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.

Syrian Demonstrators March with Defecting Troops in Idlib

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU1pY2VECDE&feature=player_embedded]

Pretty intense video here. Shows Syrian demonstrators marching with defecting Syrian soldiers in a city called Trbes, in Idlib Province, Syria. And no, I am not sure where that is. As you can see, some troops have definitely defected to the other side.

Look at those nice apartment blocks. That’s probably an achievement of Syrian socialism. There are few if any horrific capitalist slums in the Arab World as you see in the capitalist paradises of Latin America, Africa or India. I have seen some claims that there are terrible slums in Cairo, but looking at them, they don’t look nearly as bad as the slums of Mumbai, Nairobi, Rio de Janiero, Bogota, San Salvador, Managua, Port au Prince, Mexico City, Lima or Santiago.

Arab socialism has been an experiment that has worked quite well. Radical free market neoliberal capitalism goes against the Arab mindset, and it is also somewhat anti-Islamic.

The fact that horrific poverty and feudalism persists in some parts of the world is due to the fact that these areas were either not much Arabized or because they suffer from the culture of the surrounding region.

For instance, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, India and Bangladesh still have feudalism (though recently gone in Iran) because of a general South Asian feudal culture and a lack of Arabization. The feudal culture may in part be due to Hinduism or may just be South Asian regionalism. South Philippines suffers from the Latin American style feudalism that all Spanish colonies inherited.

Indonesia suffers from the feudalism that characterized all of mainland SE Asia (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) before revolutions took it out. A revolution would have taken it out in Indonesia too, but the revolutionaries were tagged as atheists by the feudalists, who used the Islamists to “kill the Commies.” A similar thing happened in Malaysia, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

The Arab World was able to take out feudalism quite easily, because feudalism is in a sense contrary to Arab culture itself. Feudalism is always going to be a hard sell in a desert climate where most folks can die of hunger or thirst quite quickly without cooperating. The Arab World is built on cooperation, not competition. Ruthless competition won’t get you far in a desert.

What Position To Take on the Syrian Uprising?

I am quite torn here. The US, Western and Jewish media is supporting the rebels 10

When I say that the Jews are supporting the resistance, I mean the Zionists. I have seen many articles by US-based Zionists in the press calling for Assad’s overthrow. Jew Lieberman called for the US to bomb Syria the same way we are bombing Libya. An article in the US press recently appeared authored by a US Jewish community leader calling for Assad’s overthrow. Debka wants Assad overthrown. Many Jewish and Israeli commenters online are 10

I haven’t the faintest idea what the line of the Israeli government is. The US government appears to be supporting the rebels, as is France, but France has a long-term imperialist interest in the region.

So, the rebels are supported by:

US imperialism, French imperialism and the pro-Zionist West in general.

The Jews/Israelis (Jews means Zionists).

Ok, look, anything that US imperialism and Zionism is for, I’m against. That’s all there is to it.

I went over the reasoning for their support for the rebels in a previous piece.

It goes like this:

International Zionism and US imperialism want Assad gone because this will deliver a smashing blow to the resistance wing in the Middle East of Iran – Syria – Hezollah – Hamas.

By taking out Assad, a Shia, we deliver a heavy blow to the Iran-Syria resistance axis. Iran must go it alone. The incoming regime will be Sunni and Iran-hostile.

By taking out Assad, we take out the Syrian wing of the resistance axis. The incoming Sunni regime is not likely to immediately play such a strong role in the resistance.

By taking out Assad, we deal a huge blow to Hezbollah. Hezbollah is supported by Iran, but that support comes by way of Syria. Taking out Syria leaves Hezbollah high and dry, and it will be hard for Iran to deliver weapons to them. The new Sunni regime is likely to be Hezbollah-hostile.

By taking out Assad, we deal a blow to Hamas. Hamas is supported by Iran, but that support goes by way of Syria.

The problem is that down the line, the new Sunni regime wants the Golan back as much as any Syrian does, and the Syrian Sunnis are very Israel-hostile. This could cause a problem with the US-Israel alliance down the road.

However, in international politics, who thinks long-term? No one does. Everything is short term. If USreal (US-Israel alliance) can deliver a heavy blow to Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Hamas, then they are going to go for it. That the end result may be more problems down the road is not something they are going to think about. Their attitude will be, “We will cross that bridge when we come to it.”

I am also a Christian, and the Christians are 10

Video: Rebels Standing Over Bodies of Killed Syrian Soldiers

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCciF4QsFH0&feature=related]

This is a pretty harsh video. It shows Muslim Brotherhood forces in Jisr Al Shoughur. The bodies are those of Syrian police and military, and most of them are dead. It’s hard to watch and viewer discretion is advised.

Audio, translation from Arabic:

Muslim Brotherhood rebel: “Where are you from?” Wounded solider: “Don’t kick us, boys.” Muslim Brotherhood rebel: “Does he have money?” Wounded solider:: “Don’t take his money, he’s dead.” Another Muslim Brotherhood rebel: “Obviously he’s a Allawi because of his haircut.” Muslim Brotherhood rebel: “I’m going to fuck his mother.” Muslim Brotherhood rebel: “They standing in a line, firing in vain, and we picked them off one by one.” Muslim Brotherhood rebel: “I stabbed all of them, the son of bitches” Muslim Brotherhood rebel: “This is the first son of a bitch I shot.” Muslim Brotherhood rebel: “Take a look, you bastards, at how I stabbed them in the back.”

The government is planning a major offensive in the region.

Video: Muslim Brotherhood Forces Entering Syria from Turkey

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAo2omosWrY]

This is an exciting video. The first part shows Muslim Brotherhood forces entering Syria en masse from Turkey. This is the guerrilla army that killed 120 Syrian forces in Jisr Al Shoughur on Monday. The last half of the video shows wild scenes shot inside Jisr Al Shoughur on the same day. Buildings in flames, armies of people marching in the street, chanting and waving swords, people pushing people down stairways, just serious chaos. Jisr Al Shoughur was a stronghold of the MB in the 1980’s and borders Turkey.

What is interesting is that it seems that the Turkish government had something to do with this incursion. There are a lot of theories about what is going on. It does seem clear that these MB guys had been hiding out in Turkey, and Turkey gave them the go-ahead to go invade Syria. But why? The leader of Turkey is an Islamist. Is the throwing down with the MB Islamists in Syria. Keep in mind that Turkey is also hosting the Islamist-dominated Syrian opposition. This seems to be a case of Islamist politics trumping regional cooperation, but it’s so hard to figure out.

Pretty wild video!

Why the US and Israel Support the Syrian Rebels

Researching this Syrian civil war, it’s clear as air that the US and Israel are rooting for the rebels. Indeed, much of the West is. But why? I was mystified at first, but now it all makes sense.

Here’s how it works:

Get rid of Assad.

Assad goes, and you strike a death blow against Iran.

Assad goes, and in particular, you strike a severe death blow against Hezbollah.

Syria is Hezbollah’s patron, via Iran. The Iran-Syria-Hezbollah Axis is one of Israel’s main enemies. Furthermore, Syria, but mostly Iran, supports Hamas.

So, Assad goes, and you strike a major blow against the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas resistance faction.

The minority Alawite Shia regime supports Iran and Hezbollah mostly for nationalist reasons – they want the Golan back. All three are Shia, so it works as an alliance.

The Syrian Arab Sunnis increasingly hate Hezbollah, because they see them as tied in with Assad’s regime. Hezbollah is also supporting the regime in Damascus, because it’s their lifeline. Iran is reportedly helping to put down the rebellion, so they don’t like Iran either. I’m starting to see a lot of Syrian Sunni Arab sectarian comments on the web against the Shia, about how they are the enemies of the Sunnis, etc.

Bottom line, if an opposition regime gets in, it will probably be a relatively Islamist Sunni Arab regime. They will take a dim view of supporting Hezbollah and an equally dim view of an alliance with the eternal enemy Iran.

The problem with this US-Israeli view is that it is short-sighted. The Syrian Sunni Arab Islamists are ferocious Israel-haters, and they want the Golan back as bad as anyone.

Their attitude is that Assad has been too weak to get the Golan back. Get rid of the Alawite regime, put in a Syrian Sunni Arab Islamist regime with deep ties to the Ikhwan, and launch a war on Israel. That’s the explicit goal of the Syrian Islamists.

Now, whether or not they can pull this off is another question. But regardless of what happens to the Hezbollah-Syria-Iran Axis, the new Sunni Arab Islamist regime in Syria will not, repeat not, be friendly to Israel.

It’s one of those be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, things.

120 Syrian Military Killed in Jisr Al Shoughur

Amazing news. Syria seems to be slipping into civil war.

120 security forces dead and 35 opposition members killed. Rebels reportedly number in the 1000’s and are armed with RPG’s and automatic weapons. The biased Western news is casting doubt on the figures, saying that the government ginned them up to justify a crackdown. But the figures appear to be valid. Attacks included an ambush on police, the blowing up of a post office and rebel snipers on rooftops.

Nine tanks were destroyed, and 2 helicopters were downed. All of the government buildings in town were burned to the ground. Monday night they seized the army’s explosive stores near the dams on the Orontes River. They used these to blow up dams over the river that link central and southern Syria. This will prevent tanks from moving into the area to put down the uprising.

On Internet sites, supporters of the regime (there are many, many of them) are furious about the soldiers being killed and are demanding blood. Meanwhile, opposition supporters are cheered.

This purely Sunni Arab city is right near the Turkish border and the rebels got the weapons smuggled in from Turkey. The fighters are 10

In fact, this is how Al Qaeda developed. After the crackdowns against the MB in Egypt and Syria around 1980, many Egyptian and Syrian MB members fled their countries for various places. Many went to Saudi Arabia, often as religious teachers. There, their militant stance mixed with Wahhabi theology (at that point, mostly quietist) to produce a potent brew. This is what led to Al Qaeda.

When talking of Al Qaeda, it is sometime said, “All roads lead to the Ikhwan.” The Ikhwan is the MB, in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria. The MB is also big in Jordan, but they are mostly quietist there. The Palestinian MB is actually Hamas, but Hamas does not like to discuss that because the MB is not popular in Palestine.

The relationship between the MB and Al Qaeda and other such groups is very complex. Obviously, many MB members are not supporters of Al Qaeda, much less members. MB groups do not openly support Al Qaeda. But the MB is like an incubation tube where jihadis fester for a while before they move to Al Qaeda. Furthermore, MB members flow in and out of Al Qaeda, and AQ members flow in and out of MB, and nobody much discusses this in either organization.

The MB is a huge organization, and obviously most are not jihadis. But the MB is always spinning off small numbers of jihadis that move on to groups like Al Qaeda.

I hope I explained that well enough.

Video: Violent Crackdown in Hama, Syria

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sztIb-As7Jo&feature=channel_video_title]

A very shocking video of the protests in Hama, Syria on Friday after prayers which turned very violent. Security forces cracked down heavily, as you can see in the video with plainclothes officer and uniformed officers opening fire on protesters.You can hear gunfire ringing out all through the video, which seems hard to play for some reason. 34 people were killed.

The protesters don’t exactly seem peaceful. They are throwing rocks and lighting fires in the streets. At 1:20 in the video, you can see protesters laying siege to what is probably some sort of govornment office.

These videos are hard to find on Youtube because they are all written in Arabic. My Arabic is not that good, but I was able to figure out that this was shot in Hama, Syria on Friday, June 3, 2011.

Hama has long been the most conservative Sunni Muslim city in Syria. This is where the Muslim Brotherhood staged their uprising in 1982. Hafez Assad smashed it with massive force, killing 30,000 people. That shut down the Muslim Brotherhood for some time. The MB in Syria is very militant, partly as a result of their decades long war with the state. After 1982, many of them left and went to Germany, where quite a few became active in Al Qaeda. Some of these folks were involved in the 9-11 plot.

The cities of Homs, Hama, Rastan and Jisr As Shughur are the center of the insurgency right now. They are all in the heavily Sunni Muslim northwest of Syria.

The situation is very confusing and it’s hard to know where to take a stand. The Western media hates Assad’s guts and is rooting for the rebels. Hence, Western coverage is biased.

My overview found that Syria is utterly polarized. Almost all Alawites, Shia, Druze, and Christians are with the regime. In fact, they are increasingly fanatical in their support for it. The rebels are now armed and are being led by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Christians and Alawi and others look east and see Iraq. Look what happened to the Christians and the Shia there. A Civil War in Syria could conceivably see the Syrian Christians subjected to genocide as the Iraqi Christians were, and the Shia Alawites may also be subjected to mass murder campaigns.

In recent days, in contrast to the lying Western media, the Kurds seem to be turning towards the regime. The Sunni Arab regime next door in Iraq was not very nice to the Kurds, nor was the Sunni Turk regime to the north. Assad recently granted citizenship to all of the Kurds who had been denied citizenship for decades. Also, the Kurds are fairly secular, and they don’t think too much of the MB.

Syria is still a confessional state, and sectarian tensions run very deep. Each group has a sense of superiority and thinks they are better than the others.

It’s hard to say what more Assad can do. Increasingly, the protesters are demanding the end of the regime, and they want Assad to step down. So there’s really nothing Assad can do to mollify them at this point. That’s essentially a non negotiable demand. Another argument is the Israeli-US type argument that the Arab leaders who gave in to demands of the protesters all had to resign. Hence, consessions just emboldens the rebels and makes the regime even weaker. So why give them anything?

There is a question of the economy. How much longer can it hold out as Syria slips towards civil war? It’s hard to say, but Algeria carried on with a vicious civil war for a long time. Iraq’s economy went to Hell with the sanctions, but Saddam held on. Syria’s economy is still pretty much closed to world, hence there’s not that much the world can do to it.

At the moment, the protesters are almost all Sunni Muslims. There are a few Shia Muslims and Kurds, and some Leftists and atheists/secular. There are about zero Christians and Allawi down with the protesters at the moment.

"Joys of Muslim Women," by Nonie Darwish

Some of this stuff is a bit over to the top, and I edited out about 1 Some of the stuff I removed: that Muslims are preparing a jihad against the West, apparently to convert us to Islam? I don’t agree with that. They think some of us are attacking Islam, so they are counterattacking. Another line said that in 20 years, there will be enough Muslims in North America to elect the President and Prime Minister of the US and Canada. No way is that true. It isn’t really true that non-Muslims are supposed to be killed or subjugated by Muslims, though there is a bit of truth to that. Under Muslim rule, non-Muslims are clearly subordinate. But where Muslims are the minority, that is not the case. Muslims are supposed to try to convert and increase their numbers so they can be a majority. Apparently conquest in the name of Islam – aggressive jihad – we have not seen that much in recent years. One exception is Southern Sudan. There have been some genocides of non-Muslims too – Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians in Anatolia, Catholics in East Timor. In areas with a Muslim majority trying to secede from the state, it’s typically “kill the non-Muslims.” This is the case in the Southern Philippines, Thailand, the Moluccas, Chechnya and Kashmir. There have been localized massacres of non-Muslims in India, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Muslim jihad is a complicated subject, and saying they want to kill us or convert us is a bit ridiculous, though that was more or less what was going on South Sudan, and there have been some cases of that in Iraq and Pakistan recently.

