The NATO War on Libya: Way to Go, Idiots

I knew this would happen.

All of you liberals who supported the war on Libya, now look what you’ve done.

Speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation, South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham said we are getting very close to the time when we are going to have to attack Syria. He also said that now is the time to let Assad know that all options are on the table. Graham was an avid supporter of the US Nazi war of aggression on the Iraqi people that led to the US colonization of Iraq. He supported the somewhat more supportable Afghan War. Of course he was very much behind the Libyan War.

Of course, Graham cited the Libyan War as the basis for attacking Iraq, saying that Assad and Ghaddafi were indistinguishable.

Graham could not seem to stop with Syria. He also demanded more aggressive attacks against Pakistani territory and said that the US is on a collision course with Pakistan.

In the wake of war on Libya, Jew Lieberman (Independent – Tel Aviv/Connecticut) demanded that the US also attack Syria. If we can attack Libya, then we can attack Syria too, he reasoned.

I was very worried about this. Though the war on Libya seemed innocent enough, the problem is what these things lead to. In an imperialist power such as the US, they set the stage via the slippery slope for more wars of aggression on whichever other target the imperialists feel like attacking next. It opens a Pandora’s Box. First Libya, next Syria, next Pakistan, next what?

See why I thought this was a bad idea?

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Al Qaeda Leader, Killed

On Friday, June 10, 2011, 38 year old Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the head of Al Qaeda in East Africa, has been killed at a roadblock in Mogadishu. His car failed to stop for a military roadblock, so soldiers fired on his vehicle, killing him. It was not the West who got him after all.

In 1992, as a very young man, he had participated in the Black Hawk Down firefight in Somalia that killed 18 US Marines. In 1995, he returned to the Comoro Islands, his birthplace. He settled in the capital of Moroni, married a local girl and worked as a fisherman. Formerly of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which he had joined as a very young man, Fazul was already working for Al Qaeda. He immediately set about planning Al Qaeda attacks.

One of the most famous photos of Fazul Abdullah Mohammad.

One year later, he hijacked Ethiopian Airways Flight 961 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. The plane was forced down near the Comoros, but before it landed, the Al Qaeda force on board executed Leslie Shed, CIA station chief in Addis Ababa, five heads of Israel’s aviation industries, and a deputy commander of the Ukrainian Air Force. They were headed to a meeting in Jerusalem where they were going to discuss a deal whereby Ukraine would supply jets to Ethiopia which would be provided by Israel and would be paid for by the US.

To this day, all three nations have kept a tight lid on the case because they never figured out Fazul obtained the top secret information about who was traveling on the flight.

Soon after the plane landed, the hijackers took off in speedboats that were waiting for them. They sped off to the Comoros. They were never caught.

Two years later, Fazul masterminded the attack on the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 224 people, the biggest Al Qaeda attack to date.

The FBI figured out that Fazul was involved in the bombing and headed to Moroni. Too late, he was gone, tipped off that the FBI was after him. In 1998, he was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List with a $5 million price tag on his head.

Fazul Abdul Mohammad from the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist poster.

In 2002, Fazul pulled off another attack, this time in Kenya. He attacked Israeli targets, first attacking the Paradise Hotel in Mombassa, favored by Israeli tourists, with a suicide truck bomb. Next he chartered a plane and flew it near an Israeli Arkia passenger jet, firing a missile at the jet and just missing it. They flew the plane over the hotel they had just bombed, and dropped bombs on the hotel from their plane. Then they hightailed it to Somalia where they escaped.

In 2010, he attacked again, this time suicide bombing multiple cafes in Uganda that were filled with crowds watching the World Cup Final in South Africa. This attack was in retaliation for Uganda taking part in the peacekeeping mission in Somalia, where Fazul was leading the Al Qaeda allied Shabaab movement that was trying to topple the barely existing Somalian government.

Fazul was a master terrorist, one of Al Qaeda’s finest commanders and organizers. He hid successfully from the finest forces of the West for 15 years. A master of disguise and forgery, he spoke 5 different languages, used 18 different names and had three different birthplaces. At the time of his death, he had plans on him for attacks against targets in the West.

His death leaves Al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa and East Africa high and dry, missing their terrorist leader and superb guerrilla fighter.

The US Army is the Army of the Rich

The truth is that the US military has always been the army of the rich, the army of the imperialist thieves and mass murderers. Look at how many billions America stole from Iraq – estimates are that the US imperialists stole uncounted billions from the Iraqis in the course of running their government for them after the war. The US is now planning to steal Libya’s money to help bomb Libya – that money belongs to the Libyan people, but the Western imperialists have simply stolen the Libyan people’s money to drop bombs on their heads.

The cruel truth is that the US military is the army of the rich and the corporations. The US homeland needs very little defending, and no one ever tries to invade anyway. Instead, the purpose of the Pentagon is to go around the world killing workers and poor people in order to uphold the rule of the rich and the right of US corporations to exploit the Third World.

It is interesting to look at US wars and military engagements to see how many of them really benefited working class people of the US and other countries. The imperialist wars in Cuba and the Philippines? Are you kidding?

The endless list of interventions in Latin America? They were all to benefit the rich and to kill workers and the poor. Even the invasion of Panama was because Noriega would not play ball with the US on the Sandinistas anymore. The drug dealing thing was a joke. The US, the CIA and our buddies in the rightwing governments and militaries down there have been running dope forever. We look the other way or even help them run the drugs.

Grenada? Pull the other one. The various interventions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic? Give it up. The 7 new US bases in Colombia? They are there to help the Colombian state kill the poor and Left of Colombia.

The intervention in Lebanon? To help Israel. The war against Iraq? A Nazi-like war or aggression that resulted in the US colonization of Iraq. The bases scattered all over the Arab World? To control the oil supply, imperialist style, so no one else can get their mitts on it. This benefits US workers how?

The bases in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus? An imperialist project to surround and threaten Russia. How does surrounding and threatening Russia benefit US workers? Someone?

Bases in South Korea? To threaten North Korea. How does threatening North Korea benefit US workers? Anyone?

I have a question for you. If you are a working class person, why would you join the army of the rich and go around the world killing poor people and workers so that the rich and the corporations can continue to rip them off and exploit them? Why join an anti-worker, anti-poor army? Why go fight for the rich? Why fight for the corporations? Because that’s what you are doing when you join the US military. Why would a working class person do that?  For the money? For the adventure?

How the Latin American Right Thinks

From this interesting comment on my piece about the FARC in Colombia:

RL: Labor unionists, community leaders, peasant leaders and peasants, Indian leaders and Indians, women’s organizations, gay rights organizations, environmental groups, anti-free trade agreement groups, human rights groups, journalists, students, professors, anti-mining and anti-oil groups…[are all accused of being “FARC supporters” or “members of the FARC” and are liable to be arrested, beaten, tortured, jailed or murdered at any time.] Parasites, dead-wood, leeches, crooks, thugs, villains, leftist shit-heels. Fuck them too.

This is how these people think. To them, if you are a member of a labor union, a women’s organization, a gay rights organization, an environmental group, an anti-free trade agreement groups, a human rights groups, an anti-mining or anti-oil group, a community leader, a peasant leader or a peasant, an Indian leader or an Indian, or a leftwing  journalist, student or professor, you are a parasites, dead-wood, a leech, a crook, a thug, a villain or a leftist shit-heel. And presumably, you deserve to be killed at any time.

So the war is not really against the FARC at all. The war is against the entire Left of society. The rightwing of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Brazil and Ecuador has a similar attitude: kill the Left. It was formerly the attitude of the Bolivian, Peruvian, Uruguayan, Dominican, Paraguayan, Chilean and Argentine rightwings too. But they have been out of power for a while and haven’t been killing many people lately.

Furthermore, this is not only the attitude of both political parties – the Democrats and the Republicans, but it also the attitude of the US military. This is a very important note: both US political parties, even the supposedly liberal Democratic Party, are 10

The US military runs a school called the School of the Americas in Georgia where they train Latin American military officers. As part of their coursework, the US military teaches these officers that the legal Left are “Communists” who are trying to overthrow the government. They are a military target and need to be dealt with via force. These officers then go back to their countries and often turn into major human rights violators.

