Alt Left: A Ukrainian Nationalist Fascist Visits the Site

A Ukrainian nationalist comes to the site:

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

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

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

Slava Ukraine forever and always.

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

fuck putin fuck russian genocide

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

#freeprussia

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

#freemoldolva, #LiberateTransisteria, #unifymoldolva

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

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

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

#freeGeorgia

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

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

The Abaz speak a NW Caucasian language like Abkhaz.

The Bats speak a NE Caucasian language like Chechen.

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

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

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

The LPR & DPR ain’t even real

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

Fuck the internet research agency especially

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

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

allah akbar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pro-Russia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Belarus: Most are pro-Russia.

Trending Pro-Russia

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

Unknown

India: Unknown, ally of Russia.

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

Anti-Russia, Pro-Ukraine

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

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

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

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

About East European Nationalism

You see, in a number of these countries, they never really had an actual nation. They were always a part of some empire or duchy or whatever. The real nation-building process was quite recent. Since they never really had a history as a nation, they had to build a nationalist project more or less out of thin air or at least out of castles of sand.

Hence the national heroes of these places goes back to World War 2, when the Nazis promised the Baltics, Belorussians, and Ukrainians with independence from the USSR. The USSR had just recently taken over the Baltic states in order to have strategic depth against the Nazis. The Ukrainians had been independence-minded, at least in the west, since the Bolshevik Revolution. These nationalists claimed that the USSR and Russia have always dismissed the idea that they have separate countries. While in the USSR, nationalist aspirations were largely forbidden and played down.

After the USSR took the Balts away from the Nazis and incorporated them into the USSR, they lost the independence they had had during the interwar period. They claimed that the USSR did not allow them to develop their national languages but that does not seem correct. Anyway, the USSR and Russia were always seen as the thorn in the side of the national aspirations of these peoples.

Since they never had much of a recent history, most of the nationalist heroes of Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Ukraine end up being some nationalist Nazi collaborator from 1942 named Vyashlev the Jewslayer or something along those lines. There are statues and monuments to these guys all over these countries with the exception of Belarus. At the same time,  all of the Soviet era statues, including to heroes of the Great Patriotic War, have been torn down or vandalized.

The Litts (Lithuanians), Letts (Latvians), and Ukrainians were the biggest Nazi collaborators of all of the national groups in the region.

Poland and Finland are extreme Russia-haters for nationalist reasons, but the Poles don’t like Nazis, and I don’t think the Finns are all that Nazi. Poles hate Communism, in part for religious reasons of extreme Catholicism.

In Hungary, the right wing has Nazi tendencies. The Hungarians had a sort of nation long before the modern era. A fascist dictator named Horthy ruled Hungary in the interwar period and during WW2. I believe he was a Nazi collaborator.  The leader of Hungary, Victor Orban, has praised Horthy. The nationalists here are Nazis, but they are not a large movement. The party is called Fideliz and its origins are in the Red Arrow of WW2. They are Nazis.

Romanian nationalists are descendants of the Iron Cross of WW2, but they are not very popular for some reason. I believe Romania has been a national idea for some time. Also, they are Orthodox. Czechoslovakia is another national idea that has been around a long time. Nationalists are not popular in either country, as you can see in the amicable breakup they had into two separate states.

Belarussian nationalists are Nazis, but they are not popular. They only get 20-2

Croatian nationalists are absolutely Nazis, descendants of the Ustasha collaborationist regime. That’s why Communist Yugoslavia cracked down so hard on them. They are also Catholics. The recent president Franz Tudjman was absolutely a fascist, though I don’t think he was a Nazi. Over there, Croatian nationalism often just boils down to “Serb-hater.”

There is a racial aspect to Ukrainian nationalism. It holds that the true Ukrainians are a sort of Aryanized Germano-Scandinavian people, descendants of the Kievan Rus, which was after all settled by Swedes.

The others, the Slavs (Russians) are simply undermenscen to be destroyed. So they copied Nazi racial ideas and said that they were not Slavs to get away form Nazi anti-Slavic theory. The Slavs were hated by the Germans mostly because the Nazis saw all of them as Communists. They were also said to have a “slave (Slav) mentality” (see Nietzsche) which made them too weak to resist against Communism. The Ukrainian nationalists also saw Russians as Communists.

Ukrainian nationalists hated Jews because they saw the Jews as the leading edge of Soviet imperialism (anti-Ukrainian nationalism) and Bolshevism. In other words, they were following the Judeo-Bolshevik theory of the Nazis. It is true that Ukrainian Jews were passionate Communists at this time, in part because the USSR cracked down so heavily on antisemitism.

As I mentioned earlier, Ukraine or Malorussia (literally Small Russia but in this context Central Russia) has long been seen as a land of bandits and robbers, a lawless place. This tradition continues today with oligarchs robbing the place blind. An anarchist named Makho was a Ukrainian in the Russian Civil War. Originally allied with the Soviets, he turned on them during the war and led and anarchist rebellion. Makho is also seen by Russians as a typical Ukrainian. He was a bandit before he was an anarchist, and anarchism is associated with lawlessness and chaos, hence he’s an archetypal Ukrainian.

There is another culture war going on here, and that is the Roman Catholic West versus the Istanbul (or Antioch) Eastern Orthodox. Few people realize this but the Catholic Crusaders killed as many Orthodox Christians in Palestine as Muslims. They were seen as heathens. Afterwards, another sort of Catholic crusader in the form of German crusaders attacked the Orthodox communities to the northeast. And it looks like they converted them to Catholicism while they were at it. The German crusaders saw the people to the northeast as forest-dwelling barbarians and heathens.

Western Catholics again attacked the Orthodox in the East under Napoleon, and once again were beaten back. The result in part was two Russian borrowings in the French language – bistro and douche (the original French “water toilet”).

The Germans in World War 2 and their Roman Catholic collaborators were seen as another in the line of Western Catholic attacks on the Orthodox East.

In Ukraine, this also has a religious form as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church split from the Russian Orthodox Church at some point and became what some see as a heretical schismatics. They adopted a sort of “Greek Catholicism” (I’m not even sure what that is, but supposedly it’s a heretical schismatic split from the Orthodox) and allied themselves with Roman Catholicism and the West against the Russian and Russian Orthodox Church of the East. The Ukrainian Nazi nationalist battalions often attack Orthodox churches for some reason. I’m not entirely sure why they do that.

So as you can see, there is a lot of history going on here.

Support for Nazism among East European Nationalists

Yes, the Nazis had a lot of support in Hungary, Romania, the Baltics, Finland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Belarus. They played the nationalism card and went into those parts of the USSR promising those peoples independence. Of those, four are Orthodox, four are Catholic, and two are Protestant.

In Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece and Albania, the Nazis had little support and often much opposition. The first three are Catholic and the last three are Orthodox.

I’m not seeing any particular tendency of any particular religion to be more Nazi-supporting than any other.

In Poland, they probably just killed too many Poles. How many Poles would go along with that? Protestants never went over to Nazis too much for whatever reason. Maybe they’re too individualistic. Also Protestants have never been very antisemitic. That’s been more of a Catholic and Orthodox thing.

Many Ukrainians sided with the Nazis. In every country they went into, the Nazis recruited homicidal antisemites for the SS. They found no more than moderate support in most places, but in Ukraine, they were overwhelmed with volunteers.

Ukrainian SS units fought all the way over in Northern France, where they hatched a famous rebellion against the Nazis in 1944.

You see, to the Nazis, even the SS Ukrainians were just inferior Slavs, and the Germans treated them terribly. The Ukrainians didn’t appreciate it. They rebelled in Northern France and killed the 50 Germans leading their unit, only losing four men. Then they all went over to the French Resistance. The Resistance happily took them in even though they were former SS. Pretty weird. SS guys joining the resistance!

The Ukrainian SS in France didn’t work very well. A German officer said, “It’s hard to motivate Ukrainians to kill Americans for Germans in France.” They were simply not part of the fight over there.

A lot of Ukrainians became concentration camp guards. The famous guard Ivan the Terrible, Ivan Demjanjuk, was one of them. They even had a special name for the Ukrainians who worked in the camps named after the camp where they were trained.

Ukrainian nationalists also committed a number of massacres in Slovakia and Poland.

Villagers under their rule said they were worse than Germans. They said German soldiers at least had a basic civilized politeness about them. They were mostly just doing a job, and they seemed a bit bored a lot of the time. They didn’t tend to go in for gratuitous unnecessary violence. The Ukrainians seemed to enjoy being cruel for the fun of it.

Keep in mind that the German Army itself often did not commit ethnic massacres. That was usually left to the SS. The German troops didn’t really have the stomach for lining civilians up and slaughtering them. Originally, the Nazis had ordinary soldiers massacring civilians, but the soldiers were outraged at what they had done and wrote letters back home about how awful it was. There were a lot of PTSD cases and desertions.

That’s why they created the SS in the first place – because the ordinary soldiers were not capable of massacres like that. Soldiers may be killers but they’re not necessarily murderers.

A German general in Warsaw saved 3,000 Jews. The Nazis had captured 3,000 Jews and put them to work in a factory for a general. The idea was to work them for a few weeks until they could transfer them to camps. The general got wind that the SS were coming, and he called his Jewish workers around. He got up and simply said, “The SS will be coming in two days.” The workers got the message and they all took off. He didn’t stop them.

Later in the war the same general tried to save another few thousand Jews. This time he was caught and executed. I have a lot of respect for that man.

Understand that your average German soldier or officer was just a soldier first and foremost, a fighting man. They were not necessarily any more antisemitic than any other German. A lot didn’t have passionate feelings about Jews one way or the other.

Some of those Nazi nationalists in those other countries were worse than the Germans! The Germans were so outraged by the behavior of the Ukrainian UNO under Stepan Bandera that they put him in prison in Germany! The Romanian nationalists outraged the Germans when they hung Jews on meathooks in slaughterhouses. That was too much for the German Army. Germans, you know, they do have certain standards!

I saw an interview with a Belorussian man. He was talking about the Belorussian nationalist Nazi collaborators, whose heirs are now the Belorussian opposition that the US supports. He was alive in World War 2. He said that the Belorussian nationalists were going to come to their village of 10,000 people and kill everyone in it. The villagers went to the local Nazi commander and told him about it, and he was outraged. He stationed a unit inside the village to protect the villagers. I respect that man too.  When you’re worse than Nazis, that’s pretty bad!

Alt Left: A Reasonable Project for “Soft” Taiwanese Independence to Assuage PRC Fears

Vicmund the Han: What do you think of Taiwanese based on your observations?

You’re going to hate me for saying this, but I think they should go independent. But I would like a peace treaty with China beforehand, an economic agreement, CCP military bases in Taiwan dual staffed, Taiwanese military bases in China dual-staffed, perhaps some sort of integration military or econonomic-wise like the CIS or better yet, Belarus. Transform it into a deep alliance and work together. The radical independencists will have to be sidelined.

The main thing is to make it so an independent Taiwan is not a military threat to China. No US military bases in Taiwan, integration of both nations’ policies towards the US and maybe on a lot of other things. Brotherly countries with a strong alliance who agree to disagree on certain things, but when they do, they are “brotherly opposition.”

There is only one China. There are two countries, Taiwan and China. Taiwan is not China. It’s Taiwan. The only China is the People’s Republic. Two Chinas policy was insane, but one China policy is crazy too as it says that Taiwan doesn’t even exist!

The problem is that most  Chinese, including the CCP, are stark raving nuts about this question, so I am really worried that they will not want to put this project into effect. China sees Taiwan as a rebellious province of China. Well, it’s a part of China that fought a war and  achieved their independence from China via military might. So it’s not a rebellious province anymore. It’s like Eritrea split off from Ethiopia. It’s a new country.

Chinese nationalism is ok in a sense, but it’s also ethnic nationalism in a sense and it’s definitely ultranationalism in a revanchist way. You can’t go back and retake land you lost in wars. That’s what those world wars were all about. Irredentism and revanchism have got to go. Chinese nationalism suffers from a lot of the insanities, toxicities, and mental disorders of any nationalism. It is fascist in a sense that all extreme nationalisms or patriotardisms are, though only in a very broad sense of wanting a restoration of a Chinese empire.

