers, Fritzsche omits significant reference to Allied failure to honor President Wilson’s Fourteen Points for peace which were announced by him on 8th January 1918. It was on their basis, and Wilson’s declaration a month later: that there were to be no annexations, no contributions, and no punitive damages, that General Ludendorff had recommended to Field-Marshall Hindenburg that Germany ask for an Armistice. Diplomatic exchanges followed until 23rd of October. On that day, Wilson informed the German government that, were he compelled to negotiate with the military rulers and monarchist autocrats, he would demand not peace negotiations but a general surrender. The Kaiser abdicated. In his haste to present the circumstances and appeal of National Socialist policies to the German people at the beginning of the 1930’s, Fritzsche also skips reference to the continued Allied food blockade of Germany for nearly six months after the war had ended. Even the German Baltic fishing fleet, which had augmented German food supplies during the war, was prevented from putting to sea. (See The Politics of Hunger: The Allied blockade of Germany, 1915-1919, Vincent, C. Paul, Ohio Univ. Press, 1985, and the Kathë Kollwitz lithograph Deutschlands Kinder hungern – Germany’s Children are Starving.) In the spring of 1919, both the putting down of Communist insurrections in Berlin, Bremen, and Munich and breaking of general strikes in Halle, Magdeberg and Braunschweig by a Freikorps of nationalist volunteers, temporarily suspended the threat of a repetition of the Bolsheviks’ October revolution in Russia. When the Freikorps finally disbanded, they left behind a loose confederacy of secret organizations, veterans’ groups, and rifle clubs. Organization by both the Left and the Right seems to have satisfied a popular need for feelings of solidarity and renewal. By 1924 there were signs that this social activity was taking a more coherent political form. New organizations were also distinctive for being more open to women, who established their own auxiliaries, and attended patriotic celebrations. Activities for women, common in international socialist organizations, were included in nationalist events in community life. Brass bands and choral societies joined in what looked more like a family celebration than a wartime field service. The wife of an engineer described a new look in her city streets: groups of young people passing by, singing patriotic songs. In midsummer her daughter Irmgard, living in Nordheim, looked forward to Sunday’s flag consecration and dance.

Everywhere there is great excitement . . . all the regimental associations are coming, even the riflery clubs. (p. 134)

Fritzsche chooses such illustrations of entertainment and excitement, rather than negative appeals, that drew many of the young and others away from the blandness of the Social Democrats, and the preaching of international revolution, “Workers of the world: Unite,” of the Communists. ‘For good reasons or bad, Germans turned indifferent to the Weimar Republic, but they did not remain inactive or apathetic. The real consequence of the revolution was not so much the parliamentary government it secured as the organization and activism of thousands of constituents it made possible. The new Germany can best be found in the humdrum mobilization of interest groups, veterans’ associations, and party branches and in the self-authorization of a hundred voices, libelous, illiberal, and chauvinistic as they may have been. It is a sad but compelling paradox that the hostile defamations of the president of the republic were as indicative of democratization as the presidency of good-willed Fritz Ebert himself’ (p.136). In the hard economic times of 1930,when the social welfare programs of the state were being cut back, the Nazis erected a “rudimentary shadow welfare state” for their supporters, responding to the crisis in a concrete way. They never made the mistake of Hugenberg’s German Nationalists of holding political meetings in the best hotel in town. During a metalworkers strike, striking party members were fed three times daily in Nazi pubs. Womens’ groups associated with the party were particularly active. National Socialist speeches and propaganda repudiated the narrow politics on the “reactionary” bourgeois parliamentarians and the proliferating interest groups and splinter parties. In speech after speech at mass rallies, Hitler and his followers tended to address voters as citizens, rather than as blocs or constituents, and repeated again and again the need to solve local problems by liberating the entire nation from republican misrule. (In Britain a National Government was set up in 1931 with slogans of unification, patriotism, insulation, planning, etc.) The National Socialist message brought to the people in town after town was not the class consciousness of Hindenberg’s upper class, nor its representation in the primacy of ‘the class struggle’ of the Communists and Socialists; instead, national solidarity was the answer to Germany’s vexing problems: social reform, economic productivity, the shameful peace. There was a deliberate attempt to enroll Germans in a collective destiny and to present Hitler as a national savior rather than a solicitous politician (Fritzsche, p. 195). Nazi propaganda very effectively portrayed political choices in Utopian terms: here was a party that opposed the present “system” and, once in power, would rebuild the nation. It was not just the modern methods of political campaigning that the Nazis used that brought them success; it was their message. With Hitler as Chancellor, workers who had watched the Social Democrats fight long and hard and always unsuccessfully to persuade the Reichstag to recognize 1 May as an official holiday, looked or listened to the Leader’s May Day speech to a disciplined mass at Tempelhof in 1933. All day the radio played the songs of “miners, farmers, and soldiers.” A “symphony of work” composed by Hans-Jurgen Nierentz and Herbert Windt, featured interviews with a dock worker from Hamburg, an agricultural laborer from East Prussia, a steel worker from the Saar, a miner from the Ruhr, and a vintner from the Mosel Valley. The crowd drank beer, ate sausages, and, in the evening, marveled at the fireworks. Should one wonder why many former Communist and international Socialists who joined the Nazis, came to be called “underdone beef:” —brown on the outside, still red on the inside? The Nazis distanced themselves from liberal state administrators, social conservatives, and traditional authoritarians. They were as dismissive of the Kaiserreich as they were of the Weimar Republic. ‘In short, the Nazis were ideological innovators.’ They met popular demands for political sovereignty and social recognition and insisted that these could only be achieved through national union, which would provide Germans with an embracing sense of collective identity and a strong role in international politics.