The US has been behind or supportive of every single rightwing military coup that ever happened in Latin America. The Obama Administration supported the Honduran military coup and the mass terror that followed. Obama also tried to overthrow the Ecuadorian regime of Correa. I thought Obama supports democracy?

The Bush Adminstration hatched and carried out a coup against President Aritide of Haiti and supported the terror afterwards that followed that left 3,000 Haitians murdered. Bush also backed and helped plan the coup against Hugo Chavez. I thought Bush supported democracy?

See what liars these Americans are? If you are an American, why do you believe the American liars when they go on and on about democracy? Why fall for their lies?

The Difference Between Phenotypical Race and Genetic Race

A commenter asks me some questions about my races of man post.

I believe that a bit more changes are necessary to be made to the race classifications you have here Robert. I believe that the Garos, Nicobarese, Negritos (Orang Asli, Semang, Aeta, Senoi, etc.), Melanesians, Micronesians, and possibly Ainus should be classed as Australoid.

Now, hear me out if you will: They have mixed to varying degrees with Mongoloids, but still maintain Australoid appearances, so it is nonsensical (I believe) to class them as Mongoloid simply due to some Mongoloid admixture.

I also believe that a separate “mixed-race” macro category (or “non-classifiable”) category should be made for those in your categories who are of mixed-race. Caucasoid-Mongoloid: Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Uighurs, Tatars, and Hazara. Caucasoid-Negroid: Djiboutians, Eritreans, Mauritanians, Bejas, Somalis, Ethiopians, and certain mixed-race Berbers (all Berbers shouldn’t be classed as belonging to one macro race).

And those certain Pacific Islanders, be they Melanesians or Micronesian, who are obviously a Australoid-Mongoloid mixture.

The Nepalese are a mixture of Indo-Aryans from India as well as Mongoloid groups from the Himalayas (so they are a Caucasoid-Mongoloid mixture).

The Ainus have mixed with the Mongoloid Japanese due to promoted miscegenation by the Japanese government, so many Ainus now have Mongoloid genes, but I still think that they are distinct enough from Mongoloids to be possibly classed as Australoid (which you yourself have called them).

I thank the poster for his input.

The problem here is that the poster is confusing phenotypical race with genetic race. The races of man post dealt only with genetic race, using Cavalli-Sforza as a template and then expanding from there. The problem is that genetic race often does not line up with phenotypical race. For instance, some types are Australoid by phenotype, but not by genes. Only the Andaman Islanders, Papuans and Aborigines seem to fall into an Australoid race by genes.

The Garos are similar to other groups in the far east of India such as the Naga. The Nicobarese are very strange, but the general idea is that they are just archaic SE Asian types, migrated down from Yunnan Province in China maybe 5000 YBP with some of the original Austroasiatic speakers.

I have no genetic data on the Orang Asli or the Senoi. The Senoi at least are certainly Australoid by phenotype. Once again, these are ancient Proto-Malay early Austroasiatic types migrated down from Yunnan 5000 YBP or so. The Orang Asli are some of the original people of the planet outside of Africa, but are they phenotypically Australoid?

The Aeta are phenotypically Australoid, yes, but genetically, they are closer to Filipinos than to anyone else.

Melanesians and Micronesians genetically fit into a nice little category within the Oceanians of the SE Asian race even though they have some Australoid mix – the Melanesians much more than the Micronesians.

A mixed race macro-race of some sort did not make sense to me in terms of a rational classification, though I did think about it. Some groups are just too recent to be classified at all, such as Hispanic mestizos and mulattos.

For groups like the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Uighurs, Tatars, and Hazara, I had to look up percentages of Asian and Caucasian. If they were a bit more Caucasian, they went into Caucasian. If they were more Asian, they went into Asian. Groups for which I had no data were not listed. It was scatter-shot, but I could not think of anything else to do.

For the Djiboutians, Eritreans, Mauritanians, Bejas, Somalis, Ethiopians, and certain mixed-race Berbers, I did try to fit most of these into some race or another. However, I will agree with you here that I may need a new category. I have long contemplated a sort of Horner Major Race, splitting the Horners off from the rest of the Africans. The Horners are just too different from the rest of the Africans. They are about 1/2 way between Africans and Caucasians.

I realize that the Berbers are a mess, but there was not much I could do with them, and I don’t want to make a major race out of them. Sometimes you just have to improvise.

The Nepalese fit well into Caucasian on most charts. Granted, they are some of the most diverse Caucasians out there, but so are the Indians for that matter.

Although the Ainu are phenotypically Australoid, genetically they are quite close to the Japanese and the Koreans, so it makes sense to call them NE Asians genetically.

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.

Video: Mass Grave of Syrian Soldiers at Jisr Al Shughour

Video here.

This video is pretty nasty. It shows Syrian troops in Jisr Al Shughour uncovering a mass grave of some of the 120 Syrian troops killed in that city a week ago.

Nobody quite knows what happened in that city. The opposition says that the Syrian troops were executed by their own troops when they refused to fire on protesters. The government says they were killed in an ambush by anti-regime forces. It’s going to take a long time, if ever, to find out what really happened here.

This video is pretty gross. Viewer discretion is strongly advised. The dead bodies pulled out of the grave are pretty gross and mangled up.

Video: Syrian Troops Open Fire on Protesters

Video here.

A very exciting video from Syria, not quite sure where it is from. It was shot on Friday, June 10, 2011. It is said to take place in the Qaboun District of Damascus, Syria.

As you can see, the protesters are not exactly peaceful as the supporters of this video say. They are harassing, hounding and chasing the armed Syrian troops through the city. Periodically, the troops turn around and aim at the protesters, but they keep on coming anyway. The protesters are basically chasing the troops through the city, and the troops are beating a hasty retreat from the protesters.

Finally, the troops kneel down and aim at the protesters. The idiot protesters keep rushing the troops anyway like a bunch of morons. Of course, the troops open fire. What do you expect? And a number of the protesters get injured or killed of course.

I don’t know what to make of this video. It’s pretty moronic of protesters to charge, chase and hound armed, retreating troops through a city. What are the troops supposed to do? Allow their position to be overrun?

Anyway, it’s a really shocking video!

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

When Is It Going to Start Working Anyway?

A commenter asks:

I know there’s probably a lot of info on the web about the various armed conflict/s in Latin America, but do you have any good websites (in English) that are specifically about the rhetoric of the Latin American Rich? And about their actual policies that lead to so many people trying to revolt against them?

I know you’ve mentioned them in your posts, but not all that much. It would be great if you had links to a detailed, extensive database of such information.

Hi, Upside Down World  in the blogroll is an excellent resource, just off the top of my head. You know, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 10 years ago, yesterday, Latin America was mired in the most horrific poverty amid the most wild wealth. I’m not sure what the rich were saying then. Now here it is, up to 100 years later, and nothing much has changed.

I think in the past it was just “Kill the Commies!” The rich ran the show, had pro-rich military dictatorships for years to decades, when that didn’t work stole elections, and controlled all the media. The masses were utterly downtrodden, but what could you do?

Every now and then the peons would get restless, and the Marines would be sent down there to repress the overwhelming majority of the people and reinstate rich rule. In Haiti, the US stayed for decades. Cuba was nearly a US colony. We invaded the Dominican Republic. Sometimes people fought back. You had the anti-US Sandino rebellion against the Marines in Nicaragua.

Anytime the people got the least bit uppity, there would be a coup or a US invasion, followed by mass death squad terror. This happened in Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964, Dominican Republic in 1965, Bolivia in 1970, Chile in 1973, Argentina in 1978, and Peru in 1992. This would often be followed by years to decades of state terror, the purpose of which apparently was to say, “Don’t even think of trying this again!”