It’s nation-state nationalism or patriotardism like exists in many countries, including the US.  It differs from almost all fascisms in not being ethnic-based and in not being part of a nation-building project where all non-Chinese Han/non-Mandarin speakers have to turn into Chinese Mandarin-speaking Hans. They all have to get rid of their languages, ethnic identities, and religions and cultures and become Hans in a sense. Chinese nationalism doesn’t work like that.

It’s inclusive rather than exclusive, offers autonomy instead of forced assimilation, and retains in a sense the notion of self-determination of nations in that nations in  China are free to  speak their languages, practice  their cultures and religions, etc. Pretty typical of the national policies of many Communist countries, though certainly not all of them! It’s more like Soviet nationalism. The Soviets went after breakaway provinces too you know.

Eastern Europe was quite hostile to minority languages, ethnicities, and cultures. Polish and Yugoslavian nationalisms were nation-building projects. I’m not sure how minorities were treated in Slovakia (Hungarians), Romania (Germans), etc. There was much persecution of the Rusyns in Poland, ethnic Germans everywhere, and Italians and Chakavian-speaking Istrians on the islands in Croatia after World War 2 of course. They were accused of siding with the enemy.

Alt Left: More on the Israeli Nuclear Missile Attack on Beirut

The infrared videos and missile videos are all fakes. I still think it’s mini nuke but not because of this made-up evidence.

https://youtu.be/pETBp4uve88

Yes, I have been told that both videos are fakes. Problem with a weapon like that is no way are you going to see it coming in, and even if you pointed your camera at the sky, it probably wouldn’t even catch it.

I’m certain a tactical nuke was just dropped on Beirut by Israel, but no one will believe it because a massive effort is now undergoing to cover it with this stupid fake fertilizer story.

I have a lot of new information via Lebanese intelligence. The fertilizer ship story is completely fake. It’s all a Mossad plot dating back to 2014.

This was apparently planned by Mossad for six years. I’m not surprised.

We don’t some other things about this story. We don’t know if a Hezbollah missile depot was targeted. I think the Hezbollah depot story was put out by Israel and Saudi Arabia and UAE as a way to fuck over Hezbollah – see, you stored weapons there, so your port got blown up. It’s probably not even true.

Most of those Hezbollah missile depot stories are coming from Israel, the Saudis, and UAE and they all have extreme hatred for Iran and Hezbollah. The warehouse was full of other things and one wonders where you put the missiles. Also see below about how that area of the port was controlled by extreme enemies of Hezbollah, so it seems dubious they would let them store missiles there. The warehouse where the “missiles” and “fertilizer” were supposedly stored were not marked for hazardous materials, so it seems very dubious that missiles were stored there and there never was any fertilizer there.

The AN fertilizer never existed. Mossad rented the leaky boat in Cyprus, hooked up with (((Russian Organized Crime))) and filled the boat with a fake load of “2,700 tons of AN fertilizer.” However it never existed. The bags were full of rocks and dirt. We don’t know if there was anything else in the warehouse, but there was never any fertilizer in there. All tenders on the boat were forged. All inspections of the boat were faked and forged. The customer in Mozambique does not exist. The Russian captain in Lebanon cannot be located.

The fake “AN” (which was mislabeled by the way as High AN, which doesn’t blow up, instead of Low AN, which does) was routed through several countries – first Romania, then Moldova, and last Georgia in an ever-changing story. The official line is that the AN came from Georgia, where it was made. However,  there are no facilities in Georgia to manufacture AN.

The rocks and dirt have sat in that warehouse for six years while cases wound through the courts.

That part of the port is controlled by Lebanese Maronite Christian fascists who absolutely hate Hezbollah, Iran, Arabs and Muslims in general. They would never let Hezbollah store a bullet there.

Keep in mind that only four days before the attack, Israel said the next time Hezbollah attacks us, we will destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure. That was right after Hezbollah supposedly tried to plant a bomb on the border. Israel reported that all of the bomb planters were killed. Hezbollah said there was no team of bomb planters and no attempt to plant a bomb. Next Israel said that they let the bomb planters get away to spare them for some reason.

Right after the Beirut attack, Netanyahu tweeted, “We got the bomb planters and now we got the people who sent  them.” And he issued another dire warning to Hezbollah. This sounds like he  is admitting to the Beirut attack. Israel has been threatening to destroy Lebanon forever, at least since 2006.

The Israeli doctrine now is the Dahiya Doctrine, named after a neighborhood in Beirut that was levelled by Israel in 2006. This doctrine states that any attacks by Hezbollah will be responded to with massive force equivalent to the destruction of Dahiya. Another Israeli doctrine is the Samson Doctrine,  which states that Israel must be like a mad dog, completely unable to be predicted in any  of its behavior.

Part of this doctrine was laid out by Martin Van Creveld, renowned Israeli military historian. He said that if Israel’s existence is ever in question due to an Arab attack and the West does to come in to save the Jews, Israel will attack Europe, possibly with nuclear weapons. The message is, “If you European Gentiles let us get massacred again, this time we will kill all of you too.” This apparently also has understandable Holocaust references that can easily be discerned.

This looks like a purely economic attack on the port to destroy the port and especially Lebanon’s food supply. The grain silos had all of their grain. They now have only a 1 month supply of grain.

The rest is supposed to come from Syria, but right after the attack, the US blew up some grain silos in Syria. And we have been burning grain fields in Syria for months now. So it looks like the US was in on this. There were four US spy planes over Lebanon at the exact time of the attack. That is very weird and there are almost never that many of our such planes over that country. They were probably there to record it. Immediately afterwards, food warehouses in Najaf, Iraq caught on fire. And right after that a huge Iranian mall in the UAE caught on fire. “Fireworks” were reported in both cases. This looks like either the US or Mossad or their Sunni Shia-hating pals were in on this.

3,000 rioters employed by the CIA as part of an anti-Iran group overthrew the Lebanese government over this false flag. The intention was to use the fertilizer story to overthrow the government and get a new government in without any Hezbollah people.

No Conservatives Allowed on This Website!

We have had a few conservatives posting here in the past few days. These are US-style conservatives, which are the worst kind of all. US-style conservatives are absolutely banned from posting here in any way, shape or form. Conservatism means different things in different countries, so conservatives from much of the rest of the world (except Latin America and the UK) can continue to post. Even Canadian conservatives can continue to post, as I do not mind them. It’s not conservatism itself that is so awful. Almost every country on Earth has people who call themselves conservatives, and there are conservative parties in almost every country on Earth. But being a conservative just about anywhere outside of the Americas is more or less an acceptable position for me. I probably won’t like their politics much, but I could at least look at them and say that this is an opposition I could live with. US conservatives and their brethren in the UK, Latin America, the Philippines, Nepal and and Indonesia are quite a different beast. I have to think hard about conservatives in Eastern Europe, especially Estonia, Latvia and the Czech Republic. These fools had such a bad experience with Communism that they went 180 degrees in the other direction. I would have to see the positions of these conservative parties in those countries to see whether they would be OK or not. Just to give you an example, Vladimir Putin is considered to be a right-winger, and his party United Russia advocates a politics called Russian Conservatism. Looking at the party’s platform, this is not only a conservatism that I could live with but one I might even vote for! Conservatives in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and most other places in Asia are acceptable. The conservatives in the Stans, Georgia, Ukraine, and Armenia can be rather awful, particularly in the nationalist sense, but I will not ban them. I dislike Indian conservatives, but I will not ban them. Conservatives from the Muslim World are all acceptable. In the Muslim World, conservatism just means religious and sometimes nationalist. I can live with that. Even the ones in Iran are orders of magnitude better than the US type. Conservatives in the Arab World are acceptable. They are mostly just religious people. Turkish conservatives are awful, but I will not ban them. They are just religious and a particularly awful type of nationalist. African conservatives are OK. Conservatives in Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany,  the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, Italy, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania are sometimes good, sometimes pretty bad, but they are all acceptable here. Conservatism in Europe mostly means nationalism. I am actually rather fond of the conservative running Hungary, Orban. LePen conservatives leave something to be desired, but they are acceptable. They’re mostly just nationalists. Hell, I might even vote for Marine LePen! If it was down to LePen versus Macron, I would absolutely support LePen! Conservatives from Indonesia, Nepal and Philippines are not OK. These are an “everything for the rich elite, nothing for anybody else” type of conservative. Some of them even hide under the labels of Socialist or even Communist. The word conservative has no real inherent meaning. It means whatever people say it means. Anyway, the conservatives in the US are pure garbage and recently they have become out and out fascists after moving in that direction for a long time. And a particularly horrible type of fascist at that, a Latin American/Filipino/Indonesian style fascist. I will not allow any US conservatives to post on this board. You all are lucky I even let you lurk here. That’s an idle threat as I can’t ban lurkers, but if they all stopped lurking, I would not mind frankly. You all really ought to go back to the gutters you crawled out of. PS This especially applies to Libertarians, the very worst of all the US conservative vermin. We shoot Libertarians on sight here, so you better watch out. *This applies only to economic conservatives. If you are not an economic conservative, and your conservatism is only of the social variety or you are only conservative on race, religion, guns, law and order, respect for tradition, American nationalism, the military, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity issues, you can stay. I’m not crazy about some social conservatives, but I can live with them. I will probably even let patriotards post as long as they are not economic conservatives. I am an American nationalist myself. I just don’t like patriotards. Of course, I very much dislike and even hate the country as it is right now, but I sure don’t want to make it worse! I have to live here too you now, and it might as well be as pleasant as possible as long I stay here. I want what’s best for my country. I don’t want to harm this country or screw it over. That will be bad for me! And believe it or not, most US patriotards do not want what is best for the country! I have dreams of a greater and better America. It’s not impossible, but we will have to undergo some serious cultural changes. One of the reasons I am so against illegal immigration is because it is ruining my country and making this place even worse. Also illegal immigration is terrible for US workers and I am for the workers. I am against H-1B visas for the same reason – they are wrecking my country. IT workers are workers too, so they are my comrades. I want what is best for America and American workers. I cannot live with economic conservatives. I like cancer way more than I like US conservatives. Cancer is much more decent and respectable.

The US War for the Dollar, 1988-Present

The crisis in Ukraine is all about two things: The desire to preserve US hegemony (US World Dictatorship) The desire to save the dollar or preserve the dollar’s role as fiat currency. Look at the following evidence: In 1988, presidents of Libya, Iran and Romania start talking about creating a more honest bank for countries. One year later, the only leader killed in Eastern Europe was the president of Romania. It was done on purpose on Christmas Day as a strong warning for the other two. The judges were ordered at gunpoint to the courtroom, which looked more like a high school classroom. The trial in the kangaroo court was over quickly and both Ceausescu and his wife were executed on the same day. The two judges were so traumatized by what they had done that soon both men committed suicide. Soon before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein had been talking about halting the denomination of his oil sales in dollars in order to put them on some other currency. Very soon after he made those remarks, Iraq was invaded for many phony reasons. Very soon after the US conquered Iraq, one of the first acts of the new colonial dictator Paul Bremer (I am so sorry that the Iraqi resistance never killed this man!) changed Iraqi policy and began to denominate all Iraqi oil sales in dollars once again. In 2010, president of Libya starts talking again about creating a bank for North Africa. Two years later he is killed as a strong message. Concerning Iran, the US has been more or less at war with Iran for the past 35 years even since the Islamic Revolution. This has gotten worse and worse to the point where due to sanctions, Iran is locked out of most international trade. A very important reason for this war has been Iran moving off of denominating its oil sales in dollars. Lately it has been accepting gold for its oil. Turkey and India both have recently conducted quite a bit of trade with Iran in gold. Putin’s Russia is now threatening to go off the dollar and denominate its oil sales in some other currency. Hence the current US War on Russia. The message is quite clear: Go off the dollar, and your country will be attacked. Not only that, but the US will execute you personally.  