Joys of Muslim Women

by Nonie Darwish

In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 7 year old, consummating the marriage by 9. The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy. To prove rape, the woman must have (4) male witnesses. Often after a woman has been raped, the family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family. Husbands can beat their wives ‘at will, and the man does not have to say why he has beaten her. The husband is permitted to have 4 wives and a temporary wife for an hour (prostitute) at his discretion. The Shariah Muslim law controls the private as well as the public life of the woman. In the Western World (America), Muslim men are starting to demand Shariah Law so the wife can not obtain a divorce and he can have full and complete control of her. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending US and Canadian Universities are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to Shariah law. Ripping the West in Two. Author and lecturer Nonie Darwish says the goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shariah law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two.

Ripping the West in Two

Nonie Darwish recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law. Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before immigrating to the US in 1978, when she was eight years old. Her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel. He was a high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza. When he died, he was considered a “shahid,” a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society. But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing. She converted to Christianity after hearing a Christian preacher on television. In her latest book, Darwish warns about creeping sharia law – what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries. Westerners generally assume all religions encourage a respect for the dignity of each individual. Islamic law (Sharia) teaches that non-Muslims should be subjugated or killed in this world. Peace and prosperity for one’s children is not as important as assuring that Islamic law rules everywhere in the Middle East and eventually in the world. While Westerners tend to think that all religions encourage some form of the golden rule, Sharia teaches two systems of ethics – one for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Building on tribal practices of the seventh century, Sharia encourages the side of humanity that wants to take from and subjugate others. While Westerners tend to think in terms of religious people developing a personal understanding of and relationship with God, Sharia advocates executing people who ask difficult questions that could be interpreted as criticism. It’s hard to imagine, that in this day and age, Islamic scholars agree that those who criticize Islam or choose to stop being Muslim should be executed. Sadly, while talk of an Islamic reformation is common and even assumed by many in the West, such murmurings in the Middle East are silenced through intimidation. While Westerners are accustomed to an increase in religious tolerance over time, Darwish explains how petro dollars are being used to grow an extremely intolerant form of political Islam in her native Egypt and elsewhere. It is too bad that so many are disillusioned with life and Christianity to accept Muslims as peaceful…some may be but they have an army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam…the peaceful support the warriors with their finances and own kind of patriotism to their religion.

Imad Mughniyeh is Dead

Repost from the old site. A bit dated, but should be useful nevertheless.

One of the only known photos of the super-elusive and ultra-mysterious Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah mastermind. He was so slippery he was dubbed Hezbollah’s Carlos, after the famous terrorist Carlos from the 1970’s. This is a great picture of him, suspicious, haunted, looking over his shoulder, as a man on the run should. And he was a man on the run for most of his life. A more recent photo of Mughniyeh in military fatigues, against a camouflage background, issued by Iran after his death. Between the earlier photo and the later, it looks like he hasn’t missed a meal. Some are also saying that the two plastic surgery operations did not alter his appearance much, but I am not at capable of judging that.

I can’t stress the importance of this news. Imad Mughniyeh, Supreme Commander of Hezbollah for the past 25 years, has been killed in a car bomb in Damascus last night, February 12, at 10:45 PM. He was on the CIA’s Most Wanted List with a $25 million bounty on his head. He was the only person killed when a silver Mitsubishi Pajero vehicle (apparently Mughniyeh’s car) exploded in the upscale Kafar Soussa District in the vicinity of a Iranian school that teaches religion to Iranian pupils. Several other cars were damaged and windows of surrounding buildings were blown out. Residents gathered in their pajamas to look at the scene. A single body lay in the street, covered by a white sheet. Kafar Soussa has many apartment buildings constructed in recent years, along with a large shopping center and the main offices of the formidable Syrian Intelligence Services. Mughniyeh was wanted for a number of attacks during the US invasion of Lebanon in 1982, said to be to keep the peace, but actually ending up as usual, supporting the Israelis. Mughniyeh orchestrated the bombing of the US Marine Barracks and French Headquarters in Beirut in 1982 that killed 227 Marines and 58 French troops. He also supervised the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in 1983 that killed 63 and wiped out the entire top tier of US CIA Middle East agents. He also pulled off the bombing of the Israeli command center in Tyre that killed scores of Israeli troops. He was involved in the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the execution of US Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem in 1985. He was involved in the kidnappings of many Americans in Beirut during the 1980’s, including Terry Anderson and CIA officer and US Army Colonel William Buckley, who Hezbollah executed. In 1988, the top US CIA agent in Lebanon, Colonel William Higgins, was kidnapped by Hezbollah and tortured to death. He was also involved in the truck bomb attack on the US military residence facilities at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, targeting US servicemen who were guarding Saudi oil fields. 19 Americans were killed in that blast and 200 more were wounded. There are suggestions that he was involved along with Hezbollah and/or Iran in the dual bombings in Buenos Aires, one at the Israeli Embassy 1992 that killed 29 people, and another at the Jewish Cultural Center in 1994 that killed 95 people. Three Israeli soldiers, Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Souad were captured along the Lebanon border in 1999, taken POW, and possibly later executed. The border incident that set off the 2006 Lebanon War led to the capture of two more Israeli POW’s, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. Mughniyeh was believed to be behind both of these abductions of Israeli soldiers. Debka has long claimed that Mughniyeh was on very close terms with both bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the Iranian leadership. This seems bizarre. Al Qaeda’s project is nothing less than Hitlerian extermination of every Shia Muslim on Earth. Mughniyeh has been described as Hezbollah’s Head of External Operations and it is believed that he stays in contact with cells that Hezbollah has all over the world. He is also described as a senior Hezbollah intelligence official, head of the group’s security wing and the founder of the group. In the event of a US or Israeli attack on Iran, Mughniyeh would have been relied upon to be in charge of any response. Angry Arab feels that Mughniyeh’s role and feat were largely exaggerated, but I am not so sure about that; he also feels that Robert Fisk could not possibly have interviewed the actual Imad Mughniyeh in Lebanon in 1991, but I think he did. The interview is worth reading: Fisk in yet another superb, incisive piece. When it comes to Middle East, few are better than Robert Fisk. I guess that is why International Zionism is on a crusade to crucify him. Mughniyeh was Lebanese, born in Tyre in South Lebanon, not Palestinian as many people are saying. He joined Arafat’s Force 17 elite bodyguard unit in Lebanon at a young age. He joined Amal, and then went to Iran for training, where he excelled. He then conducted daring behind enemy lines operations in the Iran-Iraq War. Most of the operations in Lebanon that he is most famous for were actually conducted by a group called Islamic Jihad. This group later was folded into Hezbollah, which was not formed at any rate until 1988 anyway. Mughniyeh personally executed Stethem during the hijacking in 1985. In 1990, he had plastic surgery done in Iran to change his facial features. Then he went back to Beirut, where he lived underground using a variety of fake passports. At some point, his cover got blown and he returned to Iran again for a second plastic surgery operation that completely changed his appearance. He was said to have been in Basra in early 2006 helping Mahdi Army fighters go to Iran for military training. He then returned to Lebanon, where he took part in the Lebanon War. Lately, he was still living in Beirut, but traveling to the Damascus neighborhood where he was killed for meetings on a brains behind Hezbollah’s military wing.” Hezbollah’s casualties in the 2006 War are not known. Israel claims that 1/3 of its fighters were killed, but that seems excessive. It seems clear that Hezbollah has now completely restocked its missile supplies and has tripled them from 15,000 in the 2006 War to 45,000 now. Further, it now has missiles that can reach Tel Aviv. In recent days, Hezbollah teams disguised as reporters were said to be photographing the area on the Israel-Lebanon border. Mughniyeh definitely committed some acts of terrorism – notably the bombing of the Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires – but most of his so-called crimes were simply acts of war, legitimate acts of war I might add. Guerrilla armies lack spy satellites, $500 billion/year defense budgets, smart bombs, cruise missiles, F-16’s and all of the other expensive military hardware that enables advanced states to carry out precision states during war. Guerrilla groups have to make do with what they have. I do consider embassies, especially those swarming with espionage agents, to be legitimate targets for guerrillas in wartime. Surely spies may be executed, but I don’t think enemy troops should be. None of the attacks on US, French or Israeli bases in Lebanon were terrorist attacks. The killings of the three Israelis and the US servicemen were war crimes, but the US and Israel have certainly executed plenty of POW’s and the Israelis continue to do so. The attack that set off the Lebanon War was hardly an act of terrorism. Hence, Mughniyeh’s mantle as the king of terrorism is largely nonsense. Most of his acts were simply very well planned and executed attacks on the enemy in wartime, and within what I consider to be the rules of war. Mughniyeh was one of the most underground people on Earth and no one seemed to know where he was most of the time, and Hezbollah was not talking. He was probably one of the world’s most highly protected and most secretive guerrilla fighters. Whoever killed him by penetrating his multiple circles of Syrian and Iranian intelligence officers and bodyguards surely pulled off a coup de etat. All fingers are pointing to the Israeli Mossad, which is expert at these kind of attacks. However, the Israeli government is matches closely the MO of the Mossad assassination of top Hamas operative Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil. In fact, a book written as fiction by a former Mossad agent, though set in the Shia suburbs of South Beirut, appears to describe the MO used in the killing of Mughniyeh closely. If the book had been translated into Arabic and Mughniyeh had read it, perhaps he could have avoided this. Khalil was a founding member of Hamas and a senior member of the Hamas military wing. Actually, there are probably two Hamases. One is the Hamas that runs the Gaza government. The other Hamas is based out of Syria and could be called Hamas-Khaled Meshal. This could be seen as an arm of Hamas run out of Syria, and probably a more militant one at that. Sheikh Khalil was close to Meshal. However, note that Israel “neither confirmed nor denied” that killing of Khalil. Has there ever been a case of an Israeli assassination that they did not take credit for, indeed that they even said explicitly that they did not do? Also note that retired CIA officers are saying that Israel did it. Other theories suggest that either supporters of the pro-government faction in Lebanon, at odds with Hezbollah and Syria, or Iran themselves, killed Mughniyeh. The Syria and Iran theories hinge on those countries giving up Mughniyeh to the US or Israel in order to get the heat off of them and deliver a wanted militant that had a $5 million US price tag on his head in return for an unspecified US quid pro quo. This theory is called into question because Bush placed new sanctions on Syria the day after the bombing. If this was a quid pro quo to get the US to back off Syria, that would not have happened. Mughniyeh was also wanted by some of the Lebanese Christian factions and the saying that they have settled their account with Mughniyeh. Further analysis of Israel’s denial shows that it may not even be a denial at all – Israel rejects terrorist groups blaming Israel for the killing, but does not deny that Israel committed the act. If Israel indeed killed Mughniyeh, which seems likely, that looks very bad for Syria. It means that Mossad has been able to penetrate into the heart of Hezbollah, and it means that the Mossad can operate apparently with impunity deep in the most secure parts of Damascus. Their next target is surely Nasrallah himself. It also implies that Israel has penetrated Syrian intelligence itself, a tough nut to crack. Hezbollah will now probably undergo purges looking for the Israeli agents in Hezbollah. People will be arrested and executed. Mughniyeh is said to have replaced Hassan Nasrallah as head of the Hezbollah after the 2006 war and he was rumored to have enemies in Lebanon, maybe even inside Hezbollah. Hezbollah TV is reporting his death and blaming Israel. Nasrallah will speak at his funeral in Beirut, which will be very heavily guarded. This does not look good for Damascus. They were supposed to protect this guy, who is after all one of their main assets, but they failed. His death is huge news in the roiling stew pot called the Middle East, and there will surely be counter-responses by Hezbollah, probably against Israel. Nasrallah is already thundering threats in the direction of Israel. The wild conspiracy stories are already spreading like vines. This is the Middle East, where intrigues are as normal as sand and hummus and anything that can happen, probably does happen. We have not see the end of this.