In 1932 in El Salvador there was a peasant uprising led by Farabundo Marti. It was crushed, and

The Western provinces, where the Matanza took place, were still very conservative even during the Civil War 50 years later. Mass terror works.

But things have changed now. Now they say that neoliberal capitalism (the rule of the rich) is the way to prosperity for everyone. Socialism or rule of the poor is a dictatorship and leads to mass poverty.

Now the rich say that the way of the rich will “lift all the boats.” A rising tide lifts all boats and all of that. It’s supply side economics. Problem is that Latin America has been engaging in supply side economics and the politics and economics of the rich since Day One. Who is it lifting out of poverty, anyway?

Main thing is that they don’t want to spend one dime to help the poor the in any way whatsoever. Doing so will ruin the economy, and we can’t have that. You can’t raise taxes, tax the rich or the corporations, raise the minimum wage or engage in any state spending. All of this is Communism, and it will “ruin the economy.”

They also engage in a lot of capital strikes now. With the election of Humala in Peru the other day, the stock market lost 2

But the economics of the rich isn’t working down there. They’ve been doing it for 200 years.

When is it supposed to start working anyway?

US Politics in a Nutshell

Via a link from Ian Welsh’s indispensable blog. If you read nothing else political on the Net, do read Welsh. The comments are just as good as the author. Here a commenter sums up US politics in a nutshell:

The current mode is for the Republicans to go extreme right and the Democrats to go bipartisan and compromise by giving away 7

There are no progressives of note anymore. Obama and the Democrats and not liberals or progressives, much less socialists or God forbid Communists. A “Democrat” is someone who reacts to the extreme rightwing of the Republican nutcases by going 7

This is the politics of the 3rd World, in particular, the politics of coup and death squad ridden Latin America.

Down there, if you are a feminist, a gay, an environmentalist, an anti-mining or anti-oil activist, a peasant leader, a labor union member, a community leader, a human rights organization member, an organizer against free trade agreements or a supporter of land reform, you are automatically a Communist and there is a murder warrant out for you. You can be murdered at any time. If you’re lucky and you’re a leader, you get overthrown in a coup and get to survive, like Zelaya in Honduras and Aristide in Haiti.

This calling anyone who is not a rightwing fanatic a Communist is peculiar to Latin America, the Philippines, Pakistan and Indonesia. In other words, it’s the ideology of a stinking 3rd World shithole. Down there, you have two parties, a Conservative Party that is insanely rightwing, and a Liberal Party that is about 7

In most of the world, countries where the politics is as insanely rightwing as the US are the lands of reactionary coups and death squads. At some point, the Left finally has enough of sitting around waiting to be murdered, and they pick up guns and decide that if the state is going to come out and kill them, they will at least fight back with a gun. That’s called a Left insurgency, or “trying to seize power via the gun.” It’s not, really. Mostly it’s just fighting back.

This makes me wonder. Is the current US politics nutty enough that we could have a rightwing military coup? The US rightwing is already openly stealing elections, see Bush in 2000 and 2004. This is a typical 3rd World elite pattern.When they can no longer steal elections and the Left gets elected, then come the coups. After the coups, or in between them, roam the death squads.

I already asked if you if death squads might be coming to America. I will say that the reactionaries are very nice here since at least they don’t murder us like they usually do. They also don’t do military coups. Thank you very much for that! Muah! The rich are so nice here!

But how about coups? The rightwing is already stealing elections, how about a military coup? Is it possible? What would it look like?

How about a state of emergency? We already sort of have that with the Patriotard Act. But what about a real state of emergency?

Typically, extreme rightwing 3rd World hellholes tend to create, due to their very nature, not only mass public protests and riots, but at some point, actual armed Left insurgencies. Are popular protests or even riots on the horizon in the Land of the Fat and Lazy Apathetic Whites? What about an armed Left? Possible or not?

Is the FARC Near Defeat?

This is not really the case.

The Western media would have you believe that the FARC are narcoterrorists with no support even among the peasants. This is not the case. The FARC have deep and vast support among the peasantry in the countryside. In the cities, it is more complicated.

It is true that the FARC has lost support lately. This is probably due to tactics.

The taking of prisoners was a tough one. Yes, the FARC took prisoners. Those were in general not hostages but POW’s. Colombian soldiers and police were taken as POW’s when captured. Does the FARC not have a right to take POW’s? The state does. The state arrests guerrilla suspects and imprisons them all the time. Why can’t the FARC imprison state combatants in the same way?

It’s also true that they took some Colombian legistlators prisoner. But why should they not have done this? Those legislators were voting for prosecuting the war against the FARC. By the same token, does the state not prosecute those who fund the FARC?

Several Americans, apparently spying on the FARC for the CIA or Pentagon, were also taken hostage. Many tears have been shed over this in the US. They were treated well by the FARC. If they didn’t want to be taken prisoner, why were they spying for the CIA?

In addition, the FARC has imprisoned some wealthy Colombians for tax evasion. It’s not true that these people were kidnapped for hostage money.

The FARC levies a tax on all Colombians worth more than $1 million. That is a lot of Colombians, as the Colombian elite is fabulously rich. The FARC is waging a revolution, and the rich must pay war taxes to fund the revolution. Simple, right?

Most rich Colombians have figured out that you have to pay your FARC taxes every years. They meet FARC operatives outside major cities and fork it over. It’s a very small amount of money, and they can easily pay. Some have chosen to evade their war taxes. So the FARC imprisoned them until their taxes were paid. Is this not right and proper?

We must understand that the Western line about the FARC is 10

It’s true that the Colombian guerrilla has been hit very hard lately. The guerrillas have suffered some serious losses, but they immediately replaced them. They still probably number ~18,000 fulltime guerrillas. Militia is probably many more. They are facing the heaviest offensive ever waged against a Latin American guerrilla outfit. This new offensive is all coming via US dollars and aid. The US has 7 new military bases in Colombia. The 10

Question: If the FARC is near collapse, why is it that the FARC killed more Colombian soldiers last year than 2002, which was at the very height of the war when the FARC was close to seizing power? Yes, the FARC has killed more Colombian troops than at any time in recent memory. Granted, most of that was in defensive action, but do those sky high enemy KIA counts sound like a losing army?

In addition, last year, the FARC waged about 5 offensive actions every single day. I get FARC military reports. The FARC kills Colombian troops just about every single day in Colombia. This is one kick-ass guerrilla army.

Everyone in the US seems to want the FARC to lose. But why should the Colombian regime win?

This is a regime that has decimated all of Colombian civil society.

Labor unionists, community leaders, peasant leaders and peasants, Indian leaders and Indians, women’s organizations, gay rights organizations, environmental groups, anti-free trade agreement groups, human rights groups, journalists, students, professors, anti-mining and anti-oil groups, really anyone who is anyone in Colombian civil society, has been subjected to a terror and extermination campaign.

Typically the charge is that these civilians are “members of the FARC” or “FARC sympathizers.” Usually, there is no evidence whatsoever that they are FARC members. If they are FARC sympathizers, how do you prove such a thing, and since when is such a thought crime illegal? Does the FARC have a right to slaughter anyone who is a government sympathizer?

Why should we in the West support such a vicious, venal and genocidal regime? If the FARC goes, will anything get better?  What makes anyone think that the regime is going to stop killing the people just because the FARC is gone?

The FARC, if anything, defends the people.

Here is what happens.

The state wages on “offensive against the guerrilla.” The army and death squads move into a region and start killing the local civilian leaders right away. The FARC quickly appears on the scene and starts attacking the army and death squads, trying to dive them out of the area. So you can see the FARC are really trying to protect the people from the state, to give the people a means of defense. What’s so bad about that?

The FARC want some sort of guarantees that the state will not massacre them if they lay down their arms. In the 1980’s, a faction of the FARC, the Patriotic Union, broke away, laid down arms, and tried to seek power by peaceful means. They were decimated by state terror – 5,000 of them were slaughtered like flies. Given that record, is the FARC not correct to be wary about laying down their arms?