How the East Was Won – The Destruction of Eastern Europe by the US and its Allies

We are pleased to publish this first testimony of a francophone reader of vineyardsaker. Filo is of Yugoslavian origin. He emigrated to the West in the 70’s, and tells us of his disillusionment on the Western model as well as that of an entire people. The French Saker Editors

1989, The Year the West Did Everything Wrong

by Filo

I was born a long time ago, in a country that was said to be situated between two blocks: that of the East and that of the West. A nonaligned country. Above all, an untroubled and peaceful country. I was born and lived there the first twenty years of my life. Enough for me to be able to perceive and understand the life of my country, engage in my studies and in my first experiences. As early as 1960, socialist Yugoslavia was forced by the West and the IMF to open itself to a market economy and to start making economic reforms. Poorly prepared and ill-protected, state companies rapidly went into an economic crisis. Mass unemployment appeared. In short, we became easy prey, exploitable at will. The country was invaded by entrepreneurs and businessmen from Germany, Austria, Netherlands, and Switzerland, all attracted by low-cost manpower. Many Yugoslavians became “gastarbeiters”, immigrant workers. When this situation reached its apex, there were in the West up to 2.5 million Yugoslavian workers according to estimates. In 1970, I was among those who followed this course. I landed in the middle of an economic boom. I remember, my eyes wide open, being astonished by all of these ostentatious signs of wealth, by the presence of banks everywhere. Although I was not born in capitalism, a question worried me: How can all of these banks be profitable? I finally understood much later. I will not say more about it now because I would like to keep that topic for another article. Inevitably, I compared this new world I was discovering to the world I had just left. I was first struck by the amount of falsehood and manipulation in the written or broadcast media. These media were full of glorification of the Western society, presented as being superior in every aspect. The others, the Eastern countries, were systematically criticized and slandered. Yugoslavia often was simply lumped together with the other countries of the Eastern Bloc. I had just discovered that the media of my country were much more objective, more moderate, less dishonest, and overall more democratic.

The Period of Illusions

The year 1989, right after the Berlin wall had fallen, was meant to be the Year Zero for the whole of mankind. At least, that was what we thought at the time. A new start of a world without wars, without poverty. A world of happiness for all, in which we were finally going to live together. No more divisions or hostility, no longer this imminent fear of a forthcoming war. In the East, they believed in it so much that, led by illusions, they began to dream with their eyes wide open of a new world of coexistence and sharing. They imagined and persuaded themselves that the Western World was a world suspended between earth and sky. A myth that had suddenly become touchable, within hand’s reach. They were probably in a state of mind similar to that of the Amerindians at the beginning of the conquest of the Far West; very naive. Truly ingenuous. Then, history did nothing else but repeat itself. Because history always repeats itself. Only the context changes. Too bad the West did not understand, did not want to seize such historical opportunity to open itself and welcome, in full frankness and mutual respect, this world from the East that came peacefully seeking a reciprocal coexistence.

Lies and Mental Aberrations

Since the end of World War II, Western propaganda, particularly the American variety, has never ceased to aim at the East a quasi-obsessional hammering of idyllic messages and images of a Western World bathing into perfect happiness. Applied equally in the West, this propaganda was mixed with images and stories of the world behind the “iron curtain”, the reality of which was utterly distorted and darkened. The goal was to create (and they succeeded) what was later called the “American leadership”. To define it, I offer to define “leadership” as a whole set of illusions and mental aberrations about the existence of a world to which everyone would like to belong. In reality, it is a world that does not exist and never existed. This world is also called « “The American Dream”. In short, a game of fools. A fabric of lies in which we believed. Still today, it has become clear that the reality of yesterday and that of today are a permanent fabric of lies. Americans in particular live in a permanent lie and have since the creation of their country. It started with the myth of the Far West put into images by Hollywood in an idyllic manner. The reality is entirely different and has been twisted around. Twenty million American Indians at the arrival of European settlers at the beginning of the conquest; at the end, less than a century later, only 60,000 were left. It is the largest genocide in human history. To date, no condemnation. The truth barely transpires today. Still, the Western world is entirely used to the sleep-inducing image of “the American friend” wrapped into the aura of “the savior the Free World”. A friend who, according to the legend, first came to save Europe and the world during the First World War. What a blessing! And who returned again, during the Second World War. The American savior succeeded in stopping the evil Soviets at “Checkpoint Charlie.” The whole Western world barely dodged a disaster. Whew! At this checkpoint, the Americans and their European lackeys tried to create a myth to go along with the Hollywood sauce. Big kitsch, yes! At the beginning of this month of June 2014, during the commemoration of the Normandy landings, I was amazed to see how Americans continue to falsify history and blatantly lie. With the help of European cowards of course. To maintain a permanent psychosis, the Americans were threatening and provocative, as much towards their opponents as towards their own people and the population of the Allies. Such a behavior caused similar reactions among their opponents until the introduction on both sides of a true paranoia. I believe that the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the crash of the “Prague Spring” in 1968 are direct consequences of this escalation of paranoia between the two Blocs. The Americans can be credited for the direct initiative of this escalation. One day we will know the truth about this period known as the “Cold War.” We even have a duty to know the truth and the whole truth. It is important to be reminded that “walls” are first and foremost within our own minds. But, regarding the other Wall that fell in 1989, it is clear that it is still there in the minds of today’s Western policymakers. It is not yet destroyed. This is especially the case with regard to the Americans, subject to a total mental aberration.

Back to Reason: Four Examples

Unfortunately, we were bound to quickly become disillusioned and understand that we would not enter into a new era of peace and prosperity. It was all lies and promises from the West. Their intentions were far from sincere and honest, and they never intended to deal with us as equals. Their only endgame was as Western conqueror, triumphant and vengeful. Wishing to enslave us in order to better exploit us. For them, we were only consumers of their capitalist products; a potential market, and nothing more. To support and confirm my statements, I offer four examples among many others:

  1. In our “liberated” countries, Western manufacturers implemented a dairy and food industry supplanting what was already there, regardless of the existing agricultural environment. The domino effect was instantaneous, and the farmers of these countries were ruined.
  2. We were discredited and treated as “sheep to shear” in favor of the capitalist banking and its usurious system. Putting their hands in the banks of the conquered countries, the “banksters” have imposed their methods and systems: Western-type mortgages, but with interest rates sometimes up to five times higher than those of West. Self-authorized robbery, yes! Especially because they were loans in euros, Swiss francs or dollars, modeled on the fluctuation of exchange rates. The destructive effect was guaranteed within a year after the loans were made. Result: a lot of ruined people and exorbitant suicide rates.
  3. The Westerners also robbed us of all of the wealth and raw materials in our soils. They systematically bought our raw materials at a fraction of their market value, often bribing local potentates to acquire both the mines and the factories that reprocessed these raw materials. In return, they gave us vague promises of investments and employment for the local population which never arrived.
  4. More directly, they sent an army of occupation. Example of such a deceit: Kosovo and “Bondsteel”, 40,000 m2, the largest U.S. base ever built in Europe. In 1999, the U.S. imposed on a puppet government in Pristina a 99 year lease, where the subsoil is rich in mercury, silver and lead. I am convinced that Americans began looting it immediately. The day they leave, there will be nothing left in the subsoil but gaping holes. The American army also uses this base as one of their secret prisons.

After blowing in like a hurricane, the Westerners triggered a tsunami effect.

Western Arrogance

These Western acts of triumphal conquerors were particularly stupid. We were open to them, and we wanted to learn from them, but also we wanted to pass on our own knowledge. In the field of culture, we could have had a very rich exchange: for us culture has always been very important, and we take great care of it. Contrary to this, we were treated with a wave of violence, spite and humiliation. Curiously, I find some similarities between these events and those that occurred at the time of the Mayan and Aztec civilizations, when savage conquistadors looted and destroyed civilizations that were far more advanced than their own. I am deeply convinced that the West in this year 1989 did not understand what had just happened. Together we could have built a new world, instead of just destroying what already existed. The confidence that was then lost will never be regained.

In the Year 1989, Westerners Blew It!

For example, the Germans believed in the coming of a 4th Reich. Genscher, at the time Minister of Foreign Affairs and former a SS officer, began to secretly visit the former Axis countries. He was forcibly expelled from the Baltic countries by the Soviets. Mitterrand’s France was first opposed to German reunification. Backed as usual by the U.S., the UK was waiting for a signal from the Americans. The U.S. acted as if they understood everything; but they mainly pretended they did. They immediately applied (once more) their “Shock Doctrine”- immediate gains for sure, but very stupid in the mid to long term.

Those Who Saw Through It All

I think the only ones who got it all in 1989 were the Russians. Not the Russia of Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage, but the Russians in the background, the strategists who acted immediately and started to create today’s Russia. They understood that German unification would be, at least for the next twenty years, like slamming an economic brake on the new reunified Germany and by extension on the Western economy, and that this length of time would enable a modernizing Russia to recover economically and militarily. Today one must admit that they were visionaries who were absolutely right. The stupidity and greed of Westerners in general and Americans in particular have led to where we are now, a dead end without alternative. Today the West has lost its hegemony over the world. The failure of its policy since 1989 is complete! Recent events such as those in Syria demonstrate this well.

The effects of this global deception

“At the time, I was young, very naive and very stupid, and I sincerely believed that the Soviet Union was a deadly threat to Western Europe and that the only thing that stood between them, the evil Communists, and we, the Free World, was the military power of NATO,” the Saker stressed in a text published in March 2014 [1].

How true is this sentence of the Saker’s. Unfortunately we were young and naive, our naivete bordering on stupidity. Especially since the American style has always been the same – simple, too simple, downright simplistic.

The End of the USSR

The Russians are a nation of spontaneously and naturally friendly people; they voluntarily dropped “the wall” thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev’s naivety. Although, as regards the naivete of Gorbachev, head of the USSR from 1985-91, there remain some doubts to this day. According to the latest news, an inquest has just started in Moscow to determine whether the fall of the USSR was simple naivete or a case of high treason. The only result produced by his “perestroika” (reconstruction) was an economic, military and political weakening of the USSR and its subsequent disintegration. The ruble was became worthless and people started throwing rubles out of their windows in disgust. In spite of all this, even today, he says he is satisfied with what he did. In 1990, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Later, with the collapse of the USSR, it was rumored that the Prize was a reward given to Gorbachev by the Americans for “letting the fox into the hen house.” Then, another strike of bad luck for the Russians hit. Either a real string of bad luck, or the result of a large-scale corruption: the arrival of Boris Yeltsin. Notorious drunkard, yes. For eight years, Russia had an open door to all possible abuses and looting. Russia saw the appearance of vultures nicknamed “oligarchs.” Enriched overnight, they became billionaires. Some of the best known among them: Khodorovsky, Abramovich, Berezowsky, Navalny, etc. A real scourge for Russia. Boris Yeltsin himself considerably benefited from the situation. In Switzerland, he has been investigated for corruption. He presumably received bribes from a civil engineering company in Tessin, led by an Albanian who was mysteriously contracted to renovate the Kremlin. During his reign, privatizations prevailed. All that could be privatized and sold cheaply went to either oligarchs or foreigners, in particular Americans. Hence, Americans treated themselves to buying a military industrial complex in the north of Russia. Immediately after this purchase, they froze all of the activities with the company so as to harm the Russians. With Boris Yeltsin, a chronic alcoholic, Russia became the laughingstock of the West. Bill Clinton, at that time the U.S. president, was accustomed, at each meeting with Yeltsin, to laugh himself to tears. Forced but triumphant laugh of course! Russia, a great heroic nation, saw its dignity trampled. Westerners, Americans in particular, stupid and vengeful, behaved like bulls in a china shop: looting, humiliation, and harassment of all kinds ruled the day, both towards Russia and towards other so-called Communist countries.

The Ceausescu Trial in Romania

Coup in Romania. Sloppy and expeditious trial of the Ceausescu couple. Death sentence and immediate execution of the couple. Judgment by two judges who were taken by force to an improvised courtroom site that looked like a grade school classroom. Shortly after the trial, the two judges committed suicide.

The Destruction of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Now, here is the height of Western stupidity: the destruction of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, under the false pretext that the people who composed it no longer wanted to live together. A pretext as cowardly as it is deceitful. Witness of it is the fact that it took Westerners almost twenty years to destroy it (from 1991-2006). A great and beautiful country, a Europe in miniature. A country of 24 million inhabitants and a territory of nearly 260,000 square kilometers (half of France). A sweet mixing of populations, cultures, and religions. An incredible diversity of cultures, arts and foods. During the Cold War, the country had perfectly fulfilled its buffer role between East and West. Unfortunately the West had ideas of conquest and domination. I’m sure that the West had always and only ever wanted to take advantage of the Yugoslav position between the two Blocs, and that’s all. As disposable as a Kleenex, discarded once it has served. Thrown out to the dogs of Western wars, all for more dough for their arm dealers.