It was this far-reaching program of renovation that made the Nazis stand out and made them attractive to a plurality of voters. If Hitler and his followers had simply recirculated the anti-Semitism of Anton Drexler’s German Workers’ Party or blustered on about the shameless Treaty of Versailles or devoted all their energies to combating the Social Democrats and other treasonous “November criminals,” the movement would have stalled completely. This is exactly what happened to Wolfgang Kappa and the Freikorpsmen of 1919-1920 and also explains the demise of Alfred Hugenberg and the German Nationalists in 1924-1930. Instead, attacks on conservatives as well as Marxists, denunciations of local power arrangements as well as the national parliament, and an affirmative vision of a prosperous, technologically advanced nation gave the Nazis a sharp ideological edge. At a time when so much civic strife is defined in terms of cultural affinities it is all the more important, if sometimes difficult, to recall the force of ideology. Long-standing ethnic hatreds, religious fundamentalisms, and transnational “civilizations” dominate contemporary discussions about instability and unrest, which are frequently understood in terms of the friction between basically essential cultural qualities that have come into contact with one another. However, the Nazi phenomenon was not a hyperventilated expression of German values, even as it pronounced the allegedly superior quality of the German people. Nor was it the pathological result of economic hard times, instead National Socialism comprised a program of cultural and social regeneration premised on the superordination of the nation and the Volk and modeled very much on the public spirit and collective militancy of the nation at war.

Fritzsche concludes:

even as the Nazis upheld an integral, almost redemptive nationalism, they created new categories of outsiders, enemies, and victims. That system was neither accidental nor unanimous’ (p.235).

Some Jewish historians have noted almost marginally that National Socialist election material did not directly appeal to anti-Jewish sentiment (for example, Avraham Barkai’s From Boycott to Annihilation, Brandeis Univ. Press, 1987, 11, Saul Friedländer’s Nazi Germany and the Jews, Harper-Collins, 1997, 4), or Finkelstein and Birns’ A Nation On Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis, Henry Holt 1998). So why is the Goldhagen account and conclusion so different from that of Fritzsche? The parsimonious explanation is the ‘Zoom syndrome.’ This is a tendency to magnify items supporting the prejudices of the observer. Goldhagen focuses on German critics of Jews or practices associated with them, and projects these as anti-Semitism leading to a program of Jewish extermination. His premise is—unchecked criticism of Jews leads to a ‘Holocaust.’ With this ‘tunnel vision,’ he is deprived of depth and width of perspective. Leading Jewish academics are stressing the importance of incorporating the Jewish ‘experience of the Holocaust’ into the perspective of Jewish studies programs. This would help Jewish scholars to regain or maintain historical perspective. In his review of A Nation On Trial in the New York Times Book Review, Max Frankel, a former executive editor of the paper, recorded his mother’s experience in wartime Berlin in 1940 as an enemy alien Polish Jew. A commissioner of police gave her the name and location of the Gestapo chief who would give the family an exit permit.