As part of a negotiated settlement, the FARC wants a land reform. As in El Salvador, land is the key issue. A tiny fraction of the population owns almost all the farmland in Colombia. The vast majority of rural people own little or no land.

The rich are constantly stealing, with armed force, what little land the peasants have left.

This is how it works.

The army and the death squads will show up and tell the peasants to leave their land. You leave or you die. Most folks pack up. After the land is vacated, the rich move in and steal the vacated peasants’ land. This process goes on all over Latin America, especially in Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Brazil. It is source of much of the death squad run murders in the region. The same process goes on in Pakistan, India and I believe in the Philippines. Before the Salvadoran War ended, it was common in El Salvador.

A huge land reform was enacted in El Salvador as a consequence of the peace settlement. It did not solve the problems of the rural areas, but at least the peasants have their own land and can feed themselves. The major cause of the war was ended, at a cost of 70,000 lives.

As I understand it, the Colombian elite refuses to budge on land reform and demands that the FARC disarm for peace talks to start. This will not work. The Salvadoran state dropped their demand for rebel disarmament, and this enabled a peace settlement. Unilateral disarmament never makes sense.

An Anatolian Homeland For Indo-European?

That may be, but the part about “proto-Europeans” coming from the Lower Volga is bullshit. All archaeological, anthropological, linguistic, and genetic evidence (not to mention, evidence from indigenous pagan religions/mythologies) point to an Anatolian origin of the Indo-Europeans.

During the LGM, European hunter-gatherer groups gathered in some refugia in South Central Europe (Iberia, Western Balkans, Ukraine…) and Northern Europe was almost entirely covered in glaciers, as were the Alps, Caucasus, Pyrenees, and other major mountain ranges.

After the LGM, the scant remnant of Upper Paleolithic survivors moved back north, but Southern Europe was depopulated, only to be repopulated again by Near Eastern agriculturalists at the dawn of the Neolithic. These agro-pastoralists from the Anatolian-Levantine refugium brought farming, livestock, and copper to Europe. Among the earliest farmers were the Anatolian proto-Indo-Europeans.

The Basques are probably remnants of the Mesolithic survivor population. The purest descendants of these Near Eastern settlers are the Greeks, Albanians, Armenians, and at least some Italians – also the Turks, who inhabit the PIE origin land – ironically Turks, who speak a non-Indo-European Altaic language, are probably more Indo-European than most Indo-European speakers, especially Brits or Indians.

Of course, there were other migrations around that time. A people closely related to the Mongols expanded westward across Siberia, over the Urals and into Scandinavia following the deglaciation. They introduced Uralic languages (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Lappish) into Europe, and the Lapps are their most direct descendants.

But we have strong reason to believe that Indo-European spread from the Near East (most likely North-Central Anatolia) chiefly due to agriculture, not from Western Europe (as some White Nationalists might believe), from India/Pakistan (as many Hindu nationalists believe), or from Gimbutas’ fanciful Kurgan patriarchs (which Wikipedia deems as “official” and which you appear to take for granted).

[Actually, it surprises me that so many people take for granted some nutty hypothesis proposed by the Marxist-feminist Jewess Marija Gimbutas despite the lack of evidence or historical precedent. At least the Paleolithic Continuity Model is based on some evidence (albeit misinterpreted), and the Out-of-India hypothesis is based on understandable wishful thinking.]

Consider the following:

* As per your own model, virtually all Europeans cluster closely with each other and with Persians, Kurds, Caucasus folks, Jews, Turks, and some Semitic-speaking Levantines. Basques, North Africans, Arabs, and “West Asians” (i.e. Afghans) are minor outliers.

This interrelatedness suggests a strong demic diffusion and also implies that the stat that Europeans are 8

* While Indo-Europeans are/were indeed fairly heavily male-dominated (Gimbutas was at least correct about this), this follows from a Near Eastern origin, as the Middle East was, and still is, very patriarchal. Ironically, Gimbutas located the homeland of those “evil patriarchal invaders” who decimated the “feminist utopia” that neolithic European society (allegedly) was in Scythia, which is believed to be the source of the Amazon legends…

* Indo-European languages show relatively strong affinities to Semitic languages, and probably Kartvelian and Pelasgian languages (the latter may have actually been Indo-European, related to Hittite), possibly Ligurian (probably Indo-European and related to both Celtic and Italic languages), and even Etruscan (controversially). No such closeness to Iberian (Basque), Ural-Altaic, or Dravidian languages.

* The oldest evidence of Indo-European languages comes from Anatolia (Hittite) and the Aegean (Greek in Linear B). Minoan (in Linear A) remains undeciphered and may have been related. Archaeological records demonstrate a settled native population.

* Even the pagan religions seem to cluster near the Anatolian center. Zoroastrianism and the Indic religions both descend from the Indo-Aryan religion, but the Persian religion is more similar to ancient European religious traditions than the Dharmic faiths are (because Hinduism absorbed some Harappan/Dravidian pre-Aryan influences.)

Greco-Roman and Germanic religions were more alike than either was akin to Celtic (Druidic) paganism, the Celts being more matriarchal and probably influenced by relatives of the Basques in Western Europe and the British Isles.

All this points to an origin for Indo-European in Neolithic Anatolia, but you are probably correct that the Aryans (Indo-Iranians, not blonde Germanic supermen) came into Iran and India via Central Asia. Most likely route being a clockwise migration around the Caspian Sea…

Excellent commentary, fascinating stuff.

I actually agree with an Anatolian homeland for PIE, however, I also agree with a secondary spread from the Lower Volga. So things are complicated. In fact, I argue that Indo-European is actually Indo-Hittite, with Anatolian being so far removed from the rest that it is actually a sister to the rest of the family. Just a look at Hittite shows you how archaic it is compared to the rest of the family.

The part about the Turks, Greeks, Albanians, Armenians, and at least some Italians being the remnants of the original IE people is probably true. So, in a sense, these are really the “original Whites.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Nordicists.

Gimbutas’ theory has always ween a bit nutty. There were no ancient matriarchies. As a female friend once said, men have always ruled. Why? She answered, “Men are bigger, men are stronger, men push women around and make them do what they want them to do.” Well, of course, and women are too weak to fight back.

As it is now, as it’s always been. In gender relations, it’s the law of the jungle. I also feel that matriarchies might have been inherently unstable, as I’m not sure that “female rule” works very well. We are having enough problems with what matriarchy we have in the West.

Patriarchy or male rule is sort of a bad deal for women, but at least it seems to “work.” And I have noticed that women from patriarchal cultures seem to be happiest in their femininity and in general. The men are masculine, the women are feminine, and everyone’s happy.

The more women rule, the more miserable women seem to be, and men never seem to be happy under female rule. For one thing, oddly enough, female rule tends to make women act masculine and men act feminine.

Neither is a normal role model, and I argue that the more masculine a woman is, the more unhappy she is, and the more feminine a man is, the more unhappy he is. That ‘s possibly because they are violating nature itself. When you do that, nature fights back, possibly by making you miserable.

Surely IE is related to Afro-Asiatic and Kartvelian, but I disagree that it is less related to Uralic or Altaic, and I also disagree that Uralic and Altaic represent some family. Ligurian and Pelasgian are probably IE, but no one knows what Etruscan is.

I definitely agree that almost all Europeans are quite close to Persians, Kurds, Caucasus folks, Jews, Turks, and some Semitic-speaking Levantines. It is interesting how close the Caucasians are to each other. Most Caucasians are much closer to each other than other major races are. There is much larger differentiation among NE and SE Asians, Aborigines, Papuans and for sure Africans than there is among Caucasians.

All around, a great comment. The rest of you may feel free to chime in if you have any thoughts or anything to add.

Hot Black Chicks: The Rapper Eve

Eve, beautiful Black rapper, with her White British boyfriend.