Support For South Ossetian Secession

Repost from the old site. A good progressive principle, but one subject to some exceptions, is the principle of self-determination. This leads naturally to support for most if not all separatist movements. In my case, I do support most, but not all separatist movements. It’s interesting of all the people around the world, that only leftwingers and various seceding nationalities support this principle. It’s also interesting that once nations secede and become their own state, suddenly they do not believe in the right to secede anymore! We on the Left have always upheld this basic principle. The USSR held that all Russian nationalities had the right to secede. Unfortunately, it was not enforced much, but it was this very principle that allowed Gorbachev to permit the various USSR republics the right of secession in 1991. At that time, on at least that one variable, the USSR was the most civilized nation on Earth. Its civilized nature was a direct result of the progressive principles that were embodied in the USSR by the first Bolsheviks in 1917. Later, Czechoslovakia split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The reason they were able to do this so civilly is, number one, because they are White, and number two, due to the decades of internationalism that had been inculcated into them by Communist rule. I say that being White is important because I am absolutely convinced that only White nations are capable of breaking up civilly and peacefully without slaughtering each other in the process. In a way, breaking up your country without massacring your countrymen is the ultimate civilized act. Even Asians, as civilized as they are, would never be able to break up one of their countries without turning it into a mass slaughter. On this metric, they are not that civilized. What is it about Whites that allows them to break up a country? Is it altruism? Although studies are rare, in the US, Whites have rates of civic participation, volunteerism and donating to charity far above other groups. Now, it is true that Communist China has not done a good job of living up the progressive principles of self-determination. Clearly, Tibet has a right to go free, and I would argue that East Turkestan does too. And Taiwan is a separate country. Mao never was a true internationalist. He was always a Chinese nationalist first and a Communist second. Another reason to support secessionism is that the people who hate it most are the fascists. Idiots are always saying that fascism and Communism and fascism and socialism are the same thing. Let us call them on this one at least. This is a prime difference between fascists and Communists, the Left and the Right. The Left supports self-determination and cultural autonomy for national minorities and the Right has always opposed this, instead choosing to force all national minorities into a single ethnoreligiolinguistic entity. No one opposes separatist movements more than fascists, and no fascist nation has ever given one national minority an inch of cultural autonomy. Even in China, national minorities have considerable cultural autonomy and have the right to education in their national tongue. It’s true that the USSR’s commitment to cultural and linguistic freedom varied throughout the lifetime of the state. Its commitment was highest in the 1920’s, wavered seriously in the 1930’s when Stalin murdered many leaders of national minorities and never attained earlier depths with the subsequent promotion of Russification by Stalin and his successors. The Left nowadays is sleazy and unprincipled on the question of national self-determination. Sadly, the entire world Left refused to support the right of self-determination for the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, all because Yugoslavia was a Communist state. Then they all opposed the right of Kosova to break away from Serbia, I guess because Serbia used to be Communist state! This leads us to the recent fighting in Georgia. First of all, Georgia is pretty much of a fake state. Sure, there have been Georgians living in that area for a very long time, but the Soviet republic called Georgia included not only Georgians but other nationalities as well. Other minorities included Abkhazians, Adjarians and South Ossetians. It is possible that the republic of Georgia was seeded with these minorities as a divide and conquer strategy by the early Soviets, who were not perfect on the national question. Seeding Georgia with non-Georgians would make it more difficult for Georgia to secede from the USSR. Similarly, splitting the poor Ossetians between Russia and Georgia was probably another sleazy divide and conquer game. Anyway, in 1991, this completely fake state called Georgia (really just a republic of the USSR) gained its independence. If we are to support the principle of self-determination, we need to allow national minorities in fake states newly birthed the right to secede. On what basis were Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia an inherent part of some entity called “Georgia”? On no basis whatsoever! On what basis is some new fake country one day or one month old entitled to the bullshit and fascist principle of “inviolability of borders”? On no basis. So, when the Georgian state (really just a place with lines on the map with a lot of Georgians living in it, but drawn wider than the Georgian nation) got its independence, Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia surely had the right say, “Screw this, we want no part of this new state. We’re out of here.” Adjaria, a Muslim region in the southwest, seems to have settled its beef without fighting, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia both waged nasty and ugly separatist wars and managed to secede from the new state of Georgia. South Ossetia apparently wants to marry with North Ossetia and become a state in Russia called Ossetia. I’m not sure what Abkhazia wants to do. I think they may wish to join Russia also. Abkhazia is located in the northwest and populated mostly by Orthodox Christians. South Ossetia is located in the north-central part of Georgia and is composed mostly of Ossetians. The Ossetians were formerly called the Alans, an ancient kingdom related ethnically and linguistically to Iranians. They speak a language that is close to Iranian and resemble Iranians physically. Russia is being cynical about this, as befits an imperialist state. While Russia under Putin has fascist tendencies in the nasty repression on national minorities such as the Mari and the people of the Caucasus, Putin is willing, like all sleazy imperialists, do support secessionism when it benefits imperial goals. Russia has it in for Georgia, lately because Georgia has lined up heavily on the side of the US. There are US and Israeli advisors working with the Georgian military right now, and Russia is terrified by Georgian threats to join NATO. We need to note that NATO doesn’t have much right to exist anymore. NATO was set up to deal with the Soviet threat. That’s gone. So why is NATO still there? Apparently to form an imperialist bloc to oppose Russia! The Russians are furious about this, and rightly so. Who can blame them? Sadly, it is also possible that Russia is using this as a payback to the West for supporting the secession of Kosova. The West, including the US in its extreme cynicism, first of all supported the secession of all of the former states of Yugoslavia (apparently on the cynical grounds that since they were seceding from a Communist nation, therefore the right of self-determination was invoked). Then, just to stick it to Russia for the most part, the US and most of Europe supported Kosova and Montenegrin independence, just so long as they were pro-West. I supported it too, on the basis of solid principles called the right of self-determination. It is sad that the entire world Left opposed the independence of Kosova. This made Russia furious. Yet in Abkhazia, in the same sleazy West that championed every micro-state to be cleaved out of the former Yugoslavia, not a single Western state, nor any state anywhere, would support the principled secession of the Abkhazian people from Georgian imperialism. Does fascist Russia under Putin support the right of self-determination, however limited? Of course not. As a capitalist, and in fact fascist and now imperialist state, Russia clearly has no principles whatsoever. As payback to Kosova secession which hurt their pitiful fascist pan-Slavic feelings, the Russians are now supporting secession in Georgia. Principles? Come now! This whole conflict is shot through with imperialism all the way. The US is supporting Georgia not out of any principles, because as an imperialist state, the US has zero principles other than profiteering, plunder and subjection of other states and peoples. The US supports secessionism when it benefits imperialist interests, and opposes it when it hinders imperialist interests! And of course, it never admits this. When it supports secessionism, the US apparently invokes the right of self-determination. When it opposes secessionism, the US invokes the right of inviolability of national borders, as it is doing now in the case of Georgia. Contradictory, no? Sure is! The sleazy and pro-imperialist US media fails to point out this dissonance, and your average educated American will inconsistently invoke, like a moron, either the right of self-determination of the right of inviolability of borders, depending, as they support the imperial projects that they have been inculcated to support. This conflict, like all imperialist bullshit wars, boils down to various imperialist nations waging armed conflict over access to markets and natural resources. As is, oil from Azerbaijan and gas from the Stans goes through Georgia and I believe hooks up with Russian pipelines. The US, Georgia, Israel and Turkey wish to cut Russia out of the deal and cut a new pipeline through Georgia to Turkey. At least some of the oil will then go to Israel and from there, through the Suez and out to the Indian Ocean and various nations in that region, in particular India. Someone suggested to me that the West is cutting this new pipeline because they are afraid that Russia will cut off the flow of oil to the West. Forget it. They will not do any such thing unless pushed to the wall. The US, Israel, Georgia and probably Turkey are all doing this because they are more or less imperialist states. This conflict is also shot through with old Cold War “Beware the bear” bullshit. Even after the fall of Communism and the return of capitalism to Russia, US imperialism and anti-Communists everywhere have continued to see Russia through and Cold War and anti-Communist lens. It is as if the fall of the USSR never occurred. Any analysis of the conflict between the US and the West that leaves out this essential element is lacking. As a socialist, I want to ask the supporters of capitalism on this blog some questions. Show me how advanced capitalism can exist without imperialism. Prove to me that an advanced capitalist state can exist in the modern world without becoming an imperialist power. It seems to me that large capitalist states are typically mandated to become imperialist states and from there to engage in conflict, often armed, with other imperialist states for markets and natural resources. If this is so (and I think it is) how then can one support capitalism as it now exists, since it seems to be impossible to have large capitalist states that are not also imperialist? As you might have guessed, I support the right of South Ossetia to self-determination and to secede from Georgia and the right, however sleazy, of Russia to assist them in this principled endeavor. This conflict is getting real nasty real quick. Russia is threatening Israel and the US over their support for Georgia and the US has incredibly ordered Russia to withdraw its forces from South Ossetia. And the conflict very quickly seems to have expanded to Abkhazia. We have the potential for a really nasty conflict here. I would like to point out that the neoconservative scum who now pretty much run this country are first and foremost ferocious imperialists. They are some of the most voracious backers of US imperialism out there. In this endeavor, neoconservatives have been picking fights with Russia for a long time now. Many Jewish neoconservatives are involved in this imperial conflict with Russia, and unfortunately, in this light, they have supported Chechen independence not out of any decent principles, since neocons have no principles, but just to screw Russia. The fact that elements of imperialism have supported the Chechen separatists rouses Russian nationalism and paranoia and makes Russia all the less likely to give the Chechens and other Caucasian peoples the independence they deserve. It’s not known why the neocons have such a beef with Russia, but they also backed the Russian Jewish oligarchs in their fleecing of Russia. There seems to be an old beef between Jewish nationalists and Russia. We can see the outlines of this conflict in the campaign to “free the Soviet Jews”, which was one of the original catalysts for the formation of the Jewish neocons back in the 1970’s. There may also be a “screw the Russians” mindset dating from the hostile history of Russians and Jews in Russia, a history replete with pogroms of Jews.

Support For the Uighurs

Repost from the old site. Since it seems like virtually no one outside Muslims supports the Uighur battle for independence, I will support it. I realize that this is a tough time for China and that imperialism, particularly US imperialism, would love to use a new Uighur state to plant bases in it and surround China, but still I believe that something can be worked out. A major stumbling block for the self-determination of nations, long a Left hallmark for which we Leftists can all be proud, is the cynical abuse of this right by hypocritical imperialist and Realpolitik-dealing large states. Imperialist states, as I argued in a previous post, have no consistent values at all. They will support secessionism to further imperial goals or weaken enemies and oppose it everywhere else. An imperialist nation has the morals of a hardened criminal -> no legitimate morals at all. If you follow this article, it seems like the vast majority Uighurs support the armed groups, which is how they are able to function at all in the locked-down police state of China. China has seeded East Turkestan with settler-colonists, as it has despicably done in Tibet. It treats the Uighurs like shit. Almost no one seems to support Uighur secessionism. I’m sure that Muslims do, but Muslims do not have a very consistent basis for supporting secessionism. Most Muslims I have run into only support secessionism when it involves Muslims separating from non-Muslim states. In all other cases, I guess they don’t support it! In particular, most oppose the liberation struggle of the Kurds, who have as good a case for a state of their own as anyone does. In the comments section, Dragon Horse, a very smart commenter, made the case for the territorial integrity of borders. He made several arguments: First, why should we be creating brand new mono-ethnic states? Second , that what I was arguing for was radical devolution. Third, that when the OAS was formed, the member states agreed on the territorial integrity of even colonial borders that made little sense in order to avoid endless secessionist wars. Hence, that in Africa, the principle of territorial integrity had a good record. Fourth, that I was arguing for a world full of 100’s to 1000’s of Luxemborgs or Leichtensteins. Fifth, that in an integrating globalized world, the last thing we needed was to move in the opposite direction. My response is as follows: The truth is that most nations on Earth simply do not wish to break away from the states of which they are a part of. Legitimate secessionist movements are actual nations embedded with states that have a valid case for secession. I may evaluate that case in a later post. In Latin America, I can think of no legitimate secessionist movement. There are not many secessionist movements even in Africa, which you mention as the horrorshow of secessionist theory. The rebels in Darfur and South Sudan can leave Sudan for all I care. Sudan has forfeited its right to exist as a state. They can break it up into pieces for all I care. Somalia has no right to exist either. When a state is so failed that it cannot even govern its own citizens, it’s time to say goodbye. In the Arab World, we have only the Kurds and that is all. Who have a most powerful case for independence. I do not think that independence movements are trying to make monoethnic states, but even if they were, it would be more logical than multicultural states, which do not seem to work very well in praxis. Your logic, in opposing all secessionist movements, leads to endless bloody wars for the bullshit cause of “territorial integrity of states”. Tell me, why did Georgia, instantly birthed as a state in 1991, suddenly have any territorial integrity at all? Let us note that this territorial integrity became immediately sacrosanct the very hour that Georgia became a new state! Brand new states with no history behind them at least have to ask their citizens if they want to be part of this baby state. Those who wish to leave are certainly entitled to do so. The world is not going to break up into hundreds or thousands of Luxembourgs because tiny states are not viable in the modern era either economically or militarily. There are advantages to being part of a large state in terms of both economics and military. Even a world of small states could function well. Europe has an increasingly integrated military and economy in the OECD and NATO despite being made up of numerous mostly not very large states. Self-determination and regional integration are not contradictions.

No One Is In Charge

Repost from the old site. I don’t like to discuss religion here since so many of my readers seem to be atheists or agnostics, and I don’t want to antagonize the highly militant atheist faction on the Internet. Some of my friends and relatives are religious. A couple are Muslim, a few are Jewish, and some are Christians. I myself am a Christian, but I am a funny kind of Christian. The New Testament is fine, but let us limit it to only those words that the Jewish rabbi Jesus himself said. In that way, I can be a “Jesusist”, in the manner of the early Jewish Christian sects such as the Essenes. We may pick and choose from the words of the apostles, who after all, were just fallible men. So some of the things they said are correct and others may not be. We can toss the Old Testament, although it reportedly did contain a number of revelations that came true with Jesus’ coming. For the rest of the OT, let us call it myth or history. We can also posit a Replacement Theology, whereby the Jews and the Old Testament were replaced with the coming of Jesus and the NT. Jesus came and said that we were no longer required to live by the Law. The new Law, and the new Israel, was the Church. The Jews were no longer the Chosen People – that baton passed to the Christians. Sure, the Jews hate Replacement Theology and call it anti-Semitic, but too many Jews have a tendency to hallucinate anti-Semitism where it does not exist. For those who doubt the Resurrection, one can always just be a Christian by “following Jesus and his example”. There are many ways to be a Christian, and many Christians, especially Catholic males in Europe and Latin America, are rather lax in what they really believe deep down inside. What’s wrong with following the Christian doctrine of “walking in Jesus’ shoes?” This is where practical Christianity collides with the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists actually believe that what you feel in your heart is most important. One’s deeds? Well, we are all sinners, you know, so men will sin and that is that. But the practical Christian believes in good works – that is, how one lives one’s life, not necessarily the depth of spiritual intensity in one’s heart, is the most important part of being a Christian. Walking in Jesus’ shoes, living life the way Jesus would have lived his…who can argue that this is such a terrible thing? Do the atheists wish to argue that this is some sort of insanity? Why? What of the Resurrection? Does it not invalidate science? Sure it does. But if one is in touch with God Himself, as Jesus may have been, perhaps that power can be used to transcend the laws of science? If anyone can transcend such things, cannot the Spirit do so? At the same time, paradoxical as it may seem, we may posit a God that isn’t doing much of anything these days, since that is clear. Was he doing anything back in Jesus’ time? Possibly we may argue that Jesus had some sort of a line in with the spiritual world. A famous Hindu yogi argues that men like Jesus, Buddha, etc, are messengers from the spiritual world who float down from the spiritual world somehow from time to time to stay here and give us lessons. That’s not completely beyond the realm of science -it’s simply unknowable one way or another. Looking around the world today, the only rational conclusion regarding God is that no one is in charge. Otherwise, we must argue senselessly that God does bad things to punish us, or to test us, or for some obscure, unfathomable reason. Either that or we must take the irreligious view that God must be a wicked practical joker, or a bad person, or perhaps he suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. This needn’t be the Deism of our founding fathers – the God who created the universe, then sat back on his haunches and hasn’t done a damn thing since. In a conversation with linguist and anthropologist Sylvia Broadbent, the author of a grammar of Central Sierra Miwok (old pic here [on right], newer pic here [blond hair, wheelchair and cane], homepage here), we discussed the spiritual beliefs of the local California Indians. Most are fundamentalist Christians of some type or another now, so they vociferously argue that they have always believed in some sort of an omnipotent God. But searching through early anthropological texts and the conversation with Broadbent revealed something different. Broadbent felt that the Indians here believed in what she called the concept of Deus Obtusa, or a Lazy God. If you think about it, the Lazy God is a form of Deism. It’s not that He hasn’t done a thing since creation, it’s that He doesn’t do much of anything now. And I think a Lazy God is perfectly in accord with a “Jesusist” or replacement theology version of Christianity, and a total belief in science, including of course evolution and modern biology. So call me a hypocrite who wants it both ways – as independent free agents, we humans may fashion our heterodox spiritual beliefs the same way we style our lives and wardrobes. There are no rules here; we may make it up as we go along.