As she thanked him and turned to leave, the commissioner suddenly asked, “Where did you say you want to go?” “To America.” “If you get there, will you tell them we’ re not all bad?” To her last day, she did.

The facts cited by both Fritzsche and Goldhagen, and other previous writers, are explained as never before, using evolutionary and social identity theory, by Professor Kevin MacDonald’s analyses of anti-Semitism published in the Praeger Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence series, in 1998 “Separation and Its Discontents: Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism and The Culture of Critique, and in his previously published A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Strategy, 1994. *Dr. John is a diplomatic historian, policy analyst, and a former professor of psychiatric education. He is the author of The Palestine Diary: British, American and United Nations Intervention 1914-1948, 3rd. ed. 2006, 2 volumes, with a foreword by Arnold Toynbee, and Behind the Balfour Declaration: The Hidden Origins of Today’s Mideast Crisis, 1988. He has been a U.S. correspondent for the monthly Middle East International and adviser on international affairs to the Council on American Affairs. He was presented with the 1997 Freedom Award by the International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Analysis in Baden-Baden “for his outstanding work and contributions towards the fight for human rights, justice and liberty.”

Update on National Bolshevism

Repost from the old site. There is something downright nasty about these guys, and I can’t even put my finger on it. National Bolshevism is some type of Third Positionism. Third Positionism is one strange beast all right, and I can’t figure out what to make of it. Their Celtic cross symbol gives me the creeps; it reminds me of the Zodiac killer, and it looks fascistic. It’s supposedly some species of fascism that combines unspecified elements of the Left and Right, in particular, Leftist and socialist economics. As they have never held power anywhere, no one really knows how this plays out IRL. I’m not necessarily going to oppose anyone that gets lumped into some Third Positionist “fascist” grab bag by political scientists, but so far, I don’t like what I see. The National Bolshevik Party is Russia is one strange beast. They support the Russian minorities in all of the former SSR’s, which is theoretically a valid cause, but in many cases probably reeks of national chauvinism. But there’s a lot of national chauvinist crap going on in those new states anyway, this time victimizing Russians. They supported, and apparently still support, the War on the Chechen People in Chechnya and now generalized across much of the Caucasus to Dagestan, Ingushetia, Southern Russia, North Ossetia-Alania (When did they change their name?! Ok, 1994. The history of the Alans, especially as relates to the peopling of Japan and NE Asia, is an interesting one, if you like strange theories), Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Originally, their project was the usual fascist imperialist expansionist crap, envisioning a vast state encompassing all of the former USSR (which would have to be reconquered in some way) and all of Europe (I guess this would have to conquered too), to be ruled by Russians. That’s actually kind of humorous. Well, since then, they have dropped that. They are also anti-Semites, accusing ultranationalist Zhirinovsky of being a Jew, as if that is a bad thing (he has a bit of Jewish heritage, but I don’t enough to go to Israel). They hate Putin and accuse him of being a fascist. That’s strange, but if you study fascists for a while, you realize that one of their fascist games is that fascists are always going around calling others fascists as a term of abuse. It doesn’t make sense until you are around them a long time. Lenin hated the precursors of the National Bolsheviks and said they were a class enemy, but he’s not a God to me. At the end of the day, I’m sorry, but I just can’t get behind these guys. Ultranationalism pretty much sucks just about everywhere, without many exceptions. National Bolshevik principles. Update: R.M. Schultz of the Soviet Overseas Trading Company News blog, author of the principles above, stopped by the comments section and made some interesting points.