Good God this chick is hot. Whoever says all Black women are ugly needs to have their head examined. She has taken up with this wealthy British guy, who was probably born into money. She’s also been with other White guys in the past. This has caused a big to-do in the Black community as many are accusing her of treason for dating White. The idea is that she rode her Black race to fame, coming in on the coattails of some big Black rappers, then abandoned the community for a White man. She’s basically a treasonous, race-mixing whore, in other words.

That’s all pretty silly, but she sure is a babe!

The Corporations Swooned While the Nation Slowly Died

I'm not sure what to make of this chart here. As you can see, as US exports crashed, US corporate profits went insane.

Can anyone make sense of this chart? It appears that while the nation was slowly murdered, gasping, heaving coughing blood, the corporations were swimming in money, partying on the Titanic as it were. As the nation dies, the fortunes of the corporations go through the roof. It appears that the corporations are getting rich as they slowly murder the country. The more the sickens and dies, the richer the corporations get.

But can someone explain what’s going on. Why did the collapse of US exports lead the soaring of corporate profits. There appears to be a connection. What is it? Offshoring?

Deficit Limit Politics: Republicans Play with Fire

As you can see, the US does not even have a significant deficit problem at the moment.

The chart shows that all the blathering about the deficit is nothing but the usual rightwing lies of the rich and the corporations, the enemies of mankind. We don’t even have a deficit problem right now. However, we will have one soon if we don’t get a handle on things.

It’s not caused by government spending, as government spending is as low as its been in decades. In fact, US government spending was much higher at the end of WW2 under Truman than it is today. It’s been declining ever since, and it’s been relatively flat for decades now. It’s caused mostly by the Bush tax cuts and the wars, and to some extent by the rotten economy that the banksters blew via the deregulation of finance.

The deficit hawks are screaming, but they caused this problem in the first place, mostly by 30 years of tax cuts. Tax cuts on the rich and corporations devastate the state and lead to large deficits. At some point, the deficits become too high and the bond market starts to call in its chips. At that point, there are huge cuts in pro-people spending and the state even has to start selling off the people’s property to the capitalist sharks, often at fractions of what it’s worth.

The Republicans are lately playing with fire over raising the debt ceiling. First of all, who put in this requirement that Congress raise the debt ceiling every year? There’s no sensible reason for it. Just get rid of it, and let the state borrow whatever it needs. If the Congress doesn’t like it, then don’t fund the borrowing, real simple. This is a Congressional anachronism that needs to go.

If the debt ceiling is not raised, the US government will default on all of its debts. The consequences will be catastrophic; first of all, an immediate cut of 4

The business class, Wall Street and even the corporations probably think this is a very bad idea, which makes me wonder why Wall Street and the corporations are supporting these reactionary fanatics.

Many Republicans, in fact, most of the party, is threatening to crash the US economy and cause the US to default on its debts by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. A lot of them are saying, “Go for it! It would be a great idea to have the government default!”

This is so irresponsible I can’t even put it into words. What do the Republicans want to not raise the debt ceiling? They want massive cuts at all levels of the federal government. In particular, they are demanding cuts in Medicare and Social Security.

You see, Medicare and Social Security are the two things that they can’t touch. The Ryan Plan kills Medicare, but it’s stalled right now. So great is the Republicans’ hatred for Medicare, and so determined are they to kill it, that they are going to cut it come Hell or high water. If they can’t kill Medicare through the Ryan Plan, they will slash it by threatening to blow up the whole US economy unless we let them.

One would think this program is political suicide, but the Republicans are saying it is not. They figure that even if they blow up the economy, they will place the blame on Obama for not agreeing to their devastating cuts. Anyway, the economy will we wrecked, and we will be in a depression.

American voters are idiotic retards, at least since the 1930’s, and they’re so stupid that they automatically throw out the incumbent if the economy is bad, whether he had anything to do with it or not. Amazingly, they did not think that way in the 1930’s.

So there you have it. The Republican strategy is to wreck the economy, cause a depression, have the US default on its debts, blame Obama for the mess, run against him on a crap economy and beat on that issue.

How low can you get.

Republicans are slugs.

Video: Syrian Soldier Hanged in Hama

Video here.

This is a very nasty video. Extreme viewer discretion advised. During the riots in Hama, Syria on Saturday, a Syrian soldier was captured and then apparently hung from a post in front of cheering mobs. The mobs also abused his body and beat it with sticks. They also threw shoes at it.

The video is short, but then it seems to repeat a few times. The last 2 thirds of the video seem useless.

This video has been making the rounds in Syria, and it has stirred up a lot of regime supporters. The rebels are claiming it’s fake, but I don’t think so.

Video: Syrian Soldiers Massacre Civilians in Deraa

Video here.

This is a very nasty video. Extreme viewer discretion is advised. It shows Syrian forces on a rooftop in Der’a in the South of Syria, where the rebellion began. They are standing among a group of civilians, who have all been killed by the soldiers. Many of them have head shots, and the footage is very gruesome (Ever seen half a guy’s head blown off?).

The soldiers are apparently all Allawi from a special brigade led by the President’s brother, sent because the regime was not sure whether or not the regular army was down for the job. But this special brigade is all Allawi and very loyal to the regime, so they are down for about anything. The soldiers do have Allawi accents. The soldiers are joking about the dead bodies, posing with them, etc.

The men were bringing food to the city or the fighters in the city after the city was blocked off. Apparently the food was mistaken for weapons and this is why the men were killed. However, the head shots suggest execution at close range. If they were only bringing food, why execute them? This is a pretty serious crime on the part of the regime.

Exciting video, you can hear the sounds of battle – gunfire, etc. in the background.

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!

Romney Leading Obama in the Polls

This is extremely bad news, and it shows just how fanatically rightwing the reactionary American people are.

You wonder just how stupid Americans are. Romney is leading Obama, 49-46, in the latest ABC poll.

Romney is no moderate. This is what the joke is. Romney is seen as some kind of a moderate Republican. If this is what a moderate Republican is, we are in for some very deep trouble.

For instance, Romney has come out in full support of the Ryan Plan. The Ryan Plan would wipe Medicare off the face of the Earth, forcing the elderly to purchase their own medical insurance. It would also gut Medicaid by approximately 5

The rest of the Ryan Plan involves such deep cuts to the discretionary spending that it would end or seriously curtail most government programs outside of defense. The EPA, Food Stamps, the Department of Education and the Department of Energy would be wiped off the Earth.

Mitt Romney supports wiping out Medicare, Food Stamps, the EPA, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. He would cut Medicaid in half. He  would seriously curtail much of the rest of government.

Mitt Romney also supports the repeal of Obamacare, even though his own Romneycare plan as governor of Massachusetts was the same thing as Obamacare. He now says he doesn’t even support his own plan.

Mitt Romney supports jailing doctors give women abortions. Wow! Kook alert!

Mitt Romney actually believes in anthropogenic global warming, which must make him the only Republican who does so. He also says we need to cut our emissions. Good for him.

But it’s all nothing but lies because he supports the work of a discredited scholar who says that the best way to deal with global warming is to do absolutely nothing to try to stop it and just let it take its course. He says that the implications of it will be very mild and in many cases will even be positive. He says that we can muddle through global warming just fine with few to no problems. Further, he says he should not lower emissions one bit because AGW is no big deal. This is the real Mitt Romney: Complain about AGW, but do nothing whatsoever.

Mitt Romney made his money as a corporate shark, raiding and destroying perfectly good companies. He engaged in leveraged buyouts in which would buy good companies, fire all the workers, sell off everything that could be sold, and then turn a profit. He made many millions of dollars this way and he destroyed tens of thousands of jobs and maybe more. He also destroyed many fine US companies. Bizarrely, Romney claims that he created many jobs.

The truth is that Mitt Romney is an ultra-rightwing Republican fanatic loon. There’s nothing moderate about him. If you can find anything moderate about him, show me.

Romney is running against Obama’s handling of the economy. However, Romney’s own plan only involves massive cuts to government spending along with serious cuts to taxes on rich people and corporations. None of this is going to create one job. This is the same failed supply side economics that’s been ruining America for the last 30 years. It won’t even do much to touch the deficit, since the tax cuts should wipe out most of the savings.