Dough, the Only Real Western Value!

At the end of the Cold War, the old demons awoke. First, among the Germans and the Austrians (memories of 1st and 2nd World Wars). But also at the Vatican, who saw an opportunity to settle disputes with the Orthodox Church. Westerners played on the antagonisms that were unique to this land in order to destroy it. Such an act is cowardly, criminal and stupid, and it caused a lot of suffering, hundreds of thousands of deaths and as much destruction. Remember that in a house there are walls that are said to be load-bearing. One should never touch them, because of the risk of seeing the house collapse. Yugoslavia, for Europe in any case, was one of those bearing walls. And our stupid Western leaders destroyed it. Since then, the house has kept cracking and threatening to collapse. I feel that the destruction of this country will be fatal to the destroyers and that the Yugoslavian national anthem might as well be the Western funeral song. In the case of Yugoslavia, the West has shown a staggering political illiteracy and a stunning cultural ignorance.

And What About Russia in All This?

The Russians said, “Never again!” And they kept their word. Once Yeltsin was thrown in the dumpster of history, the Russians chose the best among them. VV Putin. A president and a very talented and intelligent politician. Someone who holds life principles which he applies. In less than 15 years, he managed to return glory and power to Russia. Today, not only is his country no longer the laughingstock of the West, but on the contrary, Russia has become a  major geopolitical actor on the world stage. On the military level, its role is just as important. The Russians have caught up and even surpassed the Americans in this area. NATO has found a Russian opponent who managed to halt its progression towards the east. The lying behavior of Westerners in the face of Russia is now being turned against them.

“The day the sun will rise above Russia, NATO will melt,” Slobodan Milosevic (former President of Serbia) said.

Milosevic “committed suicide” in 2006 at the hand of his jailers in the prison of the ICC in The Hague. According to British media, his trial was moving inexorably towards a nonsuit, that is a dismissal of charges.

And Finally, What About the West in All This?

In 1989, a Russian visionary declared: “Communism and capitalism are the heads and tails of the same coin. Now we let down our communism. How long after that, do you think your capitalism will hold?”

Today, results agree entirely with him.

Conclusion

Forty-four years have passed since my arrival in the West. I am a full citizen of my adopted country (Switzerland). From the beginning, I had the desire and made the effort to integrate into this country. But I always refused to assimilate. Since the beginning, I was aware of the benefits of having been born and raised in another country, another political system, before arriving here. I have always taken advantage of this asset and used it in every opportunity that presented itself. I especially used it to understand and analyze some features and paradoxes of the West. For example, very quickly, I had to admit the evidence that Westerners were viscerally anti-Communists, including towards such rather tempered form of that of Yugoslavian Communism, which was quite diluted from its original form. For years I asked myself why. A paradox that I wanted to elucidate at all costs. And I finally understood. It’s huge, because in reality it is the keystone of the West itself. The cause is capitalism itself. Since its beginning, by its very definition, it is an economic concept that is not viable. Therefore, it was doomed to fail from the beginning. The reasons and causes of its inevitable failure I will address in my next article. Filo, for vineyardsaker.fr June 2014 [1] http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.fr/2014/03/today-every-free-person-in-world-has-won.html Source: http://www.vineyardsaker.fr/2014/07/15/1989-lannee-ou-loccident-a-tout-rate-par-filo/

Capitalism Is Murder: Shock Doctrine in the East Bloc Killed 10 Million People

Here.

After the fall of Communism in the East Bloc in the early 1990’s, Westerners pushed something called shock therapy, or rapid privatization. A new study by the Lancet shows that shock therapy actually killed 10 million men and an unknown number of women in the East Bloc.

The study points out that it was not the transtion to capitalism per se that was at fault but how it was done. Rapid privatization or shock therapy was one way, but the other way is more gradual privatization. The study makes clear what we on the Left have been saying forever, that shock therapy kills.

The study also found that the more social connections a person had, the less likely they were to be killed by shock therapy. As radical capitalist neoliberalism has as its purpose the destruction of all bonds between men other than profit-seeking and the complete atomization of all humans, leading to mass insecurity and a Hobbesian war of all against all, it figures that neoliberal capitalism works strongly against social bonds. The more neoliberalism, the weaker the social bonds between humans.

Shock therapy had differential effects in different places. In Poland and the former Yugoslavia, there was little damage. The damage was severe in Russia.

In the US, the entire mass media and both conservative parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, vociferously pushed shock therapy. I read many articles about it at the time, always wondering why this was such a great thing. In the “free press” there was no dissent on the subject of shock therapy. You could not find a single opinion anywhere saying that this might be a bad idea. So much for “freedom of the press” in the USA. It was the way to go. Bill Clinton pushed it as strongly as Newt Gingrich.

Most of the Americans pushing shock therapy were connected with the Chicago School of Economics, and all of the most prominent ones were Jews. Many Jews in Israel also got in on the looting in Russia and the East Bloc. In addition, Russian Jews were very heavily involved in the mass looting and destruction of their great land.

Much of the looted funds was transferred to agents of International Jewry in the US and the UK, in particular Lord Rothschild. A lot of the money ended up in Israel. Richard Perle and other neocons on the right along with George Soros on the Left both gladly looted Slavic lands to benefit the tribe.

One wonders what the motivation for this mass rape of these mostly Slavic people was. Possibly it was revenge for anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe and Russia, another chapter in the war of the Slavs and the Jews. The Jews were getting their revenge for the Holocaust and Russian anti-Semitism. All in all, it was shameful behavior on the part of the Jews. The Jews are supposed to be progressive people, but here they were, acting just like the feudal lords and masters who they worked with in Eastern Europe for centuries. Worse, they were raping the East just as the ultimate Amelekite, Hitler, had done.

Every Jew on Earth should hang his head in shame at this grotesque display, if they have any sense of decency at all.

To be fair, a lot of the riches just went to the Western rich, mostly bankers. And many Russian gentiles helped the Russian Jews rape Russia. The Jews couldn’t do it alone.

As one might logically predict, this Jewish-led mass looting led to a huge upsurge in anti-Semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe, even in places like Romania (5,000 Jews) and Poland where there were hardly any Jews left.

If Jews hate anti-Semitism so much, why do things to worsen it? I don’t get it. Or do Jews hate anti-Semitism? Maybe they like it?

Does Multilingualism Equal Separatism?

Repost from the old site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As this area holds 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many of Iran’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Adygean, Tuvan and Bashkir struggles are all peaceful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hawaiians are about 2

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

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

At partition, the population was 98.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Characteristics of Fascism

The Tea Partiers, rightwing extremists, Third Positionists, Yockeyites, etc. say that Fascism is a Left movement. No it’s not. It’s a rightwing movement, far right. Let’s look at the evidence:

Fascism is an extreme rightwing system characterized by:

  1. Varying degrees of contempt for democracy
  2. Intimidation of political opponents
  3. Utter contempt and hatred for liberalism, socialism and Communism
  4. Hatred for homosexuals and minorities
  5. Utter contempt for social programs as palliatives for the weak
  6. The notion that the strong survive, and the weak die
  7. Often use of extreme religiosity, usually Christianity
  8. Exaltation of masculine values and contempt for feminine values
  9. Emphasis on traditional values and traditional morality with hatred for “immoral” behavior
  10. Hyperemphasis on the family unit
  11. Utter hatred and contempt for feminism – the notion that women belong at home
  12. Ever-present propaganda
  13. Total dishonesty in government and society – the Big Lie
  14. A total marriage of government and business to where we can’t tell where one ends and the other begins
  15. Extreme emphasis on law and order
  16. Use of street thugs to enforce order
  17. Massive corruption in government and business
  18. Utter hatred for workers’ organizations and workers’ rights
  19. Exaltation of class society as divine and denial of class conflict
  20. Extreme, often belligerent, nationalism tending towards jingoism and militarism
  21. Hatred of most other societies as inferior or weaker
  22. Insulation and xenophobia – refusal to read anything from outside the motherland
  23. Hatred and contempt for all international institutions
  24. Hatred for all sentimentality, kindness, sympathy and other “soft, weak, feminine emotions”

Sound very Left to you? Not really. Not in general anyway. Sure, there have been crossovers. North Korea has fascist elements. The Khmer Rogue did too. So did Romania’s Ceaucescu.

National Bolshevik Video

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39IjFe4CS4c&feature=email]

I honestly don’t know where to begin with this crap.

This is some of the most fucked up and confused politics I’ve seen in a while.

Is socialism great, or is Socialism Death, as the video argues in one case?

The endless fascist imagery, the violent, morbid, punk, death and frankly occult imagery is very disturbing. This worship of violence, death and the occult is what fascism is all about.

The Communist leaders they love for the most part were some of the worst and most murderous Communists of all.

Stalin murdered 3.1 million people. Pol Pot caused the death of 1.7 million, 1/4 of the population. Mao did quite a bit of killing himself. Ceausescu was one of the worst, most backwards and most fascist-like leaders in the East Bloc. He had a ton of blood on his hands, and he’s nothing to envy. Ceausescu promoted natalism and made abortion illegal. This is progressive and pro-women’s rights? Stalin made abortion much harder to get in the 1930’s. Saddam Hussein was nothing but a murderer. The North Korean Kims have a horrific human rights record.

The video’s images of Nazis were very disturbing. Nazis are shit. They were shit then, they’re shit now, they’ll be shit forever. The video makes an extensive case that Stalinist Communism and Nazi National Socialism were basically one and the same thing. It’s not the case. They also play up the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a treaty that is very misunderstood. This Communism = Nazism, Nazism is socialism, Nazism is Leftism shit could have been written by an American hard rightwing anti-Communist.

Many of the Nazbol (the name itself is disturbing as it sounds like Nazis) marchers look like skinheads. The written introduction to the video defends not only nationalism (somewhat dubious) but also “racialism,” which is just a fancy word for racism. So Nazbols are apparently not only nationalists but also racists. Apparently Nazbols are also anti-Semites. Wonderful! Such a progressive movement, moving forwards and leaving barbarism behind! But that’s not so. Instead this movement embraces barbarism and looks backwards, not forwards. The opposite of progress, or progressivism.

Fuck this Nazbol shit. It’s interesting, but it seriously creeps me out. Even thinking about it makes my head spin.

Nostalgia For Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhAXtVRopaw&feature=related]

From the video, we see the following startling figures taken from recent surveys:

Slovakia, 2003 (Public Relation Institute, Bratislava): 6

Russia, 2005 (New Russia Barometer Survey): 4

East Germany, Nov. 2007 (Forsa Institute): 7

Bulgaria, Dec. 2007 (Mediana): 3

Romania, May 2007 (BERD): 5

Romania, Nov. 2007 (Soros Foundation): 4

Romania, Feb. 2008 (World Bank): Only 2

Hungary, June 2008 (Gfk Piackutato): 6

There are a lot of commenters on this site who oppose socialism and Communism for a variety of reasons. I am wondering how these folks can reconcile these figures with their views.

I imagine that most of these folks feel that Communism and socialism are failed ideologies that simply don’t work in practice, however noble they may be conceived. If it’s really true that they fail so miserably and obviously, why do so many of those who have lived in the same nation under both Communism and capitalism feel that Communism was better and capitalism was worse?

Are these people simply so insane that they can’t figure out that things are obviously so much better now than they were back then? If their views are not insane, how do you reconcile their opinions with your view that Communism has been a miserable failure?

A common line among anti-Communists is that Communism inevitably starves people and enslaves them. If this is true, and I say it’s not, then are these people simply masochists who enjoy being starved and enslaved? How can we account for their behavior?

Most of you feel that capitalism is obviously superior to Communism. If it is, then why do so few of those who lived in the same nation under both systems agree with you?

Is there any way for you folks to account for the opinions of these folks. Are they simply lazy people who don’t want to take risks and enjoy being coddled and taken care of by a cradle to grave welfare state?