A Debate About Communism and Capitalism

Steve wrote:

‘The system is already killing at least 4 million and probably a lot more anyway.’ [citation needed] ??? ‘Communist countries have done great things as far as feeding and housing people, giving them basic education and health care and putting in essential sanitation. India has failed at all of these things, mostly because they haven’t even tried.’ North Korea- questionable on health care and food sufficiency. Cuba- I don’t know much about Cuba, but the life expectancy is slightly higher than the US and people are well fed, so it must be doing something right. U.S.S.R.- sure it achieved those things but it was poor, and they only managed the basics. Compare it to the western half of Europe. China- I might address that on the other post. In any case, supposing you have a generally good point, I’d still say so what? Capitalist countries have achieved those things too. Europeans achieved all those things on both sides of the divide. The question is would a Communist government achieve them in India? India is not Europe or North East Asia. It is a tropical, caste ridden country with rampant corruption. Oh…watch the bodies pile up as they try to stamp out caste. ‘As they became more capitalist, they became much more corrupt.’ Really? I don’t know how you would measure it or prove that but I don’t think it is controversial to say that there was plenty of corruption in Soviet Union. And do you think Indian officials/politicians/police will stop being corrupt because they are communist? Really? “There won’t be any “economic development that will eventually lift millions of out poverty.” It’s not going to happen under neoliberalism. Don’t you ever get tired of neoliberals telling us to wait around for the “economic development that will eventually lift millions of out poverty?” Don’t you realize that under neoliberal capitalism reduction of poverty is a goal that has zero value, and I do mean zero value.” Economic growth is already happening in India. The economy will keep growing, as long as there isn’t a big war or global financial collapse or something. As the economy grows, the small middle class will grow and per capita incomes will rise generally. Incomes are already higher than in sub Saharan Africa. (The malnutrition is a separate problem related to Indian culture.) Income inequality is less in India than in China or America. Why won’t the economy keep growing? Maybe poverty reduction has no intrinsic value in capitalism but it happens anyway. It can anyway. If you are practical, the question is what will work? Compare North Korea to South Korea, Eastern Europe to Western Europe. And look at the Chinese economic growth in the past 30 years. It has been meteoric. The fastest industrial revolution in history. I only have to look at my own country and think of it 100 or 200 years ago. There was widespread poverty and squalor. People lived with terrible hardship. How did it get from that to this? This being high levels of development and widespread material wealth and comfort, probably unimaginable to my great great grand parents. Capitalism. Capitalism is better for economic development, or at least a strong element of capitalism. I’m not advocating libertarianism or neoliberalism. The public sector (in health care and education for example) and government regulations (like minimum wage, working hours etc) are important and have been important to my country. Capitalism must be harnessed. And poor countries must not be forced into structural adjustment policies. When capitalism is harnessed, it is more effective at providing economic growth and development than Communism, as it was in the 20th century. Let people get on with enterprising and they will produce growth. How big the public sector should be and what it should encompass is open for debate.