The Republican Party has thwarted any stimulus spending that could hope to get this economy off the ground. Whether that’s due to calculation or ideology, the fact is that the Republican Party is deliberately running the economy into the ground in order to defeat Obama on the basis of a bad economy.

All sane people agree that the Ryan Plan would cause a new recession, if not a full depression. I’m not sure if Republicans realize this. The cuts that the Republicans are demanding are only going to sink the economy in the short term. The thinking is that the Republicans are willing to deliberately wreck the economy in order to defeat Barack Obama.

Capitalism is Murder: The Evidence

The American people are further to the Right on economic issues than just about any peoples on Earth. They resemble Third World death squad populations like the Philippines, Guatemala and Colombia that always elect extreme right candidates of a vicious, callous, corrupt and venal elite that have never done one damned thing for the peoples of those countries.

The only difference, and I will give the American Right this, is that the American Right does not murder the people.

Murder, especially mass murder and genocide, is what the Right is all about. When confronted with a threat from the Left, the Far Right usually resorts to mass terror to stall the threat. We see it to this very day in the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala where the Right literally rapes, beats, burns down the homes, tortures and murders anyone who stands in their way.

The US has been supporting this mass murder for ages now, in fact, it’s the American way. Most US corporations in Latin America pay death squads to kill people getting in the way of their profits, or they used to in the past. I recall an interview with a US businessman in Guatemala in the 1970’s. He said openly that his business supported the death squads and in fact, all US businesses in Guatemala were hiring the death squads to keep the people at bay.

The usual targets of these corporate-run death squads are union officials and members, people protesting dams or mining operations, peasants protesting the theft of their lands, environmental groups, women’s groups, community organizers and leaders, left journalists, students, professors, gay/lesbian activists, etc. The corporations themselves usually target groups that are opposing their rapacious activities in the nation, along with trade unionists.

The rest of the Left is targeted by the death squads that are run by the state itself. Yes, India, Pakistan, El Salvador, Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and Peru all either run death squads or allow them to operate and do nothing, which is more or less the same thing.

I am wondering why the rightwing fanatics, who seem so similar to the death squad crazies in the Third World, haven’t started running death squads and killing us yet. Do you think the US rich and corporations will ever start running death squads against the Left, as is done in the Third World?

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.

McArthyist “Academic Bill of Rights” Laws

Repost from the old site.

Here’s one in Colorado and the effects it is having. Wow. Professors getting death threats. Professors sleeping with shotguns under their pillows. Students filing complaints against professors and trying to get them fired for political reasons. A list of subjects that university professors are not allowed to discuss (WTH?)

Threats of “quotas” for hiring conservative professors and threats of money cutoffs if quotas are not met. Professors quitting their jobs and living in fear. Whew. Jesus Christ man.

By the way, Jewish Zionist ultra-sleazeballs David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes have been behind a lot of this shit. And US Jews have been behind some of the worst examples of academic censorship and retaliation seen in recent days – the refusal of Yale to hire Juan Cole, and refusal of De Paul University to give the excellent scholar Norman Finkelstein tenure, followed by a monetary settlement and his subsequent resignation.

Some Choice: Nazi or PC Nutjob

Repost from the old site.

Boy, the Left has really gotten us into a pickle here, haven’t they?

If you are on the Left, support any degree of socialism, or are even a liberal, you are obligated to go along with the whole PC nutjob package: support for the craziest notions of man-hating Western feminism, for White-hating and non-White-worshipping lunatic anti-racism, for the insanity of mass immigration, not to mention illegal immigration of all things, for the idiotic and suicidal notion of Open Borders.

I talk to regular White people all the time. The Western Left has precisely nothing to do with the realities of how most White human beings in the US live their lives. Most of them hate illegal immigration and want cuts in legal immigration. Most of them dislike mass immigration turning the US into a United Nations on every block. Most of them reject White-hatred and non-White-worship.

And fanatical Western feminism is increasingly trivial to the lives of hundreds of millions of non-Western women who labor under the horrors of misogyny and male supremacy vastly worse than what American women endure.

What I have noticed is that Western feminism seems irrelevant to the realities of how heterosexual males and females negotiate sex and relationships in modern times. It is as if Western feminism is broadcasting from some bizarro alternative universe that has nothing to do with the one most of us negotiate on a daily basis.

What I am trying to say is that the Western PC Left, as its constituted, is irrelevant.

It’s hostile to men and Whites, and double so to White men. Any White man who buys into the line of the Western Left must be out of his mind.

It says right on the sidebar that I’m heterodox. You got it. For one thing, I’m a race realist. There are differences between the races and even within the races in terms of minor races and even ethnic groups. These differences are observable on a wide variety of metrics. It is irrelevant whether these differences are due to genetics or culture, since both intertwine anyway.

To see a particularly nasty view of race realism, shot through naturally all the way with racism, check out this book by Ricard Fuerle, a PhD in Economics and a patent attorney. The book is called Erectus Walks Among Us. The premise of the books is that Black people are monkeys, or apes, or Homo Erectus, or a much more primitive type of man. I’m almost done reading it. It’s pretty entertaining, but I’m warning you, this is toxic stuff.

While most of us don’t even want to think about stuff like this, he does marshal an awful lot of data showing that there are significant differences between the races. Philippe Rushton has done something similar lately and has been raked over the coals for it.

I will say right now that Rushton, Fuerle and the rest may be correct in some of what they say: there are more differences in the races than the obvious ones such as skin color. A quick rejoinder to this argument is typically shot from the Left: that in saying so, we are classifying ethnic groups and races in the same way we classify species and subspecies of animals – as having invariable behavior.

Like most Left rejoinders, this is garbage, but many racists sadly do think this way. I’m not much of an artist, but if I was, I would draw a scatter plot for you. That is what differences, particularly behavioral, psychological, intelligence and other such, but also including athletic ability, would look like between the races if you plotted them out on a graph.

On athletic ability, you would find Blacks more likely to plot superior on certain variables. Some Whites and even Asians would be over with the Blacks. Some Blacks would have very poor athletic ability. Racial and ethnic tendencies are only averages, and there will always be all sorts of individuals who will fall outside the stereotypes for their races.

Unless you understand what a scatter plot looks like, or unless you understand averages and statistics, you can’t discuss racial differences at all.

Why discuss racial differences at all?

Because, for one, the Right keeps throwing them in our faces.

And because the Left’s reaction to any racial or ethnic differences in outcome is wrong. The Left says that all races and ethnic groups are equal, and therefore, any differential outcomes must be the result of racism.

This leads the Left into insane, decades- to centuries-long, never-to-be won wars against racism, sexism, homophobia and whatnot. These things will probably always be with us. The insanity of the Left is the folly that they dream they can eradicate these aspects of human nature.

All you can do is reduce or increase things like that. I am certain that when I die, racism, sexism and homophobia will be alive and well, and the Left will be insanely waging war “to rid them from the Earth”.

Scientifically speaking, it is certainly not true that if one race or ethnic group scores worse than another or does worse on any sort of variable, it must be due to racism. Surely there are all sorts of reasons why this might happen. The folly of the Left is its refusal to consider that there may be things other than racism causing this.

Problem is that almost anyone online taking a race realist position is simply a racist. And almost all such folks are Whites who are arguing at least for getting rid of all civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation and and at most for outright White separatism, apartheid, race war, or ethnic cleansing.

Wow. Breathtaking. You mean that if one acknowledges differences between the races on a variety of controversial variables, one must be a racist, a separatist, a fascist or a Nazi? Yes. This is what it means. Any socialist who steps outside of PC idiocy on race will find himself embraced by some other funny socialists. Almost all such persons will be sympathetic towards White racism, White separatism, fascism and Nazism.

Whew. Well, allow me to step out of the box here for a second. This blog will make the outrageous statement that race realism (a recognition that there are non-trivial differences between the races) and anti-racism can go hand and hand. Just because there are average differences between races does not mean we have to turn into a bunch of racist jerks, much less racial separatists.