Keep in mind that by 1989, the socialist systems of most of these states were highly heterodox, with lots of collective and even limited private enterprise alongside public property. Censorship laws had been relaxed in most states and there was considerable freedom of speech. In places like Hungary, Goulash Communism or market socialism had created a quite high standard of living.*

*However, in Romania, a terrible Secret Police had instituted a terror state, and this in addition to a ferocious austerity program was the main reason for the violent overthrow of Nicolae Ceauşescu. In the few years before the Revolution of 1989, Ceauşescu had instituted brutal austerity measures in order to try to pay off the nation’s foreign debt.

While this made him very unpopular, I don’t see why anti-Communists, deficit hawks all of them who never been an austerity program too savage for a capitalist state, should object to Ceauşescu putting Romanians on a diet, as Thomas Friedman and his globalist buddies like to quip. Ceauşescu had also created a ridiculous personality cult and blown huge amounts of money on lavish construction projects dedicated to himself.

Map of the Romance Speaking World

Here is a very nice map of the parts of the world that speak a Romance language, in whole or in part. The main languages covered here are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.

Nice map of the Romance languages of the world. Click to enlarge.

The heavy Spanish speaking zone is Spain, Rio Muni, New Mexico and Latin America except for Brazil, the Guyanas, Haiti and some Caribbean islands that speak French. To a lesser extent, it is spoken Spanish Sahara and Belize. To a much lesser extent, it is spoken in  parts of the US and in the Philippines where it is a dying colonial language.

The heavy Portuguese speaking zone is Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, other parts of Africa and East Timor. In the latter countries, it is a lingua franca.

French is heavily spoken in France, Quebec, French Guyana, French Polynesia, Belgium and Switzerland, less heavily in much of Africa, especially Congo, the Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Mali, Togo, Cote d’Ivorie, Burkino Faso, Senegal, West Africa, Central Africa, Djibouti and Madagascar, less in the rest of Canada, and even less in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Louisiana, where it is a dying colonial language overtaken by national languages in Southeast Asia, Arabic in Northwest Africa and English in Louisiana

Italian is spoken heavily in Italy and less so in Libya and Albania.

Romanian is spoken heavily in Romania, Moldova and Serbia.

Cool Nazi-Era Photos

Here are some cool Nazi-era photos that I just ran across.

The first one below is of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1941, the famous Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact. Any idiot with half a brain knows that Stalin and Hitler despised each other and that Hitler had long ago decided to invade the USSR in order to put the final stake in “Judeo-Bolshevism.”

The USSR was the heart of the Judeo-Bolshevik beast, and only the destruction of the USSR would kill it for sure, since the beast kept sending tentacles out in the form of local Communist movements in Europe that threatened to spread Communism into the heart of the Continent.

Hitler’s hatred for Slavs is hard to figure. The Slavs were said to be a “slave race.” It’s true that the Russians had a reputation for running rather than fighting, but that was the nature of this forest-dwelling peasant people and in fact it was adaptive. When the Scandinavians first invaded down into Russia to conquer part of it, they found it curiously ill-defended. Faced with a superior force, the Russians would fight a bit, then give up land and just melt away into the mysterious forests. The Scandinavians felt it was useless to go find them, and after a while, a peace of sorts was reached.

The Russians were a forest-dwelling people at the time who lived in deep forests, often near rivers. They farmed a bit, lived off wild game and other food from the forest, and especially fished in the rivers. They weren’t exactly hunter-gatherers, but they were as close to that as a European people got at that time. They had a small population and were poorly armed, and typically responded to attacks by melting away into the forests where the enemy could not find them. Military defenses have to be judged by their adaptiveness, and this one worked well.

The Mongols also conquered a bit into Russia, and the Ottomans were so enamored of taking White slaves in the form of Slavs of various sorts that this is where the word “slave” comes from – it means “Slav,” because in Medieval times, so many slaves were Slavs.

Like most of Hitler’s crap, this had a grain of truth along with a ton of bullshit. The Russians were not really a slave race. As fare as stereotypes go, one can make a better case for the Russians as being one of the primitive, barbaric, backwards and even frightening of the White Europeans. This has long been the view from the Continent, especially of, say, the Finns, who despise the Russians as “barbarians.”

Most recently, Hitler’s view had the Russians as a “slave race” once again, this time having allowed themselves, idiotically and cowardly, to be “enslaved” by the Jews in the form of Judeo-Bolshevism. In fact, a vicious Civil War had been fought in the early 1920’s and 5 million Russians had died. Maybe twice that had starved in a horrible famine. Anyway, Soviet Communism wasn’t all that Jewish after 1927, and Stalin was no Jew. The majority of Russians went along with the Soviet program and even supported it. It was certainly better than Czarism.

Stalin hated Hitler’s guts and knew full well his plans to attack the USSR. Much of the wild industrial buildup of the 1930’s, which occurred amidst another 5 million famine deaths (though the famine was by no means intentional and there was no “Holodomor”) was a mad race to build up the USSR in order to withstand a Nazi attack that Stalin had predicted as early as 1933.

Without this mad industrialization and possibly the deaths it entailed, the USSR may not have been able to defeat the Nazis, and World War 2 would have looked a lot different. So in a sense the mad Soviet buildup of the 1930’s saved the West and the world from the Nazi Orcs.

In addition, the purges of the 1937-38, cruel, insane and evil as they were, were actually intended to ferry out Nazi spies. This was the nature of Stalin’s paranoia. It occurred in the backdrop of his increasing knowledge of the Nazi threat.

Hence, anyone with any sense knows that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a pact between two of the deadliest enemies the world has ever known.

Anti-Communists have never stopped playing up this sad pact as evidence that Nazis and Communists are the same, and that all Communists are really Nazis and all Nazis are really Communists. This makes no sense, as Hitler was much more of an anti-Communist than he was even an anti-Semite, and much of his anti-Semitism stemmed from his view that Jews were a bunch of Commies. These same folks try to say that Stalin was just as much of an anti-Semite as Hitler (this view especially popular with rightwing Zionist Jews).

This flies in the face of the common reactionary stereotype of the “JewSSR” or the USSR as a Judeo-Bolshevik state. Stalin was certainly no anti-Semite, but he wasn’t exactly a Judeophile either. The Jews suffered badly in the purges of the 1930’s. Anti-Semitism was a capital offense. When the Germans invaded later, Ilya Ehrenberg, Soviet propagandist, laid down the line, “You’re either an anti-Nazi or an anti-Semite! You can’t be both!” This at a time when traitors were getting bullets to the head in the USSR. Ehrenberg’s views were approved by and represented those of Stalin himself.

Anyway, the Pact was nothing but Stalin desperately buying another year or so before the inevitable Nazi attack. Another year to build up his defenses and to move most of their industry behind the Urals.

Although this pic is famous, I've never seen it before. That is Molotov signing the Pact, with Stalin and Ribbentrop directly in back of him. Cool pic!

Below is another interesting pic. This is of the special German Army division, the Gebrings Division, or the Handschar, made up of Bosnian Muslims that the Germans set up after they conquered the Balkans in WW2. Zionists, especially Jews, and Muslim-haters never stop talking about this division. It’s unfortunate, but the truth is that huge pro-Nazi paramilitaries were formed by citizens of many of the countries that the Germans conquered.

There were pro-Nazi divisions made up of Romanians, Hungarians, Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Russians, Italians, Armenians, and peoples of the Caucasus.

So singling out 10,000 Muslims for signing up for the German army is a bit absurd. I would think that many more Bosnian Muslims fought against the Nazis as part of the anti-fascist resistance, but I don’t have figures

Bosnian Muslims of the Handschar Division of the German Army reading a Nazi pamphlet called "Islam and the Jews." Notice how White these Muslims look. So much for the White nationalist notion that Muslims are all non-Whites. Don't think so.

The next picture is very interesting. These are East Indians, apparently Sikhs, serving in the German Army. They are in the regular Army, not the SS, as you can see by the insignia on their collars. India was a British colony at the time, and there were Indian soldiers serving in the British Army. A number of these Indians were captured by the Nazis and made into POW’s. The Germans recruited some soldiers for their army from these POW’s. Some of these Indians may have been motivated by anti-colonial feelings towards the British.

This also lines up with the lunatic Nazi notion that they were going to reach India via their offensive in the Caucasus. They would conquer the Caucasus and move on to Iran and then to India, where they would set in motion and armed Indian rebellion against the British colonizers.

The Nazis had some respect for the Iranians and may have even considered them White (the name Iran comes from the word “Aryan”). Nazi race researchers had been running around India researching the Indian Caucasians in order to determine the origin of the Aryan Race. It’s not certain what the Nazis meant by “Aryan,” but I believe it meant the same thing as Indo-European. Yet Slavs were somehow not Indo-Europeans or Aryans? Whatever. Nazi race science never made much sense.

Indian troops serving in the Nazi Army. These are members of the Freies Indien (Free Indian) Division of the German Army

The next pic is really boss. This is a Nazi propaganda poster showing caricatures of evil Soviet troops raping and then murdering teenage German girls. Note that the girls are really almost prepubescent, maybe 12 years old. The blood in the pubic region is from the “pure” virgins being raped. Classic propaganda. Note that the Russians have a pronounced Asiatic look about them in order to make them appear to be non-Whites, while the German girls being raped and murdered are pure blond and blue “Aryans.”

In reality, Russians are probably only about 3-

Classic Nazi propaganda shows diabolical Asiatic Red Army troops raping and murdering 12 year old blond and blue pure "Aryan" virgin girls.