If the USSR is so poor and capitalism is so much better for Russia, why have only two republics recently surpassed the USSR in per capita income. Agricultural production is still far below the USSR. If capitalism is so much better for Russia, then why did the USSR produce more crops than Russia does now? The problem is you are comparing socialism to socialism. They haven’t had pure capitalism is Western Europe for many decades. You are comparing state socialism of the USSR with social democracy in Europe. They are both socialism – just different kinds. One would think that if a tropical country like China or Cuba could do great things, why wouldn’t India? India can’t even provide the basics for its people. I don’t give a flying fuck about “economic growth.” The capitalists have been saying sit back and watch the economic growth as the rising tide lifts all boats in trickle down, supply side economics forever now. The 3rd World has always been pure capitalist or colonialist, which was a form of mercantilism. When is it supposed to start working? When is capitalism in the 3rd World supposed to start working so this rising tide can lift all boats and raise everyone out of poverty? It hasn’t happened, and a lot of us are getting tired of waiting around. Poverty in the capitalist 3rd World is horrific, and capitalism has utterly failed to alleviate the problem in any way, shape or form. Yes, corruption skyrocketed as China, the CIS and Eastern Europe went to capitalism, and no, there was not a lot of corruption in the USSR or Eastern Europe compared to now. There is always vastly more corruption in a capitalist society than in a Communist one, and always far more crime too. Capitalism causes incredible amounts of crime and corruption. Neoliberalism only benefits the top 2 Why is this economic growth acceptable in China? Millions of people are dying every year in China from lack of health care. That wasn’t happening under Mao. Why is this ok? Why was it ok to shut down hundreds of thousands of schools. You realize that the privatization of health care and mass shutdown of schools all over China was part of Deng’s project that you are now cheering on? Why is that ok? Was it ok to do that just to get some “economic growth?” You know what? Fuck economic growth. If you have to kill millions every year and shut down hundreds of thousands of schools so tens of millions of children don’t even get a primary school education, why is that worth it? I say it’s not worth it! That so many live so well in the UK now is testament to social democracy. And keep in mind that the UK was a very socialist place until recently. The state even ran mines and all sorts of “commanding heights of the economy” type things. You argue for capitalism, but all over the world, the capitalists are all 10 The problem is that the only people who are advocating that capitalism should be harnessed in any whatsoever area us socialists. Almost all capitalists agree that capitalism should not be harnessed in any way whatsoever. Capitalists are all radical neoliberal, neoclassical Libertarians. Almost all of them are. They all oppose regulation in any way, shape or form, and they always will. That’s why capitalism is unreformable. Anyway, hardly anyone on the Left is advocating USSR style Communism anymore anyway.

Why People Are Poor: More Rightwing Inevitability Theories

The rightwing also tosses about more inevitability theories about poverty.

A rightwing character on here recently informed me that poverty was caused by low IQ. In the US, and apparently around the world.

But this is false, and it relies on a false understanding of the nature of capitalism. Sure, under capitalism the lower IQ types will tend to fall towards the bottom. However, there are many states in the world that have eliminated or nearly eliminated extreme poverty. There are millions or tens of millions of low IQ persons in China, Belaus, Cuba, the Arab World (particularly the Gulf), Russia and the former USSR.

Yet somehow, these places have managed to provide just about everyone with a place to live. There is no homelessness in Finland, Belarus, North Korea or Cuba. There is very little homelessness in many European states. It’s unknown in the Arab World. There is very little homelessness in Russia and the former USSR. It’s illegal to be homeless in China.

There is almost no hunger or malnutrition in any of the places listed above, except for some parts of the Arab World. There must be hundreds of millions of low IQ people in those place. There’s nothing about having a low IQ that means that you automatically won’t have enough food to eat.

Infant mortality is low in most of the places above with the exception of the Arab World. So is maternal mortality. Infant and maternal mortality is particularly low in Europe, Russia and the former USSR. There are 100’s of millions of low IQ people in those places. Just because you are low IQ, does not mean that your babies have to die from hunger or lack of health care, nor does it mean that if you are female, you will be forced to die in pregnancy.

The rightwing lies. There’s nothing to be done about poverty. It’s all caused by stupidity, and stupidity is genetic.

China, a high IQ country, had a life expectancy of 32 years in 1949. The peasantry lived on the continual border of life and death. Most were perpetually malnourished, and if you got sick, you either got better or you died, real simple. And this was in one of the highest IQ countries on Earth.

Suppose we could genetically engineer humanity so every country could have an average IQ of 100. Or better, so the vast majority of humanity would have the equivalent of a 2011 IQ of 90+ or even 100+. That would no guarantee whatsoever against mass starvation, sky high infant and maternal mortality, high disease rates or much less poverty.

Poverty is built into the capitalist system, and everyone can’t be rich. When everyone is rich, $1 million and $1.75 buys you a Slurpee at a 7-11. It is the nature of the unregulated capitalist system to create insane extremes of wealth and poverty. Why are some rich? Because others are poor. The rich are rich because millions are poor. The poor make the rich rich. The more you impoverish the middle and working classes and the poor, the richer the rich gets. All of this is independent of IQ.