There are specific, subspecific and racial differences all across the natural world of biology, and none of it necessarily leads to hating this or that brand of organism or critter. For instance, here in California, we have various threatened and endangered species that I know a lot about. We have Tipton Kangaroo Rats and California Red-legged Frogs and Alameda Whipsnakes.

I assure that all of these damned critters act different. I will assure you that a California Red-legged Frog acts a Hell of a lot different than a Foothill Yellow-legged frog, and an Alameda Whipsnake acts a Hell of a lot different than a Pacific Gopher Snake, and a Tipton Kangaroo Rat acts a lot different than a Dusky-Footed Woodrat. I, lover of nature, love all of these critters.

Why be a speciesist, a critter racist, lining up with the Tipton Kangaroo Rats and swearing to drive the California Red-legged Frogs to extinction? I, lover of humans, love all humans. Why should I be a human-critter racist, lining up with the White human critters against this or that non-White human critters? They act different. So? So do all the other critters.

The reason for the Left’s opposition to race realism is quite simple. All we have to do is look at the agenda of those big names promoting hardcore race realism. They’re all White, and almost all, or all, of them are on the Right or the Far Right, and I haven’t found one yet who was not a hardcore racist.

Furthermore, every prominent race realist out there supports getting rid of civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. The reason being that if there are average differences between races, people ought to be able to discriminate racially or ethnically against individuals on the basis of those averages.

But average differences mean nothing when it comes to individuals. Individuals are individuals, and groups are groups. You can’t tally up group stuff and use it to thumbs up or thumbs down on individuals in the group. Forget it. Group differences be damned, one still must treat individuals as individuals.

With such a bunch of ugly creeps running the show, is it any wonder that decent people run away from race realism in droves?

It’s really sad that socialists have to choose between fascists and PC airheads. There’s got to be more space in the room than that. Come on.

Some Thoughts on Worker Self-management

Repost from the old site.

In the comments section, huy points out that the former Yugoslavia under Tito had a different type of Communist system that allowed worker self-management of plants.

That system provided a quite nice standard of living too, I am told. The former Yugoslavia supposedly had one of the highest standards of living in Eastern Europe, and was particularly good at providing plenty of consumer goods for their people. This is important because many Communist states promoted heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods, leading to much frustration.

A female writer from Czechoslovakia, in a critical book on the Communist experience in that country, said that one of the things that angered the people (I would gather the women) the most was the chronic shortage of washing machines. Who wants to wash your clothes by hand?

The problem with the Yugoslavian model was the workers really did run the enterprises. So they had the choice of whether to take home the profits of the enterprise as spending money or to reinvest in the business. They usually chose to take home the profits for more spending money. Eventually, plants did not receive reinvestment and they fell apart and became uncompetitive.

I do not think that workers should run their own enterprises because they do not know what they are doing and will usually take home profits as pocket money instead of pumping them back into the enterprises. What has to be done is for an outside manager to run the business.

The Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque Country is a good example of a non-capitalist cooperative economy in Spain. It works very well and has for many years. The cooperatives are formally run by the workers, but actually the owners are some giant regional banks. They operate with the enterprises’ best interests at heart and often money is reinvested in the plant. Sometimes workers just get to take it home.

The workers also get to elect their own managers. One would suspect that workers would elect those managers who let them screw off the most and work the least, but that has not been the case.

Bottom line: the decisions are in the hands of people who know what they are doing.

In China, a similar thing is operating. Workers still formally own most of the plants in China. They may even own most of the so-called private plants. Anyway, most enterprises in China are still run by the state, but they are typically run by smaller municipalities and labor collectives.

For instance, the enterprise that is the third largest producer of television sets on Earth, an immensely successful enterprise, is a socialist institution that is state-run. Officially, it is owned by its workers, but they elect managers and abide by their decisions. This worker-ownership thing is seen as a Maoist holdover by rightwingers inside and outside China and they are itching to get rid of it.

As another example, there is a very successful plant in a small city in Northern China that I read about. It is officially owned by its workers, but they are required by law to plow 9

The cities with more profitable plants attract large numbers of workers wishing to live in those cities. With the money from the plants, the small municipality has made very nice homes for its workers, nice streets, nice cultural and civic programs and structures, etc.

So this is a great example of how worker self-management or the cooperative model, or some strange new socialism, can operate. It is essential to find new models of socialist and cooperative ownership and economics in order to avoid the socialist failures of the past.

I Thought the FARC Was “Near Defeat”?

Repost from the old site. A bit dated, but good nonetheless.Here on Robert Lindsay, we do support the FARC and the ELN unequivocally.

This is one hardass rebel army. The US corporate media says they still have 7,000 men under arms, down from 17,000, and in my opinion, their militia numbers in the 100,000’s. I strongly disagree with the 7,000 number, and I think the actual number of FARC troops is probably at least 18,000. They have a presence all over the nation and in several surrounding countries too.

It’s true that they have been dealing with the most intensive military offensive against any rebel group in the history of Latin America, and in recent days, suffered the loss of some top commanders. But they will weather these changes. As soon as a top commander dies or is killed or captured, there is someone else waiting to take his place.

James Brittain notes that the FARC has recently waged some of its most impressive attacks in a long time.

A reporter noted in 2004 that there is an unstated fear that the guerrillas could overrun Colombia’s major cities at any time. As a way of dealing with this, the venal and murderous Colombian ruling class periodically issues proclamations touting the weakness of the FARC, how they are near defeat, how they are suffering from massive defections, etc.

During Plan Colombia and Plan Patriota from 2000-2006, the Colombian regime repeatedly said that the FARC was near defeat. Analysis indicates that instead, attacks have grown over time. During 2008, the US media got into the act, crowing that the FARC was “near defeat”. But this year, the FARC attacked Colombia’s most important oil infrastructure facility and wiped out entire Colombian military battalions.

Between the 29th of April and the 6th of May, 2008, the FARC carried out repeated attacks on Colombia’s largest oil pipeline and halted the export of up to 3 million barrels of oil. At the same time, the FARC attacked various transportation routes crucial to the flow of military supplies and the movement of oil in Colombia’s north.

An essential bridge was destroyed in Cesar Province, preventing the movement of troops and paramilitaries. In Norte de Santander, the FARC attacked forces guarding the Caño-Limón Pipeline.

These last attacks were just hours after the US Ambassador visited the region and crowed about the near-defeat of the FARC. On May 3, 2008, Colombia deployed a battalion to the region to resume the flow of oil. The battalion was quickly destroyed by the FARC, which kept attacking the pipeline for another 2 days.

On May 27, 2008, the FARC attacked Colombia’s largest coal mine, derailing 40 wagons out of a 110 wagon train carrying 110 tons of coal. Further attacks hampered Colombia’s ability to engage in foreign trade by shutting down many export routes.

The North was thought to be relatively free of the FARC in recent years, as their center of operation was said to be in the South, but these attacks proved that wrong. In 2007, when the FARC was “near defeated”, somehow the number of internal refugees grew by 3

The FARC has auxiliaries in all neighboring countries, the FARE in Ecuador, the FARV in Venezuela (demobilized but ready to fight if need be), the FARB in the Dog’s Head of Brazil, and the FARP in Peru.

The FARP has expanded all the way down to central Peru lately, where they have had great success forming base communities with peasants who hate the state but are disgusted by Sendero’s brutality. Many former Senderistas in Peru, up to 1,000, have signed on with the FARP. FARP has linked up with the devastated remains of the MRTA in San Martin Province and sent the MRTA leftovers back to Colombia for armed training.

They have also linked up with what is left of Sendero, a considerably less radicalized organization. A column of Senderistas from the Huallaga Valley was also seen marching off to Colombia. In Peru, the FARC troops are uniformed, healthy, well-armed and supplied, with modern communications equipment and brimming with confidence.