Street Gangs of Melbourne

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly4qk0FvEC0&feature=related] Interesting that these are mostly Whites. The gang members are apparently all Lebanese Muslims. They also rape women, often European White women, similar to the behavior of the Muslims of Europe who are from Iraq, North Africa and Somalia. Curiously, there are also many Lebanese Christians in Australia, but they cause almost zero problems. Once again, it looks like the main factor driving the gang crime is the presence of Muslims in a Western society. For some reason, young Muslims in the West are often angry at infidel society and lash out by engaging in crime and forming gangs. These gangs seem somewhat lightweight compared to our Black and Hispanic gangs, possibly due to strict gun control in Australia, but nevertheless, they don’t seem like very nice people. 15 gang stabbings in a weekend, even in a big city, is quite a few. Whose bright idea was it to bring these idiots into the West?

How Popular is Hezbollah in Lebanon?

A commenter writes:

I would love to see your sources of some of these numbers you dishing out. Your “8

Yes, that figure came out during the war. 8 I believe that a large number of Lebanese have a positive opinion of Hezbollah, even those who support other parties like Amal, the SSNP, Sunnis and Christian supporters of Aoun. At a large Hezbollah rally in Lebanon recently, there were 1 million people in attendance, including many Christians and seculars. There were many pretty young women not exactly wearing Islamist attire. Hezbollah’s popularity is widespread across the board, not that those women wearing Western clothes would vote for them. Hezbollah are seen as the defenders of Lebanon, for what it’s worth. This whole “Lebanon hates Hezbollah” line is a lie perpetrated by the Phalangists. Hezbollah’s aim is not to create “The Islamic Republic of Lebanon.” This is another lie of the Phalangists. Nasrallah has been interviewed and he said that an Islamic republic with Islamic laws or some variation would only be possible if 8 I understand that women are not required to wear the hijab in South Lebanon, and I believe that alcohol is also allowed to be sold and consumed. Hezbollah are some of the most moderate Islamists around.

Alt Left: George Habash, a Revolutionary Life

Repost from the old site.

The following tribute to George Habash, leader of the Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was delivered to a meeting organized by the CPGB-ML in Central London on Saturday 10 February 2008. The Communist Party Great Britain Marxist-Leninist, basically a hardline pro-Stalin group, last time I checked. This document is interesting for various reasons.

For one, it shows that hardline Communist rhetoric in the style of the former USSR is still popular. The PFLP are lauded for being a hardline Marxist-Leninist organization. It’s hard to say whether they still are or not, as they seem to be downplaying this in recent years, and no one really knows what Communism even means anymore. It is true that there was a Communist state in South Yemen, but I am not sure if they accomplished much down there. One of the biggest heroes of the Arab Left is Gamel Nasser, leader of Egypt. One great thing that he did do was to initiate a land reform. Most Arab states probably do not have feudal or semi-feudal land relations in the countryside anymore, but Egypt did in the 1950’s. 1 The vast majority of the rural population was reduced to the status of landless laborers or sharecroppers in debt peonage on the land of the landlords. Nasser was able to break up the large estates by buying them up via the government and giving the land to the sharecroppers. It was one of the great progressive events in modern Arab history. Back in the day in Yemen, you would go into the houses of the poor in South Yemen and see Nasser’s picture on the wall – they knew he was a hero to the Arab poor, and mostly for the land reform. Unfortunately, land reform was not enough. Population was exploding and Egypt desperately needed to put more farmland into production. Hence the Aswan Dam, a necessary evil. But even this did not solve the problems, as the rural poor continued to pour into the cities to look for nonexistent work. The landowners were bought off by assuring them a place in industry, which was and is heavily corrupt and tied in with the state. But the Egyptian economy was so shaky that the rich didn’t really feel like investing in it. Socialism was and is a pretty easy sell across the Arab World, in part due to Islam. Islam is a pretty socialist religion, although fundamentalists will argue the point with you and point out that the Koran says that there are those who have more and those who have less and this is ok. Nevertheless, the Koran is hardly a raging individualist tract. Nor are the deserts of the Arab World suited for individualism. In such an environment, the every man for himself libertarian is lost and probably dead quite quickly. One must form alliances or one will be destroyed. One must work cooperatively or the elements will take your life. In a world of perennial scarcity, mass hoarding by a few means death for many more. Hence, in the past century, most independent Arab states have opted for some kind of socialism. Where the states could not do it, the religious or militant groups did. There is no hatred of welfare or government as we have it in the individualist US. Socialism is simply normal and free market libertarianism is seen as a bizarre and cruel aberration. Nevertheless, in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and probably other places, the clergy did resist land reforms on the grounds that they were un-Islamic. Iraq, newly emerging from semi-feudal relations in the 1960’s, saw the Iraqi Communist Party become one of the largest parties in the country. It was particularly popular with poor Shia who flooded in from the countryside and poured into what later became Sadr City. At that time, the Shia clergy were widely regarded as corrupt. They were tied in with large landowners, often involved in money-making scams, and were noted for enticing women into sexual relationships with them. One of the few great things that the Shah of Iran did was to institute a land reform to realign the semi-feudal relations in the Iranian countryside. It went off pretty well, but some ethnic groups opposed it and hence were persecuted. The tone of the Communist Party Great Britain Marxist-Leninist in the statement below is what might be called Stalinist or anti-revisionist. Anti-revisionists hold that the problems with Communist states came from them leaving the path of true Communism and diluting their economies with capitalist relations. I do not know how much there is to that, so I can’t comment on revisionism. But even staunch Marxist sites nowadays post long pieces stating flat out that the Soviet model failed. The North Star Compass is a pretty interesting site. It’s run by former Communists from the East Bloc and the USSR, and it is dedicated to the reestablishing of the Soviet Union as a socialist state. For these folks, Gorbachev was enemy #1. There are quite a few interesting essays there, and for those who think that Putin is a Communist, these guys really hate Putin. For those who think that Russian Communists are all racists and anti-Semites, note that the North Star Compass despises the newly emerging fascist threat in the USSR. There are many Trotskyite sites on the Net. The Trotskyites used to be totally nuts on the question of “Stalinists”. Can you believe that they supported the German attack on the USSR and opposed the Soviet army’s war in Afghanistan? Trotskyites seem to have calmed down a lot lately. Many of them are supporting the Nepalese Maoists and the Colombian FARC. They even support Cuba. Usually this is measured with a tone that these states and movements would be better off if they adopted Trotskyism. Truth is that it is possible that Trotskyism has hardly even be tried anywhere, except possibly in the USSR from 1917-1922. Trotskyites have a reputation as the ultimate splitters, and in the Philippines they have, incredibly, taken up arms alongside the feudal and fascist state against the Maoist NPA. In Defense of Marxism is a good example of a Trotskyite site. It seems that many Communists nowadays in the West are Trotskyites of some sort. No one really knows what to make of them, and many Stalinists just laugh about them and regard them as irrelevant. Western Trotskyites seem to have a lot of money for some reason, and often put up nice websites. Non-Trotskyite Communist sites often have mild critiques of Trotskyism as some sort of irrelevant hairsplitting movement. Western Trotskyites were heavily Jewish in the West until 1967 or possibly earlier. World Trotskyism opposed Israel in the Six Day War and Jewish Trotskyites consequently defected en masse. Many seem to have made their way into the neoconservative movement. There are a variety of reasons for the heavy Jewish presence in Trotskyism, and that Trotsky himself was Jewish cannot be ignored. Trots have tended to oppose both Stalinism and Maoism as horribly brutal ideologies that committed atrocious human rights violations. Trotskyism has been a serious movement only in the West and it has tended to flounder in the rest of the world. One of the Trots’ main points is that a rapid buildup of urban industry is essential for the development of a modern socialist state. Trots are almost the opposite of the Maoists and their emphasis on the peasantry. There are sites that basically uphold the former USSR and even Stalin, but they are often angry at Maoists, whom they accuse of adventurism. In India, Maoists are killing traditional Communists in the state of Bengal, a state that has been run by pro-Soviet Communists for about 30 years now. Marxism-Leninism Today is an example of a pro-USSR, pro-Cuba, anti-Maoist site. They support the CPI-M (Communist Party India-Marxist) in Bengal and are not too happy with the Indian Maoists for killing their comrades. Here is a cool site by a Georgian artist who is the grandson of Joseph Stalin, showing the Stalin family tree among other things. Stalinism.ru is a site run by Russian Stalinists, but if you can’t read Russian, it’s not for you. The National Bolshevik Party is some sort of a bizarre marriage of Stalinism and racial nationalism (I don’t want to say Nazism, but I fear that is what it is). It’s Russian too, but check out the scary party image, complete with Nordic lettering, and the background on the homepage. Lots of related links at the bottom – looks like they have chapters all over the place. Another great site, coming from a somewhat different point of view, a Maoist one, is the Single Spark. Although Maoists are often described as ultra-Stalinists, Maoists and Stalinists are not necessarily the same thing. The Maoists have always been the real bomb-throwers on the Far Left. Despite Cold War rhetoric, pro-Soviet Communists often did not take up armed struggle until all peaceful avenues for change were blocked, and the Left was up against a death squad state. Otherwise, the idea was to try to gain power through parliamentary means, despite Lenin’s denouncements of “parliamentary cretinism”. If the state was reasonably democratic and not killing the Left, the pro-Soviets often argued that “an objectively revolutionary situation did not exist”. On the other hand, Maoists tend to reject all bourgeois democracy as invalid, particularly in very backward societies with mass extreme poverty and accompanying disease, hunger and premature death. Hence, Maoists have launched insurgencies against formally democratic states as Peru, Sri Lanka, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Philippines, Nepal and India in recent years. In most of these cases, the pro-Soviet Left decided to sit out armed struggle, and the Maoists were denounced as adventurists irresponsibly taking up arms in spite of a lack of an objectively revolutionary situation. In Peru, the war launched by the Shining Path led to a state that was less and less democratic and soon became just another Death Squad State. Thus in 1984, the pro-Cuban Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) took a vote and decided that “an objectively revolutionary situation existed” and opted to take up arms. Another difference is that despite Cold War rhetoric, Maoists are often a lot more vicious than the Castroites and pro-Soviet rebels. Maoists have no qualms about killing “class enemies” – anyone prominent advocating rightwing politics or abusive landowners – whereas the Castroites often try to take the high ground in guerrilla war. Examples in Latin America are the Castroite ELN in Colombia, URNG in Guatemala, FSLN in Nicaragua, FMLN in El Salvador, the aforementioned MRTA, and the FARC in Colombia. Despite crap from anti-Communists and the US government, all these groups have tried pretty hard to abide by the rules of war. At any rate, the overwhelming majority of grotesque human rights violations in each of these conflicts were committed by the state. On the other hand, the Maoist Sendero Luminoso was a profoundly savage and cruel guerrilla group, though they almost seized power. Communism doesn’t mean that much anymore. Cuba allows religious believers to join the party, and there are millions of liberation theology Leftist Catholics in Latin America and the Philippines. The Chinese and Vietnamese Communists have introduced major elements of capitalism into their economies, while retaining a great deal of socialism at the same time. Over the course of a few years, from 2003 to 2005 and 2006, the Nepalese Maoists underwent a sea change in politics. They went from hardline Maoists railing against revisionists and opposing anything but the dictatorship of the proletariat, to an embrace of multiparty democracy and a mixed economy and measured critiques of Mao, Lenin and Stalin as outdated for the needs and realities of today. I think this is fantastic. I care nothing about dogma. I just want results, and I don’t really care how you get there – capitalism, socialism, communism or whatever. If Marxism is indeed an ever-evolving science (which, if it is a science, it must be) then there must be no treating its elementary texts as some sort of religious books. The works of Marx, Lenin, Mao and others must be regarded as the works of men, not Gods, positing theories. These theories must be tested in praxis to see how well they test out, as in any empirical investigation. The theories of these mortals will either test out or they will not, and if not, we need to adjust them accordingly. We know what our goals are; all that is at stake is how to get there. Let us listen to top leader Prachanda and other Nepalese Maoist leaders, from the Single Spark site:

Since MLM is a progressive science, the people’s war calls for ideology and leadership that is capable to complete a new People’s War in the 21st century. Our Party’s CC Extended Meeting last September held that the ideologies of Lenin and Mao have become old and inadequate to lead the present international revolution. The political and organizational report passed by the meeting says, ‘The proletariat revolutionaries of the 21st century need to pay their serious attention towards that fact that in today’s ground reality, Lenin and Mao’s analysis of imperialism and various notions relation to proletariat strategies based on it have lagged behind.’ As Marxism was born in an age of competitive capitalism, the strategies and working policy formulated during the times of Marx had become old when they arrived at Lenin’s times of imperialism and proletariat revolution. Similarly, the ideologies developed by Lenin and Mao at the initial phase of international imperialism and proletariat revolution have become inadequate and lagged behind at the present imperialistic phase. Therefore, ‘the main issue is to develop MLM in the 21st century and to determine a new proletariat strategy.1 The second [wrong trend] …is not to concentrate on how revolutionary struggle can be developed in one’s country by developing correct strategy and tactics, but to talk more of world revolution, enjoy classical debate, eulogize strategy and tactic of the past successful revolutions, teach other fraternal parties as if they know everything about the concrete situation in that country and stick to what Lenin and Mao had said before. This trend represents dogmatism.2 What we think is that situation has undergone a considerable change, so the communist revolutionaries must not stick to what Lenin had said about insurrection and what Mao had said on Protracted People’s War.3 Q. You have envisioned a people’s republic, no? Prachanda: Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic cannot fulfill the needs of today’s world. It cannot address today’s political awareness appropriately. Mao said cooperative party theory; we called it competitive party theory. We have said let’s move ahead from the conventional People’s Republic and develop it as per the specialties of the 21st century. Q. You do not follow the old concept of communism? Prachanda: Definitely not. What happened without competition? In the USSR, Stalin gave no place to competition and went ahead in a monolithic way. What was the result?4 Does Communism make sense today? P: It’s a big question, starting with Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong, who wanted to apply the Marxist teachings in semi colonial countries. Now, we still need Marxism, but in accordance to the needs of the 21st century. We have to apply Marxist science in a very new context, understanding social, economic and also technological changes, without dogmatism and without sectarianism. We are trying to develop a completely new concept, different from what happened in the past century. When we are in the government, our experiment will surprise everybody. This will happen only if foreign investors trust a communist government… P: Yes, I know. We cannot ignore the whole process of liberalization in the world. So, we will apply mixed economics to this country. Right now, we are not saying that we plan a total socialist economy, though we will not blindly follow western liberalism. We have some national priorities and we will welcome foreign investors, using capital from abroad for the well being of Nepal.5 Though Mao made some bold experiments to revive and develop socialist democracy, his efforts did not result in any qualitative advance. Why did socialist democracy ultimately fail? Why did it have to bear the stigma of ‘totalitarianism’ from its adversaries? If the revolutionary communists of the 21st century have ‘to win the battle for democracy’, as Marx and Engels had declared in the famous Communist Manifesto, we must dare to question the past practice in socialist democracy and take some bold initiatives.6. All selections from this document7.