Unregulated capitalism creates mass death from disease, hunger and poverty. And in a world of brainiacs, there would still be 100’s of millions of poor, because everyone can’t be rich. When everyone is rich, no one is rich. When every country is rich, no nation is rich. Think about it.

This is more rightwing hopelessness. Poverty is in your genes. There’s nothing to be done. Move along now.

Russia: Welcome to Capitalist Hell

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=IT&hl=it&v=eVjYO9FKL7o]

Say what you will about the USSR, but they never had dirty bums on the streets begging money and sniffing glue. Of all things, street children. Good God, what a mess.

Whether it works or not, capitalism is definitely not morally ok. In a lot of ways, it’s just flat out evil.

Check out Lenin giving a speech at the end. I don’t believe I have ever seen him speak before. And at the very end before the video ends, guess who? Leon Trotsky.

Imperialist War Ends in Libya – Imperialists Win

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RW16ly_JzU&feature=channel_video_title]

From Russia Today, an excellent TV station funded by the Russian government that frequently attacks the West and Western imperialism, an interview with Pepe Escobar of Asia Times. Escobar, a journalist who often takes on Western imperialism, says that NATO will want a boots on the ground occupation in order to secure the oil supplies.

Western imperialism, headed by the North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO) has won the war in Libya. The whole war was a joke. There was a no fly zone, which meant that Western aircraft flew over Libya to keep Qaddafi’s aircraft out of the sky. This was supposedly to protect civilians. But it never really was.

For a long time recently, NATO jets have been bombing Qaddafi’s forces where they were not attacking civilians at all. These attacks happened in areas where Libyan forces were only fighting against rebel forces. So the whole protecting civilians things is some kind of a sick joke.

One wonders why the people rose up against Ghaddafi. Libya provides free education anywhere on Earth for any Libyan who wants it. There is a job waiting for any Libyan who wants to work, or even for Libyans who don’t want to work. The unemployment rate is effectively zero, since the only nonworkers are layabouts or the disabled. Basic food supplies are either very cheap or free. Rent is completely free in Libya. All medical care is completely free in Libya. All Libyans get a $500 check every month from the state’s oil supplies.

This was probably one of the main reasons for the NATO assault – to wipe out Libya’s socialist system and privatize the Libyan state.

Ghaddafi tried to move off the US dollar to denominate oil sales – this is probably the main reason why he got attacked by imperialism. He also moved completely outside of the world banking system. As such, he was a threat to the bankster criminals who actually run this entire planet. This is probably another reason why he got attacked – to force him back into the international imperialist banking system.

He was trying to set up a parallel currency and banking system for Africa so Africa could move off the imperialist currency and banking systems of the West. Ghaddafi represented what’s called “the threat of a good example” – this is why he was attacked.

I imagine that all of Libya’s socialist system denominated above will be dismantled by the new NATO imperialist rulers of the NATO colony of Libya. Enjoy the capitalism, Libyans!

Libya had contracts via an Italian oil company with Putin’s Russia. Wikileaks’ documents showed that the US said that these contracts had to be stopped at all costs. This was probably another reason for the war – to end Ghaddafi’s contracts with Russia. This contract is now on hold.

Libya under Ghaddafi paid lower royalties to foreign imperialist oil corporations than any other nation on Earth. That is because as a nationalist, Ghaddafi believed in keeping the maximum amount of oil wealth for his people and the minimum for Western corporate sharks and rapists. This was probably another reason he was attacked – to force negotiation of better terms for Western oil corporations. These contracts will probably all be negotiated on better terms for Western corporations now.

Libya does not recognize the Zionist entity in Israel. This was probably another reason why he was attacked – to force him to recognize Israel.  There are now reports that NATO is demanding that the new regime recognize Israel immediately. I am sure that they will.

Libya was destroyed so that it could be rebuilt. More disaster capitalism. Western corporations, like sharks, are now swarming over Libya to get the rebuilding contracts for rebuild all of the infrastructure that NATO bombed. I think that NATO deliberately destroyed Libya’s infrastructure in order to make money off the rebuilding contracts. The very same thing was done in Iraq. Is that sick or what?