The Key to Understanding US Behavior in Iraq

This post from the old blog is four years old, but it still pretty interesting in how it lays out neoconservative machinations in Iraq and goes into great details about the Sephardic Jewish community in the Mediterranean, particularly in Greece. This research was done to try to determine whether or not John Negroponte was Jewish, as asserted by some prominent anti-Semite “progressives” on the Net. As it turns out, he’s not Jewish at all. Apparently he’s a Greek Orthodox Christian. However, the name Negroponte can be a Sephardic Jewish name too, and it has links back to the history of the Sephardic Jews in Greece and Romania. This Jewish community is little-known, so some of you into Judaica might find it interesting. An old news story from four years ago blasted, “Syria Undermining Iraq’s Stability”. Robert Zoellick, a horrible Zionist Jew neoconservative who thirsts for Arab and Muslim blood, is the source of this “statement”. Zoellick, along with Zionist neoconservative Arab-killer John Negroponte, now the US ambassador to Iraq, was the latest neoconservative outrage to be shoved down the unwilling throats of the Iraqi people. Although the notion of whether or not Negroponte is Jewish is somewhat controversial – for instance, the popular Amygdala blog and the (now apparently defunct) blog Spookspot, both disagree – the balance of the evidence, so far ,Note May 2006: One year after I wrote this article, I no longer feel that Negroponte is Jewish. If he were, I think we would have heard about it by now. I feel that Negroponte is exactly what he says he is – a Greek Orthodox Christian. It is still possible, though not very relevant, that he may have Jewish roots. For that matter, many of us may have Jewish roots. But the major source for the notion that Negroponte is Jewish, Ghali Hassan, is, in my opinion, a proven liar and propagandist. I advise readers to take anything the intellectually dishonest Arab nationalist sophist Hassan says with a massive grain of salt. And Counterpunch needs to quit publishing this proven liar. Nevertheless, I still think this article has a lot of fascinating info about the Sephardic Greek Jewish community. Have fun reading it! The fact that a few leftwing writers have pointed out that Negroponte may be Jewish when he was selected as top Intel Czar and then later as the outrageous US Ambassador to Iraq has been noticed by some right wing bloggers and denounced as, you guessed it, “anti-Semitism”. See the obsessively Zionist Indymedia Watch (on the ambassador selection) and the conservative blog ColdHearted Truth (on the Intel Czar selection) for examples. As suggestive evidence, the name “Negroponte” is also the former name of the capital of Evoia Island, Chalkis; this link also contains a number of photos and paintings of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and Jewish relics from Chalkis. The city acquired this name during the Venetian Domination, the period after Venetians conquered the island, which lasted from 1205-1470. This city is the only Jewish community in Europe that has been living in the same place for 2,500 years. The Jews on this island were very assimilated. De la Negroponte is the Italian name for Evoia; it is also a Venetian Italian surname from the 14th century. This city, Negroponte, was also a major destination for Turkish Jews fleeing the Ottoman conquest of Turkey and subsequent persecution of Jews, as described by a Jewish doctor from Istanbul, who fled to Negroponte with many other Jews in 1455. Furthermore, “Negroponte” is also the name of an ancient Jewish cemetery in Romania dating from the 14th Century; “Negroponte” was also the surname of a prominent Romanian Jewish family in that area. A famous Jewish author, born in Heraklion, Crete, toward the end of the 1100’s, was called “R. Chemarya of Negroponte“. A famous early translation of Genesis was done by a Greek Jew, Shemariah of Negroponte (1328-46). Shemariah was trying to bridge the gap between the Karaites and the Rabbinites. The evidence suggests that the name “Negroponte” may be a Romanian and Greek Jewish name dating from 14th and 15th Centuries. On the other hand, it is probably also a Greek Orthodox name too. Back to Zoellick and Negroponte. These dual outrages – the neoconservative Negroponte appointed as an ambassador to Iraq, the Jewish Zoellick making high-profile appearances in Iraq – were concocted deliberately by a single group of people. That group is the Zionist neoconservative Jews and their Zionist Gentile allies who have infiltrated our government and have successfully managed to take over at best or wield massive control over at worst, under George Bush, all of US Mideast foreign policy, and some of US non-Mideast foreign policy, for the Jewish-Israeli Lobby. Why were these deeply offensive moves done? In order to understand this, we need to understand the psychology of both the largely Jewish neocons and Jewish history and psychology in general. As a tribal people, indeed, as the most tribal humans on Earth, the Jews have a long history of this sort of thing. Jewish history tells us that the Jews have been noted for harboring endless grudges against whoever wronged them, even 2500 years in the past. It’s typical Jewish behavior to pine endlessly for defeat of any and all enemies, ancient or modern, to right the wrong done to the Jews, no matter how long ago. “Never forgive, never forget” was not invented with the Shoah – it’s classical Jewish psychology, and it doesn’t apply only to Nazis, it applies to any group that ever wronged the Jews. After defeating an enemy, Jewish history tells us that Jews have often tried to wipe out the collective culture and history of the adversary. This may explain the lackadaisical attitude the neocons took towards the looting and destruction of much of Iraq’s history and infrastructure. In addition, I have noticed that Jews seem to delight in utterly humiliating their enemies after they surrender. In fact, if an individual Jew ends a friendship with you after he suspects the slightest anti-Semitism (a very common occurrence) they usually will only accept you (if at all) again after forcing you to utterly humble and humiliate yourself at the feet of the Jews. This ties into the Jewish uber-tribal view of humanity, in which there are three categories of people – Jews (the only really important people in the world), non-Jews (people who barely exist in the human world, or are at least not important to it – kind of like the wild animals in your country lot), and enemies of the Jews – a vast, ever changing, always growing, undifferentiated mass of humanity. Not all Jews hold this tripartite worldview, but many do, particularly the Orthodox. A solid majority of US Jews (about 8 There is also a third category – suspected enemies of the Jews. For all practical purposes, these are nearly as bad as the enemies. Less assimilated, more traditional Jews will tend more towards the traditional tripartite world, more assimilated Jews will tend more towards the dual worldview and the most assimilated Jews will be like the rest of us and hardly trouble themselves with anti-Semites at all. The enemies are lumped together as “the people who threw us in the gas chambers” – everyone from the person who utters the slightest Jewish-critical remark to the most deranged genocidal Nazis – the Jews, in their blindness, see them all as one. The enemies are endlessly cultivated and provoked into greater and greater extremism, in part due to a Jewish need for as many enemies as possible, of maximum virulence. Jews do something I have never seen any other ethnic group do. If they feel you are anti-Semitic (often a false characterization) or anti-Israel even in the slightest, they will often immediately end the friendship or business-professional relationship with you, forever. At the very least the temperature of the relationship will grow colder. Completely unforgiving, totally black and white, no gray area. If these Jews continue in some professional relationship with you, they will sometimes try to screw you in order to “get back at the anti-Semitic enemy” – which is why it’s a bad idea to piss off your Jewish lawyer. As noted above, they may take you back if you debase yourself enough at their proud feet, but you will always retain a taint of suspicion. Jewish qualities of vengefulness, vindictiveness, a Manichean mindset, hypersensitivity to criticism, us versus them thinking, obsession with enemies, provocation of enemies, need for victimhood, and desire to humiliate the crushed enemies are some of the most extreme examples of these behaviors I have seen in any human group. I’m going to submit that there is something pathological about these extreme behaviors. A more important question is: What is the explanation for the Jewish behaviors above? A variety of explanations have been offered for the Jewish behaviors above, along with other Jewish behaviors deemed objectionable by non-Jews. The standard, classical anti-Semitic line is that Jews are just plain damn evil. The racial anti-Semitic view is that Jews are not only evil – they are born evil, their evilness is genetic, and it’s bred right into their genome – this was the Nazi line. The Islamist line is that it is due to the Jewish religion, a religion that causes ornery and malicious behavior due to its innate characteristics. Christian anti-Semitism also focuses on the Jewish religion as the source of these behaviors. Catholic anti-Semitism will lay furious blame on the Jews’ role in killing Jesus, a crime that, according to this doctrine, the Jews can never live down. These explanations also differ in the possibility of Jewish redemption. The racial point of view says that since Jewish evilness is bred in the Jewish genome, there is no solution but expulsion, conflict, restriction of Jewish rights, homicide, or genocide. The Jew is hopeless, at the least; we must separate ourselves from him. The Christian and Muslim points of view see the Jewish religion as the source of these behaviors, hence, conversion to Christianity or Islam is sufficient to redeem and purify the Jew of his objectionable Jewish characteristics. All of these explanations are interesting, some are just wrong, and most have elements of truth in them somewhere, but none of them seem sufficient to explain the behaviors described above. Look at those characteristics – extreme vengefulness, vindictiveness, Manichean mindset, hypersensitivity to criticism, us and them mindset, obsession with enemies, provocation of enemies, need for victimhood and desire to humiliate the crushed enemy. Careful, thoughtful analysis shows us that those are characteristics of human tribalism, clannishness or ethnocentrism (same thing). Note: Not Jewish tribalism, but human tribalism. This is an important point to make, since so much anti-Semitism seeks to make the Jew appear non-human. The tribalism of Jews, the most extreme tribalism of any human ethnic group, is simply human tribalism, and these “Jewish” behaviors can easily be revealed as human behaviors once we open our minds and try to see these same qualities in non-Jews. The purpose of this little excursion into Jewish history and psychology is to shed some light on so many things about this Iraq War that seem to defy understanding. If we plug our new found understanding of Jewish hypertribalism into the largely Jewish neoconservative movement, more and more lights wink on and things seem even clearer. When we recognize that the (largely Jewish) neoconservative War on Terror battle plan has nothing to do with spreading democracy, the blurred lines get even clearer. Off the record, many neoconservatives have admitted that the purpose of the War on Terror is simply a war on the Islamic religion. In order to set off this war, neoconservatives seek to do precisely those things that are designed to humiliate and infuriate the Muslims most of all. In off-record comments, neocons have admitted that what they really desire is not democracy but the radicalization of the Islamic World. Why would anyone want something so counterproductive? In order to “smack the hornet’s nest”, to “get the enemies to show us their true colors”, and to “get the enemies out in the open where we can destroy them” – that’s why. At the moment, most Islamic countries cannot be attacked by the neocons, because Islamic hostility to the US and Israel, officially anyway, is somewhat hidden. The neocons hope that by radicalizing the world’s Muslims, Muslims will be turned into a worthy, evil target that the neocons will be justified in attacking. In the same fashion, Israel undermined the PLO and promoted Hamas in order to give the enemy an evil face and weaken the more moderate PLO, whose relative moderation threatened to gather world support. The neocons hope this provocation will set off a religious war of the West, or really the Jews and whatever Christian and maybe Hindu allies the Jews can round up, versus the radicalized, evil Muslims. I know that sounds insane, but bear with me. The neocons realize that this will be a long, hard, drawn-out war, but they make the analogy of the Cold War. The war against Islam will last for maybe 40 years, the neocons figure, but they assume that, like the Cold War, the West will come out on top. In the end, Islam will be defeated and the Islamic religion will be transformed into a neutered, harmless version of itself. Once we recognize the outlines of the neocon conspiracy and trace its roots to Jewish ultratribalist psychology and history, so many things start making sense. Shoving Jay Garner, the arch-Zionist general from JINSA, down Iraq’s throat. Desecration of the Koran – stomping on it, tossing it in the toilet. For Muslim POW’s – forced nudity, nude human pyramids, exposure to dogs, blasting with “immoral” rock music, forcing Muslim women to undress, forced eating of pork, forced watching of US jailers having sex. The outrageous new Iraqi flag that looks suspiciously like the Israeli flag. Having a US Jewish Zionist run the new Occupation regime’s radio network (Norman Pattiz’s Radio Sawa). The deliberate US plot to wipe out of Iraq’s cultural history and infrastructure. Sending an uber-Zionist neocon (Negroponte) to Iraq as an ambassador. Attempts to force Iraq to recognize Israel or sign a peace treaty with Israel. The delighted, repeated, floating in the media of the Israeli plan to rebuild a pipeline from Kirkuk, Iraq to Haifa, Israel. Major construction of 14 permanent US military bases in Iraq, whether the Iraqis want them or not. Outrageous plans to turn over most of Iraq’s public property to rich foreign investors and wipe out most Iraqi private businesses, all at once. Loud plans to privatize Iraq’s oil industry. The loud demands of the expatriate Iraqi Jews to be compensated for the money and property left when they were evicted from Iraq so long ago. Sending a super-Zionist Jew, Zoellick, to Iraq on frequent, in your face, junkets to Iraq. The deliberate destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, so it can be rebuilt at maximum cost by US companies. The destruction of the Michael Aflaq (a founder of the Baath Party) statue in Baghdad. The faked humiliating capture of Saddam Hussein in a spiderhole, when he was actually caught in a firefight with US and Kurdish forces, defending himself with a pistol, 2 days before. The humiliation of a US Army doctor searching Saddam for lice. The deliberate opening of the uberZionist Mossad office, MEMRI, right in the heart of Baghdad. The smashing up the Palestinian Embassy in Baghdad and the arrests of Palestinian diplomats, for no apparent reason, by US troops. The flooding of Iraq with mismarked Israeli products, camouflaged and marked by treasonous Jordanian partners – the mentality is – we will force the Iraqis to buy Israeli products. The deliberate US bombing of mosques, the outrageous attack on the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and on and on. The reason for all of these baffling, seemingly counterproductive US-Zionist behaviors becomes crystal clear when we see their genesis in Jewish hypertribal thinking and the related neocon efforts to provoke the Islamic World into a World War 3, so the Muslims can be beaten once and for all. Now, moving on, what of Zoellick’s charges? They are deeply problematic. First of all, Syria has caught more jihadis trying to cross into Iraq than Jordan or Saudi Arabia combined. The Saudis support, at least ideologically, the Sunni Salafists, who play such a major role in the insurgency. Jordan, while hostile to Salafism, has a majority fundamentalist Parliament, and is strongly Sunni chauvinist. If you go to downtown Amman, you find it crowded with Iraqis, many of them Sunni refugees of Saddam’s regime. Many of these people have links to the Sunni insurgency. These Sunni Baathists do not bother to conceal their utter delight in the chaos caused by the Iraqi insurgency; such is their furious hatred of the present Shia regime. Indeed, most every Arab Sunni state is so terrified of the Shia government in Iraq that they are surely rooting for the Sunni insurgency. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have done little or nothing to stop guerrillas crossing into Iraq. There are 2,500 Saudis in Iraq now, and they get official sanction and approval from state preachers. By contrast, the Syrian regime is a Shia Alawi regime. In fact, Alawis are a minority, very divergent Shia sect who have been treated like little more than slaves by their Sunni neighbors for centuries. Highly secular, the Alawis have long had to constantly ward off accusations of not being Muslims, or of being apostates. It would seem the Syrian regime would have little reason to support Sunni fundamentalism. In fact, of all the nearby Arab nations, Syria has been by far the most hostile to Sunni Salafism. The Syrian government attack on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood Salafists in the city of Hama in 1982 killed some 20,000 residents. Syrian prisons are full of Sunni fundamentalists, and the Syrian regime is the most secular Muslim regime in the region. Further, the Syrians have arrested quite a few jihadis trying to head into Iraq, as opposed to Jordan or Saudi Arabia, who have arrested few or none. On the other hand, the Zionist-dominated US is intent on overthrowing the Syrian government, and, conversely, the US government is not conspiring to overthrow any other Arab government, including the Saudis or the Jordanians. In addition, part of the neocon conspiracy is to use the US base in Iraq to attack surrounding regimes, especially defiant Iran and Syria. Therefore, the Syrians have exactly zero reason to cooperate with the US in keeping guerrillas out of Iraq, since they get nothing in return, and since the US troops in Iraq are a major, demonstrable threat to the nation of Syria. The reasons for all of this finger-pointing at Syria, while ignoring, say, the Wahhabi regime in Arabia, are obvious. The Occupation of Iraq, on balance, looks pretty bad. The neocon plan was to overthrow the Iraqi regime quickly and then give Iraq a US-Zionist makeover as some sort of a spearhead to redraw the map of the Middle East and force major culture and political change in the region. Instead, Iraq is a catastrophe; a horrible, chaotic mess, a failed state torn apart by the most savage Arab insurgency in decades. When humans are stuck in a lousy situation, they tend to blame others; it’s a classic defensive psychological reaction. Rather than admit that many of the Iraqi people are in open revolt against the US Occupiers and what they as their Iraqi lackeys, the neocons have come up with a new theory. The theory is that all of the mess in Iraq is due to the existence of the Iranian and especially the Syrian regimes, who, alone, are creating the insurgency and wreaking havoc on the peaceful, lovable, Occupation-loving, Judeophilic, Zionist-enamored Iraqi people, who are just dying to become the 51st state of the US and sign a peace treaty with Israel. This laughably dishonest theory, reeking with psychological defense, is quite useful: it gives the neocons an excellent reason to try to overthrow, one way or another, Iran and Syria, who are the last two state enemies of Israel. The theory is: as long as the Syrian and Iranian regimes are not overthrown, the Iraqi insurgency will rage on. These accusations are simply part of the propaganda campaign being waged as part of a US-Israeli conspiracy to overthrow the defiant governments of Iran and Syria. This research takes a lot of time, and I do not get paid anything for it. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a a contribution to support more of this valuable research.