CPGB-ML Tribute to Habash

In his 1944 speech, “Serve the People”, Comrade Mao Zedong said these famous words:

All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said: ‘Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.’ To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.

Today, the heroic Palestinian people are continuing to resist, whether in the breaking of the barrier with Egypt to alleviate the genocidal siege of Gaza, or in the martyrdom operation at Dimona, the nuclear site where imperialism and its stooges do not demand inspections, to express a sense of grief at the loss of Al-Hakim, Dr George Habash, one of the greatest leaders of the Palestinian people, and, more importantly, to celebrate his glorious life and give real political vitality and clarity to the essential work of building solidarity with the Palestinian people in the British working class and in the anti-war and other progressive movements.

Nice memorial poster of PFLP leader George Habash. In all of the obits in the US news, few detailed the reason for the radicalization of Habash. At university in Lebanon, he was apolitical and preferred to play guitar. He raced home during the “Israeli War of Independence” to his home in Lydda. Jewish militias attacked the town and forced 9 Most were Palestinian Christians. His sister died of typhoid fever during the siege of the town and Habash buried her in the backyard. He blamed the Jews for blocking access to the hospital that could have saved her. There were some notorious massacres of Palestinians during the attack on Lydda, including the execution of many young men in a mosque. The Jews forced Habash and others to line up and leave their homes and all of their possessions. One man asked if he could return to get the keys to his house and for making this request, he was shot dead in front of Habash’s eyes. From that point on, the apolitical future doctor was transformed into a revolutionary.

Comrade George Habash, who has passed away at the age of 82, gave more than six decades of his life to the revolution. He was born into a prosperous Greek Orthodox family in the Palestinian city of Lydda. At that time, the Palestinian people were under the rule of the British colonial mandate, which was systematically preparing the way for the creation of a Zionist settler colonial state, which, in the words of Sir Roland Storrs, the first British governor of Jerusalem in the 1920s, would form “for England a ‘little loyal Jewish Ulster’ in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism”. In the summer of 1948, whilst studying medicine in Beirut, George went back home to help organise resistance to the Zionist catastrophe that was sweeping over the Palestinian people, driving them from their ancestral homes and lands into exile and dispossession. At this time, he and his whole family, along with 95 percent of the inhabitants of his native city, were forced out at gunpoint by the Zionist terrorists and ethnic cleansers commanded by Yitzhak Rabin. Years later, Habash was to observe:

It is a sight I shall never forget. Thousands of human beings expelled from their homes, running, crying, shouting in terror. After seeing such a thing, you cannot but become a revolutionary.

During al-Nakba, the catastrophe, more than 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and lands, made stateless and refugees. Graduating as the first in his class, Dr Habash eschewed the chance to pursue a lucrative career, opting instead to open a people’s clinic offering free treatment and a school for refugees in the Jordanian capital, Amman. Around this same time, he and his comrades founded the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), the first pan-Arab movement to take up armed struggle against colonialism and to win back the lost lands. The significance of the ANM should not be underestimated. Not only was it to be the root of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); from its ranks also came revolutionary forces in many parts of the Arab homeland, including the National Liberation Front in Aden and South Yemen, which not only defeated British imperialism in a revolutionary armed struggle to win national liberation, but, later as the Yemen Socialist Party, leading the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, stood in the vanguard of to date the only real attempt to build an Arab socialist state on the basis of the scientific principles of Marxism-Leninism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the 1960s, Comrade Habash, like many other anti-imperialist fighters then, before and since, came to accept that the liberation struggle of the oppressed people, if it was to be crowned with success and carried through to the end, needed to be based on Marxism-Leninism. Lamis Andoni, an analyst for al-Jazeera, who knew Comrade Habash well, expressed matters this way in his tribute to his friend:

He belonged to a generation influenced by Franz Fanon, Mao Zedong, General Vo Nguyen Giap and later by Che Guevara. In their views, colonialism epitomised systematic, institutional violence and subjugation of people under its control … In the early 1960s, George Habash, already a paediatrician in Amman known for treating the poor for free, endorsed Marxism as he grew convinced that the national struggle should not be separate from the struggle for social justice.

After the founding of the PFLP in December 1967, following the Arabs’ bitter defeat in the June 1967 war, Habash declared that the struggle was “not merely to free Palestine from the Zionists but also to free the Arab world from remnants” of Western colonial rule. All Arab revolutionaries, he said, “must be Marxist, because Marxism is the expression of the aspirations of the working class”. In a 1969 interview, he declared:

By 1967, we had understood the undeniable truth, that to liberate Palestine we have to follow the Chinese and Vietnamese examples.

Indeed, Comrade Habash paid close attention not only to the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions, but to the experience of all the socialist countries and the revolutionary movement in all parts of the world. Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea were also two countries close to his heart and with which he and the PFLP forged tight bonds of active solidarity. In the memorial hall for Comrade Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, the Korean comrades proudly display the several awards and medals presented to their great leader by the PFLP over the years. Under Habash’s leadership, the PFLP forged close and active ties of combat solidarity with national liberation movements in all parts of the world – the ANC in South Africa, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the Irish Republican Movement, to name but a few, embracing training, material assistance, joint operations and moral encouragement. In the September 1970 hijackings that gave the PFLP worldwide fame, Leila Khaled was joined by Patrick Arguello Ryan, a militant of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and the only martyr of those operations. In 1983, after the Nicaraguan revolution, the Sandinistas commemorated Arguello by renaming the Geothermal Plant at Momotombo in his honour. A poster still available on the PFLP website describes Arguello as the “symbol of common Nicaraguan/Palestinian struggle”. Comrade Habash sought to translate into reality, and himself embodied, these inspiring words of Che Guevara, which go to the very essence of proletarian internationalism:

Let the flag under which we fight be the sacred cause of the liberation of humanity so that to die under the colours of Vietnam, Venezuela, Guatemala, Bolivia, Brazil will be equally glorious and desirable for a Latin American, an Asian, an African and even a European.

Comrades, The Palestinian revolution is a complex and difficult one, throwing up many challenges and inevitably differences of view. Equally inevitably, Comrade Habash often found himself embroiled in internal controversy, particularly in terms of the sometimes painful compromises, concessions and retreats that have been forced on the Palestinian people at various times. But what shines out is the fact that he never lost sight of the importance of unity in the national liberation movement. In their own tribute to their leader, the PFLP put matters this way:

In 1987, with the outbreak of the great Intifada, Dr. Habash called for upholding Palestinian national unity, and convening the Palestinian National Congress in Algeria in 1988. Comrade Al-Hakim always understood national unity as a necessary condition for the continuation of the struggle and the national liberation movement, whether in Beirut during internal fighting among Palestinians and after as well, recognising that the internal contradictions among Palestinians could not be solved through military mechanisms, but rather through the democratic processes of the liberation movement.

Lamis Andoni, to whom we have already referred, wrote:

‘His message to the Palestinians was to restore our unity,’ Issam Al Taher, a senior aide, who saw him a day before his death said.‘Unity, unity, unity — that was his only message,’ said Al Taher.

Andoni notes of the relationship between George Habash and Yasser Arafat:

The two men never severed ties and continued a complex relationship of camaraderie and rivalry until the end.

Andoni continued:

Tall and handsome, Habash exuded a certain charisma that disarmed his distracters who admired his persistence but criticised what they saw as rigidity. A stroke that partially paralysed half of his body changed his appearance later but did not affect his ardour for the cause.It was that Habash that I saw and met for the first time in Tunis in 1983. The PLO was expelled from Beirut too and most its leaders moved to this northern Mediterranean capital of Tunisia. Habash moved to Damascus, Syria instead. On that day the PLO was holding a meeting. Most of the leaders had arrived and then there was a stir and silence. Habash entered slowly on crutches, hampered and subdued by his physical disability. The hall, filled with hardened fighters, stood on their feet while Arafat hugged Habash and escorted him to his seat.

Of the final period of Habash’s life, Andoni notes:

He would get so distressed during conversations discussing the events in Palestine and most recently in Iraq, that his wife, and closest friend Hilda, would interfere to stop it.When Israel besieged Arafat in 2002 in his compound in Ramallah, Habash stood by his rival. When Arafat died, amid Palestinian suspicion that Israel may have been involved, Habash deeply mourned him. The few times I was able to see him over the last three years, he never stopped monitoring and learning every detail about Palestinian life. His physical ailment deepened the sense of soulful pain he internalised. Those who were with him during his last days recall how disturbed he was by the rift between Fatah and Hamas. He opposed the strategy of Mahmoud Abbas, the current Palestinian president, of accommodating US and Israeli demands but did not endorse Hamas’ military take over of Gaza. His main concern was the damage brought upon the Palestinians by the most serious internal rift in their history.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the mourning for Comrade Habash has transcended the differences in the Palestinian ranks. President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of national mourning, noting that Habash had dedicated his life to struggling for his people. Hamas leader Ismail Haneya said, “Dr. George Habash spent all his life struggling for the cause of the Palestinian people.” Islamic Jihad described him as a “real leader” and other Palestinian organisations paying their tributes included the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestine Popular Struggle Front, who said that his path was and is one of liberation for the Palestinian and Arab people. In its December 1967 Founding Statement, the PFLP declared:

The masses are the authority, the guide, and the resistance leadership from which victory will be achieved in the end. It is necessary to recruit the popular masses and mobilise them as active participants and leaders … The only language that the enemy understands is the language of revolutionary violence … The slogan of our masses must be resistance until victory, rooted in the heart with our feet planted on the ground in deep commitment to our land. Today, the Popular Front is hailing our masses with this call. This is the appeal. We must repeat it every day, through every breakthrough bullet and the fall of each martyr, that the land of Palestine today belongs to all the masses. Every area of our land belongs to our masses who have defended it against the presence of the usurper, every piece of land, every rock and stone, our masses will not abandon one inch of them because they belong to the legions of the poor and hungry and displaced persons … The struggle of the Palestinian people is linked with the struggle of the forces of revolution and progress in the world, the format of the coalition that we face requires a corresponding … coalition including all the forces of anti-imperialism in every part of the world.

Much more can be said on the life, work and legacy of Comrade Habash, but in summary these are some of the things he advocated and taught: • That the fundamental way to liberation lies through armed struggle and people’s war based on the masses. • That for the struggle to be successful and carried through to the end it needs to be based on Marxism-Leninism, the scientific world outlook of the working class. • That the oppressed peoples must uphold proletarian internationalism in their struggle for liberation, based on militant unity within and between the three major currents of the world revolutionary process, the socialist countries, the national liberation movements, and the working-class movement in the imperialist heartlands. • That the liberation of the nation necessitated the principled and democratic unity of all the forces of the nation, even though major differences will also exist and must be struggled over. Clearly, all these are not just lessons for the Palestinian people alone. In June 2000, age and ill health led Comrade Habash to step back from the day-to-day leadership of the PFLP. Giving an inspiring speech on that occasion, in many respects he wrote his own epitaph. He told his comrades:

What I have lived through over the course of these militant decades, and the rich experience I have acquired, is not a matter to be taken for granted. It is your right, and the right of coming generations to review the content and lessons of this experience with all of its many successes and failures.

As befits a man who gave all of his own life and strength to the revolution, Comrade Habash said of the martyrs, the prisoners and his comrades, and it is with Comrade Habash’s own words, from his farewell address, Palestine Between Dreams and Reality, that we conclude this tribute:

I remember each of the martyrs, one by one, and without exception – those martyrs to whom we are indebted, for whom we must continue the struggle, holding fast to the dream and holding fast to hope, and protecting the rights of the people for whom they shed their blood. Their children and their families have a right to be honoured and cared for. This is the least we can do for those blazing stars in the skies of our homeland.I also remember now the heroic prisoners in the jails of the occupation and the prisons of the Palestinian Authority – those militants who remind us morning and night of our patriotic duty by the fact that they are still there behind bars and by the fact that the occupation still squats on our chests. Each prisoner deserves the noblest signs of respect … Now permit me to express my gratitude to all the comrades who have worked with me and helped me, whether in the Arab Nationalist Movement or in the Popular Front. They stood beside me during the hardest conditions and the darkest of times, and they were a great help and support for me. Without them I would not have been able to carry out my responsibilities. They have been true comrades, in all that the word implies. Those comrades helped to create a congenial atmosphere, an environment of political, theoretical, and intellectual interaction that enabled me to do all that was required. Those comrades have a big place in my heart and mind. I offer all my thanks and appreciation to each one of them by name. In addition, to the comrades who vigilantly guarded me, looking out for my safety, all these long years, I offer my gratitude … As a last word, I feel it necessary to say that I know well that the goals for which I worked and struggled have not yet been attained. And I cannot say how or when they will be attained. But on the other hand, I know in light of my study of the march of history in general, and of Arab and Palestinian history in particular, that they will be attained. In spite of this bitter truth, I leave my task as General Secretary of the Front with a contented mind and conscience. My conscience is content because I did my duty and worked with the greatest possible effort and with complete and deep sincerity. My mind is content because throughout my working years, I continually based myself on the practice of self-criticism. It is important to say also that I will pay close attention to all your observations and assessments of the course taken by the Popular Front while I was its General Secretary. I must emphasise that with the same close attention, if not with greater attention, I will follow and take to heart the observations and assessments of the Palestinian and Arab people on this course and my role in it. My aim in this closing speech has been to say to you – and not only to you, but to all the detainees, or those who experienced detention, to the families of the martyrs, to the children of the martyrs, to those who were wounded, to all who sacrificed and gave for the cause – that your sacrifice has not been in vain. The just goals and legitimate rights which they have struggled and given their lives for will be attained, sooner or later. I say again that I don’t know when, but they will be attained. And my aim, again and again, is to emphasise the need for you to persist in the struggle to serve our people, for the good of all Palestinians and Arabs – the good that lies in a just and legitimate cause, as it does in the realisation of the good for all those who are oppressed and wronged. You must always be of calm mind, and of contented conscience, with a strong resolve and a steel will, for you have been and still are in the camp of justice and progress, the camp whose just goals will be attained and which will inevitably attain its legitimate rights. For these are the lessons of history and reality, and no right is lost as long as there is someone fighting for it.