It’s clear, however, that many Libyans hated Ghaddafi. One wonders why. He did so many things for his people. Libya had the highest level of development of any African nation. I think it may have been because he was brutal. He killed so many of his own people. Many others were arrested, tortured, beaten or disappeared. It’s possible that he was so widely hated more on account of his brutality than anything else.

More on Laissez Faire Economics

Repost from the old site.

In the comments section, James Schipper makes some interesting comments about laissez faire economics and libertarianism in general. His comments are in italics, mine are follow in normal font.

JS: Laissez-faire usually means short-term gain for a small minority and short-term pain for a large majority, medium-term gain for a larger minority and medium-term pain for a smaller majority and only long-term gain for the majority.

RL: I don’t agree with this at all. The case of neoliberalism seems to show us that the gains never do filter down to anyone below the top 2

Of course not. Things just seem to get worse and worse. Neoliberalism only accomplishes massive wealth transfers from the bottom 8

JS: The Chicago boys are actually right in that speculative bubbles are only possible if the government engages in massive monetary expansion or allows the banks to do so. This means that the most essential part of government regulation in a modern economy is the regulation of credit and the currency. Too much money and credit = inflation and speculation.

RL: The problem here is that these Chicago Boys characters have been cheering on every single speculative bubble that ever existed, and they created quite a few of them themselves. Their libertarian project in Chile ended in massive failure such that even Pinochet had to step in with major government intervention to save the economy. Huge intervention by the state was the only thing that saved the economy.

In Russia, the Boys succeeded in looting the nation, transferring the money out of the country, engineering a Depression 3.5 times worse than the US Depression and killing 15 million Russians. The Chicago Boys and their acolytes were behind the Asian Flu crashes in the late 1990’s too.

The only way to prevent speculative bubbles is through government regulation of an economy, and the Chicago Boys apparently oppose all such. The business sector, whom the Chicago Boys represent, always supports a loose money policy during the good times in order to facilitate the cheap money necessary for economic expansion and of course speculation.

Furthermore, the US capitalist class, nor any other capitalist class, would never support the Chicago Boys’ apparent prescription here – getting rid of the Fed’s regulation of the money supply. Business loves and needs the Fed, despite all of its rants against socialism. Anyway, the role of a central bank is overestimated. Even in a state without a strong central bank regulating money, you can still get massive speculative inflows. This was the case with the nations harmed by the Asian Flu.

The Fed itself is run by economists who are themselves working hand in hand with Big Business and are generally followers of Chicago School Economics. The only thing the rich care about is inflation, and business everywhere on Earth has cheered on every speculative bubble that ever existed. They can’t get enough of them.

To blame these bubbles on a reactionary government institution called the Fed, implying the Fed is some kind of socialist institution (though its recent actions have indeed been socialist) is beyond perverse.

What’s deadly to business and the rich is inflation. The rich hate inflation because it cuts into their incomes. Most rich people don’t even work at all. They just kick back and live off rents and equities. Nothing cuts into their lazy money more than inflation. Further, inflation engenders demands for wage increases, which is why business hates it so much. It also increases costs for supplies, which they may or may not be able to pass on.

In order to stop inflation from hurting the rich and business, the Fed fights inflation by throwing millions of Americans out of work, since inflation and unemployment are two ends of a scale. As unemployment gets “too low”, workers start getting “uppity” and demanding wage increases. This is deadly to capitalism, so the Fed responds by deliberately increasing unemployment and throwing millions out of work.

If you take a university course in capitalist economics, they will tell you that capitalism operates on the premise of “the benefits of mass unemployment”. The benefits lie in the disciplining of the worker. The notion that mass unemployment has any benefits at all is enough to turn my stomach against capitalism.

Further, I’m not enamored of any Austrian economist.

JS: Too much money and credit = inflation and speculation.

RL: Problem here probably being that the Fed cares little about speculation (although it does worry about it a bit – witness Alan Greenspan’s famous “irrational exuberance” comments a while back) but cares a lot about inflation.