Bad Place to Visit, Wouldn't Want To Live There

Repost from the old site. This article has produced a tremendous amount of controversy, angry comments, and even, oddly enough, virulent hate mail. I guess I hit some raw nerves. I stand by my comments that these cities are some of the worst in the world, and, in doing further research on the Net, have found only further support for my thesis. Some of these cities, such as Bogotá, for instance, have large wealthy districts that are apparently quite pleasant. If one is rich, one can make a nice life just about anywhere on the globe. But this is not important – what is important is how the majority live. The title is a play on the line, “Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there”, said about many less-than-desirable tourist locales. This post is about the worst places on Earth to visit, and probably to live too. The ratings were based on research done on the Internet in various places, including here and here. I’m going to focus on the places that are dirty, smelly, crime-ridden, trashy, rip-off havens, unsanitary and dangerous (Third World), and avoid places that are merely depressing, unsightly, rude, etc. (First World). Why? Because I live in the US, and those Third World qualities are going to be the most disturbing to me. I’m also avoiding active war zones because everyone knows they are horrible. To be fair to the “Third Worldists” out there, I noted that many people slammed various places in France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Finland, South Korea, Ireland Italy, the US, Great Britain and Australia for various reasons, mostly because they are said to be unfriendly, depressing, tacky, cheesy, boring, etc. Detroit seemed to top the list as worst US city, along with Newark (though it had one fan), East St. Louis and New Haven (though some liked New Haven) were runners-up. Various small towns in the Rockies (especially Idaho) and Texas also were listed. For some reason, a lot of people hate Vancouver, BC in Canada. To my thinking, many of the horrible cities below point out the catastrophe of Latin American, Indian, Indonesian and Philippine capitalism. In much of Africa, capitalism doesn’t seem to working very well. For all its faults, impoverished Cuba certainly does not resemble any of these Latin American hellholes in any way, shape or form. I don’t think that capitalism in the First World is failing, but looking at many of the cities below, it’s hard to argue that capitalism is doing anything but failing in those places. Some of the winners in the Loser Destination Contest: Colon, Panama: A dirty, crime-ridden disaster of a city. The most dangerous city in Latin America, full of residents who seem like they would just as soon knife you as say hello. Other than the free trade zone, the entire city seems to be sprawling slum. Colon has no redeeming qualities. This city topped many worst lists. Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador: Guayaquil is horrible. A stinking, steaming, downright dangerous heap of a city with miles of slums. With armies of glowering gang members, this place is dangerous even in mid-day. There are garbage dumps everywhere with corpses laying out in plain sight and guns going off all the time. Quito is similar. Guayaquil topped many worst city lists. Johannesburg, South Africa: How sad that this country now has one of the worst violent crime rates on Earth. Although popular with tourists, this city is downright dangerous. This city also topped many worst lists. This blog supports the Mandela government, but the problems of this tragic nation seem insurmountable. ***** Lagos, Nigeria, or the whole country: This city, and even the whole country, seems to top everyone’s list. Garbage is everywhere, the city stinks, the poverty is horrible, animals are slaughtered on the streets, and it seems that at least half the population wakes up every morning thinking, “Who can I rip off today?” Up to 9 Nigeria has what must be the worst government on Earth and the country is rated the second most corrupt on Earth. The national airlines are dangerous and not recommended. The ripoff attempts often start as soon as you land at the airport and won’t let up until you leave. It’s best to assume that most, if not all, Nigerians you meet in Lagos are out to rip you off in some way or another and then proceed from there. The city is full of impostors, and you really do not know if anyone is really who they say they are. The police and Customs officials are all crooks and so is 9 Most bank and post office employees are also crooked. Imagine waiting in line at the post office, and a group of swaggering gangsters with fake ID’s strut in to pick up their stolen goods reshipped from overseas. They go straight to the front of the line ahead of everyone else, pick up their stolen property, and walk away laughing, having paid off the Post Office clerks. Welcome to Nigeria. There are Internet cafes all over the city, where 150,000 full-time Internet scammers ply their trade in plain view of anyone to see, and the government doesn’t bat an eye or lift one finger to stop them. In many cafes, 8 The scammers started out with the famous 419 email scams but have now branched out into lottery, romance, auction, roommate, orphanage and check-cashing scams. The scams are continuously evolving, and Nigerian con artists are widely acknowledged to be some of the best in the world, as they have been practicing the art for decades now. On highways outside of Lagos, you can see numerous vehicles wrecked on the side of the road, or even in the middle of the road, some with dead bodies still in them or beside them. Thieves pick through the wreckage and rifle the corpses looking for stuff to steal. All of the roads are dangerous, as armed robbers often set up roadblocks to shake down travelers. Nigeria is now a world center for counterfeit pharmaceuticals, credit card fraud and drug dealing, and a district of Lagos, Oluwole, is now a world center for top-notch forgery. The FBI and the US Merchant Risk Council recently came to Nigeria and inspected 40 packages coming into the country from the US to check for stolen goods. 39 of the 40 packages contained stolen property. When the agents arrived at a Lagos neighborhood and tried to arrest an 18-year-old boy for reshipping scams that targeted US merchants, much of the neighborhood – up to 100 people – rushed out of their homes to defend the local punk from Big Bad Whitey. Although the country is awash in oil, the power goes out all the time because the government power company is so crooked. The power company has either stolen all of its own budget money or the power comes in, but the crooked company resells it on the side. As with elsewhere in Africa, Whitey is blamed for all the troubles here. Hatred of Whitey is higher in Nigeria than in much of the rest of Black Africa and the White visitor will definitely feel it. The degeneration of Nigerian society is complete, and the culture appears near collapse. Mobs lynch thieves in the street and kill them in public for as meager a crime as stealing a cellphone, yet crime rages on anyway. Anyone can just up and say they own your house, put it on the market and sell it and you are out a house. Law enforcement, courts and anything resembling government seem to be nonexistent. ****** ****** Lima, Peru: When they tell you to visit Peru, they don’t mean the nightmarish capital. There are teeming slums as far as the eye can see, horrible crime (although not a lot of violent crime), pickpockets everywhere, and on top of all that, the sun never comes out. The fog mixes with the smog and the filthy streets to make a toxic brew. Lima made many worst lists. But it has its fans, and the upscale Miraflores district is said to be nice. The execrable Shining Path took up their nihilistic, deranged war in this country for a reason – because Peru is a rotten heap of a country. ****** ****** Medan (Sumatra), Jakarta, Surabaya, Indonesia: Jakarta is a reeking city with terrible pollution, open sewers and wrenching poverty. Medan seemed to top many lists for worst city on Earth, though it has a few fans. It’s hot, dirty and polluted, with factories, thieves and leering, menacing men everywhere. There is also nowhere to stay, not that you would want to stay anyway. Besides Medan, the rest of Sumatra is much better. The river running through Surabaya is so polluted you might vomit walking across the bridge. As you suppress your gag reflex, you will look down and notice that people are actually washing their clothes in this river. ***** ***** Mumbai, Patna (Bihar), Calcutta, all large Indian cities, India: Indian cities are very dirty and teeming with some of the most miserably poor and wretched people you will ever see, but at least there is not a lot of crime. The Hindu religion keeps crime down because believers fear they will be punished by returning in the next life as something terrible, like one of the huge rats you see scurrying about. Mumbai has pollution that is so bad that people actually get lung cancer from breathing the air. Mumbai, a stinking and sometimes dangerous city, made many worst city lists. Patna is the sorry capital of Bihar, the poorest state in India. It’s dirty and miserable, and it’s almost impossible to even get a taxi to get you out of town, which means it’s hard to leave the place. Calcutta is generally agreed to be one of the worst cities in India. ***** Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenyang, China: Deadly pollution, mostly from coal. Bucharest, all of Romania: Stalinist pollution covers the whole country and everyone seems depressed. Bali (in particular Kuta Beach), Indonesia: Hopes so high, reality so low. It seems everyone is out to rip you off. Surly locals hungry for money. Dangerous roads, nightmarish traffic, rude, leering men. When it rains, the sewers flood into the streets. Very high crime rate, hustlers everywhere. Most of the rest of Indonesia is pretty nice. Kuta is a tourist trap gone to Hell. **** Manila, Philippines: A crime-ridden hellhole. There are armed guards everywhere, especially in front of banks due to constant bank robberies. Their nemeses, criminal gangs armed to the teeth, roam streets filled with prostitutes and transvestites. It’s a town where everyone seems like they are out to rip you off in one way or other, and the hotel workers and cab drivers are all crooked. The latest advice is to have your Filipino friend meet you at the airport and head straight to their place, thereby avoiding all the ripoffs and con artists that seem to descend on every tourist. Traffic is horrible, and pollution is so bad it kills people. But some people don’t mind it. **** Gdansk, Poland: Combine a high crime rate and daylight robberies with totally crooked, thieving officials, and you get this Polish city. However, a number of others said it’s just fine. **** Mexico City, Villahermosa, Mexico: Mexico City is a dirty, polluted city suffering an insane, surreal epidemic of street crime, especially violent crime. Add 20 million people, stir well, bring to a boil, cover with a lid of otherworldly smog, and simmer. Reportedly, tons of human waste are blown into the air every day, and much of the population has constant respiratory infections. The sewer system is reportedly above ground and more or less runs through lots of neighborhoods where many people are residing. Villahermosa is a Mad Max-style, violent, crime-ridden disgrace of a city. There are stabbings and shootings galore here, even with a 10 PM curfew in place. ***** Tangier, Morocco: This is a dangerous place with lots of street crime. That’s unusual for a North African country, but Tangier is so close to Europe that it is almost a part of Europe. ***** Cairo, Egypt: Cairo has horrible pollution, smells terrible, there is trash everywhere, nothing works, there are armies of miserably poor people and it boasts some outrageously awful traffic. In the souks there are huge rats and wild, mangy scavenging dogs running about in plain sight. There seems no escape from aggressive, pestering hawkers. On top of all that, all the Customs officials are criminals. The crime rate is fairly low, though. Thank President Hosni Mubarak. 