Notes

1. Ashok. (May 2006). Our Experiences of Ten Tumultuous Years of People’s War, The Worker#10, pp. 68-73. On Lenin and Mao, p. 71. 2. Basanta. (May 2006). International Dimension of Prachanda Path. The Worker #10, pp. 82-90. 3. Ibid. On Models: Page 87. 4. Kishor Nepal. (June 2006). Prachanda Interview. Maoist Revolution Digest. 5. Alessandro Gilioli. (Early November 2006). Prachanda: Our Revolution Won . L’espresso, Italy. Excerpts. 6. Prachanda. (November 18, 2006). Democracy: The Forbidden Fruit or Nectar for Progress? Speech at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi. 7. MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S. (Dec. 21, 2006). Assessing Recent Developments in Nepal: A Bibliography on the State, a Peaceful Transition to Socialism, Democracy and Dictatorship, Negotiations and Their Relevance to the International Communist Movement in the 21st Century.

Why Can't Folks From the Caucaus Migrate to Moscow

Or anywhere else in Russia for that matter? That’s what I want to know. John UK supports the Russian Nationalist Nazis for some unfathomable reason. John UK said many a crazy thing in this comment, but it’s standard Russian nationalist Nazi nonsense:

Wade: Russians have no right to attack Tatars, Buryats, Chechens, etcJohn UK: Funny I thought Moscow and St Petersburg were Russian lands. Russians don’t have a problem with Tatars only with Central Asian and North Caucasus Muslims who come to Russian regions for work because they have fucked up there own regions are hyper aggressive, extremely violent and openly hostile to ethnic Russians. Chechens are occupying Russian land that was never an independent country and repeatedly fought on behalf of foreign powers who have expanded there territory the North of Chechnya resulting in ethnic cleansing historically and traditionally Terek Cossack territory.

Saying that Moscow and St Petersburg are Russian lands is like saying that New York City and Chicago are White lands, and no non-Whites can move there. It’s nuts. This is like people in New York claiming they own the place and no one from California can move there. Anyone can move anywhere they want to in the US. Anyone can move anywhere they want to in Russia. It’s all the same. The Russia for Russians Movement is somewhat insane. I am trying to think of a good analogy, but it would be something like America For Whites Movement. Of course Chechens are not occupying Russian lands. Chechens were there first. It’s like saying that Comanches and Cherokees are occupying American lands. Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? It matters not if Caucasians are committing crimes. Suppose Californians committed tons of crime. They moved to other states and still committed lots of crime there. Other states would not be able to stop Californians from moving to South Carolina, Oregon or New York for that reason. Californians can move anywhere they want in the US, Chechens, etc. can move anywhere they want in the US.

Islamist Bombers Attack Sweden

1 dead, 2 wounded in blasts attacking Christmas shoppers in Stockholm. The dead man was apparently a bomber on foot. He was carrying a bag of pipe bombs and they seem to have exploded, either accidentally or on purpose is not known. The press was calling it a suicide bombing, but police are not sure. Video of the blast here. A while earlier, a car bomb had gone off in a shopping center. There was no one in the car. Before the blasts, the Swedish press had received threats from Islamists threatening attacks against Sweden for their presence in Afghanistan and the recent cartoons of Mohammad by a Swedish cartoonist. The 2 wounded people suffered minor injuries. The blasts seem to have been carried out by an Al Qaeda type group, because AQ groups are the ones who threaten to bomb Europe over Mohammad cartoons and troops in Afghanistan.

Why A "European Islam" Is Not Possible

From French commenter W. I edited it a bit for style, as English is his second language:

You said that “there is a fundamental incompatibility between liberal democracy and sharia-obedient Islam”. Of course I agree with your statement. But I don’t think a non-Sharia obedient Islam exists. In my opinion, we Westerners have a biased view of Islam. When we think about religion, we think about Christianity. And we misunderstand Sharia. We often see it as some kind of civil code, an innovation added to a pure Islam. But Sharia is not an innovation. Sharia is part and parcel of Islam, because Islam is a law and Sharia its expression. And in this law, there is no separation between what is private and what is public, between what is spiritual and what is political. So even if many Muslims try to create differences between the spiritual and the political, I don’t think Islam itself can do the same one day. If I’m not mistaken, this is what Wafah Sultan and Ayaan Irsi Ali say, and this is not far from what Geert Wilders says. I can’t imagine how Muslims can deal with this contradiction. So I don’t think we will have an European Islam, because an Islam compatible with Western values will be a heresy according to Islam’s own rules, and Islam doesn’t tolerate rules other than its own. So even though it can sound like a trite “clash of civilizations theory”, nevertheless, I think that’s the way it always has to be and it can’t be any other way.

He’s right, no? Feel free to weigh in.

Dutch Nationalist Right Calls on Israel To Annex the West Bank

This is the nationalist Right, including the White nationalist Right’s hero, Geert Wilders. Yeah, he’s socking it to those scummy Muslims and those dirty immigrants, who, it turns out, are all Muslims too. This is what you get, idiots. When you vote for Islamophobes, you get the worst Zionists of all. I’ve been through all of the anti-Islam sites out there, including all of the blogs. It is axiomatic that if one if an Islamophobic nut, one is also a fanatical Zionist. One goes with the other. Wilders is calling for Israel to annex the West Bank, ramp up settlement building as much as possible, and apparently to send the Palestinians to Jordan (“Jordan is the Palestinian homeland.”) This is even more radical than Avigdor Lieberman. Like I said, this is par for the course with Muslim-haters. If you’re a Muslim hater, you heart Israel. Why? Because the most fanatical Muslim haters of all are in Israel. Because Muslims hate Israel, and therefore, Israel must be good. Because Israel is part of the Judeo-Christian West under assault by Islam. On the other hand, most anti-Semites love Muslims. This makes no sense to me. I’ve been around enough Muslims to figure out that they are not the greatest thing since sliced bread. Actually, they are much worse than that. Confined to their sandboxes, they do a minimum of harm, but we let that cat out of the bag long ago. If you hate Israel, you love Islam. If you hate Jews, you love Muslims. Why? Once again, the biggest and nastiest anti-Semites out there these days are Muslims. They’re the coolest and baddest Jew-haters of all! Yeah! If you hate Israel, well, Islam does too. Of course there’s a sensible line that almost no one takes. It could look something like this: Jews suck. Muslims suck. They both suck. Israel sucks. The Arab World sucks. They both suck. A better line is proposed by the Left in the region, especially the Left in Iran and Afghanistan. The Left in that part of the world is not wild about Islam, after all, Muslims pretty much exterminated the Left in that part of the world, and Islam is behind almost everything reactionary in Central Asia, in particular women’s rights. This is where RAWA, the famous Afghan women’s movement, is coming from. They grew out of the Afghan Maoist Left. The Left in that region also hates Israel of course, in line with the general Left line on Zionism.

Cool Page On Social Democracy

Repost from the old site. This is a really cool page on the Social Democratic Party of America. There are several social democratic parties in the US, and no, rightwing fuckwads, they are not much like the Democratic Party at all. A lot of them don’t even like the Democratic Party. Social democracy means a lot of things all over the world. There is a Socialist International of socialist parties all over the world, and I support that organization. Even a lot of Communists don’t necessarily hate it. A lot of us on the Left support all sorts of socialist models, from Communism to social democracy even all the way to the US Democratic Party. Your average US rightwing shithead can’t seem to figure that out, but then, they subscribe to a philosophy that is narrow-minded and stupid in both intent and praxis. Truth is, as you can see by this page, there is not a lot of love lost between at least this social democratic party and Communists. To say that they are one and the same just shows that you are a stupid rightwing asshole. No serious political scientist would make such a statement. I don’t necessarily agree with this party in their critique of Cuba, Belarus and other countries ruled by Communist-type regimes, but hey, it’s a big tent here on the Left. There are all sorts of social democratic parties all over the world. As you can see, they are major parties in Slovenia, Japan, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Romania, Ukraine, Iceland, Austria, Serbia, Poland , Paraguay, Portugal, Finland, Cameroon, Guatemala, Tajikistan, Macedonia, France, Italy, Sweden, Belarus, Denmark and all sorts of other places. I have varying opinions on how well they are doing; I think that the ones in Europe have done a pretty good job. But I have a pretty low opinion of Lula’s PT in Brazil, Bachelet’s Socialist Party in Chile, the UK Labor Party (An imperialist socialist party?), and I doubt if this new Guatemalan party is going to get much done. The Peruvian social democrats have a particularly horrible record. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua will not be able to get much done either. Cristina Merkel is having a hard time getting a lot of her agenda through in Argentina. Social democracy seems to work best in highly developed and wealthy countries, as you can see above. In the poor Third World, they haven’t been able to do much to change the reactionary and backwards nature of society, nor to alleviate poverty, nor to do much of anything. I think in a lot of cases there may be a necessity for revolutionary change, either via the way of the gun, or possibly peacefully in a more civilized society via the Hugo Chavez model. In Europe, the ruling classes and the Right were completely destroyed in World War 2, which left millions of rightists and fascists dead and left the whole rightwing movement scattered and discredited. Hence social democracy was able to make a lot of headway with a defeated and more or less rendered-civilized and neutered Right. Further, society itself changed in that even the wealthy, the upper middle classes, the middle classes, and corporate executives began to support social democracy. In part this social pact was due to massive pressure from the Left which caused the European Right and business classes to sue for peace via a Social Compact. Also, society itself changed and social democracy became the dominant model for all classes. Something similar occurred in Japan. The Right was destroyed by the war, and those that were not dead were discredited and humiliated. In Eastern Europe, decades of Communism may have left a distaste for Communism but not for social democracy. Once again, most of the rightists were simply slaughtered, the rest were in jail or discredited, and society itself was well-molded along socialist lines for decades. In Latin America, faced with a much more backwards, venal, dishonest, amoral, criminal, corrupt, and murderous upper class and upper middle class intent on staying in power at all costs, social democracy has had a really hard time getting much done. It’s fascinating that the US has allowed social democracy to flower in Europe, but has smashed every glimmer of it in Latin America as “Communism” or “dictatorship”. Socialist parties in India (the Congress Party) have failed for similar reasons as the ones in Latin America. Social democracy in Sri Lanka has a good record. In most of the Arab World, there is a more or less socialist model in place, no matter what the governments call themselves. Radical free market capitalism is contrary to Arab society and to Islam itself, hence it is not likely to succeed in any Arab or Islamic society. Cambodia is run by a socialist party. So is Burma, but most socialists want nothing to do with them. Contrary to rightwing bullshit, socialism in the form of social democracy has not failed at all. It is not a failed or discredited model or any of that. Social democratic parties have sadly had a really hard time getting off the ground in the United States. For the most part, this is because America is extremely rightwing for a developed country. It is no exaggeration to say that the US is the most reactionary developed country on Earth, in both its leadership and in its citizens. This is 10 There’s been a decades-long propaganda war against socialism in which the word “socialism” was deviously married to word “Communism”. Americans being a bunch of morons, and basically very rightwing in their natures, swallowed the whole thing. But in the mid-1970’s, things were different. We had had over a decade of fairly progressive politics, even under Republicans, and leaders of major US corporations got together, agitated and worried. They said that if something is not done now, we are going to have a European-style social democracy in the US. This began a years-long project to set up and fund a series rightwing foundations and think tanks in the US. They are still going strong, and have tremendous influence on US politics due to their ability to churn out papers, speakers and conferences on issues almost immediately. They have deep ties to the reactionary corporate media and quickly popped onto TV and the front page and kept there as long as the Right wants or needs any issue to be spotlighted. It is true that there is a tradition of radical individualism in the US, but that’s only among White people. This may have been slightly reasonable at some point if you were Davey Crockett building a cabin in the woods, but those days are long gone. One great thing about the loss of a White majority in the US (which will be both good and bad) is that US non-Whites, in particular Hispanics and Blacks, are much more sympathetic to at least Democratic Party politics and possibly social democracy. On the other hand, reactionary politics have such a deep hold on this country that even some younger Blacks and Hispanics, once they start making some money, adopt some form of reactionary politics, typically nowadays along the lines of the faddish but ultra-rightwing libertarianism. This is discouraging, and shows that a non-Whites in the US are not necessarily a progressive bloc. Another thing to note is that despite the hostile rhetoric some US social democratic parties take towards the Democratic Party, we already have a lot of social democracy here in the US, brought to us actually by both political parties. The Right, meaning White America, has been savagely slashing away at this social democracy for decades now, but even so, it’s a Hell of a lot better record than the social democratic parties in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Jamaica and Brazil, which in my opinion have failed to varying degrees. If Americans were anything like Europeans, social democracy ought to be an easy play here in the US. But for one thing, White Americans’ opposition to high taxation is going to make this a difficult project. White Americans’ opposition to socialism and social democracy is rooted in a lot of things, but one of the main things is race. It’s all about taking the hard-earned tax dollars of White Americans and giving them to worthless gangbanging, welfare-addicted, drug-abusing Hispanics and Black criminals, scumbags and lowlifes. Truth is that this simple-minded mindset has devastated a lot of hardworking working-class lower to mid-income Whites, but White America just can’t see that. White Americans don’t have much in the way of racial solidarity. If there is anything, there is solidarity based on class and that’s it. Whites in the suburbs think that low-income and working class Whites, whom they refer to as White trash, can fuck off. While White American politics are indeed often rooted in race, they are also rooted in class too, and the two can be contradictory. Life is complicated.