Speculation does not necessarily lead to increases in core inflation, but it surely runs up some prices. Housing market, oil and dot com stock speculation surely created bubbles in those sectors, but in the case of housing and dot com’s, did not effect core inflation.

JS: As to the New Deal, it was a colossal failure.

RL: I can’t comment on this. The general analysis here in the US is that the New Deal saved US capitalism from Revolution, hence it was painful but worth it. This analysis comes from the more enlightened among capitalist sectors themselves.

Of course Western Europe and the Asian Tigers were not built on laissez faire. Even today that Japan, Singapore and Korea have extreme government intervention in the economy in terms of state planning of the economy. That’s often termed corporatism.

It’s not like Gosplan where the social economy is planned down to the # of eggs you will eat in a year. Instead this sort of economic guidance actually works. Government works with firms to help them compete against foreign sectors, goosing some sectors while letting others wilt.

No country with a mostly private education system and a poor public education system has ever produced any kind of an educated population.

Up here in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, we have many roads that are private. The country never got around to making them county roads. Without exception, they are horrible. In many cases, there are expensive homes and properties lining these roads. The homes sell for about ~$300,000+ now. Most people living there have some money and they are not poor at all.

Thing is, everyone would have to get together to pitch in to fix the road and maintain it. People, even well to do folks, can never seem to get together to do that, so you have a horrific road. It’s really strange to try to drive down a nightmarish road while looking at very nice, fancy houses with new cars on either side.

Fascism Today in the US and Beyond

Uncle Milton writes:

Bernardio Carpio: I have a gut feel that what you are going through in the USA today is what the Germans were going through during the Weimar Republic in the late 20′s and early 30′s, before Hitler took over. An aggressive, determined, fanatical, irrational right wing. A reactionary middle class.

UM: I doubt it …and this is coming from someone who has several Jewish relatives. If we are sliding towards fascism it is much more likely to be the half-assed Latin American variety wherein the elites are behind walled compounds protected by bodyguards and the masses suffer from mass inflation and economic instability.

Milton is right about most of it except for the inflation. There won’t be any. And I do consider Latin American fascism to be real fascism.

Fascism is simply any far rightwing, anti-democratic movement.

The opposition to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Venezuelan, Bolivian and Ecuadorian opposition, the Honduran ruling elite, all of these are fascists because they hate democracy.

Any violent, murderous, rightwing government is automatically fascist. The Salvadoran right is still fascist. The ruling elite in Haiti is fascist, as is the ruling elite in the Dominican Republic. The Guatemalan and Colombian states are obviously fascist.

Going abroad, the Indonesian and Phillipine states have been fascist forever.

The middle classes in many places are fascist. The “yellow shirt” middle class opposition in Thailand is clearly fascist. The leader of the poor, the “red shirts,” Thakhsin, won the election in 2006, and they refused to accept the results because they boycotted it.

They rioted and demanded another election. Incredibly, he accepted a new election, but then the yellow shirts staged a military coup. The US corporate scum press said he was thrown out because he was corrupt, but all Thai governments are corrupt. The yellow shirt government was just as corrupt as the red shirts or even worse.

The opposition in Belarus is fascist. Lukashenko won the last election fair and square. It was proven by many observers, and exit polls proved it too. He won by a very wide margin. The corporate scum press around the world said he stole the election and that the opposition really won.

Then the opposition, which represents maybe 2

The modern Republican Party in the US is fascist because it is a far rightwing and fiercely anti-democratic party. They refuse to accept the legitimacy of any Democratic President. In that sense, they resemble the middle class yellow shirts of Thailand. It is important to note that it is their hostility to democracy and refusal to recognize the opposition as legitimate that makes the Republicans fascists.

And going by conversations with them, most Republicans are fascists themselves. I realized this when Bush stole the 2000 election. I talked to a lot of Republicans back then. It seemed like most of them recognized that Bush was stealing the election, but they just did not care. At that point, I realized that we were doomed.

The truth is this: the business sector, the capitalists, are almost always fascist when there is a left government in power or threatening to take power. It’s true all over the world. They simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of a left regime.

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