25 years ago, Cairo was one of the great world cities. ***** Bangkok, Thailand: This gigantic city has pollution so bad you need to wear a mask over your face. However, some folks like this city and say it has many positive attributes. ***** Brindisi, Naples, Italy: No one seems to like Brindisi. It’s a sad, dirty, polluted and ugly city, with hostile, brawling, drunken locals, hungry stray dogs, belligerent drivers, horrible traffic, and miles of soul-killing tenements. You would think that despite all of that, being genuine Italians, they could still manage to make a decent pizza. Forget it: even the pizza is terrible. Brindisi topped many worst lists, although it has a couple of fans. I had never even heard of Brindisi and had to look it up on a map. It’s located in southern Italy on the East Coast, southeast of Naples. Naples has a great deal of crime, and many think this city is overrated as a tourist destination, although others say that, despite the drawbacks, it has its joys. All of southern Italy has a lot of crime, but it’s mostly property crime. ***** ***** Athens, Piraeus, or the whole country, Greece: Greece, especially Athens, gets mixed reviews. A lot of people really hate Athens; others don’t. The detractors say the city is dirty, ugly, depressing, polluted, and covered with garbage and traffic. I was surprised that Athens made the list, as I had always thought it was a wonderful city. The port city of Piraeus is a nasty place. The whole city smells like a giant sewage treatment plant, and the ocean offshore has a sickening color to it. ***** **** Suburbs of Paris, France: These tragic towns, full of hostile Arab immigrants angrily refusing to assimilate to French culture or join French society, are a sign that the French model is not working well, at least for some folks. There is a terribly high crime rate here, and cops and firemen often won’t go there because they get attacked as soon as they show up. These mournful towns are packed with angry, unemployed young Arab men who like to seriously riot every year or so, or even more often if the mood strikes them. Lately, they have been staging mini-riots every night. If only 100 cars are burned, that’s a good night. Otherwise, Paris, of course, is one of the world’s great cities. But that doesn’t mean you might not walk into a subway station reeking of urine and see junkies shooting up in plain sight. But still, Paris is a must on any serious travelers’ list. ****** Brussels, Belgium: As with Paris, the districts with many Arab immigrants are quite dangerous and unpleasant, but the rest of the city is as nice as any big city. Abidjan, Ivory Coast: With one of the worst crime rates in Africa (although it has plenty of competition), this city topped many worst lists. ***** Bangui, Central African Republic: One of the worst cities in Africa, as bad as Lagos. The crime rate is totally insane. The locals will try to steal everything you own and even a contingent of armed guards will not be enough to protect you. Your hotel room will feel like a war zone. This fiendish city made a number of worst city lists. Lonely Planet’s guidebook more or less tells you to avoid this city altogether. Here is a harrowing report of a visit to Bangui. ***** Bamako, Mali: Mali has one of the worst governments in Africa, admittedly a race with a lot of competition. Bamako is a sick joke of a town, where the tourist surcharge is rigorously enforced, and the ridiculous, potholed streets are undriveable by any vehicle. Guatemala City, Guatemala: A totally dangerous, dirty, polluted, terminal patient of a city, full of scary, heavily armed teenage soldiers. The soldiers are there to keep the teeming, crime-ridden slums that stretch as far as the eye can see, from overrunning the place. But this city has a few fans. Belize City, Belize: This sweltering, miserable, impoverished, crime-ridden, very dangerous city is built on a swamp, with a jungle for a backyard. The beggars are aggressive and even menacing, and shady characters shadow you on the streets as you walk about. Cops are nowhere to be seen. This is one of the worst cities in the Americas. But the rest of the country is a great place to vacation. ***** Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Sao Paulo is the industrial engine of Brazil. This major city is full of garbage and very dangerous. There are hustlers as far as the eye can see, chaotic streets that render maps useless, not enough cops and Godawful traffic. Rio de Janeiro, the popular tourist destination with the killer skyline perfect for any postcard, is a deceptive place. It’s a very dangerous city with lots of violent crime. Street gangs armed to the teeth regularly shoot it out in military-style wars with the cops. Death squads of off-duty cops funded by local businessmen roam the streets at night, murdering homeless, drug-addicted street kids and petty criminals with impunity in a sickening “social cleanup” campaign. There are pickpockets and muggers all about, often in menacing, youthful gangs (especially on the famous beach) and they frequently operate in broad daylight. A dystopian horrorshow of a city. ****** Nairobi, Kenya: Unfortunately, this city is seriously crime-ridden. Even locals admit that violent crime has reached catastrophic proportions. Caracas, Barquisimeto, or the whole country, Venezuela: The crime is very bad here, sadly, and there is garbage everywhere you look. This blog supports Hugo Chavez, but crime in Venezuela is a tragic, long-standing problem with no quick fixes. Guinea-Bissau: There is no water, no electricity, no place to stay, and the only hotel is half-demolished. San‘a’, Yemen: In a Dickensenian touch, children are actually chained up here in order to beg! Moynaq and Nukus, Uzbekistan: These two cities broiling in a merciless desert have been ruined and turned into ecological dead zones by Stalinist pollution. ***** San Pedro Sulu, Honduras: This sad town has a horrible amount of crime. Swarms of locals will attack you on the bus, trying to steal your luggage. You will have to fight them off if you wish to retain your suitcase. Like the rest of this wreck of a country, it’s full of US gang members gone home to Honduras. People here are very poor and desperate. If you can make it to the nice part of town and afford to stay there, though, you can be quite safe. ***** ***** Dakar, Senegal: According to some, this large West African city has horrible street crime – it is very dangerous. They say if you don’t have armed guards with you, don’t even go outside your hotel room. However, others report that they spent a week there and found it to be safe, in fact safer than many American cities. Violent crime is reportedly rare, and the country is one of the most stable in Africa, and has been that way since independence. ***** Port Au Prince, Haiti: This filthy, degraded, extremely dangerous and desperately poor mess of a city is best avoided at all costs. It sports open sewers, enslaved children, riots, killings and lots of other fun things. This blog did support President Aristide’s efforts to improve the tragedy of a nation called Haiti. Lome, Togo: Criminals are as common as mosquitoes here, walking around fearlessly in broad daylight in this terrible city full of miserable people and crooked taxi drivers. ***** Istanbul, Turkey: The 20 The rest of the country is a great place to visit, has many fans and is one of the world’s top tourist destinations. Best bet for Turkey is just to head to the tourist spots and blow off Istanbul altogether. ***** Phnom Penh, Kampuchea: This city has become a very dangerous, crime-ridden place. The gangs of little girl prostitutes add a particularly poignant touch. ***** Bogotá, Colombia or really the whole country: Bogotá is one of the most dangerous places in the Americas but there seems to be agreement that Colon, Lima and Guayaquil are worse. Really, all of Colombia is dangerous as Hell, to be honest. This comment about Bogotá was recently rebutted by a Bogotán blogger, with more comments here. His post aggressively taking issue with this entry is in Spanish, but my Spanish is good enough to get the gist of it. Also I am getting a lot of comments coming in from Bogotáns on the Internet aggressively objecting to the content. The sole issue that these Defenders of Bogotá are taking issue with is my contention that the city is a very dangerous place. To be honest, Bogotá used to have a truly horrible reputation for crime, but in recent years, there has been a huge effort put into cracking down on street crime. For some more agreement that Bogota is dangerous, see Bogotá is scopolamine. This drug is used by crooks to disable their victims so they can rip them off. It is sprayed in the face, dumped in your drink or spiked into a cigarette. Bogotá hospitals receive an incredible 2,000 scopolamine victims every month, or an astounding 66 a day. The drug knocks you out and can cause medical problems. Colombia has one of the world’s worst road systems. Many roads are not even marked. Drivers are reckless and many cars don’t have headlights at night. Cows have a tendency to wander into the road. Taxis are totally dangerous and are best avoided, if possible. Women are advised to avoid all taxis at night. Anyone is advised to avoid any taxi that already has someone in it. In many cases, this is a criminal accomplice of the thuggish driver. In addition to getting scopolamine sprayed in your face, another popular scam is the “jump-start”: you are told that the taxi has stalled and asked to get out and help push. As you do so, the taxi driver leaves with your luggage. Buses are also best avoided. Thieves haunt the buses, waiting for you to fall asleep, at which point, they rip you off. Certain bus lines are frequented by thieves offering drugged gum, sweets, food and cigarettes. After the drug knocks you out, they rob you blind. In addition to theft and druggings, kidnapping and extortion are also rife on buses. In view of all of the above, it is nothing short of amazing that all of these Colombians are angrily protesting my characterization of their country as dangerous. Or perhaps they doth protest too much? ***** Managua, Nicaragua: This dirty, crime-ridden, dangerous disaster of a city has a bombed-out look about it. This blog supports Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista Party and prays that they can ameliorate this mess. ***** San Salvador, El Salvador: See Managua. Full of dangerous former LA gang members. Death squads roam the streets, slaughtering gangsters by the dozen, but for every one you kill, it seems five more pop up in his place. This blog supports the FMLN’s efforts to reform this ruined land, but the crime here has become so terrible, one wonders if anything short of an act of God could make things better. In fact, I used to make contributions too the FMLN’s weapons fund via an FMLN agent in Los Angeles during the 1980’s. ***** ***** Detroit, New Haven, Newark, Gary (Indiana), Hammond (Indiana), USA: Detroit topped all lists as the worst city in the US. An ugly, dangerous, depressing and filthy city with a downtown that looks like a war zone – a despairing district surrounded by miles of crumbling, abandoned industrial buildings, torn-down fences and rusting cars. Newark is similar, with few to no redeeming qualities. It’s a frightening, polluted city with a postwar look of miles of weedy, trash-strewn vacant lots where crumbling apartment buildings have been torn down. It’s also a dangerous city with a high crime rate. New Haven, despite the presence of Yale University, is similar. There are legions of homeless, begging drug users clogging the streets, and the crime rate is very high due to hordes of crack-dealing gangs shooting it out on the streets. Congress and Columbus Avenues are notorious for drive-by shootings, drug dealing and muggings. It is reportedly the HIV capital of the East Coast due to IV drug use. A lot of the more respectable people have been moving out for some time now. Although much of the city is quite ugly, New Haven does have its bright spots, thanks to Yale. There are nice parts of town, parks, trees, etc. Gary is yet another postindustrial Rust Belt train wreck of a town. A grimy town full of abandoned factories, overgrown lots, rusting fences, graffiti, barred windows and vomit. Go downtown and see tall buildings all boarded up, with no vehicles in sight and unhinged stoplights swaying in the wind – for all practical purposes, a ghost town. This was once a vibrant, working-class city, and now it looks like Road Warrior. Hammond is similar, a suicidally depressing city lined with shuttered factories on the shores of Lake Michigan. Yet another Rust Belt post-industrial ruin. ***** Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: A collapsing, dirty, crime-ridden hellhole. Osaka, Japan: I never would have thought that this city would make the list but according to my friend Tumerica, she says it is the worst city she has ever lived in. I tagged her with the title of this story. In blogging, tagging mean you are supposed to write on the topic – kind of like, “Tag, you’re it.” I will let her explain why Osaka is such a crappy place in her post here.

Check Out Spoken Romanian

Romanian is said to be one of the hardest languages to understand for speakers of other Romance languages. It shares that honor with French. However, Romanian speakers have fair intelligiblity of Italian. On the other hand, Italians can’t understand much of Romanian. Here is an audio file in Romanian – a woman with a great, sexy voice reciting a beautiful poem. You will ruin the experiment if you look at the text while you listen. I know Spanish fairly well – that is, I can generally communicate orally with Spanish speakers. However, out of the 107 words in this poem, I think I understood 2 of them. That’s If you know Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or another Romance language, listen to this Romanian audio file and see how much you can get. Even if you can’t understand it, it’s interesting to hear it spoken.

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