Socialism Wastes Money, Capitalism Wastes Humans

Repost from the old site. There has been a lot of talk, even by socialists, of the profound “wastefulness” inherent in various Communist economic systems. As I’m not an economist, I don’t really understand what they are talking about. However, I can give you a few ideas. In recent years, Cuba has revolutionized organic agriculture to where they probably have one of the most highly developed organic ag systems on Earth. For starters, Cuba has more agronomists per capita than anywhere else on Earth. During the Special Period, they were put to work devising organic solutions to problems that were previously solved by industrialized agriculture. Right now, in the intensive organic farming collectives all over Havana, crop yield has reached some of the highest levels on Earth per unit of land. And that’s with a 10 However, interviews with collective farmers reveal that the system could not be replicated on a capitalist model. It is “wasteful”, that is, it has to either spend too much money to get that yield, or it pays too many farmers as workers to get the yield. It’s pretty much the same argument. A similar complaint has been leveled at Cuban enterprises. In some office jobs, it seems as if there are four or five workers for every real job. They rest are screwing off or shuffling papers or engaging in make-work. I suppose all of these examples are of “waste”, right? Waste of money! Well, Cuba is a poor country dedicated to 10 In most of the Third World, college grads just don’t have any jobs. The state has no jobs for them and the private sector doesn’t either. So there are vastly more applicants than positions. A lot of these places have much more wealth than Cuba. Cuba’s not going to go that route. It has enough money to hire workers even for jobs that barely even exist, and it wants everyone to have a job, figuring that’s better than sitting on your ass. 3rd World capitalism creates armies of over-educated young unemployed men with no income to start a family. In the Muslim World, lots of them are going in for radical Islam and blowing themselves up. I suppose that Cuba has a similar problem, but they just dealt with it by creating make-work jobs and at least giving folks an income and something to do with their time. There’s waste of humans in one case (3rd World capitalism) by lack of jobs for them, and waste of money in the other case (Cuba) for creating make-work jobs. I would point out that the Cuban organic collectives are run by the workers themselves. They hire other workers to join on. If you don’t pull your weight and slack off, you’re fired. They have to sell some of their produce to the state, but there’s plenty left over for farmers’ markets. There are many people clamoring to get into these collectives, as it’s seen as a good job with a good income. As a collective economic form, it’s also non-capitalist. Right now, only Here in the US, a lot of very smart people are just completely wasted by capitalism. I’m not talking about myself here, because I’m not healthy enough to work in a regular job, so I just live off a meager trust fund. But I know two people with IQ’s over 140 who are not doing much productive. One works at low-level jobs and the other is on disability, but could work if they wanted to. What puzzles me is why this wonderful market is not beating their doors down trying to hire our most valuable citizens (cognitive elite)? If the stupid market can’t utilize their brains in any way, why doesn’t the state? The very same thing happens in 3rd World capitalism. Very bright people, with degrees and advanced degrees, have nothing to do. If aliens landed on the Earth and saw a bunch of the smartest people around being wasted by society, wouldn’t they say that was insane? The capitalists would explain to the aliens that these folks are useless for making money, so they are a waste of air, and that capitalists don’t give a damn about talent or brains or anything. I guess that’s what it boils down to? Capitalism is good for creating wealth, that’s it. Hell, even Marx said that. Read The Communist Manifesto. He praises this greatest wealth-creating engine to the skies. What else is capitalism good for? Nothing. It ain’t good for fuck-all else. I assure you that Cuba would find something to do with everyone in the land who had a 140-150 IQ. I guess the market feels it can’t use the smartest people in society to help it make cash , so it has no use for them. Capitalism and the market is just a fucking money-generating machine. It’s in business to make money, nothing else. That’s what all this crap the market-fetishists go on about in terms of “generating wealth” is all about. Making money. “Generating wealth” means making money. Big deal. Since when is that a value worth anything of importance? I hate capitalism and the damned market. Looking at the failure of socialist models (For example, when Albanian leader Hoxha died in 1985, there were shortages of even the most basic foodstuffs.) I’m willing to acknowledge that it may be necessary, but it sure sucks. Have you ever noticed the contempt that capitalists have for professors in universities, our finest minds at work in various sciences and fields, advancing the knowledge of our species? They sneer and call them eggheads and talk about how their tax dollars are wasted on these guys. They brag about how they never went to college. There’s no money in a lot of these fields of study at the university (probably, or at least at the moment, or from what we can tell), so capitalists figure it’s all a total waste. If there’s no money in it, it’s worthless. That’s your glorious market. Fuck the market.

Reactionary Nut Republican On Various Non-Existent Threats

From In Mala Fide, where many a flipped out reactionary hangs out, a super-rightist named Whiskey holds forth:

You’re completely off base on this. The objections to the START treaty is that it hamstrings the US, particularly with weapons modernization (so they actually work) and forbids a ABM shield. Which is needed. Obama’s objective is to punish White America for having and using Nukes by eliminating them first. As he’s pushed for repeatedly in speeches and actions. No one trusts him because he’s against the US having nukes or a military in the first place. Nor are you correct about Iran not being able to get nukes. North Korea has them, and just today it was revealed their centrifuge program, thought impossible was far along and done in less than a year, right before our eyes. Of course they have help, as does Pakistan and Iran: CHINA. China wishes to use proxies to threaten or even nuke the US, deniably, so they can scoop up much of Asia, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Their economy is a sham and they know it. They have a massive gender imbalance. They have looming demographic shortages coming. This is the mark of a “use it or lose it” aggressive power: see Japan and Germany, 1930′s. For the Chinese to take Taiwan, and the rest of Asia, as colonies and mercantile advantages (think 1600-1700′s France) they must move the US out, and indirect ways are less risky than overt war (which is disturbingly contemplated in Chinese media and thus with official approval). Iran is a threat because it too faces a looming crisis domestically with their economy, looming demographic implosion, and like China and Turkey aspirations for empire rebuilding. Iran’s leaders have stated they wish to reconstitute in Islamic form the Persian Empire, stretching into the Balkans, down to Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula. As a practical matter, Iran’s nukes would allow it to keep oil prices sky high (by threatening the Gulf states) and turf out the US Navy. If you like paying less than $20 a gallon for gas and keeping your job, you’ll find Iran’s nukes a threat. Given the need to start paying off their gunmen and what amounts to a cadre of military gangsters they are likely racing to this goal of nukes + ballistic missiles. Both technology more than sixty years old. Its not that hard to do, the Russians did it in the 1950′s. As far as Iran plus Pakistan, each could point to the other if they are both nuclear, if a major US city goes boom! Which is why Lindsay Grahmanesty is right. We need to dismember Iran before they go nuclear. So we can have gas that is not so expensive it destroys the economy and puts us in horse and buggy times. We also need a robust nuclear deterrent, and ABM against nations like North Korea which are thinly disguised proxy attackers helped by China. Iran does not have any friends and a major power like the US needs to provide useful lessons and reminders of the danger of attacking us. Our main problem is that no one really believes we have the will and ability to punish nations severely if they threaten our core interests. China has no such problem and is our major competitor. Thus we need to dump the START treaty and do something about Iran, like bomb all its major facilities. Setting back its nuke program and promoting useful fear. [I mean really, who’d care if we bombed the crap out of Iran? But its a good way to put fear of the US into Pakistan’s military, so they control their jihadis.] Never underestimate the power of a useful example in international relations.

One insane remark at a time here. The objections to the START treaty is that it hamstrings the US, particularly with weapons modernization (so they actually work) and forbids a ABM shield. Which is needed. This guy must go to the Richard Perle School in International Relations. First he trots out the old, “We need to still keep building nukes ‘to make sure they still work'” line. Can you believe that this crazy line has captured the famished imaginations of many a US President? Sad but true. Next up we have the ABM shield. It’s a bad idea, and it’s based on the premise of a winnable nuclear war. Nuclear wars are not winnable. Everyone loses. In the we can win scenario, the ABM shoots down all the enemy nukes, and then we blast them with our nukes. It goes back to the USSR and the Cold War, which is supposedly over, but neocons like this guy are always finding new wars to fight. Obama’s objective is to punish White America for having and using Nukes by eliminating them first. As he’s pushed for repeatedly in speeches and actions. No one trusts him because he’s against the US having nukes or a military in the first place. Wow, some Tea Party White racism thrown in for good measure. Obama hates US Whites because we have nukes and niggers don’t. LOL. No one cares that Obama opposes even the US having nukes, supposedly, but even Obama isn’t nuts enough to unilaterally disarm. Of course they have help, as does Pakistan and Iran: CHINA. China, a nuclear power, is helping potential enemy neighbors and near neighbors also become military powers, so that maybe they can threaten China in the figure. Right dude. Rule #1 about nuclear powers is that they don’t tend to spread it around. Look at all the big nuclear powers. Any of them proliferated? Of course not. If you had the deadliest poison on Earth, would you even give it to your best friends or family? Of course not. China wishes to use proxies to threaten or even nuke the US, deniably, so they can scoop up much of Asia, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Their economy is a sham and they know it. They have a massive gender imbalance. They have looming demographic shortages coming. This is the mark of a “use it or lose it” aggressive power: see Japan and Germany, 1930′s. For the Chinese to take Taiwan, and the rest of Asia, as colonies and mercantile advantages (think 1600-1700′s France) they must move the US out, and indirect ways are less risky than overt war (which is disturbingly contemplated in Chinese media and thus with official approval). LOL, whoa dude. Too much, dude, too much. Even the Perle – Wolfowitz – Gaffney – Rumsfeld – Cheney – Feith Project for a New American Century sociopaths don’t say things this crazy. There’s crazy and there’s batshit crazy. This is batshit crazy. So nuts I won’t even bother to refute it. Suffice to say there is no evidence for it. China’s economy in some ways is in better shape than the West’s. It is growing at a remarkable pace. It avoided the financial ponzi scheme World Depression through the use of state banks. China invests in real capital investment, real productivity growth and real commodity production and increasing wages and living standards, whereas the US engages in asset stripping, bald and naked class war out of the 1890’s, financial ponzi schemes, the destruction of the real economy, a financialized casino economy that in reality is a house of cards, declining wages and living standards and an economy that both parties run only so the top China’s economy is run for the nation, the people and workers. The US’ economy is run by and for a parasitical FIRE sector with banksters at the helm determined to suck every last bit of surplus out of consumers in form of payments to banks. Iran is a threat because it too faces a looming crisis domestically with their economy, looming demographic implosion, and like China and Turkey aspirations for empire rebuilding. Iran’s leaders have stated they wish to reconstitute in Islamic form the Persian Empire, stretching into the Balkans, down to Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula. Iran’s demographics are no big deal anymore than any other 3rd World Country. The birth rate is below replacement. The economy is doing ok, barring the sanctions. Iran certainly has no desire to be an imperialist state, and neither does Turkey (LOL) and even China does not aspire to such. Iran’s leaders certainly have never said that they want to recolonize the Arab World under a recreated Persian Empire. This sounds like the fevered blatherings of fanatical Sunnis more than rational analysis. As a practical matter, Iran’s nukes would allow it to keep oil prices sky high (by threatening the Gulf states) and turf out the US Navy. If you like paying less than $20 a gallon for gas and keeping your job, you’ll find Iran’s nukes a threat. Given the need to start paying off their gunmen and what amounts to a cadre of military gangsters they are likely racing to this goal of nukes + ballistic missiles. Both technology more than sixty years old. Won’t happen. Even if they ever get them, Iran won’t use nukes to blackmail the world. This is just ridiculous. They will use them like all other sane countries use them, in order to keep idiots like us from attacking them. Duh. As far as Iran plus Pakistan, each could point to the other if they are both nuclear, if a major US city goes boom! A US city won’t go boom unless someone shoots a nuke at it. If that ever happened, I’m sure the Pentagon has the high tech to figure out which country launched it. Snark. There’s no way to nuke a US city without shooting a ballistic missile at it. I deal with the suitcase nukes bullshit in an earlier post. Which is why Lindsay Grahmanesty is right. We need to dismember Iran before they go nuclear. So we can have gas that is not so expensive it destroys the economy and puts us in horse and buggy times. The homosexual Lindsay Graham is not right. We don’t need to invade Iran, much less dismember it. If you thought Iraq and Afghanistan were fun, try doing Iran! Iran does not have any friends and a major power like the US needs to provide useful lessons and reminders of the danger of attacking us. Yeah but no one’s “attacking us” you neocon dumbshit. Oh, that’s right, in the 107 degree minds of the neocons, the US is always “under attack.” Usually the attacks are the “invisible” kind, but they are attacks nonetheless. Snark. We also need a robust nuclear deterrent, and ABM against nations like North Korea which are thinly disguised proxy attackers helped by China. We don’t need the ABM, and it doesn’t even work anyway. Ever try shooting down a bullet with another bullet. That’s what an ABM is. It doesn’t work. North Korea is not a Chinese proxy. China has it’s own nukes, and it’s almost an ally anyway. There is huge trade between the US and China. No reason to screw that up with messy things like wars. Our main problem is that no one really believes we have the will and ability to punish nations severely if they threaten our core interests. Neocons are always saying this. “Our enemies think we are weak. We need to attack someone to show them we are serious!” By the way, this was one of the main rationales for the Iraq War, and look where that got us. Sure the world is scared of the US. In the above, “threaten” means just about anything. It means looking at Uncle Sam wrong. It means not following orders when the US issues them. “US interests” means the interests of US imperialism. Not a good thing. Thus we need to dump the START treaty and do something about Iran, like bomb all its major facilities. Yeah, brilliant idea, dumbass. Want to see that $20/gallon oil? Then try this. I mean really, who’d care if we bombed the crap out of Iran? Just about the whole world, in particular the Muslim World, Russia, China, everyone really? This is another of the neocon delusions. First of all, the world is full of enemies who “hate us for our freedom” or whatever bullshit reason they thought up last night. We have no friends. Second of all, the world really does love America and will secretly be overjoyed when we start the next war. This is the thinking behind the assholes who started the Iraq War, exactly. But its a good way to put fear of the US into Pakistan’s military, so they control their jihadis. Yeah dude. Um, Pakistan is afraid we are going to bomb their nuclear facilities? WTF. Never underestimate the power of a useful example in international relations. This is the “make an example out of them” neocon school. This argument was also very important in the Iraq War. Boy, this guy is drumming them out one by one here, no? The scary thing is that this raving lunatic represents the way the Republican Party thinks, and the way that 10’s of millions or possibly even a majority of Americans think, or could easily be led to think. Commenter AJ is right. US imperialism is a menace to humanity. The sooner it crashes and burns, the better.

The Slow Death of France

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D-1WO8KkIA&feature=player_embedded] Good Lord, this is terrible. This is the great France of Hugo and Sartre, Renoir, Flaubert, Zola, Proust, Beckett, Godard, Truffaut and Cocteau? The France of the Paris cafe scene in the 1920’s, with Hemmingway, Joyce, Pound, Toklas, Stein, Barnes and the rest? Now it’s descended into sheer jungle savagery. France is turning into Africa. They would have done better to import African-Americans. These are the worst of all possible Blacks, straight out of the primal backwards of the Dark Continent itself. To make matters worse, not only are they Black Africans, but they are Muslim Black Africans! I can’t imagine things are this bad even in US ghettos, terrible as they are. US ghettos are awful places, but I don’t think there are no-go zones for cops. I’ve worked in these ghettos, and the police are everywhere, making arrests constantly. I’ve never heard of cops going to investigate a rape and being driven away by hostile residents out to protect the rapists. And anyone who pulls a baseball bat on a US cop is probably going down on charges to say the least. If I pick up a bat and advance towards a US cop, I’m guilty of a crime, no?I doubt if the cops are going to run away. Nor do US Blacks, even in our worst ghettos, burn dozens of cars a night, and hundreds on bad nights. They scarcely burn cars at all, at least not as social protest. These areas have essentially been ceded to a hostile foreign enemy. The Muslims and Blacks rule these places and don’t let any government entities in. In the video, the detectives go with the rape victim to the site of the crime. It’s a squat where 10 young Black Muslim men are living. These Blacks are obviously the ones who raped the woman. They probably felt she deserved it for some reason, maybe because she was fair game, maybe because she was dressed like a slut. The victim can be seen throughout the movie dressed in a red coat. At one point, a detective says, “We are here for her.” She’s a Caucasian woman in her 20’s. I watched this video with a dropped jaw. The French have created a monster. God help them.