They come into the villages and offer basic necessities and health care to peasants who are pleased to see them and find them impressive compared to the ragtag guerrillas they are used to. Just because Sendero has been badly hammered does not mean that the people of Peru are not in a revolutionary mood.

The FARC also operates R & R bases in Panama and operates all across northern Brazil to southern Guyana, where they tax gold mining operations. This is one way the FARC has reacted to the largest offensive ever launched against any Latin American guerrilla group – they have expanded to all of the surrounding countries.

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When members of the FARC put down their arms to run for office in the 1980’s and formed the Patriotic Union, they were massacred like flies. Years later, 5,000 UP activists lay dead, and the party was disbanded. This is how the Colombian regime responds to challenges from the Left, even unarmed. With bullets. Until that changes, war will go on.

Colombia is currently one of the US’ top allies in the world, and the US’ top ally in Latin America. It’s unfortunate that US’ best friend in the region is such a murderous and fascist state, but it speaks volumes about the nature of the US state itself.

Ian Welsh, “The Depression and the Future”

From Ian Welsh’s glorious blog:

Ok, everyone’s talking about the oncoming recession. What it is is the second downleg of the depression we’ve been in since the financial crisis.

All of this has been baked in since 2009. Since January 2009, when Barack Obama announced his stimulus, which was not just too small, but put together so badly that it was evident it would not kick the economy out of the doldrums.

The stimulus would be seen to fail (it doesn’t matter how many jobs it “saved” what matters if it created a good economy.) Meanwhile Obama made it clear he had no intention of restructuring the economy, shutting down any of the major banks or of disrupting the paper for oil securitization game.

So, anyway, what’s happened since 2009 was baked into the cake. What is happening is what anyone halfway competent should have expected to happen and that includes the massive wave of austerity in the developed world, the high commodity prices, and the continued liquidation of public assets to feed private greed.

If anything it’s slightly worse than I expected. I would have hoped that some nation other than Iceland would prove to have enough guts to tell the vultures to fuck themselves, but apparently we’re all eunuchs or morons these days, and the Greeks still aren’t rioting amongst the mansions of the rich, I notice. So who cares what they think, anyway?

I suppose it’s tiresome to keep saying “I told you so”. Certainly I’m tired of it, but the point is that this could all be predicted, was all predicted (well, not all, I didn’t get the revolutions in Arab countries, though I know someone who did and the clues were there.)

Assume that what is happening is, essentially, what your lords and masters are at least ok with having happen. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be happening. This isn’t a case of incompetence, they didn’t even try to make this stuff not happen.

The future you’ve got coming from you is a future of unconventional oil extraction: aka fracking. The play is to get back to cheapish oil and make that run for as long as it can. That is what WILL happen. That is baked into the cake. The only economy these people want to run is an petro economy.

They will do whatever it takes to run one and continue to use their position in control of legacy capital to extract rent and tax the future. There will be more controls on so-called intellectual property (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one). There will be more security theater. There will be more austerity, which means taking public assets and turning them into what appear to be revenue producing private assets.

This will go on until the last drop of cheapish conventional oil has been pumped and the last suburb built. Americans, and apparently the developed world, will do whatever is required to see this happen. They will kill whoever they have to kill. That’s what the developed world is, now. This is only compounded by stupidity like Germany going off nuclear without a clear plan of how to replace the energy. Remember, boys and girls, yes, there is blood mixed in with that oil. A lot of it.

This the future, the next goodish economy will come from unconventional extraction. Not sure how long that will last. It will come at great environmental and health costs, but Americans will give up anything to keep the petro-economy going, so, so be it.

What’s this gonna mean for you? The good jobs are going to keep getting scarcer, and if you aren’t willing to do evil (work for any insurance company, anything defense related, most good paying education jobs, most good paying healthcare jobs, virtually all financial industry jobs, etc…) then they will essentially non-existent.

Real wages after real inflation will continue to trundle down. Even inflation adjusted wages as measured by the BLS may show declines. Employment WILL NOT recover in your lifetime if you are over 40. That doesn’t mean there won’t be ups and down, but it won’t have a long sustained up. Financial markets will continue to be a rigged game, and if you want to play, realize you need to play as if the game is rigged, not as if you’re in a free market.

Unless you can pay premium, the quality of everything you buy will continue to go downhill. Want a good burger? Closing in on $8. Want a shitty fastfood burger?  $2 or less. Public transportation will get worse, more libraries will close. The cops will make less calls and be less helpful. The schools will be worse in most places and keep getting worse. Eventually Medicare will be slashed to the bone, and so will SS. Not necessarily destroyed, but so weakened they might as well be.

It’s gonna be a long 20 to 30 years folks. Does this have to be the future? In theory, no. In practice, well, yes, apparently it does.

I keep running Ian Welsh’s pieces because he is one of the finest writers currently writing. He needs to be on TV, in the newspapers or in the newsmagazines, but no wait. That will never happen. They are all owned by the rich. I have decided that I am going to limit my intake of the newspapers of the rich, the newsmagazines of the rich, the radio stations of the rich and the TV stations of the rich.

The rich are my deadly enemies. It’s a war to the death – us and them. I will fight them to the death and then I will dance on their graves forever and a day.

I really don’t understand the rich. They want to rip up the safety net? Got it, they don’t need it.

Destroy public education? Sure, their kids all go to private schools.

Close the libraries? I don’t get it. The rich don’t go to libraries?

Close all the parks? I don’t get it. The rich don’t go to parks? They have private parks and country clubs to go to?

Shut down the state and national parks and national forests? I don’t get it. The rich don’t go on vacation? They don’t go to national forests, national parks, or state parks? Someone clue me in here.

Shut down public transit? Sure, the rich don’t use it.

Destroy all funding for infrastructure? I don’t get it. The rich don’t drive on highways? They don’t drive over bridges?

The model here is Latin America. Latin America, a continent that has been wrecked by the rich from Day One. All of Latin America’s problems are due to rich rule. The public schools are wrecked – the rich won’t pay for them. The highways and infrastructure are a joke. I never understood this until I heard that the Latin American rich simply buy 4-wheel drives to drive over their shit roads. They would rather do this than pay for a road.

Libraries in ruins? No problem, the Latin American rich don’t care about libraries. So where do they get their books?

Medical care in ruins? Who cares, the Latin American rich go to private clinics.

Parks decrepit, falling apart, or closed? In Latin America, this is the case. National parks are horribly underfunded, decrepit or closed. I guess the rich just don’t care?

Even housing standards. After the glorious Pinochet (Tulio’s hero) came into Chile and afterwards, the housing standards put in by Allende were rolled back. That more buildings did not fall down in the Chilean earthquake is largely due to the housing standards that were put in by Allende.

After Pinochet, new governments rolled back these standards or mostly just looked the other way while typical Latin American capitalist criminals violated building codes. As a result, many more buildings were damaged in the earthquake than would have been otherwise. This I don’t get at all. The Latin American rich are such skinflints that they would rather skirt a building code to save a few bucks, and then risk having the building fall down or getting hurt or killed? All the personal risk is worth it to save a buck or two? What scumbags!

The Latin American rich don’t believe in hooking up their countries with electricity. Much of the country lacks power, but they don’t care. They all have generators!

Horrible pollution runs in the public water supply, but they don’t give a fuck. A cholera epidemic rages through Peru, but the rich don’t care. Why not? They all drink bottled water?

The part about the cops I get. Here in California, even the police are cutting back. They often won’t even come out. This is the case in Latin America. In Peru, the cops are so poorly paid that they often stage holdups on the road to get money. I don’t get this. Don’t the Latin American rich worry about crime. I have heard that many of them hire private bodyguards. They’d rather hire private bodyguards than pay for cops?

The Latin American rich won’t even pay for a decent military. During the Civil War in Peru, the soldiers didn’t even have proper boots or uniforms. The rich could not be bothered to pay for them. Now that’s a callous ruling class! So cheap that they won’t even fund the army that keeps them in power. “Oh well,” they figure, “The revolution will always be defeated somehow. We won’t need to pay for an army.”