New Issue of Al Qaeda's Inspire Magazine Released

I was able to obtain the new issue of Al Qaeda’s Inspire Magazine. It’s difficult to obtain if you don’t know what you are doing. As far as I can tell, it’s only available on jihadi forums. First of all, you have to find those forums. They are very secretive, their locations are not well-known, and the sites are constantly going up and down and changing locations and url’s. However, I have access to sites with lists of the latest lists of jihadi forums. Then you start to visit the forums. The forums are all in Arabic, so you have to figure out the Arabic. Even then, it’s not easy because a lot of the links are just pictures. You click the picture links, then try to figure out where the download links. After a while, you find them. There are many hazy-type download links at fly by night servers. You find one that works, and you go and get the file. I’ll be making the file available for download on my server here. That link should work; anyway, I was just able to download the file. The last copy (available on my server here) got downloaded 141 times, so apparently there is some interest out there. The latter link definitely works. I emailed WordPress asking them if it was ok to offer Al Qaeda stuff for download, and I got no response, so I assume it’s ok. If anyone is wondering, I hate Al Qaeda and I don’t support their project. I’m just making this stuff available so people can see what these very dangerous people are all about. This latest issue is getting quite a bit of press. It highlights “Operation Hemorrhage,” the operation to down two cargo planes, a Federal Express and a UPS, in October by using PETN explosives packed into a toner cartridge of a printer. The report goes into minute detail about how they did it. Why they are showing their hand like this, I have no idea. AQ says that the intention was not a terror attack, as they realize that these planes only have two people aboard. They said that instead the purpose is to disrupt the US economy. It’s true that for 10 years since 9-11, we were not checking cargo flights at all. Now we are supposedly checking 10 Al Qaeda claims to have found a way around a variety of security measures. First of all, the devices are made with no metals, and this is how they elude metal detectors.They now have five different bomb detonators that use no metal whatsoever. They elude bomb-sniffing dogs by packing the material so tight in the toner cartridge that the cartridge is completely sealed. Then they use a variety of solvents to wipe clean all of the surrounding objects in case any PETN molecules escaped. They explain how they manage to elude X-ray scanners, but that description was rather complex and I will let you tackle it yourselves. For one thing, they used an explosive that was similar in molecular composition to the printer toner itself. It is true that the printers were inspected twice in the UK, but both times passed inspection. The bomb was only intercepted when the US had the exact tracking number of the package. Al Qaeda denies US claims that they have only one bombmaker. The US named this fellow, and claims that he is AQ’s bombmaker. Whoever the bombmakers are, they are extremely intelligent. AQ continues to claim that they downed a UPS cargo plane that crashed in Dubai on September 29, but the US insists that that crash was due to a battery fire. AQ ridicules that claim, and asks why the US can’t figure out that they did it. There is quite a bit of baiting and ridiculing of the US and its allies in this issue. They are basically taunting us. AQ claims that the whole operation cost only $4,200. That is probably correct. There are repeated exhortations about Palestine in this issue (“Palestine remains the main issue,” etc.) US analysts note that AQ’s ability to pump out the propaganda shows that AQ is operating with relative freedom. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is currently operating mostly out of what even this issue of Inspire calls “the failed state of Yemen.” I would agree that Yemen is close to being a failed state.

Thoughts on Secessionism of Afrikaners and Chechens

AJ writes:

The Afrikaners are a nation, so do you support stuff like Orania, and Eugene TerreBlanche’s Afrikaner Front trying to carve an independent Boer state in South Africa?

That is an interesting question. Sure Afrikaners can be independent, I think. But they have to let non-Afrikaners live there too, since a lot of them were there first. I don’t support self-determination so you can form your shitty little fascist dog states and throw out all the “impure, non-national people.” The Kosovars did that. I support their independence, but they have behaved like total jerks ever since. The Kosovars acted despicably. They were like, “We have a right to self-determination!” Then when they got it, they ethnically cleansed everyone not a Kosovar Albanian! And then they decided hypocritically that while minorities in Serbia had a right to split, no minorities in Kosovo would have a right to split! Forget that. This is the problem with separatism. The separatists wage a just war against a fascist state, and then as soon as they get freedom, they start their own evil fascist nation-building project and suddenly that wonderful right of secession is immediately revoked. The Afrikaner Front are serious racists, militant Nazi White Supremacists. I’m not sure scumbags like that have a right to self-determination to create some little Nazi White Supremacist state. Anyway, most Afrikaners would not want to be part of such a state. They might want independence, but not under the AF. The ANC are typical backwards Africans. Africans are typical barbarians, too uncivilized to allow any separatism without committing mass murder in the process. Look at Eritrea, Biafra, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. Even Arabs are as barbaric as Africans in this regard. Look at the genocidal response of Morocco to the Polisario Front. AJ:

Chechnya is already semi-autonomous, they have their own culture and laws and everything, what else do they want?

Independence? Chechens have been fighting for their freedom since the days of Shamil. It took Russian imperialism 60 years to conquer the place, and it’s been in periodic rebellion ever since. Obviously, they never assented to annexation in the first place, eh? I consider those Caucasian Muslims to be serious pests and troublemakers who are doing nothing but blowing things up and killing people in Russia. Be gone with them. Allow a referendum on independence within the context of the CIS. You can even negotiate further. Russia can station military bases there with the option of reconquering the place if Chechens start acting up again. Make independence dependent on a number of Russia-friendly prerequisitives. Win-win.

Arabs or Hispanics, Which Do You Pick?

I pick Hispanics any day. FG writes:

Many are concerned about the demographic and cultural Hispanicization of the US. It’s a big change that surely carries major costs and benefits. Who knows what the future holds? But I have to say that the future of the US seems brighter than that of Europe.

Most Latinos do not fit the traditional American definition of White, but they are a quasi-Western people. From my perspective, that’s preferable to being demographically swamped by Muslims with their affinity for Shariah Law, as is happening with France, Holland, and other Western European states.

I don’t lose a lot of sleep over Hispanicization, but keep in mind that I’m a native Californian who grew up with Mexicans, took Spanish lessons at age 6, was raised on Mexican food, had Mexican-American friends and girlfriends in high school and spent many vacations down in Old Mexico.

If you spend a lot of time around these 2nd generation and up Hispanics (especially the 3rd generation ones), you realize that they are so much like us Whites. For instance, just about every White teen cult has been replicated by Hispanics. There are Mexican bikers, hippies, punks, heavy metalers, skaters, emos, Goths – you name it, they have replicated it.

On the other hand, Blacks have not replicated our cults like this. You don’t see a lot of Black bikers, hippies, punks, heavy metalers, skaters, emos, Goths, etc. It’s like Black people have this totally different culture that’s not like White culture at all.

The only reason that I can think of why these Hispanics are replicating our movements is because they are like us culturally and possibly genetically. Blacks may not be so much like us culturally, and they are not like us genetically.

Last night I spent some time at the local market discussing honor killings with the local Yemeni (born in the US by the way). He defended them, and said that if a married woman cheated on her husband, she had to be put to death! He then said that Islam mandated this. It’s not true, and I argued with him about this, but he didn’t buy it. He also said that if an unmarried woman had sex, 1

He and his brother also told me that there was no such thing as Al Qaeda and no such thing as terrorism, and added that Jews did 9-11, not Arabs. I like these guys a lot (Arabs are great people), but it was quite a discouraging conversation.

Europe is experiencing this mindset in spades. I don’t envy them.

There is Truth in This Anti-Islam Post

This post was taken off the Internet. It’s a standard anti-Islam post, but there is truth in it. Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system. Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components. Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called “religious rights.” When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to “the reasonable” Muslim demands for their “religious rights,” they also get the other components under the table. As long as the Muslim population remains around United States – Muslim 1. Australia – Muslim 1. China – Muslim Italy – Muslim 1. Norway – Muslim 1. Canada – Muslim 1. At Denmark – Muslim United Kingdom – Muslim 2. Germany – Muslim 3. Spain – Muslim Thailand – Muslim 4. From Switzerland – Muslim 4. Philippines – Muslim Sweden – Muslim The Netherlands – Muslim 5. Trinidad & Tobago – Muslim 5. France – Muslim When Muslims reach 1 Guyana – Muslim 1 Kenya – Muslim 1 Russia – Muslim 10-1 India – Muslim 13. Israel – Muslim 1 After reaching 2 Ethiopia – Muslim 32. At 4 Bosnia – Muslim 4 Chad – Muslim 53. Lebanon – Muslim 59. From 6 Malaysia – Muslim 60. Albania – Muslim 7 Sudan – Muslim 7 Qatar – Muslim 77. Bangladesh – Muslim 8 Indonesia – Muslim 86. Syria – Muslim 9 Egypt – Muslim 9 Tajikistan – Muslim 9 Jordan – Muslim 9 United Arab Emirates – Muslim 9 Pakistan – Muslim 9 Iraq – Muslim 9 Iran – Muslim 9 Morocco – Muslim 98. Gaza – Muslim 98. Palestine – Muslim 9 Turkey – Muslim 99. 10 Yemen – Muslim 99. Afghanistan – Muslim 10 Saudi Arabia – Muslim 10 Somalia – Muslim 10

Tea Party Assholes

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydyOTADrCFc] The usual crap. This isn’t a very good video about their assholery, since it’s made by liberal idiots (Color of Change), but it’s OK. Barack Obama does not hate White people, White culture, White America or any of that. He’s as White as a Black man gets. This is the language of White nationalism that Beck is using. When Fat Man Rush calls Obama a “magic Negro,” this is racist language. Among White racists, the phrase “magic nigger” is common. What it means is that most niggers are at worst evil and at best useless. However, they agree that there are a few niggers who are pretty much like White people, but they are so rare, it’s ridiculous. Maybe Oh yeah. I would like to say one more thing about Rush Limbaugh. He’s fat. LOL! I can’t believe this Jew John Stossel is arguing for getting rid of anti-discrimination laws. I hope he gets his wish and half the stores he tries to walk into throw him out for being a slimy kike, which frankly he is anyway. This guy’s really gone insane. Remember back when he was one of the most famous talking heads on US TV on 48 Hours. He was always shilling for corporations back then. Now he’s come out as a full-blown Libertarian radical. Wow. All this shit about Obama being a Muslim and not being an American is racist too. Blacks  aren’t really Americans according to White nationalism. WN says that only Whites can be Americans. Not Amerindians? WTF. And to be a real American, you have to be not only White but also Christian. Saying that Obama is a Muslim from Kenya is just another way of saying that niggers are not Americans and can never be Americans. It’s the language of White nationalism.

Al Qaeda’s Inspire Magazine, Volume 2

It wasn’t that easy to find the new version of Al Qaeda’s Inspire Magazine, a glossy e-magazine written entirely in some pretty darn good US English. But I know my way around the Zionist Jewish anti-jihadi forums, and it was a short leap from there to the latest fly by night jihadi forums. It was all in Arabic, but I eventually found my way around enough to find the link to a post about the latest edition of Inspire Magazine, which came out I believe on October 6. In the post were a ton of fly by night and hazy links, one of which led me to the a pdf of the magazine. This is the second issue of Inspire. The first issue suffered some sort of an attack on the server were it lay and most of it was deleted, possibly by a security agency or anti-jihadi hackers. Inspire appears to be the project of Anwar Al-Awlaki, who is for all intents and purposes the head of the real active wing of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He apparently stays in contact with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Bin Laden has a short article in the latest issue, and there is a short quote from Zawahiri gleaned by Awlaki during a visit he took to the Afghan-Pakistan border recently. AQAP seems to be biggest these days in Yemen, where it almost seems out of control. They’ve been pretty much closed up in Saudi Arabia. Though most of the members have been released, Saudi intelligence agents watch their every move. There is an article in this issue by a Saudi jihadi who was with bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001 and escaped with him over the mountains to Pakistan. His group was betrayed by some villagers and turned over to the Pakistani security forces, who then turned him over the US in Afghanistan. He spent some time in Kandahar and Bagram in US custody, but he was quickly remanded to Guantanamo Bay, where he stayed several years. He describes all of these places in detail. The Americans finally released him to the Saudis, who put him in prison for 3 months and then released him only to find himself under constant surveillance. He managed to sneak out in a wild rainstorm, and he made his way to Yemen, where he hooked up with AQAP. There’s a good photo montage of an AQAP attack on Yemeni security forces in Abyan, South Yemen. There is an article by an American jihadi about why he is a traitor to America. He describes how he left North Carolina for Yemen where he hooked up with AQAP. There are pieces on what it’s like to go on jihad, why one should go on jihad, how to use PGP keys and safe-delete shredder programs on your computer, what the Afterlife is like compared to this life, interviews with various AQAP and Al Qaeda jihadis, a poem from a jihadi to his mother, etc. There is an article by Adam Yadiye Gadahn (former Adam Perlman). Adam al-Amriki or Adam the American, an American citizen living on the Pakistan-Afghan border for some years now who is apparently now a high ranking Al Qaeda member. Gadahn threatens President Obama and makes a number of totally unreasonable demands for actions that Obama will need to undertake in order to get a ceasefire from Al Qaeda. Gadahn closes by noting that the US killed 1.5 million Muslims, mostly kids, with sanctions even before the 2003 invasion. Gadahn implies that absent a ceasefire, Al Qaeda intends to even the numbers a bit, and that they are just getting started. These guys don’t play. The whole affair is nicely designed and the English is in general quite good. The graphics are nice and professionally done. The magazine has a “cool” feel to it. There are nods to the US counterculture and the progressive Left social and environmental movement, pieces that look like Madison Avenue consumer capitalist advertisements for jihad, a Web 2.0 feel, use of hacker leetspeak. All this makes jihad seem cool like the 60’s counterculture, the Social Forum, Greenpeace, the latest cool sneakers or iPod player, wealthy computer nerd-programmer types in Silicon Valley and the hacker underground culture. It’s designed to appeal to hip young English speakers. You can download it on my server here . I believe it’s legal to download this magazine, read it and keep it on your computer in the US. But some people who do that are not very nice people – they are Al Qaeda jihadis. So it’s possible that intelligence agencies may monitor some of those who do so. If you’re outside the US, I have no idea what the consequences are of accessing this stuff. I don’t support these Al Qaeda reactionary religious fundamentalist shitheads at all. I’m just putting this link out there for people who are interested in Al Qaeda and seeing what they are up to. Hopefully, most of them feel the same way I do about them. If they don’t, oh well.

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